Kenneth Spencer Research Library

In May of this year, students and staff in the Conservation Lab undertook the ambitious project of rehousing the Spencer Library’s Orbis Maps collection. This collection includes more than one thousand maps that span centuries, forming a vibrant repository of our geographic landscape through time. Though there was much to explore, one of the most exciting parts of this project was the continual discovery of sea monsters, peppered in the blue of the earliest maps. 

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Though these sorts of depictions seem mystical to us, sea monsters were often included by mapmakers who were striving for scientific accuracy. Prior to the eighteenth century, seafaring legends heavily influenced what people knew of oceanic life. Sailors would return from their expeditions with tales of close brushes with vicious kraken, sirens, and serpents. Such beasts were then often included by mapmakers — a practice which, according to the Smithsonian, was an act of upholding the common understanding of that time.

In many instances, sea monsters were inspired by animals that sailors might have come across, but perhaps not accurately seen. For example, in Orbis Maps 1:30, above, a whale-like creature swims through a gulf, with only small characteristics distinguishing it from the sea mammal we’ve come to know. In other cases, as with Orbis Map 1:5 (below), the sea monsters have virtually no bearing in reality and are altogether closer to the traditional monsters of myths and legends. 

These sea monsters are just a few of many that were found in the Orbis Maps collection. As the maps progressed through time, we observed the image of the world change to become more and more representative of what we have today, and sea monster numbers slowly dwindled as scientific knowledge became more absolute.

The rehousing project for the Orbis Maps was completed on July 30th of this year and, overall, a total of sixteen maps were found to contain sea monsters like the ones shown here. These creatures, and many more delights from this collection, can be visited in the Spencer Research Library. 

Reece Wohlford
Conservation Services Student Assistant

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created the series because I genuinely believe there is something in our collections for everyone, whether you’re writing a paper or just want to have a look. “That’s Distinctive!” will provide a more lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique materials at Spencer – including items that many people may not realize the library holds. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this page.

This week on That’s Distinctive! I am sharing a book from Special Collections. The book, titled Flowers in Concrete, was written by Mary Ellen Solt and published in 1966. According to the Poetry Foundation, “Solt began writing concrete poetry in the 1960s and became a leader of the concrete poetry movement.” A post on the Getty’s Iris blog describes concrete poetry as a form of poetry where the poems are “composed of words, letters, colors, and typefaces, in which graphic space plays a central role in both design and meaning.” The Poets.org website describes concrete poetry as more than just poems; they are pieces of visual art. Concrete poems are meant to be viewed rather than read aloud.

While there is more to be seen than said when it comes to concrete poetry, I chose to highlight this item because I had never heard of a concrete poem before. Often, then one thinks of a poem, they think of the typical lines that tend to rhyme and tell a story. Concrete poems still tell a story but in a different way. I came across this book when Special Collections Curator Elspeth Healey was using it for a class. She took a moment to show the book to me and some students since we were intrigued. The book the library houses is copy 60 out of 100 printed. Solt signed and dated the title page of Spencer’s copy in February 1970. The library also holds a later limited-edition poster-sized portfolio version of Flowers in Concrete printed by lithography in 1969 (Call Number: R72). Below I am sharing just three examples of concrete poems from the book (zinnia, forsythia, and dogwood). The Poetry4Kids website has a great lesson on how to write a concrete poem.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services

Every rare books library, at its heart, is a graveyard of forests long lost: paper has dominated the process of making books since the 15^th century in Europe, and earlier in Asia and the Islamic world, so that almost every shelf holds the lives of hundreds, thousands of different trees and plants that were repurposed into a different sort of leaves entirely.

But in a handful of volumes on Spencer’s shelves, we might find something closer to nature than wood and flax linen pulped and lined into thin sheets for writing: we can find actual plants. These volumes preserve the past between their pages in a particularly literal sense, sometimes containing once plentiful plants that are now endangered, even extinct, serving as a testament to the lost flora of centuries past. These books were created not only by botanists but by farmers and shopkeepers as well, spanning the breadth of relationships that people have with nature: as scientists, their efforts to dissect, study, catalog, and document them so perfectly and completely; as farmers, their efforts to tame them and domesticate them; and as artists, to transform them into new forms of beauty and preserved life.

Cross sections of the American Chestnut, from Hough, Romeyn Beck. The American woods: Exhibited by actual specimens and with copious explanatory text. Lowville, N.Y.: Published and sections prepared by the author, 1888; Call Number: Pryce C11. The American Chestnut, once one of the most plentiful trees in the United States, was decimated by a fungal blight that killed 3-4 billion trees beginning in 1904, and now fewer than 10% of its original number survive.

