Graphic Arts

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), El ultimo prologo de Jorge Luis Borges (Buenos Aires: Ediciones “Dos Amigos”, 1990). Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage. Oversize 2009- in process

“It has occurred to me that complete works are an error of commercial or academic origin,” wrote Borges in the prologue to this volume, “A man has a right to be judged by his brightest page, not by the distractions of his pen or his casual correspondence. I would like to be judged by the nine texts that follow or by the echo of those texts in memory.”

Eduardo Mayer published this trilingual edition in honor of the Argentine writer, essayist and poet. Borges chose the texts, which appear in Spanish, French, and English. Illustrations are by Josefina Robirosa (El Muerto), Rodolfo Ramos (Ulrico), Roberto Páez (La Espera), Norma Bessouet (La Muralla y Los Libros), Alica Scavino (La Intrusa), Gabriela Aberasturi (Fragmentos de un Evangelio Apócrifo), Vechy Logioio (La Luna), Julio Pagano (Utopía de un hombre que esta cansado), Libero Badii (Fue en Ginebra) and Luís A. Solari (Avelino Arredondo) The book concludes with an epilogue by Horacio Zorraquín Becú.

We are fortunately to have received the donation of another Bernhardt Wall (1872-1956) etched book, joining the eight already in rare books and special collections (see earlier post). It is a fine example of Wall’s publications, in which he not only drew the etchings for his books, but also printed and bound them.

Wall was an avid researcher of American history. He published biographies of several American presidents and various American writers, including Theodore Roosevelt, Warren Taft, Henry Coolidge, Sam Houston, Mark Twain, Thomas A. Edison, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson. This is his biography of Washington Irving.

For more information on Wall, read Francis J. Weber, Following Bernhardt Wall: 1872-1956 (Austin, Tex: Book Club of Texas, 1994). Graphic Arts (GAX) Oversize 2005-0466Q

The German artist-activist John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfelde, 1891-1968), created images in photomontage using labels, newspaper ads, photographs, and engravings. These were cut, assembled, and re-photographed (by Janos Reisman) for half-tone reproduction. Heartfield himself was not a photographer but a collage artist who prepared the work for commercial reproduction. George Grosz said he and Heartfield invented photomontage “in my South End studio at five o’clock on a May morning in 1916.” (George Grosz, “Randzeichnungen zum Thema,” Blätter der Piscatorbühne, Berlin 1928). Unlike other reproductive work, the published half-tones are usually bought and sold as Heartfield originals.

Heartfield joined the German Communist Party in 1918 and remained sympathetic to these ideals throughout his life. His younger brother, Wieland Herzfelde, founded the publishing house of Malik Verlag where leftist writers were championed, such as American Upton Sinclair who sought to expose social injustice and economic exploitation through his writing. Heartfield created many of the dust jackets for his brother’s publications.

Heartfield’s cover designs involved two images, one for the front cover and one the back, interrupted by a separate spine element. The two images for Sinclair’s Das Geld schreibt depict a group of writers as puppets of the state on the front and the family of German writer Emil Ludwig (1881-1948) on the back. Ludwig, who was himself persecuted by the National Socialist Party, threatened to sue Malik for defamation of character. As a result, the faces of the Ludwig family, including the dog, were punched out on all unsold copies. Princeton now owns both the censored and the original uncensored copies.

Heartfield was eventually forced to leave Germany in the 1930s but thanks in part to Berthold Brecht, was able to return in 1950 when he worked primarily in theater design.

Below, see two of the color variations Heartfield created for Oil! (Petroleum), Sinclair’s novel recently translated to film as There will be Blood, by Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Daniel Day Lewis. Heartfield tried the design both in green and in gold, representing both paper money and hard currency.

For more, try this volume on bindings and dust jackets of Berlin Publishing Houses: Anne Buschhoff, Blickfanger: franzosische Plakate um 1900 aus der Sammlung der Kunsthalle Bremen (2000) Marquand (SA) NC 1807.F7B872 2000. Blickfanger can be translated “eye catcher.”

Magdalena Dabrowski, “Photomonteur: John Heartfield,” MoMA magazine no.13 (Winter/Sprint 1993): 12-15.

Peter Selz, “John Heartfield’s ‘Photomontages’,” The Massachusetts Review 4, no. 2 (Winter 1963): 309-36.

Anton Kuchenreiter, Die Calligraphie in ihrem ganzen Umfange, geschrieben in Stein (Calligraphy in its entirety, written in stone) (Neuburg an der Donau, 1831). 35 x 51 cm.

This is the first and only edition of a German writing album containing thirty-three plates printed lithographically by Anton Kuchenreiter. It is a dedication copy for Princess Therese von Thurn und Taxis (1773-1839) and the bookplate bears the Thurn und Taxis arms. The dedication is signed “Anton Kuchenreiter lithograph.”

Kuchenreiter is not listed in any of the standard indexes to printmakers. However, there was a Swiss firm named Kuchenreiter known for their elaborately engraved firearms, led by Andreas Kuchenreiter I (1716-1795). It seems likely that Anton learned engraving from members of the family and incorporated the detail of the cut line with the ease of lithography.

The book was printed in Neuburg an der Donau (Neuburg on the Danube River), the capital of the Neuburg-Schrobenhausen district in the state of Bavaria, not far from the first quarries of Bavarian limestone, which was the favored stone of the earliest lithographers.

Princess Therese was born Duchess von Mecklenburg-Strelitz before marrying Prince Karl Alexander von Thurn und Taxis. Her younger sisters were Louise, Queen of Prussia; Duchess Charlotte von Saxe-Hilburghausen; and Princess Friedrike of Prussia. In the volume’s final plate, Kuchenreiter has drawn three names as though they were printed on top of each other: Louise, then Charlotte, and finally Therese. If you look closely, you will see additional words inside the letters of Therese’s name.

One more point of interest, the work is an example of lithographic engraving, or engraving on stone. A coating of grease-resistant gum arabic is painted on the stone and the artist scrapes away the text with a steel point. The exposed stone is inked and the rest is treated like lithography. This means that it would be written laterally reversed. For more, see Michael Twyman’s Early Lithographed Music (1996), p. 504. Mendel Music Library Ref SV ML112.T89 1996

In the previous post, we described the first section of a nineteenth-century photography album compiled by a British Army officer, attributed to be the Army surgeon Alexander Dudgeon Gulland, MD Edinburgh University. The second section of the album includes photographs of the Indian Northwest Frontier Hazara Campaign (1867-1870) and others taken in Malta, Ireland, Guernsey, Spain, and elsewhere.

After the Jamaica photography, the album moves on to India and includes 32 photographs of Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier, in particular 8 fine photographs of Kashmir by the British photographer Samuel Bourne (1834-1912). The Bournes are numbers 792, 805, 815 (prize-winning photograph Srinagaar a Bridge on the Margual Canal above), 782, 776, 261, 818, and one titled Glimpse through the Forest.

There are also group portraits of the Sixth Royal Regiment, all annotated with names, including one with Gulland as a blurred figure at the edge of the frame, perhaps suggesting he was the photographer and moved into the frame at the last minute? A two-part panorama of the camp of the Hazara Field Force includes notes on all the batteries and contingents of Sikh, Gurkha, and Punjabi troops as well as men from the Maharaja of Cashmere and the Nawab of Ulm. The British recognized that collaborating with native troops was an essential part of sustaining the campaigns they had to fight to keep India.

There are also two striking and unusual images: one is of Hill Men in chainmail armour; and the other of what is noted as The Attack on Mhunnah-Ka-Dhunnah showing a cannon ball arching through the air and landing on a hillside. The other areas included in the album are mainly ports and bases used by the British Army and Navy. Most of these photographs are by commercial studios, which indicates that Gulland, like many nineteenth-century tourists, bought photographs of the places he visited.

One of 5 views of Malta is by Giorgio Sommer (1832-1914) and taken around 1860-1865. Among the 20 of Ireland are 12 large blind-stamped views and 3 others by William Lawrence. One of the 19 views of Guernsey is a mammoth print of the Harbour and Castle Cornet, most unusual for the time, and the views of Gibraltar and Spain are from Francis Frith’s Series.

This album is still being processed but will soon be available for research in the reading room of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library. Special thanks go to Katherine Spears who did the majority of the research on this unique album.

On October 11, 1865, several hundred native Jamaicans marched into the town of Morant Bay, the capital of the predominately sugar-growing parish of St. Thomas, to demonstrate against injustices. Several members of the crowd, on both sides, were killed. In the days that followed, the British Army was called in and over 500 people were murdered along with hundreds wounded.

We recently acquired an album with 165 rare albumen photographs: 59 of the Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica (1865), 32 photographs of the Indian Northwest Frontier Hazara Campaign (1867-1870), and 64 others depicting Malta, Ireland, Guernsey, and elsewhere. The prints are primarily by unidentified amateur photographers, although there are 8 by Samuel Bourne, 5 by G. Sommer, 3 by William Lawrence, several by Francis Frith.

This post will describe the 59 photographs relating to the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion and future posts will deal with the other sections. The album’s careful compilation includes detailed notes of the people, places, and dates relevant to each photograph. It may be the work of a surgeon in the British Army, Alexander Dudgeon Gulland, MD Edinburgh University, who appears in the album. Appointed Staff Assistant Surgeon in 1854, he served with the 6th Foot which was in Jamaica in 1865 and is listed as having been in China from 1860-62 and Hazara in the Northwest Frontier in 1868 (See: Hart’s Army Lists and Returns Relating to Medical Officers (Army) 1854). The Jamaica section of this album begins with photographs of the Morant Bay military base including a view from the Surgeon’s Quarters and general views of the area to set the scene.

The 1865 rebellion started when a black man was put on trial for trespassing on abandoned plantation land and imprisoned. Slaves were emancipated in Jamaica in 1838 but the freed black population remained an underclass with little fertile land to cultivate. Paul Bogle, a Baptist Deacon, led 200 or more Jamaicans (men and women) to protest at Morant Bay courthouse where panicked militiamen fired on them. In the ensuing rioting the protestors seized Morant Bay.

Governor Eyre declared martial law and the brutal suppression led to over 500 deaths. HMS Duncan, sent from Nova Scotia with troops to suppress the rebellion, is noted in the background of one view. Other images show important locations for the rebels, including the cotton tree where they gathered before heading to the courthouse (above) and a roadside grave of 80 rebels (below).

Portraits of key figures from the rebellion tell more of the story. Among them are a page of portraits of “The Victims of the Jamaica Rebellion of 1865”, a portrait of George William Gordon who is now considered a Jamaican national hero, portraits of unidentified Jamaican natives, and of British Army officers. Listed among the victims are not only those who were murdered but also those in the colonial government who were later tried for murder and acquitted.

Eyre’s treatment of Gordon, the son of a white planter and a mulatto slave and known critic of the government, came to symbolize the brutality of his response. Gordon was arrested in Kingston (where martial law had not been declared), and taken to Morant Bay (where it had been). He was imprisoned, tried by court martial, and sentenced to death by hanging.

It is probable that these portraits were gathered after the rebellion and some may have been taken by the only commercial studio we can identify in Jamaica at the time, run by Adolphe Duperly (1801-1865) and taken over by his son, Armond.

Two small photographs of Jamaican Maroons, including one of Maroons in camouflage with Colonel Fyfe, reflect an interesting social dynamic in the rebellion. Originally runaway slaves who set up communities that engaged in guerrilla warfare against the British, the Maroons eventually cooperated with the British authorities after they started to deport them and confiscate their land in 1796. Used to suppress slave revolts until 1838, they were also used to suppress the 1865 rebellion.

Coming less than a decade after the Indian Mutiny (1857), the rebellion renewed fear in England about native uprisings and many felt that it vindicated Thomas Carlyle’s argument that reform was dangerous as colonized peoples were unreasoning and unappreciative of any benefits conferred upon them. The rebellion ended planter rule in Jamaica, which became a Crown Colony.

For more information, see “The Town of Morant Bay, Morant Bay, Jamaica,” Harper’s Weekly, December 23, 1865.

“Morant Bay, Jamaica, the Scene of the Negro Insurrection,” The Illustrated London News, November 25, 1865.

Gad Heuman, The Killing Time, The Morant Bay Rebellion in Jamaica (London: Macmillan, 1994) Firestone F1866.H48 1994b

Arvel B. Erickson, “Empire or Anarchy: The Jamaica Rebellion of 1865,” The Journal of Negro History, 44, no. 2 (April 1959): 99-122.

Henry Bleby, The Reign of Terror: a Narrative of Facts concerning Ex-Governor Eyre, George William Gordon, and the Jamaica Atrocities (London: s.n., 1868). Firestone HF 1569.E53

With many thanks to our Japanese bibliographer, Yasuko Makino, the literal translation of the title of this album is: New 100 Komon Designs Used in Kimono/Costumes Used in Ancient Court Ceremonies. Compiled by Sumiharu Suzuki (Kyoto: Maria Shobo, Showa 11 [1936]).

Komon literally means a small design scattered all over a kimono. http://umechiyo.ikiten.com/umechiyo-ZD-E287-14-sctg037.html Yasuko has also sent this URL to show a modern album. Below are a few more designs, printed by stencil and brush, (or to use the French term: pochoir).

Although the British engraver and publisher Edward Orme (1774-ca. 1838) always claimed to have invented transparent prints, Michael Twyman reminds us that Rudolph Ackermann (1764-1834) published 109 transparent etchings between 1796 and 1802, along with a book entitled Instructions for Painting Transparencies (1799). Even before Ackermann, the caricaturist Mary Darly published a few “humorous and transparent prints” in 1763.

