‘The Great Bowyer Bible’: Robert Bowyer and the Macklin Bible1

This article examines an iconic example of grangerizing: the Macklin Bible extra-illustrated in 45 volumes by London artist and bookseller Robert Bowyer (1758‐1834) in the first quarter of the nineteenth century (Bolton Libraries and Museums, Bolton, United Kingdom). The principal focus is on the Bowyer Bible as an example of an extra-illustrator’s close engagement with its source publication. The author argues that Bowyer’s practice responds not only to the Bible or the King James Bible, in general, but also to the Macklin Bible, in particular. The article discusses how the Bowyer Bible engages with the Macklin Bible specifically and how it reflects a broader range of concerns in its visual engagement with the Bible. It demonstrates that Bowyer’s curation of biblical visual material evidences both his professional interests as a connoisseur of prints and his personal interests in the visual culture of the Bible that reflect his own piety as well as contemporaneous developments in the study of the scriptures. Other matters discussed in the article are the original function of this Bible, as well as the extent to which it reflects and is distinctive from contemporaneous extra-illustrated books.

Extra-illustrations to Charles Robert Cockerell’s Ionian Antiquities and James Cavanah Murphy’s Arabian Antiquities of Spain in the collections of the Gennadius Library and the Yale Center for British Art

This article focuses on unpublished extra-illustrations relating to two architectural monographs, currently in the collections of the Gennadius Library (Athens, Greece) and the Yale Center for British Art (New Haven, CT, USA). The first section examines two unique copies of Ionian Antiquities (1769) by Richard Chandler, Nicholas Revett and William Pars, both grangerized by Charles Robert Cockerell (1788–1863); the second section considers a special copy of The Arabian Antiquities of Spain (1815) by James Cavanah Murphy (1760–1814). These enhanced volumes embody early nineteenth-century concepts of authorship and shed light on the working methodologies of their creators. In his personal copies, Cockerell noted differences in admeasurements of the monuments as recorded by Chandler and Revett for use in Neoclassical architectural practice, and brought to light new discoveries made during his Ionian Grand Tour. In Murphy’s own volume of The Arabian Antiquities of Spain, the supplementary sketches, drawings and additional illustrations enliven the plates, place them in context and inform the printing process.

Extra-illustration, preservation and libraries in the nineteenth-century United States

Extra-illustration, usually considered an eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century British phenomenon, is abundantly present in the creative book practices of the late nineteenth-century United States, but it is often overlooked in scholarship. Analysing the collecting, cutting and pasting habits of Massachusetts banker Nathaniel Paine, this article argues that extra-illustration was closely connected to the then emerging modes of information organization that have since shaped modern libraries. Paine added hundreds of mass-produced images of US president George Washington to the volumes in his library, including a group of pamphlets printed just after Washington died in 1799. This unusual group of pamphlets, as well as Paine’s other extra-illustrative supplements to his volumes and scrapbooks, reveal an effort not only to preserve a particular version of the past but also to develop an indexing scheme built around pictures.

Where the book ends and the album begins: Extra-illustrating the work of James MacPherson LeMoine1 in nineteenth-century Quebec

This article is a case study of photographs as extra-illustrations using as an example the third volume in the series of Maple Leaves books by Sir James MacPherson LeMoine (1825‐1912), published in 1865 under the subtitle Canadian History and Quebec Scenery, which was the first literary work in Canada to be commercially illustrated with photographs. Original albumen photographs made by photographer Jules-Isaïe Benoît dit Livernois (1830‐65) depicted many of the country villas described by the author in the section referred to as ‘Our Country Seats’. The readers of Maple Leaves turned this work into a complex and intimate record of a community by liberally augmenting the official photographs with individual prints selected independently for their copies. The surviving books collectively serve as a kind of regional album, preserving the tastes and aspirations of some of the 500 subscribers living in and around Quebec City in the mid-nineteenth century.

