Camillus Kessler (active 1920s), When We Get a Censorship of Books, no date [ca. 1925]. Pen and ink drawing. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012.02310. Gift of Charles Rose, Princeton University Class of 1950, P77, P80.
Camillus Kessler (active 1920s), Once Upon A Time: The Library, no date [ca. 1925]. Pen and ink drawing. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012.02282. Gift of Charles Rose, Princeton University Class of 1950, P77, P80.
The Dollar Weekly Pennsylvanian ran from 1854 to 1861 under the editorial control of Dr. Edward Morwitz (1815-1893), a physician turned newspaper publisher. Morwitz also ran the German-language newspaper Demokrat and the weekly Vereinigte Staaten Zeitung (United States Journal), using all his papers to advocate for his political views.
There were many other papers run by Morwitz. This broadside mentions the reuse of “cuts” and stories from his five other newspapers. Biographer Henry Samuel Morais writes that Morwitz “controlled, perhaps, more newspapers than any other man, having under his management at one time as many as three hundred of these, and among them eight dailies…”
The large wood engravings on this sheet illustrate the newspaper’s extensive coverage of foreign news, offering scenes of the Second Italian War for Independence (also called the Franco-Austrian War). There are also portraits of Giuseppe Garibaldi, Adolphe Niel, Patrice MacMahon, and Alexander von Humboldt.
See also: Henry S. Marais (1860-1935), The Jews of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Levytype Co., 1894). Firestone Library (F) F158.9.J5 M8 1894
Graphic Arts now holds a 2012 Teaching Set of Historical Bookbinding Models, thanks to Iowa Book Works, a small enterprise founded by Joyce Miller and Gary Frost that specializes in production of book craft kits. http://iowabookworks.bookways.com/?page_id=34
Included in an enormous clamshell box are ten model bindings, along with two instruction booklets. The history and culture of each binding is described, followed by notes on the “handling and action” of each volume (how it feels in your hand, how it opens, etc.). In this way, the student not only learns the definition of a book structure but how to recognize it when they hold one.
“These bookbindings illustrate the appearance and structure of common books in different cultures and across time,” writes Frost. “As you read the descriptions for the individual types investigate their physical features and mechanical actions. Handling of these model bookbindings will provide a lasting impression of the innovations and changes in the mechanism of the codex book. Each bookbinding model exemplifies specific attributes of the codex structure, and the array of books together tells a story of a persistent mechanism for reading.”
Samples include:
1. Papyrus book
2. Ethiopian book
3. Account book
4. Wooden board book
5. Vellum binding
6. Leather binding
7. Paper case binding
8. In-boards cloth binding
9. Cased cloth binding
10. Contemporary binding
Thanks to the generous donation of Charles Rose, Class of 1950, P77, P80, Graphic Arts now holds 1429 zinc and aluminum printing plates for comic strips syndicated to American newspapers from the 1920s to the 1950s. The plates originated with Abraham Meyers, whose American Melody Company or Meyers List (newspapers knew the firm as International Cartoons or Empire Features) was founded in 1898.
At first a distributor of sheet music, Meyers transitioned to comic strips in the early 20th century. One package of zinc printing plates was shipped to each newspaper at the beginning of the month and then returned. There was no sequence or simultaneous publishing of comics in city papers around the country.
In 1934, the firm passed to J.R. Kramer and then, to Kramer’s son-in-law Charles Rose, who bought out the company in 1967. He and his wife ran the business until the Meyers List was dissolved on March 20, 1977.
In addition to the plates, record books for the business, various teaching materials, and several albums of published strips, Princeton received 86 original pen and ink drawings for cartoons by Camillus Kessler, an active but little documented cartoonist. Kessler published comics in the New York Globe and Advertiser, New York Evening Graphic, New York World, and other papers from around 1914 into the 1940s.