However, it was Orme who made the genre popular in the early nineteenth century through his bilingual manual, An Essay on Transparent Prints and on Transparencies in General (1807) Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize Rowlandson 8415q. The effect was created by taking a normal etching or engraving, painting large areas of color on back of the print and then, adding varnish to specific areas make the paper translucent when held up to a light. Scenes often included fire light, moon light, and other glowing illusions. Orme’s instructions suggest that transparent prints could be substituted for stained glass, in lanterns, lampshades, and fire screens.

Critic and designer Karel Teige said that the cover of a book must be like a poster advertisement. His work was part of the golden age of avant-garde Czech book design, begun in 1920 with the poets and artists of the Devetsil Artistic Union (DAU). Their designs appeared on trade books from many publishing houses and influenced a generation of graphic artists. Here are a few examples. For more, see the Cooper Hewitt’s exhibition website: http://www.sil.si.edu/ondisplay/czechbooks/intro.htm

Ludwig Renn (born Arnold Friedrich Vieth von Golsseneau, 1889-1979), Valka (Prague: Vaclav Petra, 1930). Wrapper design by Josef Kaplický (1899-1962). Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

F. Slang (pseud. for Fritz Hampel), Kriznik Potemkin. Povstani Namorniku Pred Odescu 1905 (Prague: Jan Fromek, 1926). Wrapper design by Karel Teige (1900-1951). Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker (1898-1949), Rudy Obchod Hrozi (The Red Trade Menace)(Prague: Nakladem Ĉeska Graficke Unie, 1932). Wrapper design by Josef Hesoun. Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

Karel Schulz (1899-1943), Dama U Vodotrysku (Prague: Ladislav Kuncir, 1926). Wrapper design by the partnership of Jindrich Styrsky (1899-1942) and Toyen (born Marie Cerminova, 1902-1980). Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

Monografieën over Filmkunst (Monographs on Art Films), edited by C.J. Graadt van Roggen (Rotterdam: W. & J. Brusse’s Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1931-1933). 10 vols. All in the original wrappers, designed by Piet Zwart (1885-1977). Graphic Arts (GAX) in process

This set of monographs on early twentieth-century film is as important for the graphic design of the covers, as it is for the discourses on cinema inside. The individual volumes are:
1) C.J. Graadt van Roggen, Het Linnen Venster (The Linen Window), 1931.
2) J.L.J. Jordaan, Dertig Jaar Film (Thirty Years Film), 1932.
3) Henrik Scholte, Nederlandsche Filmkunst (Dutch Cinema), 1933.
4) Th.B.F. Hoyer, Russische Filmkunst (Russian Cinema), 1932.
5) Simon Koster, Duitse Filmkunst (Coastal German Cinema), 1931.
6) Elisabeth de Roose, Fransche Filmkunst (French Cinema), 1931.
7) J.F. Otten, Amerikaansche Filmkunst (American Cinema), 1931.
8) Menno ter Braak, De Absolute Film (The Absolute Film), 1931.
9) Constant van Wessem, De Komische Film (The Comedy Film), 1931.
10) Lou Lichtveld, De Geluidsfilm (The Sound Film), 1933.

Each volume has a unique design created by the Dutch artist Piet Zwart, who had multiple careers as an interior designer, industrial design, commercial typographer, photographer, critic and lecturer. At the close of the twentieth century, Zwart was named ‘Designer of the Century’ by the Association of Dutch Designers.

He preferred the title of form technician to graphic designer. His innovative typography and jacket covers steal from De Stijl in his limited palette and geometric layout, without being weighed down by its rules. He flirted with Russian Constructivism and was one of the first designers to consider issues of ergonomics into his industrial projects. Structure, balance, and repetition are constants in his work, which often incorporated photographic images he shot himself. When this film series was complete, Zwart abandoned typographic projects to concentrate on industrial and furniture design.

For more information on Zwart, see: Arthur Allen Cohen, Piet Zwart, Typotekt (New York: Exlibris, [1980]). Marquand Library (SAPH): N6953.Z85 C654 1980

For informaton on Princeton University’s Film & Video Program, see: http://www.princeton.edu/arts/artsatprinceton/film/abouttheprogram/

The sculptor and book artist Werner Pfeiffer is currently installing an exhibition of his work down the road at the University of Pennsylvania, opening Thursday, September 17, 2009, at 5:30 p.m. http://www.library.
upenn.edu/exhibits/pfeiffer.html. This seems like a good opportunity to mention two recent acquisitions of Mr. Pfeiffer’s work in the graphic arts collection at Princeton University.

Errantry is a scroll inspired by Der Triumphzug Kaiser Maximilians or The Triumphal Procession of the Emperor Maximilian (1515), a series of 130 woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair the Elder (1473-1531) and others. Pfeiffer has created his own militant parade of 20th-century violence and agression.

The title and text are based on a poem written by J.R.R. Tolkien in the 1930s, thought by many to be about war. The poem used in this scroll is an adaptation with only two or three lines directly quoting the original but with the syntax, rhyme, and meter of Tolkien’s writing.

The text and images are set against a chilling chronology of war, conflict, and genocide in the 20th century, printed digitally on a 27 foot long canvas. The scroll is housed in an actual 105 mm Howitzer artillery brass casting, manufactured for use in the M14 gun in 1943.

Werner Pfeiffer, Abracadabra: an homage to Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman; a set of typographic explorations (Red Hook, N.Y.: Pear Whistle Press, 2007).

“Abracadabra is a book about magic,” writes Pfeiffer, “Not the illusory trickery of a conjuror, but the magic of an artist’s work.” It is an homage to Dutch graphic artist and resistance fighter Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman (1882-1945), who was executed by the Nazis in the waning days of World War II. In particular, it is a recognition of the inventive typographic works Werkman called drucksels. These unusual pieces combine letterforms with geometry and color. Pfeiffer has created a set of designs based on the letterforms of Abracadabra both in individual plates and in three flexagon structures that can be folded and flipped into multiple forms of fabulous visual geometry.

Louis Lafon (active 1870s), Marinoni Printing Press. Albumen silver print from wet collodion negative, 14-1/4 x 18-1/4 in. (362 x 464 mm), ca. 1880.

Very little is known today about the French photographer Louis Lafon. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “He was based in Paris, photographed primarily industrial subjects, and won a medal for his submissions to the 1874 exhibition of the Société Française de Photographie.” The name does not appear in the standard biographies but a group of his prints is making their way into collections around the country and it will not be long before he is better understood.

Lafon made this mammoth photograph of one of Hippolyte Marinoni’s printing presses, also known as Presse Universelle. High speed, continuous paper printing on machines like this revolutionized the printing industry in the nineteenth century. A nice description of rotary printing can be found at http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/scientific-american/sup3/Marinoni-s-Rotary-Printing-Press.html.

If you want to see the press in action, there is a YouTube video of a Marinoni press similar to Lafon’s photograph at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRjoOTFKZDw.

In researching our new poster for The Colored Concert Company we found one article by Josephine Wright, “Songs of Remembrance” from the Journal of African American History 91:4 [Fall 2006] p.413-424rs that mentioned the group in a footnote:

Three other African American musicians besides Robert Hamilton compiled and published text and music anthologies of Negro spirituals in the early 1880s: M. G. Slayton, ed.. Jubilee Songs, as Sung by Slayton’s Jubilee Singers (Chicago, 1882), 14 songs; Marshall W. Taylor, comp., A Collection of Revival Hymns and Plantation Melodies, Composition by Miss Josephine Robinson… (Cincinnati, 1882), 64 plantation songs; and Jacob J. Sawyer, air., Jubilee Songs and Plantation Melodies (Words and Music), as Sung by the Original Nashville Students, the Celebrated Colored Concert Company (N.p., 1884), 12 songs. Jacob J. Sawyer served ca. 1882 as pianist for Slayton’s Jubilee Singe

Otherwise, this celebrated organization is not mentioned in any of the major newspapers or magazines of the period. Not mentioned in the International Index to Black Periodicals; African American Music Reference http://aamr.alexanderstreet.com/; African American Newspapers: The 19th Century (1827-1882); the archives of the Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College, Chicago, http://www.colum.edu/cbmr/; or the The Harvard Guide to African-American History.

We did however have luck with the dating by matching the clothing in the index: http://www.marquise.de/en/1800/index.shtml).

Julie Chen, A Guide to Higher Learning (Berkeley: Fishing Fish Press, 2009)

This latest bookwork “examines the experiential process of acquiring knowledge, on both academic and personal levels. The piece is comprised of 8 sections of rigid square pages that are hinged together in unexpected ways, giving the reader a physical reading experience that mirrors the complex meaning of the content,” writes Ms. Chen. “The book in its fully unfolded form reveals an intricate and fascinating visual pattern of information.”

Flying Fish Press was established in 1987 by Julie Chen and is dedicated to the design and production of books which combine the quality and craftsmanship of traditional letterpress printing with the innovation and visual excitement of contemporary non-traditional book structures and modern typography. For more information, see http://www.flyingfishpress.com/index.html

Catalogue of the Engraved Work of Asher B. Durand. Introduction by Charles Henry Hart (1847-1918), (New York: Grolier Club, 1895). Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

In April of 1895, there was an exhibition held at the Grolier Club in New York City focused on the engravings of American artist Asher Brown Durand (1796-1886). 350 copies of the catalogue were printed in a large-paper edition in May of that year and circulated to the members of the Club.

A devoted fan of Durand’s work (as yet unidentified) took that catalogue and extra-illustrated it with all the original engravings he/she could acquire. This acquisition will provide Princeton researchers with not only a description of what Durand produced but also a copy of the actual print.

The term extra-illustrated refers to a book that has more prints or illustrations in it than when the book was published. These were usually added by trimming and tipping the prints onto extra pages (or sometimes right on top of the text) and then, rebinding the original text pages with the new plates.

The British term “Grangerizing” has a slightly different connotation, stemming from James Granger’s Biographical History of England (1769), which was published with blank leaves already provided for the reader to fill with prints. Grangerizing became a popular hobby in England and unfortunately, many other books were cut up to provide the extra prints for these homemade editions.

For more information on the difference between the two terms, and more history, see: H. J. Jackson, Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). Firestone Library (F) Z1003 .J12 2001

Suzanne Thomas, The Wine (Santa Cruz: the author, 2008). Edition of 150. Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process
This miniature book includes a quotation from Homer’s Odyssey (Book XIV): “The wine urges me on / the bewitching wine/ which sets even a wise man to singing/ and to laughing gently/ and brings forth words / which were better unspoken.”

In 1813, printer Robert Harrild (1780-1853) joined the debated raging inside the London printing community as to the use of rollers rather than balls to ink a printing plate. The majority of hand-printers preferred inking balls but Harrild’s demonstration of his new roller was so successful that rollers became compulsory in every print shop throughout the city. Harrild established a company, located at 25 Farringdon Street, to manufacture the rollers and eventually all kinds of printing equipment.

His advertisements boasted: “Harrild and Sons’ Manufacture … have on sale every article connected with printing machinery; type, presses, machines…” Shortly before his death, Harrild’s rollers and Paragon platen press were exhibited in the Crystal Palace during the Great Exposition of 1851. His sons continued to run the company well into the twentieth century.

Graphic Arts recently acquired two of their equipment catalogues: Catalogue of Printing Machinery and Materials with Selected Type Specimens, ca. 1895, and Harrild & Sons’ Complete Illustrated Catalogue of Printers, Bookbinders’ & Stationers’ Machinery & Materials, 1892. Note in particular the machine to fold newspapers.

The French artist Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gérard went by the name Grandville, which was the stage name his grandparents used. In the early nineteenth-century, Grandville created several hand-colored lithographic books to satirize the bourgeois middle class of Parisian society in the Romantic period. His best, and today the rarest, is Les metamorphoses du jour published in 1829.

The characters of the book have a human body and an animal face, exposing people for the beasts they really are. The preface comments that the artist was thereby able to encompass “both the living picture of social manners and the satire of institutions and prejudices. Truth can circulate with impunity under the very eyes of the men it attacks.”

J.J. Grandville (1803-1847), Les metamorphoses du jour (Paris: Chez Bulla…et chez Martinet, 1829). 73 lithographic plates drawn by Grandville, printed by Langlumé. Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

The first edition was a huge success and quickly went out-of-print. A new edition was prepared in 1854, this time using wood-engraved reproductions of Grandville’s original lithographs. It is unfortunate that most people only know the series through these poor copies.

Princeton’s Les metamorphoses is a complete set of hand-colored lithographs with the extra two plates issued in 1830 in Belgium and then censored. In addition, the book is extra-illustrated with four lithographs in the style of the series: La chasse et la Pêche (1830), La revanche ou le Français du Missouri (1829), Casse nationale sur les terres royales (1830), and Chasse aux ordonnances (1830?).

Princeton also holds a number of books illustrated by Grandville including Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Voyages de Gulliver dans des contrées lointaines (Paris: H. Fournier ainé: Furne et Cie, 1838). Graphic Arts (GAX) 2005-2172N; along with an original preparatory drawing for Gulliver by Grandville in the Cotsen Collection, (CTSN) Framed Artwork 3976

The frontispiece for Crispijn de Passe’s five volume manual for painters depicts Minerva as the patroness of the arts.

She is holding a torch to symbolize the light mentioned in the title of this volume. In her lap is an open book with the artist’s motto: Nulla dies sine linea (Never a day without a line). Behind her are eight Utrecht painters: Abraham Bloemaert, Gerard van Honthorst, two unidentified, Jan van Bronckhorst, Roelandt Saverij, Joachim Wtewael, and Paulus Moreelse. Apprentices sit at Minerva’s feet drawing.

