Illumination

Title: Book of Hours
Material: bound manuscript on parchment
Creator: Unknown
Collection: APS collection
Year: possibly 1475

A book of hours was a common devotional prayer book from the Middle Ages. The books contained the list of feast days, excerpts from the Gospels, the Office of the Virgin Mary, psalms, a litany of saints, the Office the Dead, Stations of the Cross, and other prayers used at Catholic Mass. Though the books started out without embellishment, as the Middle Ages wore on wealthy personages were able to purchase books with elaborate illustrations of letters and in the margins of pages.  These illustrations, drawn by monks, were called illuminations.  By the end of the Middle Ages, after inventions of the printing press, books of hours could be mass produced with illuminated patterns made from woodcuts. 

The book is on display in the Tempus Fugit: Times Flies exhibit is a prime example of the Medieval art of illuminated manuscripts.  Although the family that commissioned this work is unknown, the book was donated to the APS by German textile merchant Detmar Basse Muller in May of 1806.  The Chicago based visual artist Antonia Contro included several books in her exhibition, Tempus Fugit, to show how humans interpret and record the passage of time. This book of hours is an example of a lost art and a technique of book making (using vellum or sheep skin sheets).  It is on display in the last case of the exhibit with a contemporary sheet of vellum and a video of pages flapping on a tiny screen.  Until you see this video, the visitor is unaware that the sounds playing in the gallery of pages fluttering corresponds to this video. Other objects on display from the APS collection include a book by Joseph Priestley,  a glass tube used for electrical experiments owned by Benjamin Franklin, a piece of petrified wood, Cromwell Varley's illustrations of comets, a stone dodecahedron, and a ticket to Charles Darwin's funeral.

 

As a history major and Social Studies teacher, I was very familiar with illuminated manuscripts prior to visiting the exhibit. I saw the book of hours on display as a beautiful historic artifact.  It wasn't until I read Antonia Contro's Artist Statement that I realized that she chose the object not only for its aesthetic qualities, but to show how humans record time differently today.  The books shows how time was recorded by human beings not by machines. She says:

 

"Time is at once about mortality and infinity. Illuminated books of hours, breviaries, and prayer books of the middle ages gave structure to devotions, feasts, and holy days.  They offered instructions on when to plant and to reap, when to pray, in penitence, and when to celebrate.  The dispassionate mechanical replacements of modern, secular time-the ticking clock and glowing LED-fall short of providing the comfort of order and purpose to our daily lives, and the assurance of eternal salvation." (I have to agree with her. Today, especially on the East Coast, everything is just so rushed. No one takes time to enjoy events.) 

 

Anyone interested in rare/historic books or Medieval history would be interested in this object. I would be particularly interested in seeing other pages beyond the page spread that is open for display.  Unfortunately, the spread on display is only a facsimile as the original had to be removed for preservation purposes.

 

During our tour of the gallery with Associate Curator of Museum Education Lisa Karena Weidman, she discussed how members of the APS did not appreciate the artist curated exhibit and that it was unlikely that the APS would stage such an exhibition again.  This has less to do with this specific exhibit element than the fact that the artist did not include any labels explaining the exhibition (there is a artist statement available which is quoted above) and that there are no seats in a gallery that is intended as a space of deep contemplation.

 

APS has an "art cart" available for visitors in the gallery which includes print outs of large illuminated letter and coloring instruments. There is also a educator's guide for middle and high school teachers available for the exhibit on the APS website.  The educators guide includes an activity in which students research Jewish, Mayan, Chinese and Muslim calendars and illustrate student planners for every month as a book of hours is illuminated.  I did a project like this in my 6th Grade Social Studies class in which we illustrated a calendar of important events in our lives (this was part of a unit on the Middle Ages in which we got to create our own fiefdom and the calendar was to be followed by the serfs on our land).  Development of a similar book created as a cumulative portfolio would be an excellent culminating activity during a study of the Middle Ages in either high or middle school Social Studies or Language Arts.