Haute Lecture: Colard Mansion

Reputedly, a drawing of Colard Mansion, right lower corner

Shorn of the over-long Dutch classes and the over-arduous exertion required to meet those demands, feelings of freedom broke out yesterday, Friday 30 March, and at long last I had the time to go to the Groeninge Museum to see the much-advertised exhibition on a famous resident of Brugge, the scribe, translator, eventual printer Colard Mansion, resident here from 1457-1484. Nothing is known of his birthplace or early life nor of his life after 1484 when he completely disappeared from the known world! The priests of Sint Donaas allegedly remarked, 'Colard Mansion is gevlucht!' [Colard Mansion is fled!] at his sudden disappearance in 1484, and without paying the rent due on his atelier in Sint Donaas. The first printed reference to his presence here was in 1457 but it is likely that he lived here before that date.

A page from Colard Mansion's

Ovide Metamorphose

I found the exhibition thrilling, with an impressive range of Mansion exhibits gathered from across Europe and the U.S. The innovative audio guide really enhanced the knowledge available to the lay person but the many stars of the show, huge illustrated Mansion books and manuscripts, were dazzling. The experts who put together the material, headed by Ludo Vandamme from Bruges Library, assembled a variety of manuscripts, illuminated incunabulae and rare prints and books to tell the most important part of the Mansion narrative. [Incunabula, a new word to me, refers to early printed material before 1500.] Perhaps the most stunning of the Mansion exhibits are the Boccaccio and the Ovide Metamorphose, both richly extraordinary in the majesty of the concept, size and realisation.

William Caxton

Brugge in the mid fifteenth century was an international economic and cultural hub. Indeed, late mediaeval Bruges was the market par excellence for fashionable and high-quality products and with the active patronage of Philip the Good, followed inevitably by the aristocratic elite, there were unprecedented opportunities for scribes, miniaturists, printers and bookbinders in Bruges. Mansion began as a scholarly scribe, a skilled copyist, but one document shows that by 1457, the first mention of his name suggests that he already held a certain position in the administrative networks of the city. This experience plus his history of producing richly- illuminated manuscripts, were perfectly timed to coincide with the appearance of book printing, stemming from the revolutionary and iconic Gutenberg Bible in 1455 printed in Mainz by Johannes Gutenberg.

A page from Mansion's Boccaccio.

In actuality, a huge and

sumptuous volume.

Mansion produced illuminated manuscripts only for the luxury market but the advent of printing enabled him to begin to move into luxury book production in the 1470s. He collaborated with William Caxton and produced a Book of Hours in 1475/6, for the English market, long a magnet for Bruges' manuscripts. Soon after this, Caxton returned to England and what had begun as a quest for Mansion into the mechanical production of manuscripts, moved into a fully-fledged luxury book production business. Mansion developed into an assured and courageous entrepreneur, deftly developing his printing and publishing business while remaining an admired scribe, comfortable with Latin, firmly established in a French-speaking world with its strong connection to the wealthy Burgundian court and drawing almost exclusively on a French language body of material for his books.

Caxton served as Governor to the English Nation of Merchant

Adventurers for many years and almost certainly

lived and worked in this building.

Mansion's place of work was in the Burg, in the

precincts of Sint Donaas.

This blog is an enthusiastic introduction only; seriously-interested readers should go to the museum and buy the splendid book, Colard Mansion. Incunabula, Prints and Manuscripts in Medieval Bruges. It contains many scholarly but accessible essays on various aspects of Mansion's life and work.

The Wurtlitzer Connection

Pre-Triennale foundations in the canal along the Potterierei.

 Sunday morning, March 25^th, I delivered something to a friend’s house then wandered along the Potterierei and was quite taken by a large, heavy-looking structure in the water, almost certainly a foundation for an art installation in the Triennale due to open in mid-May. The first Triennale in 2015 was most diverting and interesting. It involved around 18 structures – artistic creations often with narratives added, by various artists and, I think, architects, at points around the city. I loved the unexpected and thought-provoking attention it aroused among residents and tourists. I await Triennale 2, named The Liquid City, impatiently.

Towards the end of the canal, before the Dampoort, I stopped for a coffee at Het Molenhuis, already open at 10.00 a.m. though quite far from the centre and thirsty tourists. My padded jacket enabled me to sit outside and read but when I went inside to pay, a great delight was on show. A genuine Wurtlitzer had been installed and it instantly took me back to the very occasional visit to the cinema when I was young and the more regular visits of early womanhood. Glamour; music; excitement!

