For Herman Melville's birthday, book art inspired by 'Moby-Dick'

Happy birthday, Herman Melville! On Aug. 1, 1819, the author who painstakingly crafted “Moby-Dick” came into the world — and, in so many ways, he’s never left.

Literary fans invoke Melville’s spirit by breathing life into his written words each January during the “Moby-Dick” reading marathon at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. That’s where, in the 1840s, he set out on a whaling ship to research what would become the revered American novel. But over the past few months, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem has been exploring a different side of that tome's influence: how book artists have been inspired to create visual works related to Melville's hulking leviathan.

To mark the 205th anniversary of Melville’s birth, it seemed fitting (and fun) to reach out to the curator behind PEM’s jewel box-sized exhibition "Draw Me Ishmael: The Book Arts of Moby Dick."

Dan Lipcan directs the museum’s Phillips Library, and he said the seed for the show sprouted five years ago when he learned the archive housed three first American editions of "Moby-Dick," which published in 1851. Intrigued, Lipcan set forth to build up the library's collection by acquiring modern and contemporary riffs on the novel, “and in this process, I learned about these book artists that had engaged with 'Moby-Dick' in various ways,” he said.

Lipcan unearthed illustrations, typography, binding designs, graphic novels, pop-up books — even emoji celebrating Melville’s whale. What he couldn’t find, though, was evidence of any previous exhibitions devoted specifically to "Moby-Dick" and book arts. “It felt appropriate for the library and for PEM,” Lipcan recalled, “and like a real opportunity to do something interesting and fun.”

Now, 51 works are on display at PEM. All but five are from the Phillips Library. Lipcan sourced the loans from the Nantucket Historical Association, the New Bedford Whaling Museum, and a Melville collector in Worcester named Dr. Jeffrey D. Levine.

One of the coolest objects in the Phillips collection is a book bound in white goat leather, circa 1930. It has a gleaming glass eye embedded into its cover. For Lipcan, the “eye binding” (as it’s called) is thrilling, and it’s become something of a symbol for the "Moby-Dick" show.

“It’s remarkable to me that artists continue to be inspired by and engaged with this novel that is nearly 175 years old," he said. "In other ways, I’m not surprised — even though it is very much a 19th-century novel. To me, there are so many elements of it that feel entirely contemporary and relatable to this moment we are living in.”

Lipcan hopes the show inspires curiosity in visitors so maybe they'll dive into reading "Moby-Dick." And he was game to share a few highlights from “Draw Me Ishmael” to mark Melville’s birthday. The words below are Lipcan's, lightly edited.

Dan Lipcan: "The eye of this white-like-the-whale leather binding gazes back at us. Chaim and Susan Ebanks designed this work to depict Moby Dick himself. Notice the blind-tooled wrinkles in the leather around the eye and the reference to a being of enormous scale: the whale is so gigantic that we can take in only a small part of his body. The artists set these visual elements at an angle, as if Moby Dick is rising out of the water right before us."

"Herman Melville learned firsthand the excitement, boredom, and punishing physical demands of whaling while on board the New Bedford whaleship Acushnet for 18 months. He ended his journey by deserting the ship in July of 1842 while at anchor in the Marquesas Islands. This logbook documents a voyage of the Acushnet three years later, and includes two ship portraits and scenes of whaling activity."

"Melville developed an inventive form for 'Moby-Dick' by interweaving his prose with snippets drawn from his own readings. In 1839, explorer Jeremiah N. Reynolds published a whaler’s account of capturing a legendary albino sperm whale. Known by many sailors as Mocha Dick, it was first spotted off the island of Mocha near Chile and evaded hunters for nearly 30 years. New Bedford-born artist Randall Enos found fascination in this very same story that inspired Melville’s fictional white whale — paying tribute to this 'hero of whales' through brief anecdotes and prints."

"This imposing limited edition was a decade in the making. Each element of its production coalesced into what can be seen as a masterpiece of 20th-century book arts. Arion Press printers painstakingly hand set the metal type one character at a time. Their strategic use of blue gives the design an oceanic splash of color, in the custom initial capital letters, the leather binding, and the tint of the specially commissioned handmade paper (complete with a subtle whale-shaped watermark, a special symbol pressed into the paper). Barry Moser’s 100 masterful and intricate boxwood engravings focus on whaling and natural history, rather than the narrative or characters in'Moby-Dick.'"

"In 1957, this Mexico City publisher may have produced the first 'Moby-Dick' graphic novel, a form typically longer and more substantive than a comic book. Here, the iconic opening line, 'Call me Ishmael,' is nowhere to be found. Instead, Eduardo Baez A. and Enrique Cárdenas Jr. open the story with Ishmael awakening on a raft after the Pequod’s sinking. Throughout, the graphics are full of energy and emotion."