Firestone Library holds two compilations of Kessler’s work: At the Bottom of the Ladder (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1926). NC1320 .K44 and Twenty-Five Years Ago (New York: Coward-McCann, 1931). NC1320 .K45.
Most recognizable of the printing plates are the 652 zinc two and four panel plates of Just Kids drawn by New York cartoonist August Daniel “Ad” Carter (1895-1957). The strip began in the summer of 1923 and ended with Carter’s death in 1957.
Also included are 52 zinc printing plates for Betty’s Beanery by Samuel Maxwell “Jerry” Iger (1903-1990), who had a partnership with Will Eisner (1917-2005); 32 single cell zinc printing plates for The Debunder by John Henry Fudray; and 15 single cell electrotype plates for Miss Information drawn by Barnet Cohen.
There are 52 two cell zinc plates for Hospital Quips by Rube Weiss, who is also known for Have Fun!, Josh Billings Sez, and Live ‘n Laff; 8 plates for Things That Never by Gary Bryne; and 7 for That Little Gamer by Link.
201 five panel zinc plates are for the comic strip Huckleberry Finn by Dwig and 200 aluminotype plates for the six panel strip called Squire Edgegate by Louis Richard. The longest plates are for seven panel comic strips. There are 100 for Bull Run by Carl Ed, who historians known as the creator of Harold Teen, and 110 for Raising the Family a comic strip from the 1920s and 1930s by an artist only known as Fisher.
We would be grateful for more information on these artists.
Special thanks to Mike Siravo and John Walako for helping to move these very heavy printing plates.
Robert Havell’s shop, The Zoological Gallery, at 77 Oxford Street, London. Image reproduced in Francis Hobart Herrick, Audubon the Naturalist (1917).
The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired one of the rarest and most beautiful of Havell’s solo publications, A Collection of the Birds of Paradise (ca. 1835). While the volume was based on Le Vaillant’s earlier study, Havell redesigned several key artistic elements, beginning with the title page. In an act of inspired creativity, he selected elements from two individual pages that examined the plumage of the males and reconfigured the elongated and elaborate feathers into a compelling title cartouche.
Birds of Paradise was produced during the mid-1830s at Havell’s spacious Oxford Street shop, the Zoological Gallery, where he sold ornithological prints and drawings as well as the birds themselves, stuffed and posed, along with skins or feathers. Havell hunted these birds and other small animals outside London and then, prepared them for sale using his own techniques (Yale University Library holds a notebook where Havell recorded varieties of household recipes and taxidermist instructions).
All aspects of engraving, printing, coloring, bindings, and publishing were available at the Zoological Gallery, thanks to the enormous staff of young women Havell and his wife boarded, trained, and employed. One advertisement reads, “Miss Havell’s Boarding Establishment for a limited number of Young Ladies, in which the comfort and happiness of a home are combined with every instruction suitable to the capacity and age of the Pupils, who are received by the Month or Quarter. Terms may be had at the Zoological Gallery.”
Havell and Audubon were both members of the Zoological Society (instituted 1825) and well acquainted with all the illustrated natural histories, yet it may have been at Audubon’s suggestion that Havell took on the engraving of Le Vaillant’s study. As a young man, Audubon studied briefly in Paris when the original volumes were being released and he owned many of Le Vaillant’s luxurious color plate books in his own library (Audubon’s copy of Histoire naturelle des oiseaux d’Afrique (1799-1808) is now in Cornell University’s library).
Most recently this book belonged to Major General Sir Rohan Delacombe, KCMC, KBE, CB, DSO, KSt (25 October 1906 - 10 November 1991) who was a British military officer. He was the last British Governor of Victoria, Australia. Sir Rohan was appointed as Governor of Victoria in 1963 and his term ended in 1974. Upon his death in 1991, this particular item was part of his library in Australia and was left to his daughter.
