Exhibition Themes

The Mirror of the World exhibition is divided into five major themes and multiple subthemes. Each section features a changing selection of items from the Library's Rare Books Collection, including everything from an ancient clay tablet created in 2050 BCE to the latest experimental 'books' and zines. Many of these items can also be explored in the Mirror of the World website.

Each of the themes in the exhibition covers a particular aspect of the history of book production, design and illlustration.

Books and ideas

This first section outlines the early history of books and printing. It features items such as:

• Scriptores Historiae Augustae - a Renaissance manuscript commissioned by the Medici family of Florence in 1479
• A leaf from the Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed using movable type, in the 1450s.

The book and the imagination

The second part of the exhibition looks at the way books and texts have been created out of the imagination, while at the same time acting imaginatively upon us. Items on display include:

• the classic works of Homer, Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton and Joyce
• Books created for children such as Puss in Boots 
• Collection items that pay homage to 1950s pulp crime fiction written by authors such as Carter Brown.

Exploring the world

This section looks at how books have been used to explore and document the world, its landscape and topography, its inhabitants and its flora and fauna. Works featured include:

• Jomard’s monumental Description de l’Egypte, documenting Napoleon’s great scientific and military expedition to Egypt in 1798
• John James Audubon’s Birds of America (1827–38).

Art and nature

Botanical illustration unites two worlds - the scientific and the artistic. This section features fine examples of botanical art, from the earliest herbals to recent illustrations. Items featured include:

• Otto Brunfels' Herbarum vivae eicones of 1532
• Robert Thornton's The Temple of Flora (1799-1803)
• Pierre-Joseph Redoute's Les Liliacees (1802-15).

The artist and the book

The final part of the exhibition highlights the art of the book and the role of the artist in its production. It also looks at the way some contemporary books are changing shape and increasingly becoming ‘objects of desire’. This section features examples of:

• fine bindings, marbling and papers
• innovations in design and layout
• the graphic work of artists such as Piranesi, William Blake and Picasso
• the art of the Japanese book.