Recently in Acquisitions Category

Chagall's Maternité

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Marcel Arland (1899-1986) and Marc Chagall (1887-1985), Maternité (Motherhood) (Paris: Sans Pareil, 1926). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process

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Marc Chagall moved to Paris in 1923 and received several commissions for visual narratives, beginning with designs for Nikolai Gogol’s Die toten Seelen (The Dead Souls) in 1923 (printed in 1927 and published in 1950), followed by Maternité 1925-26, Les Sept péchés capitaux (The Seven Deadly Sins) in 1926, and the Fables of La Fontaine 1927-30. Many of the prints are drypoints, for which Chagall drew directly into a copper plate with a sharp needle.

Arland’s short story is a narrative told in reverse, beginning with the death of a young girl’s illegitimate baby and ending with the first night she and her lover spend together. The girl is vilified by her neighbors and Chagall’s first image shows her being taken away by the police as a crowd yells and shames her. Another plate shows the girl giving birth alone in her backyard among the chickens and empty crates.

Unfortunately, the popularity of Chagall’s prints has led many dealers to cut the book apart and sell the plates individually. To read more, see: Patrick Cramer, Marc Chagall: The Illustrated Books (Geneva: Patrick Cramer Publisher, 1995). Marquand (SA) ND689.C3 C725 1995q

Catoptric Anamorphosis

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Michael Schützer-Weissmann, In Nomine Domini: Lives of the Composers. Eight etchings by John O’Connor on texts by Michael Schützer-Weissmann (London: John O’Connor, 1974). Copy 1 of 100. The etchings were printed at the Octopus Press at the Islington Studio, London. Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize 2012-0006E

Subjects include John Taverner; Thomas Tallis; Dr. John Bull; Orlando Gibbons; William Byrd; William Lawes; John Jenkins; and Henry Purcell. The plate to illustrate Orlando Gibbons is a catoptric anamorphosis, to be viewed with the accompanying cylindrical mirror.

London Extra Illustrated

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Henry B. Wheatley (1838-1917), London Past and Present, Its History, Associations, and Traditions, based upon the Handbook of London by the late Peter Cunningham (London: John Murray, 1891). GAX Graphic Arts 2012- in process

This copy of Wheatley’s guide to London has been extra illustrated with 170 plates including engravings, etchings, and lithographs (15 hand colored) from many well-known sources. Here are a few examples.

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Klimsch's Jahrbuch

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Klimsch’s Jahrbuch (Klimsch’s Yearbook) (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag von Klimsch & Co., 1900-1940). Complete in thirty-three volumes. Subtitle varies from Eine übersicht über die Fortschritte auf Graphischem Gebiete (An Overview of the Progress in the Field of Graphics) to Technische Abhandlungen und Berichte über Neuheiten aus dem Gesamtgebiet der Graphischen Künst (Technical Papers and Reports about Innovations in all Areas of the Graphic Arts).

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Ferdinand Karl Klimsch (1812-1890) established the Frankfurt printing firm Klimsch & Co. in 1858. Originally a specialty firm offering commercial lithographic printing, the company expanded into all aspects of printing and continued to operate through 1995.

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In 1900 the company issued a report on the state of printing arts in Germany and continued the practice each year until WWII got in the way. Articles ranged from general histories and biographies to in-depth studies in paper technology, electroplating, typography, photographic printing processes, and the evolution of press machinery, much of it written by Friedrich and Konrad Bauer.

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But it is the samples of contemporary printing that really make the publication unique. Each issue includes specimens of coated papers, varnishes and inks, embossed labels, monochrome and multicolor typography, as well as printing on foil, on cellulose, and cloth. Paging through the volumes, we see the German graphic aesthetic transform from the decorative Jugendstil to the dynamism of the Futurists and then, the social realism of the rising Nazi party.

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The 1932 issue features a retrospective on the first 25 volumes. All of the volumes include tables of contents and the 1935 issue includes an index to volumes 25-28.

