Finding the Needle in a Haystack: Research into Trompe L’Oeil in Written Texts (Honours Research part 1 of 3)

                                                            Trompe L’Oeil in Books

 “handwritten books that not only offer a meticulous imitation of a printed book (in most cases a traditional ABC book in black letter serves as a model), but also pretend to include loose, printed ephemera (images, songs, and texts, mostly in roman type), paper cuttings, or even a pair of reading glasses”(P.H. Moser).

This is how Trompe L’Oeil books are described by Nelleke Moser on this website. This definition is helpful to get familiar with in order to understand the context of the research. But before that, a small personal introduction is perhaps needed. My name is Alfie Pieterse, I study Literature & Society at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, and I am doing my research project as a part of the Honours Programme under Nelleke Moser’s supervision. My research goal is to find Trompe L’Oeil books. All of the currently known books are documented on this website, thanks to Ms. Moser’s research. They are rather interesting already, but this research will concern itself with finding additional examples Finding these would help place the already known works into context, as well as help to answer some rather interesting questions, like whether all Trompe L’Oeil books are Dutch (since all known examples are), or why Trompe L’Oeil art is common while Trompe L’Oeil books are not. Finally, this research was done in two rounds: the first round consisted of going through university libraries’ databases and coming up with questions and ways to search, while in the second round the focus lies on contacting librarians and one expert in the field of publishing, John. A Lane.

Methodology

First round:

There are multiple ways in which I attempted to systematically search for more examples of these books. First of all, some obvious methods include:

1. searching for other works by already known Trompe L’Oeil authors like Crijn (or Cryn) van Zuyderhoudt;

2. searching for the word ‘trompe l’oeil’ or variations of it like ‘trompe l’oeil books’, ‘trompe l’oeil literature’, ‘trompe l’oeuil’ (the last one appeared in an English source), and ‘schijnbedrieger’ (from Nelleke Moser’s article in Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis);

3. most of these searches were carried out in Dutch, French and English databases, as well as through Google, but there might be some other databases that are less likely to yield results, for example, a Hungarian database like ‘Országos Széchényi Könyvtár’ (The national Széchényi library), that are still interesting to consider since I can speak Hungarian.

Finally, a last, perhaps less obvious way of doing research can be:

 4. to look up how the known Trompe L’Oeil books are categorised and to search for those terms, if there are any. Additionally, a description of these books that is different from their name can also be thought of and then used to search for additional examples.

These ways of searching are chosen because of their systematic approach, but this does not mean that everything that can possibly be found will also be found because of possible errors in categorising the books among other things.

Second round:

The methodology of the second round consisted of contacting various libraries: the Leiden University Library, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, Országos Széchényi Könyvtár (the Hungarian national library), Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum (A literary museum in Budapest), ELTE Egyetemi Könyvtár (ELTE university library) and the Pannonhalmi Könyvtár (the library of the Pannonhalom monastery, which houses a big collection of ancient books). Additionally, John A. Lane, an American expert in publishing (but with vast knowledge in everything concerning books) was also contacted. The reason for contacting these institutions and people, was to gain insight into where I could find additional examples of Trompe L’Oeil books, and gain insight into ways in which I could search efficiently.

 

 

Results

First round:

When utilising the first three mentioned ways of doing research, no previously unknown Trompe L’Oeil books came up. However, there were some Trompe L’Oeil drawings as can be seen on the following page. These pages resemble the spirit of the Trompe L’Oeil books in my opinion, but they are not the same. Databases that were used are: The Leiden University Library, The Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, The Zeeuwse Bibliotheek, Allard Pierson, Early English Books Online (English) and Gallica (French). These are all, except the last two databases, known sources, and all have at least one known copy of a Trompe L’Oeil book. The Hungarian databases mentioned before were also used: the Országos Széchényi Könyvtár (OSZK), the Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum, ELTE Egyetemi Könyvtár, and the Pannonhalmi Könyvtár. Terms used were ‘Trompe L’Oeil’, author’s names like Cryn van Zuyderhoudt, and, since this term does exist in Hungarian, ‘optikai illúzio könyv’ (optical illusion book). This yielded no results, unfortunately.

When it comes to my fourth method of doing research, I ran into a problem: as mentioned in ‘Methodology’, I wanted to see how the books that are known were categorised, and I came to the conclusion that this was not helpful for further research. Known works were often categorised as Trompe L’Oeil, and did not contain other helpful information but the author’s name and the name of the artwork itself. Then it came to deconstructing the Trompe L’Oeil books into a description and then use that description (similar to Ms. Moser’s definition in the introduction). This was used to search for books that would not have the name that one is used to, but were the same concept nevertheless. Similarly to the Hungarian databases where I invented a descriptive term to search for these books, this is what I attempted to do as well.

Second round:

The second round of research did not result in any more examples of Trompe L’Oeil books than the first round of research, but there were other interesting results that I found through this method. Through Erika Andrási, from the OSZK, I found an engraving from 1716 that depicted various events of the time in Hungary, which I will mention in detail in my second blog post. Additionally, John A. Lane mentioned the existence of a book called Academie de l’Espée, by Gérard Thibault. A book from around 1628 in which missing pages were replaced by hand-written pages. This is somewhat similar to Trompe L’Oeil books, but still different. These were the most interesting findings, but I was also sent other engravings that were interesting, but not quite what I was looking for. Finally, something to consider for future research that I learned while talking to the librarians: the books I was searching for are rare, and in order to look around in libraries’ rare collections I have to ask permission for looking at specific books. I did not have any titles to look for, unfortunately, and searching for Cryn van Zuyderhoudt (the author of some Trompe L’Oeil books) did not yield results. I could have utilised the librarians’ services more if I would have had a title to look for, so it would have been helpful if I would have thought about possible titles in the first round of my research.

 

Conclusion

It is still difficult to say with certainty if there are additional examples of these books that exist. It seems to be somewhat of a Dutch trend. But why would this specifically be Dutch? Were other nations not interested in Trompe L’Oeil books? Additionally, it seems to only have been practiced in the 18^th century, but Trompe L’Oeil art still exists in modern times. The more one delves into this topic, the more questions surface. These aspects make it a niche and mysterious genre, which makes it very interesting to do research on, but also makes it likely that the research will not yield the desired results. I did not manage to find additional examples of Trompe L’Oeil books through the research methodology that was discussed in this post. I did find other interesting artworks and texts through talking to experts. I consider these to be positive results of my research, even though I was not looking for them, I think they still contribute to the Trompe L’Oeil book discussion. One of these, the engraving that was sent to me by Ms. Andrási, will be featured in my second blog post. My third and last blog post will detail what I learned while doing this research.

 

 

 

Crijn van Zuyderhoudt, "Trompe L'Oeil with Riddle" (Auction.fr)