After getting very ill on the day of the Columbia book traces event I headed to Bobst to try and trace some books for myself. I was very sad to miss the day anyway but as we all know Bobst is better than any library Columbia could possibly have so I was excited to start exploring the stacks.
To start off I tried to think about the kind of books I normally write in. I highlight lines in a lot of my favourite novels but I’m pretty sure highlighters were not as popular as they are now pre 1920. I then realised that the type of books I write in most in are instructive books. My cookbooks, sewing manuals and knitting patterns are full of my scribbles marking down what ingredients I already have, what row I’m on and little question marks beside things I don’t understand.
I started off in the cookbook section but found very little. There was an old Mrs Beeton cookbook which got me very excited but unfortunately it was empty. So I started to browse the isle of manuals hoping I would find something. I picked up anything that looked a little worn down and potentially old but my first hour was full of pristine, well kept copies.
As I was about to move on I came across six volumes of a book title ‘Modern Buildings – Their Planning, Construction and Equipment’ edited by Gat, Middleton and Ariba. There wasn’t an edition number inside the book but with a bit of research I found out the volume I was holding was published in 1905. I was getting closer… I started to flick through volume one only to find it completely blank.
I felt dejected but thought I would check the others just in case. Volume two was empty but as I opened volume three my heart soared. A name was printed in the top right hand corner; ‘HG Leask’ and on the opposite page was a sticker with ‘Ex Libris’ (a Latin phrase meaning ‘from the books of’) and HG Leask printed on it surrounding a picture of what appears to be a Greek architect.
This was the only volume that had any sort of inscription in but I was still extremely excited. However this is only the beginning of the story…
When I got home I googled HG Leask. The first thing that comes up is lots of links to Amazon pages where you can buy countless pamphlets that Leask wrote on architecture. I knew I was in the right place. Clearly Leask had been in the architecture field and this book belonged to him.
I hit gold however when I found a piece written about Leask on a website called The Dictionary of Irish Architects 1720-1940. You can read the full piece here.
It turns out Harold Leask was born in Dublin on the 7th of November 1882. He worked as an architect and antiquarian for many different architecture firms throughout Ireland however is passion was for the study of historical architecture and arhaeology. He wrote many guides and reports for the Office of Public Works (the books I found on Amazon) and wrote dozens of articles for different architecture journals. He also gave numerous lectures on archaeological and architectural topics and guided many excursions to look at Irish antiquities. He received an honorary MA from University College Dublin in 1942 and an honorary D.Litt from Trinity College Dublin in 1951.
Harold seems to have lived an very lovely life however what moved me most about the piece was this passage about Leask’s personality.
Leask is described as very tall and thin, with ‘a sort of crispness’ of manner, generous with his time and knowledge and scrupulously honest. His obituarist in the RIAI Yearbook observed that ‘pretention, inaccuracy and unconscientiousness were so foreign to his nature that they shocked him and aroused his anger and scorn; but otherwise he was kind and tolerant’. His recreations included photography, golf and rifle shooting. Between 1924 and 1935 he exhibited views at the Water Colour Sotiey of Ireland’s annual exhibitions.
Reading this passage almost made me cry. I had no idea who this man was, and he has most likely been forgotten by most of the world. But he sounds like such a lovely person and I’m just so happy that this excercise meant that for at least one day Howard Leask was remembered, appreciated and helped a girl finish her homework.