' T Molenhuis

Rudolph Wurtlitzer

1829-1914

The owner corrected my immediate assumption; it was not an early original but a reproduction, he said. Couldn’t wait to go googlen, as they write here! Wurtlitzer has been synonymous with up-to-the-minute juke-boxes since the early Thirties and if I had thought of them at all, I would have assumed they were now defunct.

Oh the joys of finding out stuff online! The Wurtlitzer family began making musical instruments in the seventeenth century in Saxony but the ‘father’of the original American company was Rudolph, born in 1829. He emigrated to America, against his father's wishes, at the age of 24 and in 1856 founded the Rudolph Wurtlitzer Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, initially to import his family’s instruments though eventually Rudolph moved into manufacturing himself. His factory produced the first Wurtlitzer piano in 1880 followed by the first coin-operated electric piano, the Tonophone, in 1896 which became an overnight sensation and won a gold medal at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, in 1901. So by the age of forty, Rudolph was demonstrating a flair for innovation and commercial creativity!

Close-up of a Mighty Wurtlitzer

Historical coincidence often provides a wonderful niche when innovation miraculously discovers a developing and amenable context and thus it was for Rudolph. The Wurtlitzer Company’s inventive flair and use of advanced technology happened synonymously with the advent of silent films and the Mighty Wurtlitzers created an instant impact. These fostered Wurtlitzer-driven sound tracks to the movies and led eventually to the first patented jukebox machines in 1933. They could produce bird tweets, thunder rolls, steam engine roars and car horn hoots! Europe's largest and still playable Mighty Wurtlitzer with over 1000 pipes and 299 stops, is today housed in Berlin's Musical Instrument Museum.

Farny Wurtlitzer, Rudolph’s successor, had the vision to add highly-skilled professionals to his entourage to design and market what became the Wurtlitzer Debutante. By the late 1930s, the Company was producing around 45,000 juke-boxes a year!

In the late 1930s and throughout the 40s the Wurtlitzer chief designer was the gifted Paul Fuller and he took the inventiveness and charm of the product to a higher level yet. From 1941 Wurtlitzer factories had to switch to war-related production and the use of metal and plastics was severely curtailed. The firm, aka Paul Fuller, responded by designing and producing several revolutionary prototypes using mainly wood and glass. In 1946 the Wurtlitzer 1015 was introduced and became an immediate hit with its sophisticated styling, revolving colour columns and modern, record-changing mechanism. Post war, American G.I.s took the jukeboxes with them to an astonished West Germany and between 1955 and1960 jukebox numbers totalled around 50,000 in that country.

Wurtlitzer 1015

1946

My interest was sparked that Sunday morning when I wandered along the canal and into Het Molenhuis and saw the resident 1015. I think it might be the 1015 One More Time, described as: ‘a nostalgic reproduction of the original Model 1015 that has been up-dated with state-of-the-art digital technology’ Perfectly in keeping with the values and vision of the original Wurlitzer Company.

Honestly, there is a surprise around every corner here in Brugge and in one small, canal-side estaminet, there is a whole narrative in one reborn, glowing objet d'art.

Reckelbus again.

A heart-breakingly beautiful little

Madonna and Child on Carmerstraat.

Le Pavillon sur L'Eau

Quite a busy week with a friend on a first-time visit to Brugge. This gave me the excuse to revisit Luc Vanlaere and his marvellously melodious harp recital, free, and the first concert of the season for him. We also had to see the Memlings and St Janshospitaal plus the Pharmacy, plus the Madonna and Child of Leonardo da Vinci. It is super to witness the delight of a first-time visitor to this mediaeval little city with its canals and Flemish gables and its unending human pageant. Another friend over last weekend took us to the auction house of Bonte and its preview of an astonishing amount of Oriental art and other antiques. I was particularly keen to see the several Louis Reckelbus paintings in the sale none of which I can now afford given the undue tax bill hovering. I was especially keen on Number 520 in the sale and the knowledgeable attendant, chatting of many painterly things, told me that it would fetch a good price given the high interest exhibited. Damn, I thought uncharitably but on the way home on my own on Monday, I popped in to see Lieven in his astonishing shop stuffed to the gills with antiques, books, putti, religious statues and more. As ever, I was impressed with his boundless knowledge; his ingenuity in locating such a variety of echoes from the past; his apparent relaxed attitude to the scholarly chaos within his emporium and his unerring ability to spot the likely weak spot of a potential purchaser, protesting poverty no less as she buys a huge historic Bruggean poster from the Sixties. Yes, dear reader ‘twas I.

