Sato's sword

My Table

"Two heavy trestles, and a board
Where Sato's gift, a changeless sword,
By pen and paper lies,
That it may moralise
My days out of their aimlessness.
A bit of an embroidered dress
Covers its wooden sheath.
Chaucer had not drawn breath
When it was forged.  In Sato's house,
Curved like new moon, moon-luminous,
It lay five hundred years.
Yet if no change appears
No moon; only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art. "

From Meditations in Time of Civil War  W.B.Yeats

Poet of the dawn

"An old man in a lodge within a park;
The chamber walls depicted all around
With portraitures of huntsman, hawk and hound,
And the hurt deer.   He listeneth to the lark,
Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark
Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;
He listeneth and laugheth at the sound,
Then writeth in a book like any clerk.

He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote
The Canterbury Tales, and his old age
Made beautiful with song; and as I read
I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note
Of lark and linnet, and from every page
Rise odours of ploughed field or flowery mead."

Chaucer  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Signs and wonders

"I have heard that on a day
Mine host's signboard flew away
Nobody knew whither till
An astrologer's old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story --
Said he saw you in your glory
Underneath a new-old Sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac!

Lines on the Mermaid Tavern   John Keats

A profusion of lettering

"And finally, while you are still puzzling over the mystery of things, there will come to you like a revelation the knowledge that most of the amazing picturesqueness of these streets is simply due to the profusion of Chinese and Japanese characters in white, black, blue or gold, decorating everything -- even surfaces of doorposts and paper screens.  Perhaps, then, for one moment, you will imagine the effect of English lettering substituted for those magical characters; and the mere idea will give to whatever aesthetic sentiment  you may possess a brutal shock, and you will become, as I have become, an enemy of the Romaji-Kwai -- that society founded for the ugly utilitarian purpose of introducing the use of English letters in writing Japanese."

Writings from Japan  Lafcadio Hearn, edited F. King

Three Queens' Binders

"G.D. Hobson gave the name 'Queens' Binder' to the craftsman who was thought to have bound both for Catherine of Braganza and Mary of Modena.  Howard M. Nixon has now taken this further and shown that three binders were involved: Queens' Binder A, Queens' Binder B and Queens' Binder C. Rather like those awful sums in old-fashioned arithmetic books, Queens' Binder A was the more prolific but ( and this will rejoice the hearts of all readers of Stephen Leacock) B was the better craftsman of the two.   Recent research suggests the Queens' Binder A may well be William Nott 'the famous bookbinder, that bound for my Lord Chancellor's library', visited by Pepys on 12 March 1668/9.  Pepys added: 'Here I did take occasion for curiosity to bespeak a book to be bound only that I might have one of his bindings.'  "

Great Books and Book Collectors   A.G. Thomas 

Discoveries: conversation pieces

"In fact, human imagination may be the most powerful instrument of discovery, allowing us to question the ideas of others, no matter how illustrious and famous they may be."

Liba Taub, Director, Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge

"All objects in museums acquire significance by talking to the company they keep."

Robin  Osborne, Director, Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge

Discoveries: Art, Science and Exploration.  
Exhibition catalogue © Two Temple Place 2014

Gilded spines

"…I  to  Paul's churchyard to treat with a bookbinder to come and gild the backs of all my books to make them handsome, to stand up in my new presses when they come."
Samuel Pepys,  13 August 1666

The Shorter Pepys,  edited R. Latham.   

'half a pair of gloves…'

"For this, ere Phoebus rose, he had implor'd
Propitious heav'n, and ev'ry pow'r ador'd.
But chiefly Love - to Love an altar built,
Of twelve vast French Romances, neatly gilt.
There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves;
And all the trophies of his former loves.
With tender Billet-doux he lights the pyre,
And breathes three am'rous sighs to raise the fire.
Then prostrate falls and begs with ardent eyes
Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize:
The Pow'rs gave ear, and granted half his pray'r,
The rest, the winds dispers'd in empty air."

From The Rape of the Lock  Alexander Pope

Eve's apple

"When Eve upon the first of Men
The Apple press'd with specious cant,
Oh what a thousand pities then
That Adam was not Adamant."

Thomas Hood

"this lovely green"

"No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress' name:
Little, alas, they know or heed
How far these beauties her exceed!
Fair trees! where'er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.

When we have run our passion's heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat:
The gods, who mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race:
Apollo hunted Daphne so
Only that she might laurel grow:
And Pan did after Syrinx speed
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

What wond'rous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass."

from The Garden  Andrew Marvell