The manual was meant for a wide audience and so, the text is printed in Italian, Dutch, French, and German. Part one is devoted to proportions; part two to drawing from the male nude; part three drawing from the female nude; part four to figure studies by famous contemporary master including Guercino, Jan Cousin, Abraham Bloemaert, and Roelandt Saverij; and part five focuses on the study of mammals, birds, fish, and insects.

There are only four other copies of this book in the United States. One is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., one at the Getty Research Institute, and two at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Each copy is slightly different in the plates included, their sequence, and the altering of dates. The title pages of part 1-2 in Princeton’s copy have imprint: t’Amsterdam : By Crispijn de Pas, M.D.C.XLIV (altered with pen to M.D.C.LXIV), while the National Gallery of Art’s copy is altered similarly for parts 2-3. Princeton’s copy also has plate dates altered to reflect the addition of a number of prints.

Each of the five parts has its own title page, hence the combined title: La prima-[quinta] parte della luce del dipingere et disegnare, used for the single bound volume. The polyglot book is also known as Van ‘t Licht der teken en schilderkonst and Luce del dipingere et disegnare.

Most of the 225 plates in these volumes were engraved by Crispijn the Younger himself, although the years following the publication of this opus were troublesome for the artist. He had more and more trouble keeping up with demand for his work and in 1645, the artist was admitted to an asylum to be “cured of his insanity of mind.” Although he returned to work, this manual remains his most ambitious project.

The book is dedicated to the city of Utrecht, where his father Crispijn de Passe the elder, had moved for religious reasons. The entire family, father and four children, worked together as artists and print publishers. When the family estate was settled near the end of the 18th century, their work totaled more than 14,000 prints and around 50 print books or illustrated volumes. Princeton is fortunate to now hold 5 rare volumes with prints by Crispijn the younger, and 6 illustrated by Crispijn the elder.

The honour is immortal that remains
Of virtuous artists whose name shall never wither.
Just so with De Passe, the praise the Muses sing
In the vale of Pegasus, of all the wondrous marvels
That he disclosed with his needle,
By etching on the plate, of which Belgica boasts.
So skillfully done, stippled and boldly cut,
As can still be seen up to this very day.
The proof demonstrates the work’s deed to the master’s honour,
Aye, the hand may perish, but the spirit never dies.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987), Andy Warhol’s index (book). With the assistance of Stephen Shore [and others] and particularly David Paul. Several photos by Nat Finkelstein. Factory fotos by Billy Name (New York: Random House, 1967). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) GAX 2009- in process

This book was designed by Andy Warhol during the 1960s as “a children’s book for hipsters.” The volume, as originally published, included 10 interesting details that have broken or fallen out of many volumes and so, a complete book is extremely rare. These include a silver balloon; a pop-up Hines Tomato Paste can; a pop-up castle (reference to the house in Los Angeles where rock bands recorded); a folded geodesic dome (dodecahedron); a sheet of stamps to be placed in water (presumably tabs of LSD); a paper accordion; a multi-colored pop-up airplane; a paper disc with “The Chelsea Girls” in printed type on wire spring; a 45 R.P.M. flexi-disc with portrait of Lou Reed, which plays an otherwise unrecorded song by Nico and the Velvet Underground; and an illustration of a nose with two colored overlays on a double-folded page. Princeton’s copy is missing the airplane.

Princeton University Libraries hold nearly 200 books about Andy Warhol. To read about what he thought of this period, in his own words, see: I’ll Be Your Mirror: the Selected Andy Warhol Interviews: 1962-1987 / edited by Kenneth Goldsmith (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004) Marquand Library (SA) N6537.W28 A5 2004

Anthony Morris Family Tree, compiled by Anthony Saunders Morris, lithographed by L. Haugg, 1861. Graphic Arts division (GA) 2009- in process

Anthony Saunders Morris (1803-1885) must have had great interest in the history of his family because in the 1860s, he began compiling a complete Morris family tree. When he succeeded in documenting nine generations of male decedents, he hired lithographer Louis Haugg (1856-1894), one of Philadelphia’s leading printmakers, to draw the family tree in its entirety.

The result is this massive sixteen-plate panorama of an actual tree (approximately six by five feet), which holds all the names of the Morris family. Note that the men are the branches that continue the lineage and the women the foliage, only good for decoration.

Printed by F. Bourquin and Company on Chestnut Street, it is unclear how large an edition Morris commissioned. No other copy of this print is currently recorded.

If you love printed books, you need to move fast. This is a limited edition, scholarly text by the amazing book designer Mark Argetsinger, published by the press & letterfoundry of Michael and Winifred Bixler, concerning the life and legacy of the English designer and typographer Stanley Morison (1889-1967). It is a double treat, placing such interesting research into such an elegant package.

“The typefaces and ornamental material here printed sprang chiefly from the vision and taste of an extraordinary man, Stanley Morison” begins the preface. We all know the facts. Morison founded the Fleuron Society dedicated to typography, was a staff writer for the Penrose Annual, and a consultant for the Monotype Corporation, where he developed some new and revived some forgotten typefaces. He went on to consult for The Times of London, redesigning the whole paper in 1932.

But if you thought you knew the history of modern type design, think again. Argetsinger’s essay will change your mind about the development of letterform in our time and bring you up-to-date with the effect Morison’s legacy has on printers of today.

He writes

“As much as Morison sought to produce a new design, his achievement stands largely in the series of revivals born from his important scholarship. These classical faces, amounting in Morison’s tally to one or two permanent styles through the span of a century, have stood the years and they still stand today. Creation is a gift given by the gods to a few Promethean individuals. The gift is unsolicitable. Morison strove to be one of these persons, but in an odd modern way, by industrial proxy.”

The book was designed by Mark Argetsinger and Michael Bixler and bound by the Campbell-Logan Bindery in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Our copy is being catalogued and will be on the shelf for you to read next week.

Edmund Lodge (1756-1839), Portraits of Illustrious Personages of the Court of Henry VIII (London: John Chamberlaine, printed by W. Bulmer, 1812). Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

This is the second edition of 84 stipple engravings reproducing drawings by Hans Holbein, the younger (1497-1543), with biographical and historical descriptions by Edmund Lodge. It was Queen Caroline (1683-1737), who found the Holbein originals in a bureau at Kensington Palace and asked Richard Dalton (Keeper of the King’s drawings and medals) to have them copied and published. When Chamberlain took over Dalton’s position he also inherited the project. Chamberlain edited and published a folio edition of Holbein’s work in 1792, printed and issued in parts over the next 8 years by William Bulmer and Company, Shakespeare Printing-Office.

For the 1792 edition, Chamberlaine called on Francesco Bartolozzi (1725-1815), to prepare a set of prints. Bartolozzi had developed his own technique of stipple engraving with printed color to reproduce the look of chalk drawings, such as Holbein’s. The folio edition of Illustrious Personages was such a success that a large quarto edition was prepared in 1812 (seen here), using additional engravers working in the style of the elderly Bartolozzi, including Bourlier, Cardon, Cheesman, Cooper, Facius, Knight, Meyer, Minasi, and Nicholls.

Of the 84 portraits, 68 are identified by name. The last 12 could not be identified and are grouped at the front of the book without description. A letterpress index is included in the 1812 edition, seen on the left. In addition, portraits of Holbein and his wife serve as frontispieces to both editions.

The 1559 first edition of Praetorius’s history of the Roman Emperors was published in Latin without illustrations. For the first German edition, Praetorius added over one hundred woodcut portraits of the emperors described, taken from imperial coins and later commemorative medals.

The final portrait is that of Ferdinand I of Prague, who Praetorius met while on a diplomatic mission for the Archbishop of Magdeburg. This may have been a last minute substitute since the earlier text indicates the final portrait is to be Emperor Charles V.

Note the words in the woodcuts are printed white on a black background. It was easier to use a thin knife to cut out the letters than to cut around them. The large areas left in relief, printing black, make for a stronger block that would last through a large printing run. In fact, these same blocks were also used in Georgius Sabinus’ Catalogues Romanorum et Germanicorum Imperatorum in 1561.

L’art de dessiner proprement les plans, porfils [sic], elevations geometrales, et perspectives, soit d’architecture militaire ou civil… (Paris: Christophe Ballard, 1697). Graphic Arts GAX 2009- in process

Graphic Arts holds books with many types of bindings, including books bound in the skin of cows, pigs, sheep, and other mammals. Recently, we acquired a book described as bound in cat’s paw calf. A quick search revealed several other volumes in the stacks with similar cat’s paw bindings.

Happily, it turns out that “cat’s paw” is a descriptive term for the leather made from young cows not cats. This is a variation of Tree calf or Tree marbled calf. For such bindings, a light-colored calfskin has been treated with chemicals to represent a mottled tree trunk with branches or the marks made by a cat’s paw.

The leather is first paste-washed and the book hung between two rods, which keep the covers flat. The book is tilted so that it inclines upward towards it head. A small amount of water is applied to the center of both covers to form the trunk, then more water is thrown on the covers so that it runs down to the trunk and to a central point at the lower edge. Copperas (a green hydrated ferrous sulfate) is sprinkled in fine drops on the covers, followed by potassium carbonate, which causes the chemical reaction that etches the leather to form a permanent pattern in shades of gray.

This and other binding descriptions can be found in Etherington & Roberts’ Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: A Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology available now online: http://cool-palimpsest.stanford.edu/don/dt/dt3574.html or on paper: Graphic Arts GA Oversize Z266.7 .R62q

This mapmaker’s printing case was designed to be used by a government sponsored cartographer when working in the field around the 1860s. The buckram-covered case holds sixty-three brass sorts with a selection of numbers and military symbols. There is an ink pad and twelve glass bottles of ink, some with the label of the Paris manufacturer Dagron & Compagnie.

Thanks for finding this new acquisition go to our map curator John Delaney, whose recent exhibition To the Mountains of the Moon can now be seen through the webpages: http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/
maps/websites/africa/contents.html

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), The Great Gatsby (San Francisco: Arion Press, 1984). Photo-engravings designed by Michael Graves. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX), Oversize GA2009- in process

Princeton libraries hold 83 copies of Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, beginning with the first edition in 1925 (not to mention Fitzgerald’s original manuscript). The most recently acquired is a 1984 edition designed and illustrated by Princeton architect Michael Graves, Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture, Emeritus at Princeton University.

When Arion Press invited Graves to work on a fine-press edition of The Great Gatsby, he chose to focus on the objects of Gatsby’s world; those things that defined his life and social status. None of the illustrations Graves prepared include portraits of Tom or Nick, or the book’s other characters. Instead they depict Gatsby’s estate and grounds, the furniture, fixtures, landscaping, automobiles, telephones, cocktail glasses, the gas station, and pool.

Princeton’s copy is one of fifty housed in a clamshell box with a terra cotta bas-relief on the cover along with two original drawings by Graves.

Joan Amades and Josep Colomines, Imatgeria Religiosa (Barcelona: Gregori, 1947). Series: Col’leccio de Boixos Populars de Catalunya, I. Religious iconography of Spanish works held in Catalan collections. Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

Bella C. Landauer (1875-1960), Album of calling cards, 1920-1950. Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

A New York City housewife, who we call the First Lady of American Advertising Ephemera, Bella Landauer bought her first pieces in 1923. Her collection grew, eventually forming one of the largest in the United States, including tradecards, advertising fans, valentines, almanacs, invitations, telegrams, lottery tickets, and more.

When she was out of room at home, Alexander Wall, director of the New-York Historical Society offered her an unused kitchen on the top floor of his building as a workroom. This provided storage, as well as water to help soak the labels off jars and wash other specimens. While the NYHS kept some of the collection, aeronautical material was sent to the Smithsonian Institution, and other groups to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, and the Baker Library in Hanover.

Princeton owns 16 small books about the collection, including Some Alcoholic Americana. Graphic Arts GAX 2004-3749N; Some American Billheads. Firestone NC1810.L23f; and Some Terpsichorean Ephemera. Annex A 4291.558

We now own a piece of the collection itself, with this scrapbook, holding 263 calling cards (and a few miscellaneous items) including cards from or signed by Palmer Cox, William Cullen Bryant, Henry W. DeForest and others.

Columbia University chemistry professor Ogden Nicholas Rood, Princeton class of 1852, had a passion for the science of color. He published a number of influential books, including Modern Chromatics, with Applications to Art and Industry (Annex A P94.852.051.05) and Students’ Text-Book of Color (ND1259.R67).

Hood made a number of trips to Europe to do research and to paint. Graphic Arts recently acquired thirteen drawing after bas reliefs made by Hood while in Florence. Writing in The American Journal of Science (1903), Arthur Wright commented, “It may be added that Professor Rood’s work upon [Modern Chromatics] was greatly facilitated by his own experience as an artist. As early as his residence in Munich [ca. 1854-58] he had practiced painting in oil, and attached a high degree of proficiency. He had a great skill in drawing, and became expert in painting in water-colors, some of his pictures having been shown at the exhibitions of the Academy of Design in New York.”

Princeton also owns a small collection of letters written by Rood from New York and Germany, 1843-1902. Manuscripts Division CO602

The nineteenth-century French artist Godefroy Engelmann I (1788-1839) studied painting at the Académie des Beaux-Arts but turned his talent to printmaking when he was introduced to the new medium of lithography in 1813. On a trip to Munich, Engelmann purchased a press, stones, and all the equipment needed to set up a studio, which he did in Mulhouse, France, followed by presses in Paris and in London.

Engelmann excelled at color lithography which reproduced the look of chalk drawings and oil paintings for fine art prints. In his twenty years of production, he was responsible for most of the major technical developments of the medium, publishing two important treatises, Manuel du dessinateur lithographe (1822) and Traité théorique et pratique de lithographie (1835-40).