Romeyn Beck Hough, author of The American Woods, took the idea of making a forest into a book quite literally: his work is not only a comprehensive representation of over 350 different species of trees that flourished across the late 19th- and early 20th-century American landscape, but a demonstration of a new technology of his own invention: he developed a cutter that could slice wood to 1/1200th of an inch, making slices of wood so thin they were translucent. The American Woods became a manifesto of wood samples: for each of the 350 species he included three different slices together with details of their botany, habit, medicinal and commercial uses. In total, the work consisted of 13 volumes, with a fourteenth published by his daughter using his notes after his death. Scientific illustration in Natural History already sought to recreate the details of living specimens in perfect detail and accuracy; through his wood samples in The American Woods, Hough took the next step in perfect replication.

Specimens of Meadow Barley, Meadow Cattail (now called timothy hay), and Marsh Bent from Swayne, George. Gramina pascua: or, A collection of specimens of the common pasture grasses, arranged in the order of their flowering, and accompanied with their Linnæan and English names, as likewise with familiar descriptions and remarks. Bristol: Printed for the author, by London.: S. Bonner, Castle-Green; and sold by W. Richardson, Royal-Exchange, 1790; Call Number: Pryce H1. Timothy hay is now a common grass for cattle and horses, as well as small, domesticated pets, thanks to its high fiber content.

The Gramina Pascua, or A collection of specimens of the common pasture grasses, arranged in the order of their flowering was published in 1790 by Reverend George Swayne, a farmer, rather than a scientist. Swayne was a learned man, with two degrees from Oxford. In addition to serving as a vicar in Gloucester, England, he was active in the agricultural societies of the early 19th century, clubs that consisted of farmers and scientists dedicated to discussing practical and theoretical farming. Gramina Pascua had a more practical purpose to its scientific exploration of botany, however, as it was borne from a broader interest in the early 19th century in cultivating grasses in the meadowlands and pastures of Britain for grazing animals and harvesting for food. Between 1700 and 1850, agricultural output quintupled thanks to technological advances and studies that sought to understand and optimize farming, as was the case for Reverend Swayne and his Gramina Pascua.

Pressed Flowers from Gethsemane, from Meo, Boulos. Flowers from the Holy land. Carefully arranged. Jerusalem: Printed and bound by Joseph Schor, 1888; Call Number: Pryce AK1. Gethsemane was a garden of olive trees across the Kidron Valley, where Jesus was said to have prayed before his arrest and crucifixion.

Boulos Meo was neither scientist nor farmer – no, he was a shopkeep in Jerusalem, at Jaffa Gate, one of the seven main gates of the Old City walls. Technically, neither was Boulos Meo an artist – he was merely the publisher and seller of Flowers from the Holy Land, whose artist remains unknown, whether it was Boulos himself or perhaps someone he knew.  Boulos Meo sold, at first, rugs, beginning in 1872, but eventually expanded to sell antiques, religious icons, jewelry, and souvenirs to tourists and pilgrims from around the world visiting the city. Christian pilgrims had brought tangible items back from their journeys for centuries – stones were among the most popular souvenirs from Jerusalem, with one stone from each holy site in the Stations of the Cross, a processional route across fourteen sites in Jerusalem, but fragments of flowers and plants were also common. Flowers from the Holy Land took that practice and transformed it into an artbook tied closely to the place of its making, where the descriptions of the flower arrangements included not the names of the flowers, but the names of the holy sites where they were gathered, to connect the physicality of the book – the flowers themselves, and not merely their visual nature – intrinsically with places of religious meaning. As a result, the book became an embodiment of the places named in the text, its flowers an echo of its pilgrim owner’s memories of the places they visited.

One beauty of these books is that no two are perfectly alike, for each slice of wood, every pressed flower is distinct from its brethren in another copy, even when the texts are identical. Some two hundred copies of The American Woods survive in libraries, but like fingerprints, their thin slivers of wood cannot perfectly match one another. A little more than ten copies of Gramina Pascua are held on library shelves, and twelve of Boulos Meo’s pressed flower books still survive in public collections, though perhaps more are tucked away on the shelves of descendants of the pilgrims who visited Palestine at the turn of the century, their flowers still delicately pressed between the pages.

On July 24th, and throughout the coming Fall and Spring semesters, the KU Libraries will be hosting a range of events focused on plants, botany, and gardening, including a Plant Swap event on July 24th, which will feature several books from Spencer making a voyage of their own from their shelves to 3 West in Watson to be featured side by side with their living, breathing plant counterparts. Visitors will be able to pick up a potted lavender plant and then browse a 1640 illustrated herbal to see how lavender has been a part of human life and study for over 400 years. And perhaps, if you are so inclined, you might pick a few leaves of your own plants, and press them between the pages of a book at home, for future generations to see how plants still interleaf with knowledge and learning today.

