Apothecary Rose

The connection between American publishing and the English houses that supported them were as clear as day to me, as a young apprentice at St. Martin's Press. Editors went on annual buying trips "across the pond" to partake in the comfy literary markets of murder mysteries and tearoom gardens that are so quintessentially British. Excepting for some technical difficulties present in the differences between printing processes, our repackaged series were the house staples we could all rely on. Murder mystery readers are overwhelmingly female, and surprisingly devoted to their fictional, crime-solving heroes; a pat, easy formula that's the perfect armchair read on a chilly autumn night, served with a warm cuppa on the side.

Until a certain female protagonist caught my attention. Because I produced the advance reader copies sent out to reviewers, I usually knew the manuscript well enough to talk about it, and because of the lulls in my work, I actually read most of them, too. We did a bunch of medieval murder mysteries that sought to capitalize on the commercial success of Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose". This one began similarly, but with a twist: the prime suspect was also the chief investigator. She was a female apothecary working as a laywoman within abbey walls, tending to the same medicinal garden that produced the deadly herbal used as the murder weapon, found on her shelves. Neat plot twist, right?

I was reminded of my own botanist mother who'd cried foul play over my child's bouquet, picked to cheer her up during one of her many "moods". "Agh!" She dramatically cried out when I presented my flowers to her, at her bedside. "That's 'deadly' nightshade!" Oh? Pretty purple flowers. "Are you trying to poison me?!" Uh, no...but, thanks for the tip. End scene, cut, aaannnd...fade out.

Aside from the theater of her daily undoing, I learned a lot about the power of plants from her. She often knew their Latin names by heart, and if we couldn't readily identify the wildflowers we found, we'd look them up. She knew the trees around us by the shape of their leaves, and the colors they changed in the fall. It was a beauty and magic to me that lengthened into homesickness for the forests of my northern woods. Never would I forget the shape of sunlight slanting through the trees, or the happy yellow of a early spring daffodil.

It's become grounding to me with every move I've made, a steadying process that keeps me down-to-earth in a sea of change; collecting specimens, looking them up, and then pressing them between the pages of books. That is the strength of our collective gifts as a mother and daughter: a knowledge that is straight and true. 
And so very beautiful.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2017/09/14/england-to-be-re-dedicated-as-dowry-of-mary/

The Book of Ende

Becoming a female illuminator in the late 20th to early 21st century has been arduous, odd, and ultimately, my raison d'etre thus far. Unlike, say, Impressionism or the Renaissance period, any examples I found of exceptional illuminating were extremely rare, and a female's excellent works rarer still. But, they were there. Back in my apprenticeship, St. Martin's Press had annual editorial buying trips to England, in a reverse production process that had us recalibrating equipment to accommodate film flats done the exact opposite of our photographic process used for plate-making on American presses, but I digress.

Murder mysteries were (and still are) an export with an easy audience here in the States, as any real publishing professional will tell you. Just look at the numbers for Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie, and the "Dial __ for Murder" series. My mother is particularly enamored with a British show currently airing on PBS about two older women who plan estate gardens and solve murders, in the exact same format every single week, which is the core demographic for any murder mystery audience.

Edward Gorey famously illustrated an opening spot for the introduction to the PBS "Masterpiece Theater" murder mystery series, in a gothic pen-and-ink style that had the 90s graduating classes of RISD's Illustration department completely under his spell: a cool, hermetic character who left New York City after his own career in publishing for Provincetown, to create work reminiscent of the the 1900-1930s Art Nouveau revival, but I digress again. 

At work, we produced a series of murder mysteries by British authors that I still have on my bookshelves, with one stand-out selection: "The Apothecary Rose". Here, we find a female herbalist working in a medieval abbey garden attached to a cloister, who also solves murders most foul. Back then, the weapon of choice was often poison secreted from the abbey garden or her own apothecary shelves, for death-dealing instead of healing. 

The same fictional construct used in murder mysteries was the actual historical context for female illuminators working in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: artists who were either raised in the family business of making books attached to a prestigious monastery, or the nuns working in the scriptorium of their own monasteries. It was uncommonly educated and rare for anyone to read, write, and paint with such skill, but for a woman? Well, that's another story entirely. 

Happy Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, to my illuminated readers of 2016.

Dormant seed pods, and other cool things.

Here's a seed pod in its' "latent" phase.

I will always love all things botanical, as today I give special "thanks" to my mom for being there with me, at home in her gardens, speaking their names to me in Latin or French whenever I wanted, (because she wrote her Master's dissertation in French way back in the early 60s, as one of the few women at her university to major in science), and for my deep, abiding love of all plant life. I think Springtime is so exciting, while we wait for life that was once dormant to burst back into riotous life. I know can't wait to see the show. Here we go again!

Up close and personal with nature!

Two seed pods are better than one!

A different view reveals a nautilus shape. Cool!

Can't wait for the "big show" to start! Gotta love Springtime.

P.S. - For a special bonus round of "good clean fun", try reading the photo captions aloud to yourself in a strong "New Yawk mutha's" type of accent. 
I dare you to not laugh while you do it!