Engelmann’s son Godefroy II (1814-1897) joined the firm in 1837, and merged the business with the publisher Graf to form ‘Engelmann et Graf’. The firm quickly established itself as the leading company in France for the printing of facsimiles of illuminated manuscripts, such as this chromolithographic book of hours.

This tiny folded-paper book or parabaik (also spelled parabeik) came to the department with no attribution or provenance. It is untitled and constructed in the traditional Burmese/Myanmar manner, with the heavy paper cut and pasted into one long strip, then folded accordion style and attached to wood boards. The binding has an identical relief decoration on either side, ornamented with glass facets.

The hand-painted text, written in a round Burmese hand, forms circles around animal figures, astrological symbols, and runes. Although we do not have an expert on campus who has been able to translate this lovely volume, the characters do not appear to form complete sentences, but are perhaps the sounds or syllables that form magical chants or charms.

Untitled book of charms [parabaik], 20th century. Gift of Alfred L. Bush. Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

Princeton’s Rare Books and Special Collections recently acquired a complete set of La Caricature in the original publisher’s binding, with all lithographs and advertisements as originally published.

Following the July revolution of 1830, the citizen-king Louis-Philippe took over the French throne. Artist Charles Philipon (1800-1862) took advantage of a relaxation in censorship laws to establish La Caricature, a journal of politics and art. Through 251 issues—four pages with two or three lithographs in each—over five years from 1830 to 1835, La Caricature become the most famous of all the nineteenth-century satirical magazines.

The major contributors were Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) and J.J. Grandville (Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard, 1803-1847) but there were also lithographs by Henry-Bonaventure Monnier (1799-1877), Denis-August-Marie Raffet (1804-1860), Paul Gavarni (1804-1866), Charles Joseph Traviés de Villers (1804-1859), and others.

Included in this set are the first 15 plates (out of 24 published) of the Mensuelle supplements. As the text and images of La Caricature became more and more aggressive in their attacks on Louis-Philippe, the magazine was seized over a dozen times, the publishers repeatedly prosecuted, and Philipon served a year in jail. To cover legal costs, Philipon and his brother-in-law Gabriel Aubert created a special edition of La Caricature: L’Association pour la liberté de la presse (or Association mensuelle lithographique).

Association members paid an extra franc above the regular subscription price of 52 francs and received one extra lithograph. Although subscribers were galvanized behind demands for freedom of the press, the French government succeeded in passing legislation in 1835 that forced La Caricature to close.

Attached is a complete index to the artists and their work in each issue: http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visualmaterials/gapdf/caricature.pdf

24 Nights: The Limited Edition. Music by Eric Clapton, commentary by Derek Taylor, drawings by Peter Blake (Guildford: Genesis Publications, 1991). Graphic Arts division (GAX) 2009- in process

Guitarist Eric Clapton has been playing annual concerts in London’s Albert Hall since 1987. What began as a three-night engagement for his small band has grown in format and duration each year.

In February of 1990, Clapton played 18 concerts with four different bands. These performances were recorded but he was unhappy with the results. Clapton returned in 1991 for a one-month stint, playing 24 concerts using different back-up bands every week. Recordings from 1990 and 1991 were mixed and released at the end of the year as 24 Nights.

This project came at a difficult moment in Clapton’s life because that March his young son died. Many of his friends came forward to offer their support, one of whom was Sir Peter Thomas Blake. A leading artist of the British Pop movement of the 1960s, Blake is perhaps best known for the album cover he designed for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Blake not only designed the 1991 album art for Clapton but went on to create a scrapbook/collage of performance and tour remembrances. British journalist Derek Taylor (1932-1997) joined the project, offering a commentary to match Blake’s images. A limited edition two volume set was published to accompany a double CD with 18 live recordings of Clapton playing with Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, Phil Collins, and the National Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Vandercook Book (New York: Roni Gross and Barbara Henry, 2009). Edition: 100. Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

The first Vandercook printing press was developed by Robert Vandercook, working in Chicago in September 1909, and so, this is its one hundredth anniversary. To celebrate, Roni Gross and Barbara Henry at the New York Center for the Book have assembled and published a limited edition box set highlighting the work that master printers across the county are doing on their Vandercooks.

This anniversary edition includes 30 broadsides by 30 diverse printers working with monotype, polymer plates, linoleum, and many other printing surfaces on a variety of papers. A bound pamphlet with essays by Barbara Henry, Henry Morris of Bird & Bull Press, Michael Peich of Aralia Press, Fritze Klinke of NA Graphics, Paul Moxon and Perry Tymeson is also included.

Later this spring, a traveling exhibition of the printed works from this edition can be seen at The Printing Museum in Houston Texas, Rutgers University in New Jersey, Columbia University in New York, The Book Club of California and the University of Washington.

A vandercook blog: http://vandercookpress.info/vanderblog/

Paul Éluard (1895-1952), editor, Proverbe (No 1, fév. 1920-No 6, juil. 1921). Graphic Arts (GAX) 2009- in process

Graphic Arts recently acquired a complete set of the Dada periodical Proverbe, edited by the French poet Paul Éluard (born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel, 1895-1952). Not only is this an incredibly rare set, difficult to find in its complete six issues, but our copy is extra illustrated with a fabulous array of Dada research materials. These include:

A handwritten letter from Paul Eluard to the French writer Édouard Dujardin (1861-1949) July 1, 1920.

An invitation to the Max Ernst (1891-1976) exhibition at the “Sans Pareil” Gallery in 1920. This show introduced Ernst and his collages to Parisian society.

A vintage photograph of Eluard along with André Breton (1896-1966), Philippe Soupault (1897-1990), Jacques Rigaud (1681-1754) and Serge Charchoune (1888-1975) at the Ernst opening at the “Sans Pareil” Gallery.

A vintage photograph of Tristan Tzara (1896-1963), Breton and Rigaud.

A poster for Excursions et visites dada. 1ère visite: Eglise Saint Julien le Pauvre. Jeudi, 14 avril (1921). Signers include Buffet, Aragon, Arp, Breton, Éluard, Fraenkel, Hussar, Péret, Picabia, Ribemont-Dessaignes, Rigaut, Soupault et Tzara.

An original drawing by Louis Favre (1892-1956) of Celine Arnauld (1885-1952)

An original prospectus and subscription bulletin for Proverbe

Contemporary photographic portraits of Breton and Tzara printed in offset, and press clippings with photographs of Tzara and Éluard from the forties.

The volume is bound in boards with tipped on duplicate wrappers from Proverbe No. 6 Numero Speciale d’Art et Poesie. Also tipped into the volume are seven hand-written pages describing the importance of Proverbe with the original bookseller’s description of this special copy.

GA 2009- in process

I am catching up on past issues of McSweeney’s.

McSweeney’s was founded in 1998 by Dave Eggers on a mission to published only works rejected by other magazines. Ten years later, artists and authors seek out the magazine to present their latest work. Beyond the literary awards, McSweeney’s has won multiple design awards including AIGA 50 Books Award, AIGA 365 Illustration Award, and the Print Design Regional Award.

Every issue has a unique theme and physical format, such as McSweeney’s 28 shown here. The theme is 21st-century fables with text by Daniel Alarcón, Sheila Heti, Nathan Englander, and five others. A different illustrator worked on each volume and the entire set of eight small books is boxed to form two additional images.

Issue no. 19 comes in a cigar box-type container. Inside you find a stash of “recovered works”: pamphlets, info-cards, and letters such as might be pulled from anyone’s closet, except these include T.C. Boyle’s feral child novella and other equally curious stories.

The current issue has art on every page, bound with a die-cut cover and wrapped in several kinds of cloth. To see the run to date: http://store.mcsweeneys.net/
index.cfm/fuseaction/catalog.list/object_id/9772B00C-B37F-4915-88F8-8ED96E79EBF1/Journals.cfm

Jake Zeitlin (1902-198) moved to Los Angeles in 1925 and in only two years, was operating one of the most popular bookstores in the city. Nicknamed At the Sign of the Grasshopper because of the symbol on the front, the shop became a local hangout for writers and artists, who browsed the shelves and enjoyed works of visual art in the shop’s small gallery.

One of the local artists Zeitlin introduced to the neighborhood was Paul Landacre (1893-1963) whose first one-man show was held at the bookstore in 1930 and received a favorable reviewed by Arthur Millier in Prints magazine. The Zeitlin’s and the Landacre’s became good friends and Paul’s wife Margaret even worked as a secretary for the bookshop.

When Zeitlin established his own publishing imprint, Primavera Press, Landacre was asked to illustrate many of the books. The first in 1933 was Marguerite Wilbur’s translation of Alexandre Dumas’ gold rush novel A Gil Blas in California. Pictured at the left is a recently acquired sheet of proofs for chapter headings in this book.

1933 was a busy year for Landacre, who submitted designs for the proposed Limited Editions publication of W.H. Hudson’s Green Mansions. Although some proof pages were printed by Grant Dahlstrom, the design was not selected and these chapter headings (top and bottom) were never published. Note, as Jake Wien below reminds us, that Landacre went on to illustrate three future editions for the Club.

For a bibliography of Primavera Press, see A Garland for Jake Zeitlin, on the occasion of his 65th birthday & the anniversary of his 40th year in the book trade (Los Angeles: Grant Dahlstrom & Saul Marks, 1967) Firestone Library (F) 0334.993.37

Guillermo Frommer (born 1953), Relatos espeluznantes [Horrifying Stories] (Santiago, Chile: [printed at the Taller Artes Visuales], 2006). 63 cm. The first volume of the series was published in 2003. This is number two. It is unclear whether there will be others. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2008-0025E

The Chilean artist Guillermo Frommer had an international education in printmaking. Both his parents were artists and he made his first prints under their direction in Chile. In the 1970s, he studied at the University of Ottawa, Canada, and then, received a degree from the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. His interest in lithography led to a residency at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Although Tamarind is known primarily for its stone printing, Frommer also worked with xylography, engraving, and silkscreen.

When he returned to Chile in 1987, Frommer joined the Visual Arts Workshop (Taller Artes Visuales or TAV), a printing collective founded in 1974 by artists exempted from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Chile. Today, Frommer is a professor of printing in Santiago and continues to create his own work through the TAV.

Man Ray (1890-1976), Résurrection des mannequins (Paris: Jean Petithory, 1966). 15 gelatin silver photographs. Graphic Arts (GAX) 2008- in process

In 1938, the writer André Breton (1896-1966) and poet Paul Éluard (1895-1952) organized the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme at the Galerie Beaux-Arts in Paris. Each of fifteen artists were given a dressmaker’s mannequin as their canvas and encouraged to transform the figure in any way they desired. The artists included Salvador Dalí, Óscar Dominguez, Marcel Duchamp, Leo Malet, André Masson, Joan Miró, Wolfgang Paalen, Kurt Seligmann, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Jean, Max Ernst, Espinoza, Maurice Henry, Sonia Mosse, and Man Ray.

Man Ray organized the lighting and photographed the show. Twenty-eight years later, he printed and published a limited edition of these photographs, along with a descriptive text, under the title Résurrection des mannequins. Man Ray designed the binding and pursuaded the great surrealist printer Guy Lévis Mano to design and print the pages.

Princeton’s copy is inscribed by Man Ray to his friend William Copley (1919-1996). In 1947, Copley opened a Los Angeles gallery dedicated to the Surrealists and to Man Ray’s work in particular. When nothing sold, he closed the gallery, purchasing much of the art for his own private collection. In 1979, Copley sold this collection for $6.7 million, at the time the highest auction sale of a single owner’s collection in the United States.

Joseph John Elliott (1835-1903) and Clarence Edmund Fry (1840-1897) founded the celebrated photography studio of Elliott & Fry in 1863. Their business succeeded by offering noted actors, scientists, politicians, and writers a free photographic portrait, which could then be reproduced on hundreds of cartes-de-visite for sale to the Victorian public. By 1886, they had outgrown their studio at 55 Baker Street, Portman Square, and opened a second branch in South Kensington.

Elliott & Fry received a commission in 1870 to provide photographs for a deluxe London guidebook. Twelve portraits of contemporary actresses and actors were chosen to augment a series of steel engravings. Hundreds of original photographs had to be hand-trimmed and pasted onto pages with lithographed borders to illustrate these volumes. A lively descriptive text provides details on contemporary hotels, parks, clubs, theaters, markets, railway routes, and houses of trade.

Henry Herbert, London (Illustrated). A Complete Guide to the Places of Amusement. 8th edition (London: Herbert, 1879). Graphic Arts (GAX) 2008- in process

Alfonso D’Aquino, Briznas: poemas;
ilustrados por Dionisio Pascoe, 1997.

Born in Chicago in 1946, Pascoe was educated in the United States, while spending vacations at his father’s home in Mixcoac, outside Mexico City. He learned the art of letterpress printing at the age of 25 as an apprentice to Harry Duncan at the Cummington Press in West Branch, Iowa. When Pascoe moved full-time to Mexico in 1973, he set-up a print shop with a renovated nineteenth-century R. Hoe Washington handpress and sets of Spectrum and Garamond type, with Castellar for titling and initials. In 1975, Pascoe established his own imprint, named the Taller Martín Pescador (Kingfisher Workshop) at the suggestion of the writer Roberto Bolaño.

Cartel de El Cuento del Venerable Mono, 2003.

From the beginning, Pascoe set all the type by hand, inked and printed each page, and personally sewed each quire into their unpretentious paper covers. As his reputation grew, the projects became more elaborate but the technology remained the same. Authors published at the press include some of the major name in Latin American literature such as Octavio Paz, Gabriel Garciá Márquez, Efraín Huerta, Juan José Arreola, Roberto Bolaño, José Luis Rivas, and Francisco Segovia.

