Notes on the Ley - Booksellers Staircase, Rouen Cathedral

The next stop on the Arnolfini Ley is the ‘Booksellers Staircase’ in Rouen Cathedral.

Rouen Cathedral A

The construction on the current building began in the 12th century in an Early Gothic style though the site has had churches on from the 4th century. It has been added to, fallen down and repaired ever since. 1

Booksellers Staircase - Henk Bekker B

What particularly intrigues and falls directly on the Ley is the ‘Booksellers Staircase’ or the Escalier de la Librairie. This has an important significance on our line as it has both a sacred and book element. 

This late Gothic stair case in Rouen Cathedral was built, under the direction of archbishop William d'Estouteville, by Guillaume Pontis in 1480. The stairs used to lead to the Cathedral library which was situated just above the Flamboyant Gothic arched door. In 1788 another story was built above the library to hold the Cathedral records and the upper flights of stairs were added then. 2

In 1562, during the start of the Wars of Religion, the library was ransacked by Calvinists, when many of the Cathedal's tombs, stained glass, and monuments were damaged. The library was later rebuilt by archbishop Francis de Harley de Champvallon. 2

Booksellers Staircase -Attributed Thomas Shotter Boys, 1803–1874 C

On the north side of the cathedral where the ‘Booksellers Staircase’ are, there was also a book market which is how the stairs got there name. 3

This staircase is fascinating as it exists at a point between around which the veneration of books took place. It is almost a physical embodiment of the Ley and has parallels with the Arnolfini itself. During BABE the Arnolfini will become a  ‘Booksellers Staircase’ . With levels of book sellers between the bookshop on the ground floor to the reading room on the third floor. There is a directional flow of reading energy that will move through these spaces and that also exists on the ‘Booksellers Staircase’ in Rouen Cathedral. 

[George]

Refrences

1 Normandy, its Gothic architecture and history: as illustrated by twenty-five photographs from buildings in Rouen, Caen, Mantes, Bayeaux, and Falaise, Frederic George Stephens, A. W. Bennett, 1865.

2 http://professor-moriarty.com/info/section/sculpture/gothic-sculpture-booksellers-staircase-rouen-cathedral

3 https://daydreamtourist.com/2013/12/12/inside-rouen-cathedral/

A https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Rouen_Cathedral_as_seen_from_Gros_Horloge_140215_4.jpg

B https://www.flickr.com/photos/henkbekker/
C http://www.artwarefineart.com/gallery/booksellers-staircase-rouen-cathedral

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouen_Cathedral#/media/File:Notre-Dame_de_Rouen,_Nave_20140521_1.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RouenCathedral_Monet_1894.jpg

http://www.mimirosenthal.com/2014/02/26/staircase-of-the-month-february-2014/

Notes on the Ley - Arnolfini

The Arnolfini reading room is housed on the third floor of the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol. It is the second stop on the Arnolfini Ley. 

the Arnolfini reading room A

The Arnolfini was established in 1961 as a site ‘…where all the contemporary arts could coexist and interact in order to stimulate creativity, to provoke thought and to give pleasure to a wide range of people.’1

Bristol, Acraman's Quay B

A 1929 aerial photograph of Bush House B

It moved to its current site Bush House in 1975. Bush house was built in the early 1830s for Acraman Bush Castle & Co, for use as a tea warehouse which quickly failed. It was later used for iron and tin plate storage and expanded in the later 1830’s. By 1842 Acraman became bankrupt and in 1846 the building was occupied by George and James Bush, bonded warehouse keepers. Their company remained until the late 1960s and gave Bush house its name.2

Bush House in 1971 C

The Arnolfini gallery took its name from Jan van Eyck's fifteenth century painting The Arnolfini Portrait.1