Paul Muldoon, Epithalamium. Designed and illustrated by Debra Weier (Princeton, N.J.: Emanon Press, 2011). Copy 6 of 50. Gift of Leonard L. Milberg, Class of 1953 in honor of Richard M. Ludwig. Ex 2012-0017Q
“Epithalamium, a wedding poem by Pulitzer Prize winning Paul Muldoon, was designed, printed and bound by Debra Weier of Emanon Press. The book was conceived and produced over four years and seven months, and completed in May of 2011. Each of the seven verses claims its own page and is nestled in its own popout, and each popout symbolizes its respective verse through its structure.”—Prospectus inserted.
Additional images can be found at: http://debraweier.com/books/muldoon/muldoon.html
Oxford English Dictionary:
Epithalamium, n.: A nuptial song or poem in praise of the bride and bridegroom, and praying for their prosperity.
1595 Spenser (title) Epithalamion.
c1600 Timon (1980) iii. v. 49 Sing vs some sweete Epithalamion.
1607 J. Marston What you Will ii. i, Epythalamiums will I singe.
1653 Cloria & Narcissus I. 81 To sing Epithalamions to our marriage Feasts.
1690 T. Burnet Theory of Earth iv. 168 The 45th psalm‥is an epithalamium to Christ and the Church.
1739 W. Melmoth Fitzosborne Lett. (1763) 339 Give me timely notice of your wedding day, that I may be prepared with my Epithalamium.
1828 T. Carlyle Crit. & Misc. Ess. (1857) I. 163 Epithalamiums, epicediums.
1859 J. C. Hobhouse Italy II. 210 The Epithalamiums of Catullus and of Statius.
1860 G. J. Adler tr. C. C. Fauriel Hist. Provençal Poetry iv. 67 The epithalamia belonged likewise to the popular class of poetry.
2011 P. Muldoon Epithalamium
Frans Masereel (1889-1972), Geschichte ohne Worte: ein Roman in Bildern (Story Without Words: a Novel in Pictures). Afterword by Hermann Hesse. (Wiesbaden: Insel-Verlag, 1952 [first published 1922]). Gift of Seth Fagen. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process
Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) was a great admirer of Frans Masereel. In his afterword Hesse writes, “Der Mensch dieser Bilderfolgen, dessen Gestalt und Züge zuweilen denen des Künstlers selbst ähneln, ist der Adam unsrer Zeit; im Gewand des Heute erlebt er das ewig Menschliche, erleidet es, sucht es zu bestehen, erliegt ihm oder überwindet es. Ihn zu verstehen, mit ihm aufzuglühen in leidenschaft, niederzusinken in Verzweiflung, in ihm ans selbst zu erkennen und in seinem Leben das allen Gemeinsame zu verehren; das is die Mahnung dieses Künstlers.”
(The human beings in these picture sequences, whose form and features sometimes resemble those of the artist himself, are the Adam of our time; [Masereel] presents a universal man in contemporary dress, who suffers, struggles to exist, succumbs to life or overcomes it. To understand him, to burn with passion along with him, to sink into his despair, to recognize oneself in him and to admire the universal in his life; this is the reminder of the artist.)
[Feel free to correct my translation]
Charles Williams (active 1797-1830), Pope Joan, 1805. Hand colored etching. Graphic Arts Collection British Caricature GA2012- in process.
During the War of the Third Coalition (1803 to 1806), Great Britain was under constant threat of an invasion by Napoleon I (1769-1821). This is reflected in the game of Pope Joan print drawn by Charles Williams in November 1805.
One of the players asks, “And do you really think, Major, that Bonaparte means to attempt an Invasion? - pray what is your opinion of him.” To which the answer is given, “A knave Ma’am, and that’s a stop.”
