Taking inspiration from Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders and previous 2201 portfolios, Elijah Baird has produced striking title pages for several of the works covered in the syllabus, including Beowulf, The Book of Margery Kempe, Paradise Lost, and Fantomina. Each title page reveals a keen interest the finer details of early printing technology.
Baird provides a detailed overview of his process below, where he offers valuable insight for other would-be creators:
- So, after choosing four texts, one from each literary period we covered, I was then left to decide how to approach creating such documents.
- I first looked up free to use fonts in order to find fonts that were close to the original period that Defoe lived in.
- After I chose what fonts I wanted, I was left to figure out how to format the documents and what information I wanted to put on them, so I rewatched the lecture video and reviewed the notes I had on Defoe, studying not just Moll Flanders’ cover page, but the other cover pages Dafoe created as well.
- Once I had refreshed and studied up, I put the electronic (and still metaphorical) pen to paper, creating word documents that I converted into PDFs (there was no reason other than to have unaged versions in the cloud for backup).
- Once that was done, it was time to print and let dry.
- Once the ink was dry, it was time to begin the aging process. How would I do that?
- The aging process:
- Well, I saw the examples online and googled around, concluding that coffee was the way I preferred in terms of the outcome. Coffee? I have that. How to apply it was the challenge. I saw that some soaked it in coffee, but I didn’t like the results they had. The best results were from the ones that used soft clothes or cotton swabs to apply the coffee, so I decided to do that. Oh no, I don’t have cotton swabs or a soft cloth, what am I to do? Shamelessly (okay, a little shame. Not too much though, because it worked), I realized I did have Swiffer Heavy Duty Dry Sweeping Cloths. Bingo. I grabbed one of those bad boys and proceeded to use it to apply the coffee. Who says college doesn’t breed creativity? I let the pages dry and applied two more layers for a total of three layers.
- Next was the wear and tear. I decided to age the oldest one more than the newest on in terms of the date the works came out. Beowulf is the only one I wanted to look burned, so I went out and bought what may have been the worst candlelighter I have ever used in my life, and that, for me, is saying something. I have used tens of candlelighters to start campfires and light candles over the years. But you must improvise, adapt, and overcome (not my own words, but I can’t remember who says them, I just know the meme). After Burning Beowulf, I decided to use the lighter to help create worn looking scuffs and tears on the rest of the pages as I saw fit. I then cleaned
Baird uses each page as an opportunity not only to introduce the text to follow but also to explore these narratives. For example, Paradise Lost is framed as an intra-familial struggle between father and son before it is revealed that the dramatis personae are God and Satan themselves. The “infamous” Margery Kempe’s life is defined by “adventures and misadventures” on the protagonists journey toward a life of self-determination. The singed title page for Beowulf (a nod to the fire damage sustained by the Beowulf Manuscript in the Cotton Library fire of 1731) introduces a story ultimately about “the human condition” — a story penned by “Scandinavia” herself for the use of posterity.
We hope you will enjoy Baird’s artistic skill and subtle commentary as much as we did!
A bio for Elijah Baird is in the works!