Brugge, Wednesday March 21st.

In the meantime this last Wednesday, en route to coffee with ‘the girls’ I was surprised by a huge crowd being harangued by someone with a powerful microphone, in the Markt, with many of the surrounding streets blocked or impeded by watchful police on foot and powerful-looking, helmeted police straddling parked motor bikes in readiness, as it were; rows of the latter in fact as if an invasion were imminent. It was the run-up to what I think is a new cycle event, from Brugge to De Panne, perhaps to replace the Tour van Vlaanderen which Bruges lost to Antwerp two years ago amid much soul-searching. Subsequent enquiries discovered that the event was the Driedaagse Brugge-de Panne, Elite Men’s Europe Tour on Wednesday and the Elite Women’s World Tour on Thursday, March 22. Phew! The City does try hard to cater for a wide variety of tastes and activities.

STILL steaming over the fact that the end of Dutch  level 4 examination was summarily cancelled the evening before the event because the teacher was ill. It might have taken place two days later, if she had recovered but I couldn't go because of visitors so she said that someone would phone me with an alternative arrangement. As nothing had happened, I rang the college as soon as my guest had left and was told I would be contacted. As no one has, I have the frustrating feeling that I have missed the boat; what does it matter to the authorities that one elderly person hasn't taken the exam and, furthermore, a person who was not intending to continue to Level Five? I shall try again tomorrow, ten days after the event-that-never happened. I am beginning to realise that I feel quite resentful if my plans are changed without my involvement; it is the lack of control that is hard to stomach even if the change is minor. The elderly do grow evermore powerless so that day-to-day control over their personal lives assumes an even greater significance.


However, today to have my hair cut and the gifted kapper/owner having broken his arm, an assistant who usually blow dries my hair, was to do the cut-and-style. He has been having 'problems' with his present partner so we had a long and intense discussion and feelings of powerlessness were dismissed as he asked my advice ['you are so old' in this case meaning, 'wise'!]  Eastern Europeans have a gratifying deference to the aged which quite restored my spirits! AND he did a great job on my hair. Definitely ask for him next time!

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A Concert and A Guided Tour

After the Siberian temperatures, an almost balmy Sunday [March 11 and the UK Mothers’ Day to boot] arrived in time to add lustre to a Lovely Day Out. To Gent on the 9.33 slow train, it being a Sunday, where I was met by the owner of my flat and his wife at Gent St Pieter’s. Off we went to a fund-raising Concert for the Soroptimists, in the lovely Miry Concertzaal in Gent Conservatorium There, I learned that the core mission of the Soroptimists is to help women and children all over the world. I knew several people in the movement when I lived in Kent but assumed it was something like a female Rotary for professional women and had never dug deeper. A leaflet describes itself as 'Le Soroptimist International, une voix pour les femmes' and I like that. In Belgium alone it has 1660 members so, internationally, it is a force to be reckoned with.

The concert was marvellous, offering a programme of Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Dvorak, Smeets and Gershwin interpreted in lively and imaginative piano playing. One really didn’t want the music to stop! The pianists were a mother and daughter duo; Eliane Rodrigues from Argentina and her daughter who is half Belgium, Nina Smeets, brilliant pianists both. Eliane is much the more famous and she is also a composer, beginning composition as a precocious three year old, and giving her first public recital at five. She won a special prize at 18 in the Van Cliburn concourse and started teaching in Antwerp Conservatorium at age 20. But there have been shadows in her life, not apparent in her feisty and uninhibited public persona. Her daughter, Nina, was for a long time in a coma when she was three, and doctors had given up hope of her rescue but, no doubt as a last resort, the non-stop playing of her mother’s rendition of Mozart’s No. 12 concerto, eventually brought her round. Nina is now a most accomplished pianist and composer too.

A narrow channel added to give the sound of water near the 

main entrance.

Astonishingly, the 450 strong audience was treated to refreshments and ample opportunities to socialise, for the next hour after the concert. My hosts eventually drove us to their new home, still not entirely finished but stunning in its style. It is both a conversion and a rescue of a mediaeval Priory on the larger site of an Abbey complex, built originally in the tenth century, all near Oudenaard. The house itself had been empty and abandoned for perhaps twenty years and a huge amount of architectural planning, renovation, new-build additions and inner re-furbishment over the past four years, have resulted in a very desirable and highly individual home. I felt so lucky to be able to visit and view the innumerable small details that conserve authentic details while making a style statement. The modern additions like the spacious large glazed terrace at the back, merge seamlessly in because of the use of appropriate materials and the individual style of the contents, consistent throughout. This rescued Priory is an object lesson in conservation plus.

