Curator’s Choice: Pen Flourish Figures in a Dutch Boy’s Copybook ca. 1733

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This week when I was paging some manuscripts, I got distracted and made a discovery.   I didn’t remember ever having looked at the materials on the shelf where the one manuscript to lives and stopped to peek into a few of the archive boxes on either side of it..

One of them was a eighteenth-century copybook that had been filled in between January and August 1733 by Jan Haverman, who lived in Amersfoort, a Dutch city on the river Een in Utrecht.

Jan Haverman’s signature on the leaf pasted down on the front marbled paper cover. [Copybook]. Amersfoort (Netherlands), 1733. (Cotsen 91631)

Cotsen has quite a few American and British copybooks, but I didn’t know there were  Dutch ones as well.  Opening the marbled paper wrappers, I noticed that the pages were not ruled with carefully spaced lines that are supposed to make it easy for the student to write the practice text across the page.  The odd-numbered pages, I discovered, had margins decorated with highly stylized decorations composed of swirling lines.  Whoever calligraphed these beautiful figures was something of  an artist.

The woman with a cap and curls down her back on leaf 1. (Cotsen 91631)

Jan Haverman signed the bottom of every page he copied out, but did he have the control of the pen to have drawn the figures in the margins as well?

The man in the feathered hat on page 3. (Cotsen 91631)

The hissing snake on page 5. (Cotsen 91631)

The dancing dog on page 19. (Cotsen 91631)

The sly fox on page 21. (Cotsen 91631)

The clever ape on page 67. (Cotsen 91631)

The bird eating cherries on page 35. (Cotsen 91631)

Could Jan’s writing master been the creator of the fantastic people and creatures?  Scholars who study the history of writing instruction often distinguish the parts in an exercise executed by the student and those the instructor corrected.  But why would the master have done the drawings in the margins?  Or is the hand that drew the illustrations that of Jan?

A sprig of flowers on page 27. (Cotsen 91631)

There ARE some blots, misformed letters, and wobbly lines on this page, so perhaps the figure in the margin here was intended as an incentive to do better next time!

 

Itza Pizza in These Picture Books!

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Like junk food, pizza can be enjoyed in a picture book and on a plate!

Jan Pienkowski. Pizza! A Yummy Pop-up. Paper engineering by Helen Balmer and Martin Taylor. (Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, c.2001). Promised gift.

To some illustrators, the idea of making a pizza is an invitation to collaborate with paper engineers.  Some animals put pizza on the menu when the king of beasts announces that he is dropping by for lunch.  A penguin kneads the dough with his  feet, thanks to a pull-tab.  Other moving parts make it possible for the kitchen crew to sprinkle over the dough “creepy, crawly, tasty toppings” like caterpillars, bugs, tadpoles, worms, and a peppy frog.  A flap lets the polar bear and mouse pop the pie into the oven and close the door.  Too bad the pizza doesn’t fill up the lion…

William Boniface, What Do You Want on Your Pizza? Illustrated by Debbie Palen. (N.p.: Price Stern Sloan, c2000). Promised gift.

This unusual board book lets children “order” a slice from the pizza man. The laminated pages are so deep that they have recesses in the shapes of all the different toppings.  Readers can follow the suggestions for finishing the pie in the text or put what they like on it, helping themselves to the pepperoni, anchovies, and veggies in the plastic box attached to the inside of the rear board.

Cover illustration by Roberta Holms for Pizza Math (Alexandria, VA: TimeLife for Children, c1992) Promised gift.

Believe it or not, Jean-Jacques Rousseau suggested using waffles to teach children mathematical concepts. His spirit lives on in the “I Love Math” series, which tries to make the subject “a hands-on, interactive learning experience” by inventing “entertaining characters” and placing them in scenarios that “invite your child to solve math challenges.”  One of the activities in Pizza Math  is a board game called “Tic-Tac-Pizza” printed on the rear endpaper.  Ask mom for some macaroni and jelly beans and play along with the octopus in a chef’s toque and a cat in a trench coat and pink heels.

Endpapers by Sharron O’Neil.

The game Pete’s parents invented to distract him the day the ball game with his friends was rained out looks like a lot more fun than “Tic-Tac-Pizza”  and it was tested extensively by William Steig on his youngest daughter Maggie.

William Steig. Pete’s a Pizza. (New York: Michael di Capua Books, HarperCollins, 1999, c. 1998). Promised gift.

Dad picks up his sulking son off the couch and plops him down on the kitchen table so he can be made into a delicious pizza!  Once the “dough” has been thoroughly kneaded, then it is tossed into the air and stretched into a translucent circle.

Now the “pizza” can be topped with “tomatoes” (checkers) and “cheese” (bits of paper) before it is put in the “oven” (the sofa).  But by the time it is nice and hot, the sun has come out and the “pizza” runs outdoors to find his friends.

 For some people, the only thing better than eating pizza, is being one!