Pope Joan was a popular card game played in 18th- and 19th-century England. The staking board used in the game can be seen in this print, with its eight compartments labeled Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Game, Pope (the 9 of diamonds), Matrimony (the king and queen of trump) and Intrigue (the queen and jack of trump). The aim of the game is to run out of cards before anyone else does. For the complete rules, see http://www.boardgamesofold.com/pj_game.html
George Cruikshank (1792-1878), Cribbage, Shuffling, Whist, and a Round Game!! 1822. Hand colored etching. Graphic Arts Collection British Caricature GA2012- in process
This single sheet holds a series of caricatures around the raids held in October 1822 on London gambling houses, in particular around Pall Mall. The Bow Street Runners led by the Chief Magistrate Richard Birnie (1760-1832), seen in the upper right corner, closed a number of gaming houses although they did not stop “the synagogues of Satan” completely.
See also: The Greeks; a Poem … Dedicated to All Legs! By the Author of the Pigeons, Fashion, &c. (London: J.J. Stockdale, 1817). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Cruik 1817
Hellén, The Pigeons: Dedicated to All the Flats, and Showing the Artifices, Success and Crimes of Gaming, Gamesters and Gambling Houses … by the author of the Greeks (London: Printed for J.J. Stockdale … 1817). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Cruik 1817.2
Charles Dunne, Rouge et noir: the Academicians of 1823, or, The Greeks of the Palais Royal, and the Clubs of St. James’s … (London: Lawler and Quick and Stephen Couchman, 1823). Frontispiece by R. Cruikshank. Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Cruik R 1823.4
Isaac Cruikshank (1764-1811), The Family Party or Prince Bladduds Man Traps!!
May 11, 1799. Etching with hand coloring. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2012- in process
(c) British MuseumA card game is being played at the home of King George IV (1762-1830), Prince of Wales, who is standing with his hand on the breast of Honor Dutton (born Gubbins, married Ralph Dutton). His younger brother Frederick Augustus, Duke of York and Albany (1763-1827), is sitting with his back to us.
Cruikshank drew at least six caricatures of the two brothers and Honor Dutton. What’s interesting about this one is that a very similar print, titled The Snug Party’s Exit. Or the Farewell to Bath was published on May 6, 1799 by J. Brown of Bath (probably a pseudonym). In less than a week, Cruikshank completed a pirated copy, with the image laterally reversed. This was published in London by Samuel William Fores (1761-1838), a dealer who specialized in playing cards and popular prints.
The print’s title refers to Prince Bladud, a legendary king, who was banished from Athens when he contracted leprosy. He was miraculously healed by the waters at Bath and went on to founded a city at that site (at least that’s one story).
Lesley Dill, I Had a Blueprint of History. Poem by Tom Sleigh. (New York: Dieu Donné Press and Peter Kruty Editions, 2012). Copy 1 of 30. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process.
“Of the many ways to vent the human engine—of the many escape routes for what lies inside the body, firing up and down its nervous system and circulating through its veins—the most ordinary, and confounding, is speech. ‘We are animals of words,’ Lesley Dill has said. ‘If you were to cut us open anywhere, what would come out would not be just blood and organs, but also language.’” —Deep Breathing by critic and writer Nancy Princenthal, 2001.
The Brooklyn-based artist Lesley Dill created this limited edition artists’ book, featuring the poem I had a Blueprint of History by Tom Sleigh, Hunter College Creative Writing Program Director. The artist’s latest exhibition Faith & the Devil is currently on view at the George Adams Gallery in Chelsea, which also includes words by Sleigh. http://www.georgeadamsgallery.com/index.php3
Founders Sue Gosin and Bruce Weinberg to open Dieu Donné in 1976, one of a few pioneer papermills in New York City and the United States. Today, this non-profit organization is dedicated to the creation, promotion, and preservation of new contemporary art utilizing the hand papermaking process.
Peter Kruty Editions is Peter Kruty and Sayre Gaydos, two master letterpress printers who have pooled their talents in letterpress printing and printmaking to form … one of the most versatile and well-known fine art and commercial letterpress shops in the United States.