Juan Pascoe, La Mona, 2002

Since 1981, Pascoe has worked in a shop outside Tacámbaro, Michoacán. After years researching and published texts on the history of Mexican typography and printing, Taller Martín Pescador has become the foremost source for traditional Mexican graphic arts as well as innovative Latin American literature and poetry.

Cartel de Los signos del zodiaco: doce textos/ escritos por Francisco Hernandez, 1997

For more information, continue below.

This sales catalogue from the Jarden company of Philadelphia offers 60 leaves of chromolithographic plates presenting 181 labels for hair tonic, face powder, cold cream, perfume, and more. The images are not pasted in but printed directly onto the pages.

Lithography was perfected in Europe during the 1790s but it was in American printing companies, such as Jarden in Philadelphia, where the commercial use of color printing really evolved in the second half of the 1800s. For the first time, relatively cheap color images became possible, surpassing the use of stencil or hand-applied color for commercial applications. Up to two dozen oil-based color inks might be used, each from a separate printing stone in perfect registration, to achieve a density and richness of tone. The integration of golds and silvers heighten the metallic shine of the final chromolithograph.

You Are Not My Enemy. Combat Paper Portfolio 4 (Vermont: People’s Republic of Paper, 2008). Copy 8 of 8. Graphic Arts (GAX) 2008- in process

After six years in the army…[Drew] Cameron moved to Vermont and took a $10 papermaking course at a community college. Something clicked. He began practicing the trade out of the Green Door Studio artists’ collective in Burlington. One night back in 2007, Cameron took his old fatigues out of the closet. “I hadn’t put that thing on my body since Iraq,” he says. “I was thinking about it systematically at first. Where do I cut? Well, I’ll start with my left arm. Then I started feeling this overwhelming feeling of empowerment and emotional expression. I started ripping and pulling at my uniform until I was down to my skivvies.” From those scraps he created the first sheet of Combat Paper. http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/articleid/11262

Combat Paper is a publication of the People’s Republic of Paper, a collaboration betwen Iraqi veterans, activists, and artists. This project is conceived & coordinated by Drew Matott, former director of Green Door Studio in Burlington, Vermont, and Drew Cameron, current director of Green Door Studio and an Iraq War Veteran.

Through papermaking workshops veterans use their uniforms worn in combat to create cathartic works of art. The uniforms are cut up, literally beaten to a pulp, and formed into sheets of paper. Veterans use the transformative process of papermaking to reclaim their uniform as art and begin to embrace their experiences as a soldier in war.

For more information on the Combat Paper Project, see: http://www.combatpaper.org/about.html

One of several videos of the project can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUtXYCihavw

The prints and photographs in this album represent some of the earliest images made of Philadelphia. A similar album was given to the Library Company by McAllister’s son, John A. McAllister, in 1886.

John McAllister Sr. (1753-1830) immigrated to America in 1775 and moved to Philadelphia in 1781 where he opened a shop that grew into an optical business specializing in eyeglasses. John McAllister Jr. joined the business in 1807 and listed his occupation as optician. In addition to spectacles, they sold microscopes, spyglasses, magic lanterns, camera lucidas and obscuras, lenses, and other photography equipment. The shop was frequented by the earliest practitioners in photography who became John Jr.’s friends and colleagues.

McAllister was also a noted antiquarian and collector of Philadelphia history. His diary indicates that he hired Frederick Debourg Richards (1822-1903) to photograph the homes of his father and himself, along with other Philadelphia landmarks. Throughout his life, Richards pursued a career as a landscape painter while making his living primarily through photography. He settled in Philadelphia in 1848, opening a daguerreotype studio across from Independence Hall. In the 1850s, like many photographers, Richards made a transition from images on copper plates to paper, forming a partnership with John Betts. Several of the paper prints in this album hold the blind stamp from the studio of Richards and Betts. Other photographs in the album can be attributed to another prominent Philadelphia paper photographer James McClees.

Eight of the restrikes included in this album are from The City of Philadelphia by William Birch (1779-1851), published in 1800. Birch made the engravings “as a memorial of [Philadelphia’s] progress for the first century.” The deluxe edition included hand-colored plates and sold for the enormous sum of $35. Today, this volume is extremely rare and even the loose plates highly collectable. Eight restrikes from his second book, The Country Seats of the United States of North America, published 1809, are also included in this McAllister album.

For a complete list of the salted paper photographs, continue below.

The French caricaturist Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard, working under the pseudonym of J.J. Grandville, created a number of plates for French magazines including Le Silhouette, L’Artiste, Le Charivari, and La Caricature. This satirical scene denounces the repressive actions of the French government under Louis-Philippe, which sought to limit freedom of the press and personal expression. The image presents a man being stabbed in the back and pelted with a rain of iconic objects, including pears (representing Louis-Philippe), crutches (Talleyrand, who was then ambassador in London), a parsley pot (Jean-Charles Persil who attacked the newspapers as a prosecutor under Louis-Philippe), guns, chains, keys, bolts, cross, medals, cords, scissors, hats, bell and shoes, each representing members of the government.

This print is part of a recent donation generously given by Dr. William Helfand, president of the Grolier Club and a consultant to the National Library of Medicine, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and other institutions in areas relating to art and medicine. Dr. Helfand has written five books including Quack, Quack, Quack: the Sellers of Nostrums in Prints, Posters, Ephemera & Books… (GA Oversize 2005-0625Q), and The Picture of Health (Marquand Library N8223 .H44 1991) He has also published a number of articles on prints, caricatures, posters and ephemera relating to pharmacy and medicine. This posting shows only a few of the wonderful eighteenth- and nineteenth-century prints coming to Princeton thanks to Dr. Helfand.

Paul Gavarni (1804-1866), Enfant Terrible, 1833. Lithograph.

After the painting by Thomas Wyck (ca.1616-1677), The Alchemist in his Laboratory. Engraving, ca. 1700.

Maria G. Pisano, O-Livre-Twist (Plainsboro: Pisano, 2001). Graphic Arts (GAX) 2008- in process

Maria Pisano is a book artist, printmaker, and papermaker who publishes limited edition books under the imprint Memory Press. Many of her projects are represented in the graphic arts collection.

The title Theater of Operations refers to the convention of naming a battle as a theatre and the spiral-bound book unfolds to form a miniature stage. Created in response to the first gulf war, the volume is divided into three sections—W A R—each made up of 8 pages cut into additive shapes with images of war laser printed on acidic paper.

O-Livre-Twist is made from a recycled copy of Dicken’s classic.

Hecatombe 9-11 was created in 2007. Pisano writes, “This memorial book is an attempt to come to terms with an experience that is a constant open wound for the nation. It incorporates all the victims’ names along with photographs of destroyed buildings and the impromptu memorials created by loved ones on downtown walls.”

…the writer is enabled to use it for 10 or 12 hours with the same ease as with a pencil…!

Scheffer’s Penographic, patented in 1819, was one of the first workable fountain pens. Its secret was a flexible tube made of a goose quill and pig’s bladder. Pressure was exerted on a lever and a knob to propel ink into the nib when desired.

Originally published in 1540 with the title, Libro nuovo d’imparare a scrivere, Palatino’s writing manual/encyclopedia of current writing styles became an immediate and popular success. It was reprinted several times and then, in 1545 a new revised and enlarged edition was published with 15 additional plates and more exotic alphabets.

The first printed writing manual was published in Rome by Ludovico degli Arrighi in 1522. The audience for this and others that followed was mostly secretaries. Palatino’s book somehow attracted a wider audience, with its chapter on cryptography and lettera mancina (mirror writing), recipes for ink, illustrations of a variety of writing implements, and so on.

According to Ewan Clayton in his essay “A History of Learning to Write,”

Palatino’s book is interesting for what it tells us about the ordinary writing of that time. Most documents in the sixteenth century were still written in varieties of Gothic cursive and Palatino illustrates examples of such hands from Milan, Rome, Venice, Florence, Sienna, and Genoa. …Writing was not as homogeneous as it is today and there were many different styles in use concurrently.

For other editions and translations at Princeton University, continue below.

Called the father of English watercolor, Paul Sandby (1731-1809) was a founding member of the Royal Academy of Arts, London. This album stems from Sandby’s early Scottish period, when he was a draughtsman with the military survey of the highlands. It holds 75 etchings on 27 sheets, assembled and printed by the artist, with dates ranging from 1747 to 1758. The etchings are primarily landscapes, with occassional Scottish street characters intermixed. One holds the comment “etched on the spot P. Sandby 1750.”

The album, with late 18th century half calf and blue/greenish marbled paper covered boards, has no title page. The only identification is a book label reading “Fasque,” which is a Scottish country house in Kincardineshire, built in 1809. The estate was purchased in 1829 by Sir John Gladstone, father of William Gladstone.

This view of Strasbourg, France, set within an elaborate border, includes the arms of the Upper and Lower Alsace. There was once a large wax seal at the bottom center, no longer attached. The inscription reads:

Wir Geschwohrne Ober- und andere Meister des Ehrs. Handwercks derer Steinmetzen, Steinhauser und Maurer in der Stadt Strassburg bescheinen hiermit, das gegenwartiger Gesell Nahmens Johann Samuel Imhoft … .

A guild is an organization of men and women in a particular occupation. Guilds were first formed in the Middle Ages and craftspeople would have been unable to work without being a member of the guild. Members were bound by a code of quality and price, but could also obtain assistance from the guild, such as funeral costs. Guilds oversaw a craftsman’s progress from apprentice to master, maintained the quality and ownership of the craft. A stonemason’s “lodge” was located at the job site and was the place where masons gathered, received instruction, and stored their tools.

Until the capture of the city by France in 1681, the headquarters of the German stonemasons was in Strasbourg (even as late as 1760 the Strasbourg lodge still claimed tribute from the lodges of Germany).

Russell Means (born 1939), The Great Mystery [S.l.]: American Indian Mystery Press, 1997. Graphic Arts division GAX Oversize 2008-0030F.

When the Oglala Indian Russell Means finished his autobiography, Where White Men Fear to Tread (Firestone Library (F) E99.O3 M386 1995), he found there were things he left out. In particular, Means wanted to say more about the spiritual side of his heritage, a single creative life force sometimes called the Great Mystery.

Means wrote a series of short commentaries and his hand-written texts were converted to copper plate etchings. The words were matched with Native American portraits by Peter Bogardus and the plates printed in colors in Hadley, Massachusetts at Horton Tank Graphics. The Great Mystery was completed in 1997 but failed to reach a good distributor or a public. More than ten years later, a copy of this obscure project found its way to graphic arts.

For more about Means, see his website and personal blog: www.russellmeans.com. To see other work by Bogardus, see Touba - New York (Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2008-0012E)

This print appears to be an admission ticket for a benefit performance of Henry Fielding’s Pasquin, first performed in April 1736. It depicts a stage scene with seven performers, a dog and a cat, and in the background, two tightrope walkers accompanied by an ape; framed with a satyr on either side.

Originally attributed to William Hogarth (a friend and colleague of Fielding), the etching is a forgery. It was later attributed to Joseph Sympson, although that attribution is also questioned by some historians. In particular, Ronald Paulson wrote two different explanations for this print in Hogarth’s Graphic Works, if you look at both the 1965 and 1989 editions (Marquand Library (SA) ND497.H7 A35 and ND497.H7 A35 1989q).

Henry Fielding (1707-1754) was a British writer, playwright and journalist. His satirical comedy Pasquin; A Dramatick Satire On The Times Being The Rehearsal Of Two Plays: Viz., A Comedy Called The Election, And A Tragedy Called The Life And Death Of Common Sense, opened at London’s Haymarket Theatre.

A year earlier, Fielding had taken over management of the Little Theatre in the Haymarket and formed a company he called “Great Mogul’s Company of English Comedians.” That winter, he launched Pasquin to enormous success. His play was a brutal satire of the contemporary British government under Sir Robert Walpole, who retaliated with the Theatrical Licensing Act of 1737 and effectively ended Fielding’s brief West End career.

It may have been this political drama that built a market for the forged Fielding ticket.

Frederick Martin Sheldon, The Practical Colorist; a Pathfinder for the Artist Printer (Burlington, Vt., The Owl Press, 1900). Graphic Arts division GAX 2008- in process

A

“Believing that in the heart of every printer there is a strong desire to rise above the common level, out of the lethargic indifference of the past, into the joy of the aggressive artist printer, I have assembled the matter in The Practical Colorist as a means to this end. This book is not a text-book on the science of light and color … The book treats of nothing but the simple details essential to good work, but to one who aspires to success in illuminating, these details are, of all things, most valuable. In fact, The Practical Colorist, from beginning to end, is one earnest plea, by precept and illustration, for simple, plain, neat, and readable type and color effects.”—Preface, Frederick M. Sheldon

B

A/B

C

A/B/C

In 1973, a few months before his death, Neruda wrote over 70 poems based on simple, unanswerable questions. Libro de las preguntas (The Book of Questions) was published the following year. In 2001, printers at the Art Center College of Design’s Archetype Press were inspired to reproduce Neruda’s words as concrete poems in a virtuouso feat of creative typesetting. “This book,” states the introduction, “attempts to portray excerts from Pablo Neruda’s The Book of Questions, in a manner whereby the form and shape of both typography and the white space of the page combine to enrich the subtle nuances within the poet’s language.”

In which window did I remain watching buried time?

The Scottish environmental scientist Dr. Robert Angus Smith (1817-1884) studied air and water pollution, coining the term “acid rain” in 1852. After working at the chemical laboratory at the Royal Manchester Institution, Smith was named the first Alkali Inspectorate by the Alkali Act of 1863. He went on to publish numerous texts on the control of urban pollution, most notably Air and Rain. The Beginnings of a Chemical Climatology (London: Longmans, Green, and co., 1872). Recap 85083.863

In 1876, an Act of Parliament was passed to attempt to control London’s water pollution. Smith was appointed the inspector to uphold the new laws. His methods for determining the number of microbes in water led to significant development in environmental science and law.

