The week after that - from 1st December - is the Bodleian exhibition - my book will only be on show in a digital format but here are some pics trying to show how it opens out as promised.....
The
Wise Woman’s Girdle Book
The asymmetry,
irregularity and organic materials of medieval books always inspire my own
contemporary aesthetic but a few things sprang out from the books shown to us –
new variations of folded papers, the sewing up of holes in the vellum, the
‘veiling device’.
I immediately wanted to
make a very female book to hang on a girdle, which would include cosmography
and zodiac references, and alchemical, herbal and temporal devices and iconography,
for lunar and menstrual cycles rather than the liturgical year.
I then later read about
the Voynich manuscript in the LRB*[1]
and found that what I had started to imagine possibly already existed; with its
coded text and intimations of women’s affairs - the LRB hinted at possible …’heretical
descriptions of female contraception or abortion…’ – unsurprisingly,
someone in the 16thc had got there before me.
However I decided to
proceed with my own version, and meet the Voynich MS head on.
As the LRB revue pointed out, ‘…studying the
(Voynich) MS in the hope of unlocking its secrets is to miss the point ‘…
there are ideas embedded in my book but the main idea is to enjoy playing
with parallel worlds.
[1] July 27 2017