The Arnolfini Portrait - Jan van Eyck, 1434 D

The Arnolfini Portrait is one of the earliest paintings to assert the presence of the artist within its depiction and links to Arnolfini's consistent concerns: to explore the role of artist as a witness and recorder of what is around them.3 This is an interesting side note that ties in to part of our project. The presence of the body and making you aware of it, is a part of the reason we are exploring reading spaces along the Ley. The act of reading and referencing that act, by drawing your attention to the body, through the hands, is an interesting part of the reading process and draws similarities with the Arnolfini Portrait. Where the Arnolfini Portrait references the artist as 'creator', our project references the hands as 'creator' and more importantly 'activator' of content. This process of the hands relationship through the book and the repeated actions of reading we have seen already at the Trinity College Library Dublin, through the devotional Book of Kells.  

the Arnolfini reading room A

We will take up residency in the reading room, which will become the focus of the Arnolfini Ley during BABE. The reading room is a space that houses a collection of contemporary art books, magazines and other resources that relate to the Arnolfini’s current programme. It is a space where ideas behind the exhibitions and events centre. Like a supplement to the visual art and events that appear throughout the gallery spaces, the reading room acts in the same was as an ‘orrery’. With an exhibition as a point at the centre, thoughts move around this point to add depth and understanding to the whole exhibit. 

A repeated action here is the action of acquiring knowledge, with a specific aim to be read. It is how, I think we came to be drawn to this part of the Ley. The centring of knowledge around a specific event such as BABE, gives the reading room an important role. Allowing us to explore and explain our thoughts around the alignment project. Using the space to build up a collection of ideas that act in the spirit of the reading room. 

the Arnolfini gallery E

[George]

References

1 http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/about/arnolfini-history/

2 http://www.lookingatbuildings.org.uk/cities/bristol/bush-house/dating-bush-house.html

3 Hedley, Gill (May 2007). "Rees, Jeremy Martin". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

A http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/visit/reading-room

B http://www.lookingatbuildings.org.uk/cities/bristol/bush-house/dating-bush-house.html

C http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/about

D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnolfini_Portrait

E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnolfini

Notes on the Ley - The Trinity College Library, Dublin

A series of posts are going to run alongside the 'Notes of Alingnment' called 'Notes on the Ley' that explore the points of interest that run along the Arnolfini Ley. The line itself connects various sites of reading and book veneration amongst other interesting places. There are some fascinating connections that make the line interesting from a reading and book perspective. The acts of reading at these points give the Arnolfini Ley a synergy of gesture that we can tap into and explore.

The Long Room, Trinity College Library A

The first stop is the Trinity College Library in Dublin. Which has the stunningly iconic library space that is the Long Room. 

The Library was founded in 1592 with the founding of the College. The famous long room (pictured above) was built between 1712 and 1732 and houses 200,000 of the Library's oldest books. The Long Room originally had a flat ceiling and shelving for books only on the lower level.1 But by the 1850s the room had to be expanded as the current shelves were full. The Library was endowed with a Legal Deposit privilege in 1801, which meant (and still does) it received a copy of materials published in the United Kingdom and Ireland, vastly expanding the collection.2 

The Long Room, Trinity College Library as it existed before the extension. B

Altogether the Library houses over 6 million printed volumes with the most famous one being the Book of Kells, which was donated in 1661 by Henry Jones the then Vice Chancellor of Trinity College.2 

Folio 2r of the Book of Kells C

Folio 291v contains a portrait of John the Evangelist. D

The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript of the four Gospels of the New Testament in latin and believed to have been created c. 800 AD. 

The manuscript takes its name from the Abbey of Kells in Kells, County Meath, where it was kept for centuries.3 The book is thought to have had a more sacramental rather than educational purpose. In this sense, it would have been used more as a venerated object and as the focus of sacred and devotional events within the abbey. It would have been placed on the high altar of the church and removed only for the reading of the Gospel during Mass.4

The book can be viewed online in full here: http://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/home/index.php?DRIS_ID=MS58_003v

Although this book no longer exists in a church it is interesting that it would appear on the Arnolfini Ley. The Arnolfini Ley came about from the reading and reverence of books and the repeated actions of reading that exist along it. Nothing typifies this reverence than a book made for ceremony. The intense focus upon the repeated act of reading has found its place on the Arnolfini Ley and brings the Trinity College Library in alignment with the other points. Even today the book is visited and read by people almost as a pilgrimage. It has become the focus and centre of the Long Room from which the Ley radiates out from. 