Seven mounted woodburytypes of Smith’s experiments were used to illustrate the 1884 second edition of Smith’s report to the government board. The prints were made by Vincent Robert Alfred Brooks (1814-1885) a lithographer who purchased the patent for Woodbury’s photo-relief process in 1879 and specialize in this method of book illustration through the turn-of-the-century.

Album des célébrités contemporaines (Nantes: Lefèvre-Utile, ca. 1903). Graphic Arts division GAX 2008- in process

Over 100 years ago, the French biscuit manufacturer Lefèvre-Utile (LU) promoted its cookies with endorsements from the leading celebrities of the Belle Époque. Embossed chromolithographed cards were issued with a prominent figure’s black and white portrait and their brief testimonial to LU’s cookie quality, set within a colored scene that is thematically linked to the personality portrayed.

The public was encouraged to collect these cards and LU produced elaborate art nouveau albums for that purpose. Each album carried a list of all the celebrities endorsing LU, which included artists, actors, writers, musicians, composers, and aviators. Princeton’s album holds 48 cards in preprinted mounts with an additional 10 laid in, including cards for Yvette Guilbert, Cleo de Merode, Coquelin Aine, Jules Massenet, and George Courteline.

Today, LU cookies are marketed with less fanfare under the Kraft Foods umbrella.

Johann Virdung was a mathematician and astrologer. In the early sixteenth century, he was working at the court of the Elector Palatine and making prognostications, such as this, on the Antichrist and the coming end of the world.

In the compelling title page woodcut, Christ is seen with a sword on the right side of his head and a lily on the left. The lily signifies innocence and mercy. The sword is a symbol of guilt and punishment. Together they represent the final judgment for the poor souls seen below, some being pushed into hell and some being saved.

This is an emblem book on Leopold III, patron saint of Austria and Vienna. It holds 15 etchings composed in honor of two Hungarian nobles. The only clue to the printmaker is one plate signed B. Denner, leading some to think of the German portrait painter Balthasar Denner (1685-1749). Unfortunately, he would have been only seven years old at the time of publication.

Perhaps it is a later edition with added plates by Denner but comparing ours to another copy is going to be difficult. There are only two other copies of this volume recorded; one is at the Universiteit Utrecht in The Netherlands and the other in Wienbibliothek im Rathaus (Vienna City Library) in Austria.

In 1877, physician and public health specialist Emilio R. Coni (1859-1907) published an article entitled “Historia de una Afeccion Anestesica. Contracturante, Amputante y Dactiliana,” in the professional journal he edited Revista Medico-Quirurgica. A 16 page off-print was released at the same time by the Buenos Aires press of Pablo E. Coni, with a photographic frontispiece showing a man with macular leprosy.

Coni expanded the piece and the following year, published Contribucion al Estudio de la Lepra Anestesica. Coni fought all his life for the reform of the health practices of Latin-American families, and was eventually named president of the Medical Association of Argentina.

His memoirs were released after his death: Memorias de un médico higienista: contribucion a la historia de la higiene pública y social Argentina (1867-1917) (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos A. Flaiban, 1918). Recap, RA459.xC6

The two books in this posting are both published by Taller Leñateros, an indigenous book and paper cooperative in Chiapas, Mexico that has been creating handcrafted books for over 30 years.

Bolom Chon features the music and art of the Tzotzil Indians. The covers are made from cardboard boxes mixed with coffee and printed on an 1895 letterpress. The endpapers of the book are made from agave fiber and decorated like the tiger costumes of Tzotzil ritual dancers. The center fold features a pop-up jaguar. In addition, “The cover was stepped on by the Bolom Chon [dancing jaguar] so its footprints remained as a testimony of its passing through the world.”

To see the pop-up Jaguar in action and hear the song, go to: http://www.tallerlenateros.com/gaceta_web/eng/gazette.htm

Taller Leñateros is the only publishing house in Mexico run by Mayan artists. Founded in 1975 by poet Ambar Past, the Workshop has produced the first books to be written, illustrated and bound (in paper of their own making) by Mayan people in over 400 years.

Another item from the Taller Leñateros is a set of miniature books of Mayan spells, including a hex to kill the unfaithful man by Tonik Nibak, Mayan love charms by Petra Hernández, and magic for a long life by Manwela Kokoroch.

These texts, in three hand-sewn volumes, are housed in a hut-shaped cardboard case opens to form an altar with two side panels. Along with the three books the authors provide a pot-shaped incense burner, two animal figure candle holders, and a plastic sleeve with 12 candles.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of The Yosemite Book in the history of the United States. Only 250 copies of this lavish quarto volume were published, with 24 albumen photographs by Carleton E. Watkins (1829-1916) and 4 by William Harris. Watkins made the photographs on an 1866 trip to Yosemite with the Geological Survey of California and Harris made his on a trip the following year.

Watkins’ spectacular photographs record the beauty of Yosemite, not the geography or topography required of other survey artists, and his images found an immediate audience. Watkins used 8 x 10 inch glass-plate negatives, which had to be developed in California and then, carried back across the country to the photographer’s studio in Washington D.C. to be printed.

According to photography historian Peter Paulquist, “The task of printing 250 copies of each of the 28 negatives, a total of 7,000 individual prints, was accomplished by Watkins and his staff in the winter of 1867-68. Assuming that Watkins received at least $6 per book, and that all the books were sold, he would have netted $1,500 for [one year’s] work.”

For more information, see Martha A. Sandweiss, Print the Legend: Photography and the American West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). Marquand Library (SAPH) TR23.6 .S25 2002.

The Scottish photographer Thomas Annan (1829-1887) is best known for his images of the Glasgow slums, published as Photographs of Streets, Closes, &c. Taken 1868-71, 1872 (Graphic Arts dividion (GAX) 2007-0023E). Not long after this commission, the city of Glasgow hired Annan again to photograph the 25 mile water system between Loch Katrine and Glasgow. This was the first successful aqueduct project in Scotland, designed to provide Glasgow with cheap, clean water.

Annan finished the first set of photographs in 1876 and a portfolio was published in 1877. He returned to take a second photograph of the commission members in 1880 and a third portrait of the group in 1886.

In the late 1880s, Glasgow had outgrown the original water works and needed a second reservoir. To raise the money for this project they again called Annan, who made additional photographs and a second expanded edition of the Water Works album was published in 1889. This is the rare volume of 33 albumen photographs that Princeton’s graphic arts division recently acquired.

Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound. Translated from the Greek by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), illustrated by Russell Maret (New York: Russell Maret, 2007). Copy number 5 of 50, signed by the artist. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2007-0067F

The Greek drama, Prometheus Bound, is thought to have been written by Aeschylus around 430 B.C.E. It is a tragedy, based on the myth of Prometheus, who was punished by Zeus for giving fire to humankind.

Henry David Thoreau was only 25 years old when he undertook a modern translation of the play for the January 1843 issue of the Dial magazine. In preparing a 21st-century edition of Thoreau’s text, Russell Maret experimented with drawings made from smoke rising directly into white paper. Not only did it produce beautiful images but the drawings were emblematic of Prometheus’ dramatic theme.

The result is a book printed letterpress in three colors from photopolymer plates using Fred Smeijers’ Quadraat type for the text and an original “Promethean” alphabet by Maret on the title page. Each copy has one original smoke drawing as a frontispiece. The edition is bound by Judith Ivry in quarter goatskin and paper over boards with a second smoke drawing on each cover.

For the earliest edition in RBSC, see Aeschylus. Aischylou Tragōdiai hex: Promētheus desmōtēs. Hepta epi Thēbais. Persai. Agamemnōn. Eumenides. Hiketides = Aeschyli Tragoediae sex (Venetiis: In aedibus Aldi et Andreae soceri, 1518 mense Februario) (ExKa) Special 1518 Aeschylus

Tyson, Ian. Ghost. Poetry by Li He, translated by John D. Frodsham (San Diego: Brighton Press, 2005). Copy 26 of 30. Graphic Arts (GAX) Oversize 2007-0701Q

The Chinese writer Li He, nicknamed the poet-ghost, lived during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). He began to write at the age of seven. Each morning Li He would go for a ride on his horse, jotting down thoughts or sentenses as they came to him. These tiny strips of paper would be thrown into a bag and later that night, used as the material for his poetry.

British artist Ian Tyson was inspired by Li He’s method of composition. He created this artist’s book made of unbound printed sheets of poetry, housed in a cloth-covered wrapper. Each volume comes in a tray case with a relief sculpture mounted on top.

George Cruikshank (1792-1878), A Bazaar [London]: J. Johston [sic] Cheapside. Published, June 1st, 1816. Etching with hand coloring. Graphic Arts division GAX 2008- in process

This is one of George Cruikshank’s earliest etchings. In it we find John Bull (who always personified the English public), along with his family, enjoying a day at the Soho Bazaar. Around them, a mob of fairly rakish buyers are working their way through the stalls.

According to our rare book friends at Marlborough, the Bazaar was established by John Trotter in 1815 to enable the widows and daughters of Army officers to dispose of their handiwork. Counter space was rented at 3d. per foot per day, with open counters arranged on both sides of aisles or passages, and on two separate floors of the building. This market was the first of its kind and extended from the north-west corner of Soho Square to Oxford Street.

The items sold at these stalls were almost exclusively something for the dress or personal decoration of ladies and children; such as millinery, lace, gloves, or jewelry. At the height of the season, the long line of carriages alongside the building testified to the number of wealthy visitors who enjoyed browsing through the merchandise.

Some of the rules of the establishment were very stringent. A plain, modest style of dress was required for the young, female workers and a matron was always on duty to check on this.

Clifton Meador, Kora (Chicago, Illinois: Clifton Meador, 2007). Edition of 50. Graphic Arts collection GAX 2008- in process

Colophon: “These pictures were taken at the Dege Parkhang, a printing temple located in Ganze Autonomous Prefecture in western China, in August of 2006, with support from a Faculty Development Grant from Columbia College Chicago. This book is part of a larger project about the Parkhang developed by Patrick Dowdey….The figures are line drawings from the photographs, now converted into a font, so the pilgrims have literally turned into language, at least in this book.”

The Dege Parkhang printing temple, survivor of weather and wars, has become the largest concentration of Tibetan literature in the world — thousands of books preserved as wooden printing blocks. Printing is still carried out with these blocks every day weather permits.

Pilgrims, circumambulating the exterior of the temple, some carrying prayer wheels their mantras spinning into the ether, are performing kora — an act of devotion and honor to the books housed therein.

Meador’s book posits the possibility that the pilgrims through this act of worship become the literature, or at least the language that gives the books life.

Clifton Meador is the Director of Book and Paper Arts, Columbia College, Chicago http://www.colum.edu/BookandPaper/Faculty/Clifton_Meador.php

Mirror to Our World / Un espejo de nuestra mundo (Chiapas, México: San Cristóbal de Las Casas, 2007). Copy no. 5 of 100. Graphic Arts (GAX) 2008- in process

Recently acquired for the Graphic Arts division is this limited-edition portfolio celebrating the achievements of the Maya photographers in and around San Cristóbal de Las Casas in the Chiapas Highlands. The portfolio was produced under the auspices of the Chiapas Photography Project, which assists and promotes the artistic work of the region’s indigenous peoples. For information, see http://www.chiapasphoto.org/

The Project has developed two distinct programs: the Archivo Fotográfico Indígena / Indigenous Photography Archive (AFI) and Lok’tamayach, Fotógrafos Mayas de Chiapas / Mayan Photographers from Chiapas. The Archive holds over 75,000 photographs by more than 200 photographers from 10 different ethnic groups.

Un espejo de nuestro mundo comes in a cloth slipcase made by Paxku’ Pavlu from Nabenchauk, Zinacantán. The design is taken from a pirik mochebal of the 1970s/80s, which was a type of shawl used by women in Tzotzil-speaking Zinacantán, a community in the Chiapas Highlands. The shawl was worn for everyday activities and has traditionally been characterized by a basket-weave pattern dating from pre-Columbian times. http://www.chiapasphoto.org/shop.html

The King James Bible was the Harry Potter of the nineteenth-century. The family bible might have been the only book purchased for an American home and so, publishers crammed them with additions to make their volume more desirable.

This 1879 edition includes pages with pre-printed photograph holders, space for genealogy, maps, charts, chromolitho-graphed prayers, and 2,500 illustrations.

Also: Illustrations of scenes and incidents in the life of Christ; the cities and towns of the bible; scenes in the life of St. Paul; topographical sketch of Jerusalem and the holy land; the wanderings in the wilderness; illustrations of the tabernacle and Solomon’s temple; scenes in the lives of the patriarchs, prophets and kings of the old testament; illustrations of bible scenes and incidents; animals, birds, insects, etc, of the bible; illustrations of the trees, plants, and flowers of the bible; biographies of the reformers and martyrs, etc.

Together with: Dr. William Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible in which every important scriptural word is full explained, and a complete history of each book of the bible, beautifully illustrated, a history of all the religious denominations of the world, illustrations of the parables of Jesus and proverbs of Solomon, history of the translation of the bible, chronological and other useful tables, treatises, maps, etc., designed to promote and facilitate the study of the sacred scriptures.

In the November 11, 2007 issue of The New Yorker, Professor Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History at Princeton University, wrote about the libraries of the past and what they tell us about the books of the future: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/
2007/11/05/071105fafactgrafton.

Professor Grafton had more to say on the transformation of reading, writing, and information-storage in the digital age and happily, his words caught the attention of the guys at Crumpled Press. Together they have published an expanded version of the essay, now entitled Codex in Crisis.

