16th Century Book Can Be Read Six Different Ways(mymodernmet.com)
mymodernmet.com
16th Century Book Can Be Read Six Different Ways
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/16th-century-book-bound-dos-a-dos
17 comments
i think the only advantage is that binding books back then was expensive as hell... so maybe this crazy 6-way binding could have cost 2x or 3x and it would still be cheaper then paying the normal 6x.
not to mention you save the weight of extra 10 front and back covers.
now, why they didn't simply make the 6 volumes in the same book and put some tabs protruding from the pages, i will never know. there is a russian book binder faux anecdote there...
not to mention you save the weight of extra 10 front and back covers.
now, why they didn't simply make the 6 volumes in the same book and put some tabs protruding from the pages, i will never know. there is a russian book binder faux anecdote there...
Hard to say what the intent of the people that made this was, but even if it's not terribly useful, it's pretty clever. Maybe they would use it to bind 6 volumes of a series together?
What I find most fascinating about things like that is that when you look at the pictures of the book you see an old, shriveled up, bent, corroded, bland, demure type of book; but I am sure that when this book was new it was an object of perfection.
It's kind of like how when we look at old pictures of "olden times" there is a certain perception or assumption about things and way of life because you are looking at images that are black and white and washed out and people have that corpse look to them simply due to the nature of the technology. Reality was quite different though, in reality that world that we think of as being black and white and populated with corpse looking people was more or less just as colorful as the world you and I live in.
I don't even know if it would be possible with this artifact, but I am sure you could assemble some master book binders and maybe some metallurgists or blacksmiths in order to painstakingly reconstruct the book using the same techniques and materials, yet without the possible exponentially more experienced skill level of the original master artisan.
The old masters or centuries ago, the men and women that created things by hand and skill that had been passed down for generations and which have largely been lost with industrialization have my utter most respect and reverence.
It's kind of like how when we look at old pictures of "olden times" there is a certain perception or assumption about things and way of life because you are looking at images that are black and white and washed out and people have that corpse look to them simply due to the nature of the technology. Reality was quite different though, in reality that world that we think of as being black and white and populated with corpse looking people was more or less just as colorful as the world you and I live in.
I don't even know if it would be possible with this artifact, but I am sure you could assemble some master book binders and maybe some metallurgists or blacksmiths in order to painstakingly reconstruct the book using the same techniques and materials, yet without the possible exponentially more experienced skill level of the original master artisan.
The old masters or centuries ago, the men and women that created things by hand and skill that had been passed down for generations and which have largely been lost with industrialization have my utter most respect and reverence.
That is pretty cool, now I just need Meade or someone to make a six subject notebook like this :-)
I'm in for two! Actually it would be good to see an instructable on how to make one.
Reminds me of the ancient Indian poet whose poems gave one meaning left to right and totally different meaning right to left
Indeed, Venkatadhvari's 17th century Sanskrit work Raghava Yadaveeyam narrates the story of Ramayana (left-to-right) and Mahabharata (right-to-left) simultaneously.
http://www.sanskritebooks.org/2009/09/raghava-yadaviyam-with...
http://www.sanskritebooks.org/2009/09/raghava-yadaviyam-with...
It's a whole genre actually.*
*http://cup.columbia.edu/book/extreme-poetry/9780231151603
*http://cup.columbia.edu/book/extreme-poetry/9780231151603
there have been a number of simple examples in modern times -- poems that cycle through a pessimistic statement, a statement like "we will never see the day when", and an optimistic statement, and end with the line "now read from bottom to top" (which makes the middle line negate the pessimistic statement instead of the optimistic one.)
For example, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/14yearold-floor...
For example, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/14yearold-floor...
I always found those super tacky. I wonder if it'll get posted on Hacker News in the year 5015 as an example of brilliant 21st century poetry. I also wonder if Venkatadhvari's contemporaries found him to be tacky.
From a different comment in this discussion:
> They were a whole genre of poems called "adhama kavyas." Literally, in Sanskrit, it means 'inferior poems'.
> They were a whole genre of poems called "adhama kavyas." Literally, in Sanskrit, it means 'inferior poems'.
Pretty Amazing.
They were a whole genre of poems called "adhama kavyas." Literally, in Sanskrit, it means 'inferior poems'. Here's a nice (though a little flowery) exposition on these: https://www.dropbox.com/s/swivmkyr138wd01/14339015-The-wonde...
They were deemed inferior because they were low on traditional poetic quality- meaning, prosody, and language, and high on a sort of acrobatics.
There are fascinating poems, including palindromes, meaningful poems written by repeating the same letter, nested structures, etc.
They were deemed inferior because they were low on traditional poetic quality- meaning, prosody, and language, and high on a sort of acrobatics.
There are fascinating poems, including palindromes, meaningful poems written by repeating the same letter, nested structures, etc.
This was basically built for Hopscotch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_(Julio_Cortázar_nove...
Is there any advantage in this method for the reader over the usual method of simply printing all 6 books in one normal volume, with something between each adjacent pair so you can quickly open it to the book you are interested in? Or is this just one of those "do it because it is cool" things?