As I have read through the above, I have to admit that it does seem to have caught the breathless wonderment and admiration that characterises many a style interview about a famous person's private space. All I can say in self-defence is that the old Priory DOES hit the spot!!

One week after writing the above I discover that it was never published! I have had friends staying and gave scant thought to Other Things but here it is, at last. And after that balmy Sunday described above, came a little more snow and days of Siberian temperatures. However, nothing to match the icy white-out in many parts of the U.K.

A Gentleman in Moscow

Moscow, 1922.

I have just read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, recommended by my elder daughter. It has proved to be an absorbing, elegantly-written and sophisticated narrative which I have loved. It is a beautifully-observed novel, written with an eighteenth century delicacy of phrase and nuance despite being set in Bolshevik Moscow in 1922.

It tells the story of a Russian aristocrat, deemed to be a totally unrepentant representative of his class by a Bolshevik tribunal and therefore sentenced to house arrest and demoted to the status of Former Person. He has lived for years in the best suite in the Hotel Metropol in Theatre Square, containing 'a grand salon with eight foot windows overlooking the lindens of Theatre Square' but he is summarily moved to the mountaineering heights of the dusty, unloved attics and given a tiny former storeroom
without space, views or beauty, reminiscent of a monastic cell, for his house arrest. Allowed to take only a few items to the Great Upstairs, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov chooses to take all his books and a few iconic possessions, and somehow sails on for the next thirty years, indomitable, erudite, witty, admired, working as Head Waiter, extending his experiences to family and to a web of emotionally-important friendships and memories. Throughout, the Count remains calmly accepting of his fate; apparently wholly compliant with the will of his Soviet masters while quietly, subversively, pursuing his own agenda and enjoying, in many ways, a most enviable way of life.

The Count's world: the Hotel Metropol in

Theatre Square, Moscow.

Of course I recommend this superb book but I am including it in my blog simply to give me the excuse to quote Montaigne, or put more precisely, to enable me to lift a quote in the Amor Towles book from Montaigne. In a list of two important pieces of parental advice, the Count quotes Montaigne's maxim:

“that the surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness”.

And his story demonstrates the exemplary power of such positive good humour in the face of a total loss of liberty and possessions, and reminds us of its virtues.

This Montaigne quote appealed to me because, almost entirely and certainly effortlessly, I enjoy the benefits of a sunny disposition. I would be flattered to hear that described as wisdom; it is a wisdom, if so, of a totally accidental kind acquired by the unwitting random harvest of birth rather than the more sober and disciplined acquisition of knowledge and the gradual development of enlightenment. Constant cheerfulness seems to be more down to chance; good luck; beneficent fortune and perhaps the determination not to let the bastards grind one down. And none the worse for that!

Currently, the physical demands of travelling twice a week to and from the Nederlands classes plus the unseemly length of each lesson resulting in a real weariness which impacts on my week, reducing the daily pleasures in many small ways, have challenged my normal bonhomie! It is still there, chiefly buoyant though, to mix the metaphors, maintained through gritted teeth! My constant cheerfulness seems therefore sensitive to undue external weight and therefore lacking in Montaigne’s sureness and wisdom. And I am trying to remember which of my friends once remarked that constant cheerfulness was a drag for others; something to be borne rather than admired.

Well-heeled ladies playing

Mah Jong, probably around the time that 

Count Rostov became a Former Person.

But there ARE many reasons to be cheerful.

Part One: See right. A reminder of the joys of weekly Mah Jong sessions with other mature females of similar ability [low] and spirits [high]

Snowy, snowy blog

Earlier date but identical view on Friday 2nd March

Looks like the Siberian cold, prolonged and intense, is departing today. Friday’s snow is disappearing, huge swathes of ice on the canals have disappeared, the sun continues cheerfully as it has throughout the cold spell, and spirits are lifting. March 2nd saw the 61st anniversary of my first marriage and in two weeks it will be the sixteenth anniversary of my second husband’s death, impossibly distant in spite of its comparative closeness in time. And while I am ruminating on the unlikely speed of time travel, the fact that in the summer will come my 84th birthday, again a highly unbelievable event in my head, leads me to propose the excuse I am using, to myself, to give me permission to do something which is normally not allowed! I returned home yesterday from the written Dutch class, frozen from waiting for two buses, so tired from four and a half hours of class work, and realised that it was six hours since I had left home to go to class that morning. The sheer physical effort is considerable and that has to do with age so, untypically as claimed, I have decided not to progress to Niveau Fijf, Level 5.

