Re: Hermathena and Cicero

Conrad,

Of course, I would have to bite on this. ;-)

> I had a cheeky thought, that
> a scholar would try to resolve
> whether one can do engravings
> in bronze by means of a
> thoroughgoing literature
> review of 200 tomes and 1000
> journal articles in peer-
> reviewed journals, while I
> would probably get a slab of
> bronze and a burin and see
> what happens when you have a
> go. Can you cut a nice, smooth
> groove that will hold ink, or
> does the metal chip and fracture?

OK. But, by our assorted researches we would also end up in different 
places.

(Which is why I think cross-disciplinary collaboration, where we push 
one another beyond our comfort zones, is the best approach of all. ;-)

With your approach, you may end up knowing a lot about the strengths 
and weaknesses of bronze engraving -- but this is not something I'll 
be doing any reading about (let alone hundreds of tomes and papers ;-).

 From my perspective, even extensive hands-on knowledge of bronze 
engraving can't prove whether Bocchi's academic press experimented 
with bronze plates, or not.

Maybe they did, and that's why the printed engravings are so poor, 
compared to the original drawings.

Plus, I'm willing to bet that alloys then were not the same as alloys 
today (little else in this pre-standards era was!), so I'd have to 
make too big a leap of faith in order to use your C21 London 
experiments as proof of what they did or didn't do in C16 Bologna.

Although I would probably be persuaded by your experiments personally, 
these would not be conclusive, and I'm always leery of any rush to 
judgment (as I was guilty of doing earlier).

So, having already spent more time than I wanted to on this scholarly 
detour, I would just cut my losses and write this off as -- yet 
another! -- unresolved question about the production of a book which 
remains shrouded in mystery, as do so many other things about Bocchi 
and his academy.

And I would turn my attention instead to what interests me most about 
Bocchi's book: its innovative graphic concept, cultural influences, 
and overall a/effects.

Still, I do think it's legitimate and necessary to question whether or 
not my more limited focus on a narrowly-defined visual rhetoric -- 
i.e., things best addressed by reading "200 tomes and 1000 journal 
articles" -- is good scholarship (I'm quite certain Hendrik, for 
instance, would argue it's not, since we've been having this debate 
for a while now ;-).

I myself don't like ignoring the 5th rhetorical canon 
(delivery/production) as much as I do.

But things are barely manageable as it is, and so I continue to 
compromise.

A lot.


> Metallurgy is fascinating.
> My father was a welding
> specialist and we had many
> interesting monographs around
> the house.

I've actually done my share of arc welding.

I used to work in a machine shop (to help pay for university), and 
once welded much of the exhaust system for a CanAm racing car (built 
from scratch, using all sorts of new-fangled materials, in a nearby lab).

FWIW, I did OK on this project. The professionals told me I laid down 
a good bead, and my work on the exhaust system passed the strenuous 
water test (no leaks).

I also used to work on my own car, along with helping a friend soup up 
her Camaro, and even re-built my car's carburetor once, guided in this 
by another literary scholar with mechanical aptitude (and I assure you 
this was a project every bit as tedious as reading through thousands 
of pages of scholarly minutiae ;-).

So I'm comfortable with manual labor and metal-work, although I've by 
now forgotten most of what I ever knew ... probably because almost all 
of this work was done by rote.

Even so, I still find all those academic tomes more engaging than 
running out building my own press, or hand-cutting my own type punches!

I suppose the bottom line here has to do with differing levels of 
interest, plus the fact that I know I can get by with only a 
superficial understanding of early-modern print practices.

... And, of course, a little help from my online friends. ;-)


Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
[email protected]


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