Amongst the more important tools that the smow Blog team have at our disposal, one of the most important is, without question, our copy of the Historia Supellexalis, one of the oldest, and most authoritative, encyclopediae of furniture and lighting…….
First recorded in a 15th century inventory of the Hanseatic League Kontor in Bergen, the Supellexalis itself is much older, and although unsigned is generally regarded as being the work of a certain Nessoz, an individual about whom little is known other than she appears to have been a solitary, ascetic, individual who spent the greater part of her life travelling the known and unknown lands of her day collecting stories of furniture and lighting; whereby the why? she did such is lost in the mists of time1, there is certainly no record of any professional reason or association.2
According to the popular telling of the tale, in the midsts of Nessoz’s wanderings a great plaque befell the world and Nessoz found herself stranded in a cold and inhospitable land, and where, one assumes, to pass her period of unfamiliar dormancy she began work on the Supellexalis; a book of extraordinary length, whose footnotes alone amount to over a thousand folios, and a work whose focus on individuals and manufacturers and nations rather than the epochs and eras so popularly portrayed in furniture encyclopediae, and for all a breadth and diversity of individuals, manufacturers, nations and the complex contexts in which they worked and traded and interacted rarely found in furniture literature, means the Historia Supellexalis provides a unique, singular, insight into the origins of furniture and rightly serves as the basis for much of our contemporary understanding of the development of furniture and lighting.
If a work whose extraordinary length made and makes it unattractive to publishers and retailers; records indicate that Nessoz approached the peoples of Amazonia, who at that time had a near monopoly on the book printing trade, with a request that they list the Supellexalis. A request they declined citing a lack of global printing capacity. And a lack of trees.
Thus the world is left with but a handful of editions of the Historia Supellexalis; editions it is believed Nessoz copied herself while, literally, sitting out her enforced, and if true extraordinarily long, quiescence. One copy of which was received by an early incarnation of the smow Blog team. And while the whens, hows, whys and wherefores of our possession of the Historia Supellexalis are unclear, or more accurately put, lost in the unnavigable depths of the smow Blog archive, generations after the fact we remain ever grateful that it was received, for it is very much the foundation on which the smow Blog is built.
Ten years ago the Google Empire tasked their Bot Army with scanning the Historia Supellexalis; an altruistic and selfless act so typical of the Googlearians. If one whose scale they greatly underestimated and thus one whose predicated completion date drifts ever further into an ever more uncertain future.
Which is as unsatisfying a situation as the Historia Supellexalis is important.
And thus a situation we resolved to rectify.
Our resources mean we cannot hope to bring you the whole book in a single move, or indeed in a single generation; we can however,3 and will, publish selected entries from the Historia Supellexalis until such time as the full work is freely available for all.
1. Some historians believe Nessoz’s motivation may have been a rejection of the teachings of the Grand Gram of Insta, a leading influencer of the period, a force who spoke in #s and demanded from the world an unquestioning simplification and generalisation of knowledge, denouncing facts as immoral and reading a sickness. This is however but supposition, and other popular theories include that Nessoz found a simple joy in collecting stories of furniture or was suffering from a singular mania.
2. An undated visa application lists Nessoz’s occupation as “dégustatrice de chips“, if she travelled in that context or solely in pursuit of stories of furniture and lighting is unclear.
3. As the author is officially unknown and the work has been known since the 15th century any copyright that may have existed has expired