Roger Powell rebinding the Book of Kells E

A repeated act that is also to note and concerns the hands relationship to the book and the repeated actions that they produce, is in its binding. By its very nature the act of reading is destructive and to preserve the book it has had to be rebound. Sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. A destructive rebind in the 19th century saw the book drastically reduced in size and its edges trimmed and gilded.5 

Roger Powell talking about binding F

More recently in the 1950s the book of Kells was rebound from one into four volumes by bookbinder Roger Powell to stretch and preserve several pages that had developed bulges.3 This rebinding has changed the experience of the book. Its pace though reading and handling and through the movement of hands. Even now as it lies on display in the Trinity College Library only two copies are out at any one time. Though they can't be held, they can be read next to each other and the reading of it in this way has transformed its whole appreciation. 

[George]

References

1 "Book of Kells - The Old Library & the Book of Kells Exhibition : Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Ireland". Tcd.ie. 2014-12-04
2 http://www.tcd.ie/library/about/history.php
3 https://www.inyourpocket.com/dublin/Book-Of-Kells_34924v
4 Calkins, Robert G. (1983). Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-1506-3.
5 http://www.tcd.ie/library/manuscripts/book-of-kells.php

A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Long_Room_Interior,_Trinity_College_Dublin,_Ireland_-_Diliff.jpg
B https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/James_Malton_Trinity_College_Library_Dublin.jpg
C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KellsFol005rCanonTable.jpg
D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KellsFol291vPortJohn.jpg
E http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/from-the-archive-handled-with-care-and-great-dedication-1.2908763
F http://www3.hants.gov.uk/wfsa/sound/craft-recordings/bookbinder.htm

http://www.libraryireland.com/IrishPictures/I-2.php

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nlireland/6713554905

http://www3.slv.vic.gov.au/latrobejournal/issue/latrobe-46/fig-latrobe-46-052a.html

Notes of Alignment. [2. on The Old Straight Track]

This post is about Alfred Watkins’  The Old Straight Track, some ideas and legends behind it, its rebirth in 1960s and some of the influences.

Alfred Watkins published The Old Straight Track in 1925 on the back of his lecture to the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club in Hereford, where he presented his idea of leys - lines of straight alignments (of stones, mounts, churches, etc) in the landscape, which are visible to this day as a record of the ancient trade routes used by our ancestors to travel across Britain.  Alfred Watkins had spent years photographing his native Hereforshire and mapping the walking routes (Daniels). Then, in 1920, as he was sitting in his car at a Blackwardine crossroads, he came up with the theory of leys.

(Watkins was no walker along ley-lines, at least for any distance; he favoured motor cars of various kinds, both steam and petrol powered vehicles, to get close to the key sites, to carry his camera and his assistant Mr McKaig, and to establish the scope of the system. (Daniels))

The book is an impressive, extensively researched effort to make sense of the landscape Watkins clearly loved. The Old Straight Track is as elegant, as it is methodical. When reading it, it is easy to get fascinated by his systematic account of mounts, stones, wells, ponds, histories and customs that surround them, links with the Bible narratives as well as straight lines in other countries, attempts at etymological explanations of toponyms and hydronyms. Then, there is a poetic quote at the start of each chapter and the book completes with a four-liner from Ruyard Kipling.  The Old Straight Track can appear romantic and far-fetched in places (some etymologies are incorrect, some alignments are rather imaginative), however Watkins constructed a vision of olde England, which defines the relationship of many English ramblers with their walking tracks today.