A single sheet of sixteen candy wrappers with color printed vignette and letterpress joke below. Ashford, Kent: Howland’s Steam Confectionery and Grocery Stores, 1800s. Sheet 575 × 450 mm; each wrapper ca. 150 × 110 mm. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process
“The sweetmakers wrapped their goods in the cheapest paper from the stationer’s, or else recycled old books. In one home-based sweets factory, [Henry] Mayhew observed several volumes of the Acts of Parliament used for this purpose, as well as other books, which the confectioner ‘retained to read at his short intervals of leisure, then used to wrap his goods in. In this way he had read through two Histories of England!’ Mayhew counted about 230 sweetsellers trading, of whom twenty to thirty were Jewish ….” from Tim Richardson, Sweets: a History of Candy (Firestone TX 791.R523 2002)
Graphic Arts recently acquired twenty-three Japanese sketchbooks by unidentified artists (many different hands are apparent). They were collected by Eric Sackheim and given to Princeton University by his widow several years ago.
The sketchbooks, all with traditional Japanese bindings, were packed together with a 1938 auction catalogue from J.C. Morgenthau & Co., Inc. entitled An Important Sale of Japanese Color Prints, Japanese Books, Albums, and Books of Original Drawings, Roll Paintings, [and] a Wood Block. Fifty-five albums of drawings were offered at this sale, which may be the source of the group now at Princeton University. Here is a sample:
“Bibliographies are like building blocks,” writes Joseph Felcone, “each successive work builds on its predecessors and in turn serves as a base for the next work. Private collectors and institutional collections play an essential role in the process. This present bibliography grew out of more than a hundred years of New Jersey bibliographical research and over two hundred years of collecting New Jerseyana.”
The author notes, “For the last twenty years I’ve been working on a descriptive bibliography of eighteenth-century New Jersey printing, and it has just been published by the American Antiquarian Society: Printing in New Jersey, 1754-1800: A Descriptive Bibliography.”
For those of us interested in printing history, we can only say, “thank goodness.”
It is no exaggeration when the publisher writes, “As a descriptive bibliography of early American imprints, New Jersey Printing sets a new standard for comprehensiveness, providing full descriptions of all of the known products of every eighteenth-century New Jersey press. Of the 1,265 books, pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers, and broadsides included, nearly 25 percent are recorded here for the first time.”
Felcone has spent a lifetime collecting, studying, and writing about New Jersey books and the early New Jersey book trade. To compile this comprehensive work, he visited and fully surveyed 115 libraries—from the major repositories in the United States and England to county and local historical societies in New Jersey—and physically examined and recorded every eighteenth-century New Jersey imprint.
Handsomely designed by Jerry Kelly, the book is important to those working in early American printing, publishing, bookselling, book distribution and ownership, as well as related bookmaking arts such as papermaking and bookbinding. Note, for instance, the number of eighteenth-century references to Nassau Hall alone and you understand our enthusiasm with this volume.
The Society of Colonial Wars in the State of New Jersey should be commended for helping to subsidized the production of the book, allowing me as a reader to acquire it for a very reasonable price. In this day and age, it is a great thrill to hold new scholarship in my hand and place it on our shelves for others to use and enjoy.
Josef Síma (1891-1971), Au temps de Jesus-Christ. Contes populaires tchécoslovaques mis en françois par Louise-Denise Germain. (At the time of Jesus Christ, Popular Czechoslovakian stories translated into French by Louise-Denise Germain). Préface de Charles Vildrac (Paris: Kauffmann. 1922). 10 woodcuts and 11 small vignettes by Joseph Síma. Copy 23 of 300. Graphic Arts GAX 2012-0242N
The artist Josef Síma was a founding member of Devětsil (Nine Forces), a Czech group of avant-garde writers, architects, actors, musicians, and visual artists. Vítězslav Nezval, Jaroslav Seifert, Karel Teige, and Toyen (Marie Cerminova) were also active in the group, which included more than 70 members in the 1920s.