Eve Wolynes
Special Collections Curator

Citations:

Brett, Jim. “Gramina Pascua,” in Collection Update, no. 15. Edited by Carol Goodger-Hill. Guelph, Canada: University of Guelph Library, 1992.

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Gethsemane.” Encyclopedia Britannica, June 14, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/place/Gethsemane.

Limor, Ora. “Earth, stone, water, and oil: Objects of veneration in Holy Land travel narratives,” in Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500-1500. Ed. By Renana Bartal, Neta Bodner, and Bianca Kühnel. Routledge: 2017. Pp. 3-18.

Pizga, Jessica. “Hough’s American Woods.” The New York Public Library, March 12, 2012. https://www.nypl.org/blog/2012/03/12/houghs-american-woods.

Sharar, Adam Abu. “The Shop and Bab al-Khalil,” in Jerusalem Quarterly File, no. 15, Winter 2002. pp. 32-38.

Van Drunen, Stephen G.; Schutten, Kerry; Bowen, Christine; Boland, Greg J.; Husband, Brian C. (September 2017). “Population dynamics and the influence of blight on American chestnut at its northern range limit: Lessons for conservation”. Forest Ecology and Management. 400: 375–383.

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created this series to provide a lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique items at Spencer. “That’s Distinctive!” is meant to show that the library has something for everyone regardless of interest. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, you can leave a comment at the bottom of this page. All collections, including those highlighted on the blog, are available for members of the public to explore in the Reading Room during regular hours.

This week on That’s Distinctive! I am sharing a book from Special Collections. Special Collections holds a wide array of rare books and manuscripts from throughout time. The collection “presently holds about 250,000 volumes printed since the mid-fifteenth century and about 250,000 manuscripts dating from antiquity to the present.”

The book, titled Boy: Tales of Childhood, is an autobiography written by Roald Dahl and published in 1984.  According to Wikipedia, the book “describes [Dahl’s] life from early childhood until leaving school, focusing on living conditions in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s, the public school system at the time, and how his childhood experiences led him to writing children’s books as a career.” Throughout the book are photos from Dahl’s life. The book was followed up by a second autobiography titled Going Solo.

In one chapter of the book, “The Bicycle and the Sweet-shop,” Dahl remarks on his time at a private school. Though he does not remember much about the Llandaff Cathedral School, Dahl has two distinct memories from his two years there. The first memory he mentions is that of a boy riding a bicycle when he suddenly zooms by pedaling backward and not holding the handlebars. He then wishes to himself that someday he could do the same. The second memory is that of walking home from school with his friends and stopping at a candy shop any time they had the funds. One of his friends would frequently tell tales of how the sweets were made.

Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was a British author who is well known for many popular children’s books including Fantastic Mr. Fox, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda. Many of Dahl’s books have been adapted into popular films.

I chose to highlight this book because it gives a glimpse into the author’s life in ways that regular children’s stories might not. I had not heard of the book before finding it in the library. I was simply looking for books by Roald Dahl and this title popped up. Many of Dahl’s children’s books bring back memories from my own childhood, whether it was wishing I had magic powers like Matilda or hoping Wonka’s chocolate factory could be real. Interestingly enough, Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of my favorite movies as an adult. I even have it on DVD, so it is readily available at all times.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services

Check the blog each Friday for a new “That’s Distinctive!” post. I created this series to provide a lighthearted glimpse into the diverse and unique items at Spencer. “That’s Distinctive!” is meant to show that the library has something for everyone regardless of interest. If you have suggested topics for a future item feature or questions about the collections, you can leave a comment at the bottom of this page. All collections, including those highlighted on the blog, are available for members of the public to explore in the Reading Room during regular hours.

This week on That’s Distinctive! I am sharing a book from our children’s book collection. The children’s book collection was founded in 1953 and has been built largely through gifts to the library. The collection consists of over seven thousand children’s books from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries.

The book shared today, titled Tales of the Fairies, was written by Lewis Marsh and illustrated by Lilian A. Govey. Probably published in 1912, the book highlights fairy tales from various countries. Little can be found about the book online, but I stumbled upon it by searching terms for mythical creatures in the KU Libraries catalog. I chose to highlight this book over others for a couple of reasons. First, given the book’s condition, it is clear that it is quite old. Older books tend to grab my attention more because of the histories and stories they hold, both physically and metaphorically. My second reason was that the illustrations in the book are quite intriguing. The artistic style shifts from illustration to illustration, which adds variety to the book. Additionally, some illustrations are in color while others are grey and white.

Tiffany McIntosh
Public Services