The Old Straight Track got forgotten soon after Watkins’ death. Then, psychedelic 60s came. In 1961 Tony Weld - a former RAF pilot - suggested that there was a link between the leylines and UFO sightings, twisting the idea of ancient trackways into energy lines, thus giving birth to the subject of  “earth mysteries”. (Pennick, p.27)  Nothing illustrates better the leap from Watkins original archeology-based ideas to ancient astronauts and psychic channelling, than rewriting of the event at Blackwardine crossroads (see the first paragtaph above). The "updated" version says, that 

Alfred Watkins was riding around the Herefordshire hills in the early 1920s, when he pulled up his horse to gaze across the landscape, and he had a sudden revelation. In his vision, every landmark, whether natural or man-made, was linked by a network of straight lines, which he saw as glowing wires laid out over the surface of the land.  The lines passed through hill summits and cairns, linking church spires, prehistoric settlements and burial sites, old encampments and sacred monuments.   Following the route that they took were trackways, straight roads that had been ancient and well trodden long before the coming of the Romans, along which the first settlers of this country would have travelled by day and night, their eyes keenly aware of waymarkers. (Woolf)

New Age mystics highjacking the The Old Straight Track brought it to the forefront of discourse and visibility. As Timpson says, 

The attraction of cranks to leylines is naturally no encouragement to take them seriously: but neither it is a reason for the subject to be rejected (Timpson, p.8)

I found few direct references on how Watkins’ book influenced art. It is inevitable that it did so to some extent, considering that arrival of New Age magic coincided with the beginnings of “land art” movement. Looking at the land works of Richard Long and photography of Alfred Watkins it is easy to see visual similarities. However, those similarities lie not in the mystical and the magical energies, but in the real and physical human presence on the land, such as human marks on the land made though walking. 

Richard Long

Richard Long first found out about about ley-lines at the time of his solo exhibition at The Whitechapel Gallery in 1971:
"Someone came up; he saw my lines of walking across Exmoor, the line made by walking and said, have you heard of this man, an eccentric geographer who had a strange theory about invisible lines that connected prehistoric sites across England. That was the first time I had heard of these ley-lines." (Daniels)

Hamish Fulton

Hamish Fulton, on the other hand, was not only affected by the concept of leys, but also by the designs of Alfred Watkins’ books. 

His Straight Line Walk, 1969, relates to the artist’s fascination with the prehistoric ‘ley’ system of walking paths. Around the same time, Fulton made a special visit to the Hertford [sic] Public Library to see Watkins’s original books. Fulton acknowledges this as a very important visit, not only because of his interest in the concept of a walked line for navigational purposes, but also because of the artist’s admiration for the sheer visual and physical beauty of Watkins’s books. Fulton remains fascinated by the clarity and elegance of 1930s and 1940s book layouts, with clear geometric blocks of text, augmented by delicately tinted, tipped in photographs. (Daniels).

Watkins was indeed a competent photographer and his books offer not only skilled pictures, but accomplished and clever layouts and compositions: some pages contain sweeping landscapes with mistied background hills, while others sit as combined images, united as a journey sequence of a common alignment. Simple and clear, parts of The Old Straight Track are tremendously enjoyable as a photo book.

Like Hamish Fulton, we too are fascinated by Watkins' books and their aesthetics - not just The Old Straight Track, but also Early British Trackways with its collaged and overlapping images and simple clear lettering. Alignment project might be borrowing some of those designs. 

There are some conceptual aspects which we will be taking further. In particular, we like the idea that major sacred landmarks can be aligned into a straight track: regardless of what mystic or mundane causes for the alignment might be. If either for sheer randomness or divine intention some sites fall into one line, could we find alignments of our own?

[Egidija]

NEXT: about book as sacred object and book as part of the ritual

REFERENCES:

Daniels, Stephen (2006) Lines of Sight: Alfred Watkins, Photography and Topography in Early Twentieth-Century Britain.  Tate Papers Autumn. [Online]. Available at http://www.tate.org.uk/download/file/fid/7394  (Accessed:  21 Ferbruary 2017)

Knight, Adam (2013) Ley-lines lead writer to wrong place in history. Hereford Times. 10 June.  [Online]. Available at http://www.herefordtimes.com/news/10465680.Ley_lines_lead_writer_to_wrong_place_in_history/?ref=rss  (Accessed:  21 Ferbruary 2017)

Neil, Alan (2015) Ley Lines of the South West. Launceston: Bossiney Books.