Síma became acquainted with the French painter Louise-Denise Germain (1870-1963) and together they compiled Czech folktales, which Germain translated into French and Síma illustrated. During the process, he fell in love with Germain’s daughter, married her, and became a French citizen, spending the majority of his adult life in Paris.
See also: Revoluční sborník Devětsil (V Praze: Nakl. Večernice V. Vortel, 1922). Marquand Library (SAX): PG5023 .R48 1922
Alec Soth and Lester B. Morrison, Broken Manual. Special edition ([Saint Paul, Minn.]: Little Brown Mushroom; Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2010). 1 volume (unpaged) housed in book safe. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process.
From 2006 to 2010, Soth photographed the places in which people retreat to escape civilization including the homes of monks, survivalists, hermits and runaways. Working with the writer Lester B. Morrison, he created an underground instruction manual for those looking to escape their lives.
“300 copies of [the book] exist,” said Soth. “It was a really special project for me and I wanted the special edition to come out first. We made a book safe, cut out the pages of these books we bought, and you can hide this Broken Manual in the larger book. It was a huge ordeal to cut them out, and we made those, they exist, but the trade edition never came out. …The thing about a book is that you can control the entire shape of it, unlike an exhibition where the parameters always change.”
Rare book and print collector Lessing Julius Rosenwald (1891-1979) donated part of his collection to the Library of Congress and the other part to the National Gallery of Art. Recently, these two organizations joined together to catalogue the Rosenwald collections into a mutual database so that researchers can search, retrieve, and use the materials together even though they are physically stored separately (tba).
Rosenwald was also one of the founding members of the Print Council of America, established in 1956 by a small group of museum curators, scholars, and collectors with a mission to “foster the creation, dissemination, and appreciation of fine prints, old and new.” At our annual meeting held last week in Los Angeles, Ruth Fine, emeritus curator of special projects in modern art at the NGA, generously offered members the gift of a Rosenwald bookplate. Thank you Ruth!
Note the iconography of his ex libris: images of roses and of a forest (“wald”) = rose and wald = Rosenwald.
Holger Benkel and Frank Eissner, Erde und Feuer (Earth and Fire) (Rudolstadt: Burgart Presse, 2003). One copy of 100. Graphic Arts
In the classic tradition of xylographic printing, both image and text in Erde und Feuer are produced from woodcuts designed by the Leipzig artist Frank Eissner (born 1959) and printed on Bunko Shi paper. Originally trained in lithography, Eissner now specializes in relief printing, operating Eissner Handpresse since 1989, where he publishes limited edition artists’ books. For this volume, he collaborated with his colleague publisher Jens Henkel and “Blank Generation” poet Holger Benkel.
“His work—books made entirely in wood block printing, books in a wonderful form with most carefully chosen texts—is not intended for the general public, but merely for a small circle of connoisseurs, whose affection for each printed work has to be won anew. …Eissner’s language consists of expressive figures combined with equally dominant, almost abstract parts which give an appearance of painting due to the transparent imprint of Eissner’s color range. Eissner is not interested in a large number of copies, but rather in experimenting with wood blocks in a new way. …Eissner’s lean figures symbolize asceticism and uninhibited physicality, his colors quiet and silence.”—Wolfgang Grätz, Büchergilde Artclub (2004)
Jehan Sennep, À l’Abattoir les Cartellistes!! Album-souvenir des Elections de 1928 (Paris: Editions Bossard, [1928.]). One copy of 200. Bookplate of the Baron de Cougny-Préfeln. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process.
On April 22 and 29, 1928, elections were held for the 14th legislature. The French caricaturist Jehan Sennep (whose real name was Jean-Jacques Charles Pennes, 1894-1982) cartooned the members of the Cartel in the Paris papers and then, brought them together in this send-up of the election. Herriot, Marcel Cachin (1869-1958), Georges-Étienne Bonnet (1889-1973), and Blaise Diagne (1872-1934) are among the Cartellistes transformed into cattle being led to the slaughter house. The book is sardonically printed on rough brown butcher’s paper.
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