CHAOS: A Co-Creation

This is a critical account of a year-long collaboration between MA Authorial Illustration students and service users of a social services organization and mental healthcare provider, The CHAOS Group (Community Helping All Of Society), with the aim of communicating the journey of those experiencing mental health issues and the efficacy of authorial illustration in promoting wellbeing. Central to the project was the production of the book CHAOS: A Co-Creation, and this article describes the book’s development and the experience of working in the co-creation mode. Drawing upon research methods in narrative and authorial illustration, the article explores the potential of authorial illustration to serve as a tool for benefitting mental health: could an illustrational mindset ‐ one rooted within personal authorship ‐ bring out those personal voices, rekindling a sense of worth and self-esteem? At the heart of the project was the concept of shared creative process, a ‘thinking-through-making’ in which weekly creative sessions allowed each of the participants’ individual voices to emerge and feel empowered through a gradual encouragement to author personal stories. Alongside the fostering of individual authorial voices through illustration, the article describes how, through a non-hierarchical co-creation process, we witnessed a collective empowerment. The article draws upon the recent research-based publication Co-Creation (in France) and draws on the notion from social psychology that there seems to be a sense in which narrative, rather than referring to ‘reality’, may in fact create or constitute it, as when ‘fiction’ creates a ‘world’ of its own: empowering each individual to author their own life-story (Jerome Bruner 1991: 1‐21).

Psychoanalysis, illustration and the art of hysteria: Transcript from a talk, Worcester 2019

‘Psychoanalysis, illustration and the art of hysteria’ is a transcript of a talk. It explores the possibility of the disruption of meaning in both the analytic encounter and the encounter between image and text. In order to do this, it focuses on the photographs of hysterics taken at the Salpêtrière Hospital in the nineteenth century and asks, ‘what were the doctors doing to these women, and what were these women doing to the doctors?’ From here it goes on to explore Lacan’s four discourses (the discourse of the master, the hysteric, the analyst and the university) that provide a radically non-illustrative means of illuminating the logic of hysteria. The overall drive of the article is to articulate something around the transformative potential of unruly communications, arguing for the possibility that linear arguments and an insistence on sense-making are far from the only means of addressing the Other in order to bring about change.

Illustrating dementia

Debate about dementia commonly elicits horror and despair. Yet, dementia is a syndrome of many distinct brain disorders. While progression is expected, memory scores are highly variable in dementia. Illustration plays a part by emphasizing the shrivelled brain of advanced Alzheimer’s. Texts typically refer to wasting in the Alzheimer’s brain although it is selective and may be absent in some cases. Scans emphasize the anatomy of dementia rather than its variability and potential for relearning. Zombies have become associated with symptoms of dementia in both scholarly discourse and popular conversation. A combination of these metaphors and the implication of ‘brainless behaviour’ may contribute to the stigma around dementia and ‘malignant practices’ reported among care staff, such as mockery and disparagement, which disempower people with dementia. However, people with dementia can describe their own experience. An increasing number of memoirs, blogs and podcasts explore the subjective experience of living with dementia. Art by people with dementia reveals persistent creativity and may help them to retain a sense of identity and self-worth. My animated documentary, Mute, illustrates the past life of ‘Frank’, a man with advanced dementia. The technique of charcoal reduction, with its subtle residue of past images, is a metaphor for the selective memory loss typical of Alzheimer’s dementia. The theme of animation therapy in mental health and community arts has gained support in recent years. I discuss the scope for co-produced animations by people who have dementia and the skills required by arts health workers in this field.

Sketchbook as therapist: Self-authorship and the art of making picturebooks

To self-author means to have the capacity to make coherent and informed decisions based on one’s internal beliefs and to not rely on, or be swayed by, external sources; to trust one’s internal voice and identity. In this article, I look to self-authorship as a framework to enable the illustrator to better understand personal engagement and experience of practice and visual identity through critically informed decision-making based on one’s internal beliefs; using self-authorship as a phenomenological approach to practice, encouraging the exploration of and reflection on the individual facets of process and self with a more reflective and critical eye. Two case studies set the foundation of this article, and in case study one, I reflect on using personal sketchbooks created on a master’s degree and later during a period of great personal distress. As an established illustrator, I explore the way these sketchbooks have revealed the lengthy steps of redefinition of my practice over the past decade or more. Presenting a renewed ‘sense of identity’ for me as practitioner and for the work I create. Case study two is a prelude to the conclusion and sets in place a context for my own self-authorship as a picturebook maker. Building on Fauchon and Gannon’s Manifesto for Illustration Pedagogy, through personal exploration of self-authorship and the role of the sketchbook, this article presents the use and analysis of the sketchbook and mark making as a route to 'visual self-discovery' towards a more authentic picturebook practice.