Mills, Billy (2015) The Old Straight Track by Alfred Watkins – walking through the past.  The Guardian. 8 August, [Online]. Available at  https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/aug/20/the-old-straight-track-by-alfred-watkins-walking-through-the-past. (Accessed:  21 Ferbruary 2017)

Pennick, Nigel (1997) Leylines. Mysteries of the Ancient World. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Timpson, John (2002) Timpson’s Leylines. A Layman Tracking the Leys. London: Cassell Paperbacks

Watkins, Alfred (1974) The Straight Old Track. Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones. London: Abacus.

Woolf, Jo Book review: ‘The Old Straight Track’ by Alfred Watkins. The Hazel Tree.  14 July, 2014. [Online]. Available at https://the-hazel-tree.com/2014/07/14/book-review-the-old-straight-track-by-alfred-watkins/ (Accessed:  21 Ferbruary 2017)


Unless otherwise stated, all images are rephotographed from:
Watkins, Alfred (1974) The Straight Old Track. Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones. London: Abacus.

Notes of Alignment. [1. ley lines]

Arnolfini is located in an alignment with The Library of Trinity College (Dublin), Bookseller’s Staircase (Rouen Cathedral), The Library of Alexandria; as well as a number of smaller peaks, mounts, cathedrals and sites of book veneration. We have called this line of alignment the Arnolfini Ley.

 
On March 1st we are starting a residency at Arnolfini, Bristol. We are super excited about that! Our Alignment project will focus on the sacred and ritualistic aspects of reading, though investigation into the theories of mystical and religious geographical alignments called leylines. We are researching Arnolfini's collection of artist's books, we will be producing artwork, a large scale intervention and talks to coincide with BABE2017.

Notes of Alignment will be a short series of blog posts which will cover some of the aspects of research: Alfred Watkins, leylines, land art, library as a sacred space, reading as a performative act, ect. 


 [1. leylines]
 

At the beginning of the 20th century archeologist, photographer and brewer Alfred Watkins coined the term ley line to describe avenues of alignment along which ancient natural and man-made monuments existed on a local scale in his native Herefordshire. Those trackways, according to him, marked the paths of human activity. Our neolithic ancestors created them as a byproduct of line-of-sight navigation: prehistoric people made their way across landscape in straight lines, as a result, standing stones, mounts, burial sites, holy wells, cairns, pagan altars are located as landmark points to keep travellers on course. The next post will look at his book "The Old Straight Track".

In 1960s the idea was picked up by mystic enthusiasts and ley lines became related to a wide range of phenomena: UFOs, haunted houses, drowsing, time slips, astral projections, vampirism, poltergeist, etc. The current New Age concept of ley lines is not dissimilar to Chinese feng-shui, German heilige linien, Nazaca lines in Peru: they mark concentrated energy paths, which envelope the world in a matrix of power lines, orientated to include Machu Picchu, the Pyramids of Giza, Easter Island, Puma Punku, Lhasa Tibet, the ancient ruins of Mohenjo Daro, Findhorn in Scotland, the Bermuda Triangle, the Arizona vortices, Angkor Wat, numerous obelisks, sacred domed structures around the globe and  intergalactic objects. For an informative overview of various  extraordinary approaches to studying leylines by Paul Devereux see Leys / "Ley Lines”  - an abridged summary of paper given at the "WEGE DES GEISTES - WEGE DER KRAFT (Ways of Spirit - Ways of Power)" conference in October, 1996, in Germany. 

 

Bill Becker and Bethe Hagens grid

Most of literature on ley lines is vague and unmethodical (and this an understatement). As a result, alternative more systematic and exciting projects can be found, for example, Tom Scott’s Magical Mystical Leyline Locator. Scott’s tool is based on principle, that a large number of randomly placed points will inevitably have some of them neatly aligned into a straight line. Not unlike constellations in the sky, it is human predisposition to infer patterns in a large sample of data, which produces the effect of leys. PLEASE TRY!

In regards to our Alignment project, it is the idea of aligned holy sites that excites us the most: the idea of religious ritual being performed in multiple points across the line every day, like an engine, producing a rhythm, reinforcing the time and energy flow, combining those disconnected locations into a system, giving it meaning and purpose. 


NEXT: ON THE OLD STRAIGHT TRACK