Crumpled Press is a small, alternative publisher, which promises books and pamphlets made by hand for a distinctive look and feel. The press is jointly edited by Nicholas Jahr, Jordan Kenneth McIntyre, and Alexander Bick (a Princeton graduate student), who assert that their “books may be purchased for education, enlightenment, trade, and tra-la-la.” They aspire to create an audience for good writing instead of packaging writing for a target audience. “Liberated from the waste and uncrumpled to inspire: this is The Crumpled Press.”

Note: To celebrate Crumpled Press’s third anniversary, there will be a reading 6:00 on July 7 at the Cornelia Street Cafe in New York City. http://www.crumpledpress.org/

Codex in Crisis was published in limited edition of 250 copies and graphic arts is fortunate to have purchased one on the night of its unveiling. Whether copies are still available is doubtful.

Professor Grafton is the author of ten books and the coauthor, editor, coeditor, or translator of nine others. Two collections of essays, Defenders of the Text (1991) and Bring Out Your Dead (2001), cover most of the topics and themes that appeal to him. His current project is a large-scale study of the science of chronology in 16th- and 17th-century Europe: how scholars attempted to assign dates to past events, reconstruct ancient calendars, and reconcile the Bible with competing accounts of the past.

Newly acquired by the graphic arts division is this unique twenty-volume extra-illustrated copy of Life and Labours of Hablôt Knight Browne. Browne was the 19th-century illustrator best known for his steel-plate etchings and wood engravings for ten books by Charles Dickens.

Dickens was already a popular author when his illustrator Robert Seymour committed suicide. The practically unknown Browne was selected to complete The Pickwick Papers and went on to collaborate with Dickens until 1859. Browne took the nickname “Phiz” to complement Dickens’ penname “Boz.”

As it was originally published in 1884, Thomson’s single volume biography contained an engraved portrait and 130 illustrations (GA Rowlandson 946). Princeton’s unique copy has been vastly expanded to 20 volumes, extra-illustrated with the insertion of more than 1250 plates, including 11 watercolours, 81 pencil and ink drawings (a few with a touch of colour or double-sided), and 11 autograph manuscript items signed by Browne.

Among the manuscripts are a group of charming illustrated letters to Frederick William Cosens, an avid collector of Dickens. Cosens commissioned Browne to furnish him with watercolor drawings of every image he had created for a Dickens novels (more than 400 in all). It has been speculated that this 20 volume set is the work or commission of Cosens, although the provenance is not certain.

These volumes present to researchers not only a wonderful collection of art by one of the great illustrators of the 19th century, but also a number of variant states of the final plates. The sketches and letters provide documentary information about Browne that cannot be obtained elsewhere.

By the early 1920s, the Société Pathé Frères had built the largest film equipment and production company in the world. To increase their 1922 Christmas sales, they released the first projector meant for home use: the Pathé Baby. Kodak quickly released its own brand of home equipment and film, which found greater popularity and by 1935 Pathé was forced into bankruptcy.

The 9.5 mm Pathé Baby films come in small cassettes holding approximately 30 feet of film that plays for around 60 seconds. What makes it unique is that it has sprocket holes down the center rather than on the sides. The film also has an ingenious little notch cut into each title frame that triggers the projector to stop for a few seconds, even though the operator continues to crank the film, allowing viewers time to read the text.

Princeton's collection of optical devices, and optical prints and photographs, is basically a pre-cinema collection. However, thanks to the help of Professor Rubén Gallo, we recently acquired a 1920s Pathé Baby projector along with approximately 1,000 Pathé films, including natural history, animation, biography, current events, and multi-reel comedies and dramas.

Here is a sample (black&white, no sound):

There is a group of enthusiasts based in the United Kingdom who still use 9.5 mm film. Their website is www.Pathescope.freeserve.co.uk/Pathe95.htm

Handbill for The Comic Novel or Downing St. and the Days of Victoria (London, Feb. 1840). Graphic Arts collection GA2008- in process

This handbill announces that part one of The Comic Novel or Downing St. and the Days of Victoria will appear on February 1, 1840, and parts will continue to appear each month for the next twenty months. It goes on to promise two, or sometimes three, full-page steel engravings with each part, along with wood-engraved head and tail pieces, vignettes, and silhouettes “in as great variety as the story will admit, without too much overburdening the text.” The back page asks for advertisers to buy space in each part, priced by size, with a full page costing 2 pounds, 5 shillings. Each part will be sold to the general public for one shilling.

In the end, the public seems to have lost interest in the series after a few months because only four parts of The Comic Novel were published, each about eight pages including the advertising. This was not uncommon. Only the best loved writers, such as Charles Dickens, could sustain an audience over a year or more.

One contemporary dealer speculates that the writer/illustrator introduced here under the pseudonym “Lynx” might have been John Leech (1817-1864), the caricaturist who would make a name for himself in the following years working for Punch and in 1843 with illustrations for Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. However, there is nothing in the publication to substantiate this guess.

To read more about serial novels of the Victorian period, try

N.N. Feltes, Modes of Production of Victorian Novels, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1986. Z326 .F44 1986.

Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund, The Victorian Serial, University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1991. PR468.P37 H84 1991.

J. Don Vann, Victorian Novels in Serial, MLA, New York, 1985. Z2014.F4 V36 1985.

Graham Law, Serializing Fiction in the Victorian Press, Houndmills [England]; New York: Palgrave, 2000. PR878.P78 L39 2000

When Argentina’s economy collapsed in 2001, thousands of people were forced out of work. Some made a meager living by scavenging for scraps of cardboard and paper, which could be sold to recyclers. The scavengers became known as “cartoneros” or the cardboard people. Early in 2003, a group of artists and writers came together to figure out a way to help the cartoneros earn a better wage or find them a more regular employment. From these dreams, the alternative publishing house of Eloísa Cartonera was born.

The seven-person publishing collective includes writer Santiago Vega (who publishes under the name Washington Cucurto) and the visual artist Javier Barilaro. Their small office space in Buenos Aires’ La Boca district is donated by Fernando Laguna, another artist and financial partner. Eloísa Cartonera buys the cardboard at $1.50 a kilo when the market price is $0.30, and uses the material to create unique covers for a series of books, which they sell to finance the purchase of more cardboard. Some cartoneros are also employed to help print the texts and paint the covers.

The books include the work of prominent Argentine authors such as Ricardo Piglia, César Aira, and Rodolfo Enrique. Princeton already owns around 100 titles, ranging from fiction to poetry to comics, and continues to collect thanks to the insight of Latin-American bibliographer Fernando Acosta-Rodriguez. Eloísa Cartonera now has their own website: http://www.eloisacartonera.com.ar/eloisa/home.html and has established similar projects in Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil, where it is called Dulcinéia Catadora.

In 1645, Abraham Bosse, an instructor at the Académie royale in Paris, published an engraving manual specifically focused on the technique called taille-douce or soft cutting, which is the cutting of straight lines on soft copper plates. Sixteen wonderfully detailed illustrations show the individual steps of cutting and printing a plate, including the use of a new, rolling press. As the manual continues, Bosse also introduces etching, the more modern printing technique using of baths of acid to cut the lines in the copper.

The book proved quite popular, revised many times and translated into several languages. With each new edition, there are additions and corrections as the practice of etching itself was changing. To collect each variation is to document the progression of technical printing information both practical and historical.

Princeton is fortunate to have not only the first French edition and the first German translation, but has now acquired the rare first Dutch translation. The Dutch edition has, in particular, a section on recipes for the composition of hard varnishes that can be used as an etching ground. Both summer and winter recipes are included, taking into account the changes in humidity that effects the artist’s materials. To compare earlier editions, see:

Ed Ruscha (born 1937), Dutch Details (Deventer, The Netherlands: Stichting Octopus / Sonsbeek 71, 1971). 23 pp. with 116 photomechanical illustrations. Edition of 3,000. Marquand Library SPHX TR654.R872 1971q

Edward Ruscha’s books of sequential photomechanical images began in 1963 with Twentysix Gasoline Stations, (GAX 2006-2396N) published in an edition of 400 numbered copies under the imprint “A National Excelsior Publication,” funded by Ruscha himself. The 26 pages offer black and white images of gas stations along Route 66, which Ruscha had taken in 1962. The format had great appeal to him and he went on to produce several dozen other sequential image books over the next few decades. For many historians, Ruscha’s Gasoline Stations represents the beginning of the American artists’ books movement.

1971 was a busy year for Ruscha. He completed five paintings, along with books, films, prints, and drawings, and received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Three books were completed this year: A Few Palm Trees, Records, and Dutch Details. The third was a commission by Sonsbeek ‘71, an international arts exhibition at the Groninger Museum, for which Ruscha was to create a work on site that would then be exhibited. As the plane was approaching The Netherlands, the pilot announced that the weather was bad and he would have more details soon. Ruscha thought, “Dutch details,” and that was the beginning of the project.

Unlike other book projects, Dutch Details is horizontal in format. The images are of bridges and the buildings taken with a hand-held camera. Although the Octopus Foundation published a large edition, the majority of the print run was mistakenly destroyed in a warehouse, and the remaining copies are now highly sought after by Ruscha collectors.

Ruscha said “I don’t want people to go look at these photographs after they are enlarged and they see them on the wall in museums, maybe under the auspice of a museum and consider them to be like a painting … The book, in the end, will be a closer representation of the project.”

Touba / New York is an examination of the Murid Brotherhood, a Sufi Muslim movement dedicated to the promotion of peace. The word Mouride in Arabic means “one who desires,” and the Mourides are one of the fastest growing religious movement in West Africa.

Once a year, Sheik Mourtada Mbaké, the youngest son of Amadou Bamba and the spiritual leader of the Mourides, travels to Harlem. The growing community of Senegalese expatriates gather around a red-brick building named the House of Islam on 137th Street and Edgecombe Avenue. They come to pay homage to the Sheik and receive his blessing. The week-long celebration begins on July 21 and ends on July 28, Amadou Bamba Day, with a huge parade down 116th street, through Little Senegal. The overwhelming majority of the men and women in this parade were originally from Touba (pronounced ta-wa-ba), the second largest city in Senegal and the location of Bamba’s sacred burial place.

This book grew out of the artist Peter Bogardus’ encounters and travels with descendants of Sheik Bamba and his foremost student, Ibra Fall. Text is printed from woodcuts cut by Peter Bogardus after calligraphy by Sherif Fall and Shaykh Ndiguel Fall. Illustrations include 35 photogravures by Bogardus.

This Cambridge photograph album is dated 1867 and contains 205 gem tintypes, many with hand coloring. The word “Cambridge” on the title page does not refer to the photographs inside but was simply the album brand sold by Remick and Rice, the major producers of gem tintype albums. The album measures 3 1/2 x 3 1/4 inches; with each photo opening measuring 7/8 of an inch high by 5/8 of an inch wide, or about the size of a quarter. This size tintype would fit nicely into a locket, tiepin, or broach.

The tintype was patented in 1854 but not widely produced until a few years later. The format known as a gem or bon ton was usually made using a multi-lens camera with repeating back and was extremely popular in the United States during the 1860s. They were quick to make, inexpensive to buy (10 cents per dozen), and durable.

For more information, read: Janice Schimmelman, The Tintype in America, 1856-1880 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2007). TR375 .S35 2007.
For gem tintypes, see Marcel Safier’s page: http://members.ozemail.com.au/
~msafier/photos/tintypes.html

For more than 600 years, artists have been experimenting with spatial illusion to the great delight of the viewing public. A wonderful timeline of experimentation in perspective theory and spatial illusion has been mounted by the Getty at: http://www.getty.edu
/art/exhibitions/geometry/timeline.html.

One optical technique is the anamorphic or distorted image, meant to be understood only when viewed at an acute angle or through a reflective cylinder. Some well-known examples of anamorphosis in art are the drawings in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks or the skull in the foreground of Hans Holbein the Younger’s painting The Ambassadors (1533, National Gallery, London). More recent examples can be seen painted on the stairs leading up to the Philadelphia Museum of Art or the stairs leading out of Pennsylvania Station in New York City.

Last fall, American artist Chuck Close created his first two anamorphic portraits at Two Palms studio in New York, http://www.twopalms.us/, utilizing a complex system of laser engraving and embossing. His Self-Portrait (Anamorphic), now in the collection of graphic arts, is a perfect example of the artist’s belief that “how an artist chooses to do something is often as important as what the artist chooses to do.” The image begins, like all his work, with a straight photographic portrait. His friend Phillip Glass once commented that for Close, the photograph “is simply the carrier for the idea; the occasion for the work to take place.”

Close divided the photograph into sections and painted each section abstractly and yet, when viewed at a distance the image reads as a realistic portrait. Then, a set of these portraits was distorted into a circular pattern, which was engraved by laser onto an acrylic plate. Once inked, the plate was pressed into hand-made paper using an overhead hydraulic press that can exert up to 750 tons of vertical pressure evenly on the paper and plate. The final image can only be seen realistically through a polished cylinder placed in the center of the design.

The graphic arts division at Princeton holds a wonderful collection of optical devices together with a collection of the optical prints and photographs to be used with each device. A small selection is currently on view on the second floor of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library.

The Gita Govinda or Song of Krishna is considered by many experts to be among the finest examples of Sanskrit poetry. It was written in the 12th century by the great poet, Jayadeva, and describes the relationship between the Krishna and his lover, Radha. The poetry is organized into 12 cantos or chapters, each sub-divided into 24 divisions called Prabandhas, containing couplets grouped into 8, called Ashtapadis.

