Liber Amicorum
Announcement and Call for Contributions: SES Liber Amicorum
"During this Saturnalia, at the behest of the illustrious Ambrogio Visconti, I composed a little book of epigrams, which I entitled emblems..." Andrea Alciato, Letter to Francesco Giulio Calvi, 9 January 1523 (link)
Dear friends and colleagues,
As you know, the need for social distancing has forced us to postpone our conference this year. Since then, the Society has been considering other ways to bring our community together. Among other initiatives, we are currently working to improve our website with new content.
This Saturnalia, we would like to invite you to participate in a collaborative project: the edition of the Society for Emblem Studies’ first Liber Amicorum, with emblems created and/or commented by members of the society (“gifts made of paper, from a poet to another”). This book is being conceived as a creative introduction to the diversity of emblems, created collaboratively by experts in the field.
We warmly invite all members and friends of the SES to send us:
- A historical emblem (with a short commentary, translation or anecdote. Max. 1,000 characters); and/or,
- A new emblem, which can have a new pictura, or reuse historical emblems.
Each member can submit 1-3 emblems, through this form: https://forms.gle/srcWqtQeuMDkfrqg7, created to facilitate the editorial process.
While we would wish that these emblems could be read by all SES members in English, collaborators should feel free to send their contributions in their own language. Contributions can be used to advertise recently published pieces, digital projects, and so on.
When writing, please take into consideration that this is a Liber Amicorum: a space for us to celebrate our subject and the collegiality that is so characteristic of the SES.
The emblems will be compiled in an open-access digital book, published by the SES (eventual partnerships may be sought), which will be made available to all members and friends of the society.
The deadline is 28 February 2021.
We are looking forward to your emblems!
If you have any question or concern, please write to sesliberamicorum@gmail.com
I always liked the Nautilus especially. Still a child, I collected a fossile Nautilus in the 150 millions of years old stone formation called Black Jura near Stuttgart. In the early seventies of the last century, I bought the house of a recent Nautilus from the Pacific Ocean in a museum shop at Toronto. And I learned at about the same time from the Emblems of Joachim Camerarius (1605, vol. IV, 49) that the Ancients believed that the Nautilus used his six legs and his sail like membrane in fine weather for navigating through the sea and that he, in stormy weather, closed his house by that membrane and waited at the bottom of the sea until the sun returned. On that basis, Camerarius produced a fine emblem with the picture of an Nautilus swimming on the sea, the motto Tutus per summa, per ima and the distich
> Nautilus ut placidum et saevum mare sustinet aeque,
> Sic itidem fortis sorte in utraque animus.
>(As the Nautilus sustains the pleasant and the stormy sea in the same way, thus the brave spirit also endures both fortunes.)
Ik zou graag achter de betekenis van een tegeltableau willen komen; voorstellende een dikke kat omringd door kleine bijfiguren. Een prostituée, een koorddanseres een pijprokende koorddanser en een X. Het tableau is ingemetseld naast de schouw in een verbouwde boerderij. De tegels zijn rond 1650 aangebracht. Boven de kop van de kat staat:” Dikken kat”
Pijprokende koorddanser moet een Pijprokende pimpelaar.