This means only two more exams and four more lessons to go and the feeling of a burden, freely assumed, lifting, is strong. I normally Never Give Up but the effort to do the class and even more, the effort to remember vocabulary and achieve well in the tests, plus the bus travel at each end, has reached the stage when the efforts far outweigh the rewards!! So, some free time to come soon when the pressure will lift. And I still won’t be able to read De Standaard, my original goal!

This is at Party One but several of these were at Mah  Jong

the following day.

But a super week in spite of all. Wednesday morning to meet the girls for the usual coffee morning at Hotel Martin’s and Wednesday afternoon to a friend’s flat to celebrate Noreen’s 80th birthday with an English tea party; there were even cucumber sandwiches! It was such fun, all cakes and champagne; candles and conviviality, that the intense cold without was as nought. While there I discovered that one of those present had her own birthday the following day, so leftover delights [of which there were many] were commandeered, more bubbly donated and a little surprise celebration for our friend’s birthday the next morning organised when several of us were at my flat for Mah Jong. Toasts were proposed and drunk; delicious cakes eaten and the Chinese tiles expertly played. The feeling of friendship from both gatherings was strong and we reminded ourselves how very important, in later years, become friends. For those interested in anti-Alzheimer’s manoeuvres [all of this group] those boxes were also ticked; the importance of supportive friends; social activities; intellectual pursuits and challenges. Yup, we’re trying!

I was photographing her while she was ....

Following the wholly unreasonable tax demand from Brugge tax office, I saw an accountant this week. I knew that the method of the tax people’s accounting is allowed under the terms of the Double Taxation Treaty and this accounts for the proposed 45% level of taxation on my modest Belgian taxable pensions. AND that there is nothing I can do to defend my money further BUT still I hoped, perhaps for an obscure observation/allowance/loophole to assist an aged ex-pat. No, there is nothing and the Very Cheerful Accountant said breezily that my combined incomes made me a very wealthy pensioner to a level unknown to the Belgians and that I should cheerfully pay up. Fruitless to point out the unfair exchange rate used; the two  different total income sums converted by two different people in the same tax department, based on the same figures obtained from the UK tax people. So, voila, there it is and payment must be made before April 12 to ensure escape from the 7% daily fine for slackers. I don't often ask for advice .....!

Wandelen

A ‘back-to-normal’ week with Dutch class this morning bringing its usual post-lesson exhaustion. We have a scant ten minute break in a lesson of four hours twenty minutes so unsurprising that I eventually stagger for the bus feeling around a hundred. I seem to spend the entire lesson span in a 

state of linguistic bewilderment [only Dutch spoken] and seriously question my intellectual ability to progress to Niveau Vijf, Level Five. We shall see; I would like to be able to achieve that outmoded amd geriatric pastime of reading and enjoying De Standaard, a very respectable-looking newspaper. Suspect that the spoken Dutch and more specifically, the heard Dutch, will remain beyond my reach!

This calm reflection encapsulates what I love about Brugge;

its art, its architecture, its canals, its tranquillity; its
hidden depths and surface beauty.

Between other little activities at the weekend, I went off twice to wander along, across, beyond the canals in the bright but wintry sun; Bruggelingen and tourists alike were opening their collective face to the light and Spring felt almost round the corner. I resolutely avoided examining the terrace which looks unloved and neglected, promising it outdoor benefits to come very soon. Work is sorely needed and Will Be Done when the temperature rises to comfort level out there.

Ditto. And all, around only one hundred metres from home!

I have dithered about including the photograph  at the bottom of this blog which has nothing to do with Brugge but does have a strong emotional connection for me. I received it this week from the son of one of those pictured in it and the memories came rolling along. Taken some time in 1955 or 1956, it shows the group of friends with whom I socialised constantly in those years, up to 1961 when my first daughter was born and Going Out was something that was chiefly unaffordable!! It is extraordinary to yours truly to think that I am the sole survivor clinging to the wreckage; all those meals and pub evenings and dances [SO many dances!]; all that good friendship, laughter, loyalty and camaraderie dimly remembered though the warmest and happiest of feelings remain. There are two people missing in fact from the photograph including the photographer who can surely be found strolling the Elysian Fields, almost certainly planning insurgency as he issues a celestial call to arms!