Friday, November 9, 2012

Dr. Harvey's New Philosophy, 1663

One of the books I restored recently was Dr. Harvey's New Philosophy. (Archelogia Philosophica Nova or, New principles of Philosophy, Containing Philosophy in general, Metaphysicks or Ontology, Dynamilogy or a Discourse of Power, Religio Philosophi or Natural Theology, Physicks or Natural philosophy, to be exact.) This is one of Gideon Harvey's works, published in 1663. (First Edition) This is the first publication that mentions the word "ontology".This book somehow reminded me of the Voynich Manuscript, of which the assumed contents were related to medicine / science based on the pictorial depictions of plants, herbs, and astrology and some implications of alchemy. I looked through this Harvey's book on metaphysics, and felt some similarities with the Voynich in a conceptual way.

Back in '99, one of our regular clients told us that he had acquired a partial copy of Voynich Manuscript, and was planning to bind it by himself. (Bookbinding is one of his spare-time hobbies.) At that time, I had never heard such a document existed, but was immediately intrigued by its remarkable history and the mystery surrounding it. Since then, when I can't sleep at night or just need to chill out or something, I sometimes stare at pictures of its mysterious writings and its ominous drawings on the internet, and wonder if I can somehow make sense out of the seemingly legitimate yet rather gibberish contents, to no avail... Nobody has ever been able to decipher it, so how could I! Well, my grandma would say "If nobody can decipher it, it most likely has no meaning." So, I think it's just mumbojumbo, and according to a recent segment on Voynich Manuscript by National Geographic, "Book That Can't Be Read", my grandma's saying might turn out to be true. Though, I know I would never be able to find out what the book actually says, I find the manuscript inspiring in many ways. It's like one of those "idea books" or something. Anyway, I recently got a hold of a complete digital copy of the manuscript, and have thought of printing it out and binding the darn thing for my personal library. But, the scanned images are all askance and need to be cropped to be printed, so I've been fixing them in my spare time. (Over 200 of them! duh!)

Anyway, the client of this book asked for a brand new facsimile binding with mottled leather to match the original case. Based on a partial remain of the original headbands, they used to be in white and blue which aged to be tan and greenish over time, so that's what I've used for sewing the headbands. The top of the title page was torn, so I dug out a sheet of antique paper from 1600's, and patched it instead of using a conventional mending paper, which didn't quite match the paper texture of the original. In case someone's interested in what I mean by patching the paper without mending paper, I took some photos of the process.

4 comments:

  1. Very pleased with the restoration on the Harvey book and delighted with the blog post with its comparison to Voynich. See also Robert Fludd's writings. From Harvey's preface to the reader: "But to give you a more particular account of my design...My thoughts fluctuating in a mist, astonisht at the multiplicity of all kinds of bodies moving about me, advised to stear their course to some immoveable, whereupon they might fix themselves, and thence to ponder upon others..." Cheers & many thanks!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm glad and relieved to hear that you are happy with my work, Mr. F. I'm normally not present when clients pick up my works. So I always wonder whether they approved of my works or not. Hearing an actual approval from the client himself means a lot to me. Thank you for taking time to visit my humble blog.

      Sincerely,
      MHR

      Delete
  2. What!? This is like magic. I can't figure out how you do this. It's beautiful.

    ReplyDelete