The first English translation of Jayadeva’s 1000-year-old songs was by Sir William Jones in 1792. This new translation was completed by the contemporary poet, Andrew Schelling, who selected 29 poems from the 12 cantos to create a suite of poetic images of desire and longing, embracing both introspection and eroticism.

Schelling lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he teaches poetry, Sanskrit, and wilderness writing at Naropa University. He was the 1992 recipient of the Academy of American Poets award for translation and received a Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry grant in 1996 and 2001. For more of his translations, see: Amaru, Erotic love poems from India. A translation of the Amarushataka by Andrew Schelling (Boston; London: Shambhala, 2004). Indo-European Philology Coll. (Indo). Firestone, PK3791.A43 A812 2004

Printed at emdash Press, Kamini employs 20 colors to capture the various blue manifestations of Krishna. The text is printed in English and Sanskrit, hand-set in Dante type on Bugra paper. The images, photographed by Ken Botnick last spring during a trip to India on a Fulbright grant, were transfered to photo-polymer plates and printed with the letterpress text.

Botnick is professor of visual communications and director of the Nancy Spirtas Kranzberg Studio for the Illustrated Book, at Washington University in St. Louis. He is also the director, designer, and master printer of emdash Press. His career began at the University of Wisconsin, where his classmate Steve Miller had just launched Red Ozier Press. In the fall of 1979, Miller and Botnick received an NEH grant and moved the press New York City, where it ran successfully until 1988. Miller went to the University of Alabama as director of book arts, while Botnick joined Yale University Press as head of art book design and production. In 1997, he moved to St. Louis and Washington University.

Graphic Arts holds a number of Red Ozier editions and two other recent emdash books: Kavya (2003), a series of classical Sanskrit poems collected by Octavio Paz; and In Defense of the Book (2001) by William Gass. These wonderful books are available, without appointment, in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collection reading room.

Over several weeks in December of 1863, the following advertisement ran in the New York Times: “THE SENSATION OF THE DAY IS THE GREAT NATIONAL PAINTING!! OF WASHINGTON IRVING AND HIS LITERARY FRIENDS AT SUNNYSIDE BY F.O.C. DARLEY AND C. SCHUPELLE [sic] NOW ATTRACTING the attention of lovers of Art and Literature. ON EXHIBITION DAY AND EVENING, at the Derby Galleries, No. 625 Broadway.”

The single painting on view featured Irving in his Hudson River home with fifteen literary friends, including Longfellow, Cooper, Hawthorne, and others. An image of the painting, now at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C., along with complete identification of the sitters can be found at: http://galleries.fototagger.com/link.php?action=detailimage&id=512&sort=0

The painting came quickly after Schussele’s 1862 success with Men of Progress, a similar painting representing nineteen distinguished American inventors. In fact, one 1863 reviewer begins by mentioning the lack of novelty in the design of such works. It was a common format to draw together prominent men, particularly in a time of war, when groups of generals and politicians were often seen in contemporary illustrated newspapers and journals.

However, the Washington Irving painting and engraving found tremendous success with the public. A small booklet was prepared and sold at the gallery describing the making of the two works, along with biographical sketches of each of the sitters.

According to the booklet and the press, the making of the engraving was a long and elaborate process. The original sketch or design was created by Felix Darley, who has a long history with Irving’s work and with the writer personally. To help with this drawing, Mathew Brady was hired to photograph the individual sitters. Some of these photographs can be seen today at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division. According to the Times, another final photograph was taken of the whole design, which is the source the engraver, Thomas Barlow, worked from over a period of three years. In a separate studio, Schussele rendered the work in oil.

The edition had four separate grades and prices. Artist’s proofs sold for $50, proofs before the lettering were $30, India proofs sold for $15, and the final prints for $10. The booklet was an extra 15 cents, which also gave you free admission during the exhibition of the painting. The introductory text of the booklet is so appealing that I include it in full. If you would like to read it, continue below.

The Chain gang included J.A. Chain, a partner in the Denver Chain and Hardy Bookstore; his wife, painter Helen Henderson Chain (1848-1892); and their son Fred. The credit on the title page of this album implies that it was J.A. who created the albumen photographs, but there is good reason to believe the album itself was assembled and embellished by Helen.

Of the 19th-century western artists, Helen Chain was Colorado’s most prominent female painter. She settled in Denver in 1871 but traveled to Europe and to New York to study; in particular, spending one season working in the studio of George Innes. She illustrated several books, including John Lewis Dyer, The Snow-Shoe Itinerant. An Autobiography of the Rev. John L. Dyer. . . (Cincinnati, Published for the author by Cranston & Stowe, 1890). Rare Books: Western Americana Collection (WA) Rollins 0800.

This was a family of travelers, with Helen sketching and painting wherever they went. She was the first women to paint the Mount of the Holy Cross on site in 1877 and five years later, the first to exhibit New Mexico pueblo scenes at the National Academy of Design. The Chains joined photographer William Henry Jackson on a tour of Mexico in 1883 and he might have been their tutor in photography.

The 1888 trip to Europe, documented in this album, began in Dresden and proceeded through Nuremberg, Venice, Rome, and Switzerland. Classic views of well-known landmarks are mixed with very personal scenes, most notably one of Helen in bed with her feet protruding from an enormous comforter. These photographs are each trimmed and mounted with copious notes and decorative painted elements to create a unique, personal journal.

This political cartoon sets Democrat Stephen A. Douglas against Republican Abraham Lincoln during the presidential campaign of 1860. From left to right, the figures represent John Bell of Tennessee (Constitutional Union party candidate); John A. Wise (influential Democratic governor of Virginia); Douglas; James Buchanan (Democratic incumbent president); John C. Breckenridge (Buchanan’s vice-president and Democratic candidate); and Lincoln.

An interpretation of the scene comes from Americana dealer William Reese:
The cartoon is a play on the word “stump,” serving as a colloquial expression for both campaigning and a wooden leg. In “taking the stump” to campaign, Douglas is handicapped by a pegleg; in a dialogue balloon he explains his condition to Bell and Wise by stating that he “fell over a big lump of Breckenridge, and have been very lame ever since.” In turn, Breckenridge has his right foot and lower leg wrapped in bandages, and Buchanan presents him with a pegleg, telling his Vice President, “Here, Breck, as Dug [Douglas] has taken the stump, you must stump it too.” Breckenridge, perhaps alluding to his poor showing at the Democratic Party’s May convention, replies, “I suppose I must, but I know it will be of no use, for I feel that I haven’t got a leg to stand on.” Lincoln, leaning against a symbolic split-rail fence and the only figure depicted in casual dress, declares to the others, “Go it yet cripples! Wooden legs are cheap, but a stumping won’t save you.”

More information: Bernard Reilly, American Political Prints 1766-1876 (1991) GA Oversize E183.3.R45 1991Q and Currier & Ives: a Catalogue Raisonne (1983) GA Oversize NE 2312.C8 A4 1983Q.

Completed in only five years, St. Sophia or Hagia Sophia is today a museum in Istanbul, Turkey. What began as a basilica, then a mosque, underwent a full restoration between 1847 and 1849, by the Swiss-Italian architects Gaspare and Giuseppe Fossati. In particular, the minarets were altered to make them equal in height, as seen in this photograph taken by Félix Bonfils taken in the 1870s.

Bonfils opened his first photography studio in Beirut in 1867, working together with his wife and son. They made numerous trips through Europe, the Middle East, and later the Far East. The photographs were sold individually and in luxurious bound albums published out of a second studio in Alès, France.

The introduction to this 1878 album states that the “collection of photographs of the Orient’s principal sites—initiated, executed and completed by Monsieur F. Bonfils with unequaled perseverance—should be regarded as one of the most considerable achievements—picturesque, artistic and scientific—of our epoch.”

For more information on the Bonfils business, see Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, “The Genius of Félix Bonfils,” Archaeology 54, no. 3 (May/June 2001).

This new year’s eve, instead of drinking three pints of wine, why not use it to make your own batch of writing ink? Here’s a recipe written by Edward Cocker (1631-1675). Cocker was a London mathematician and engraver, who taught writing and arithmetic. His extraordinary talent as a calligrapher enabled him to create over 20 copy books, which included alphabets in “German”, “Italian”, “Roman”, and “Print” hands. In addition, his manuals offered instruction in cutting pen nibs, holding the pen, and the making of ink. These actual recipes are rare and Cocker’s continues to be a resource to contemporary artists and historians.

A slightly earlier recipe can be found in the online text A Booke of Secrets: shewing diuers waies to make and prepare all sorts of inke, and colours … Also to write with gold and siluer, or any kind of mettall out of the pen … newly translated into English, by W.P. (London: Printed by Adam Islip for Edward White, and are to be sold at his shop at the little north dore of Pouls, at the signe of the Gun, 1596). Search the title in the main catalog or use your Princeton ID to log into http://wwwlib.umi.com/eebo/image/3783

Cocker is perhaps best-known for his manuals on basic arithmetic, reissued in dozens of editions over several centuries. Graphic Arts holds: Cocker’s Tutor to Arithmetick: being a new and most easie method, so easie that the meanest capacity may understand it at first sight, written and invented by Edward Cocker master in writing; there is also sold with this book that excellent copy-book called The tutor to writing. (London: Printed by R. D. and are to be sold by Tho. Rooks stationer at the Lamb and Ink-bottle at the East-end of S. Paul’s Church, where is also sold all sorts of blanck bonds, [1664]). GAX 2004.3217N

This engraved wood block is signed in the block ‘Horton’. It was produced by the New England wood-engraver John S. Horton to head the chapter “The Natural History of the Lion” in publisher John J. Harrod’s 1830 The Introduction to the Academical Reader. A history of the lion is just one essay in this compilation of “pleasing and instructive pieces … intended to induce and promote the love of learning, virtue, and piety in the minds of juvenile classes of readers.”

The title page offers the inspirational text: “By reading we learn not only the actions and sentiments of different nations and ages, but we transfer to ourselves the knowledge and improvements of the wisest and best of mankind.” Credited to Watts on the Mind, the actual source is The Improvement of the Mind: Containing a Variety of Remarks and Rules for the Attainment and Communication of Useful Knowledge, in Religion, the Sciences, and in Common Life, by Isaac Watts (1674-1748)

Harrod’s book is one of several thousand American imprints illustrated with wood-engravings, identified in the Sinclair Hamilton collection within the graphic arts division. The collection is searchable online as well as in the published catalogue: Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers, 1670-1870 (GA Z1023 .P9 1968).

The process of wood engraving involves the cutting of an image in relief on a hard, end-grain block of wood. The engraver cuts away the parts of the block that are to remain white in the finished image. The hardness of the wood allows the engraver to cut multiple thin lines, creating a more complex image than was possible with the soft matrix used for woodcuts. Wood engraving was the technique of choice for book illustration in the early nineteenth century.

Long before Kara Walker, there were many folk artists practicing the tradition of cut-paper silhouettes. Pictured above is one page from an album of black paper scenes created by a young girl in memory of her visit to Yverdon in Switzerland. The book is dated Londres 3 Mai 1832 and includes 15 elaborate silhouettes cut from waxed black paper to fit the size of the page. The wax provides a shine that catches the light and adds depth and dimension, not often found in American cut paper work.

Most images are captioned, presumably by the artist, with one entry reading "A ma chere petite Elise en souvenir de son affcte LR." The album has one ownership insciption on the marbled pastedown of P. Atkinson, Belmont, Shipley, with a blindstamp on the free endpaper of the same address.

In 2002, the contemporary artist Kara Walker combined her own black paper silhouettes with the poetry of Toni Morrison for a limited-edition book entitled Five Poems (Las Vegas: Rainmaker Editions, 2002). The book is designed by Peter Rutledge Koch, and printed letterpress from digital imaging and photo-polymer plates at Peter Koch, Printers in Berkeley, California, in a signed edition of 399 numbered and 26 lettered copies. The graphic arts division holds no. 128 (GAX Oversize 2006-0733Q). More of Walker's art can be seen in a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art through February 3, 2008. http://www.whitney.org/www/exhibition/kara_walker/index.html

As I Watch’d the Ploughman Ploughing is one of ten books designed and printed by the arts and crafts inspired artist Wharton Esherick. A look at the museum that has been established in his honor can be found at http://www.levins.com/esh3.html

Trained as a traditional painter, Esherick had a brief career as an illustrator before he bought a Washington hand press and in 1920, began cutting and printing limited edition woodcuts. Around this time, he met Harold Mason, owner of the Centaur Book Shop in Philadelphia, who was interested in publishing fine press books. It was a good match. In 1924, the Centaur Press published its first book, Walt Whitman’s poem, Song of the Broad-Axe, with woodcuts by Esherick.

This led the artist to other commissions and other book projects, all printed with large-format woodcuts. In 1928, Esherick made a sequence of nine woodcuts for As I Watched the Ploughman Ploughing, a poem by Walt Whitman set to music by Philip Damas. The Franklin Printing Company issued in an edition of 200 copies and four of the woodcuts were reprinted in the February 1929 issue of Vanity Fair.

More information on Esherick can be found in an article by Henry Wessells, published in the February 22, 1999, issue of AB Bookman’s Weekly. A checklist of Esherick’s books can be found at: www.avramdavidson.org

Here is the complete text of the Walt Whitman’s poem:

As I watch’d the ploughman ploughing,
Or the sower sowing in the fields - or the harvester harvesting,
I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies:
(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)

The commercial designer James Meyer created a series of broadsides, such as this one, as memorials to President James A. Garfield who was assasinated in September 1881. A smaller scale print was also commissioned by E.G. Rideout & Company and included in an issue of Household Journal (also called Household Guest Magazine) that same year. This is possibly in response to the fear of a nation-wide panic over two presidents being killed in the short span of 16 years.