Books about paper

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Josef Halfer, The Progress of the Marbling Art, from Technical Scientific Principles (Buffalo, N.Y.: L.H. Kinder, 1893). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process
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Graphic Arts recently acquired a number of books on the history and making of American, British, French, and German papers. Here are a few other titles:

L.L. Brown Paper Co., Makers of the Standard Linen, Ledger and Record Papers: Samples, Sizes, Weights and Price-List (Adams, Mass.: L.L. Brown Paper Co., 1887). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2012-0044N

Union centrale des Arts Décoratifs, 7e Exposition organisée au Palais de l’Industrie 1882. Deuxième exposition technologique des industries d’art, le bois, les tissus, le papier (Paris: Quantin, 1883). Supplément au numèro de la Revue des Arts Décoratifs du 20 Février 1883, numéro exceptionnel du bulletin officiel de l’union centrale. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process.

Willy Grünewald, Papierhandel: ein Hilfsbuch für Papierhändler, -Verarbeiter und -Verbraucher (Berlin: Verlag der Papier-Zeitung Carl Hofmann, 1927). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process.

Richard Parkinson, A Treatise on Paper, with an Outline of its Manufacture, Complete Tables of Sizes, etc., for Printers and Stationers (Clitheroe: R. Parkinson; London: Crosby Lockwood and Son, 1894). Graphic Arts GAX 2012 in process.

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The Infallible Detective

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Graphic Arts is fortunate to have acquired the cover art by Robert Prowse, Jr. (1858-191?) for The Infallible Detective (London: Aldine Publishing Company, 1897). Drawn in ink and watercolor with gouache highlights, this is one of literally hundreds of covers Prowse designed for the Aldine company. The signed and dated sketch includes the caption “The phonograph reveals a great crime.” A small line of dialogue appeared on each of the book’s cover as a clue to the story’s plot. The Infallible Detective is no. 226 in the series The Aldine Dectective Tales (Rare Books RCPXR-6160641) and one of over 600 British dime novels available in Princeton University Library.

A wonderful checklist of the Aldine “tip top” detective novels can be found at http://mysteryfile.com/TipTop/Detective.html.

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Steve Holland posted a biography of Robert Prowse Jr. and his father, also a prolific artist of penny dreadfuls. This can be found at: http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/2010/01/tale-of-two-roberts-by-steve-holland.html

Holland writes, “It was around 1893 that Robert Prowse junior began his association with the Aldine Publishing Co., producing illustrations for their partwork publications of Burrage’s The Lambs of Littlecote and The Island School amongst many other contributions. His illustrations appeared in Aldine’s Garfield Boys’ Journal (1894-95) and Aldine Cheerful Library (1894-95), and he worked for most of Aldine’s library titles, becoming their main cover artist from the mid-1890s.”

“His work can be found on Boys’ First-Rate Pocket Library, Aldine Detective Tales, and Aldine Romance of Invention, Travel and Adventure Library in the 1890s. Probably his most famous covers were for the Aldine Robin Hood Library, and he continued to provide cover art for years to come, his last known work appearing on the Aldine Invention Library (1913) and Aldine Cinema Novels (1915).”

Note, the book covers really are blue, not just bad photography.

Pissarro's Pastorale

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Pastorale. Wood-engravings by Lucien Pissarro, with a note on the Kelmscott paper by John Bidwell ([Oxford]: Ashmolean Museum; [New York]: The Morgan Library & Museum; Risbury, Herefordshire: Whittington Press, 2011). Copy 53 of 100. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process.

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John Randle of Whittington Press notes, “The Ashmolean … [has] kindly allowed us to print from Lucien’s original wood-blocks which are in their possession. The Morgan Library and Museum … supplied 2000 sheets of the Batchelor’s Crown and Sceptre paper which has lain in their store for over a century.”

“This edition of 300 copies is set in 12-point Caslon type & printed from the three different papers made by Joseph Batchelor & Son to the original specifications of William Morris … The 40 copies bound in vellum are printed on the Otter paper, and contain a portfolio of proofs of the engravings, and one additional engraving, all in a solander box”.

“The 100 copies half-bound in Oasis leather and pre-war Fabriano Ingres are printed on the Flower paper made for the Kelmscott Press, and also contain the proofs and additional engraving. The 160 regular copies are half-bound in Fabriano Ingres papers and printed on the Crown and Sceptre paper”.

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Anti-Slavery Broadside

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David Claypoole Johnston (1799-1865), The House that Jeff Built, 1863. Etching. Graphic Arts GA 2012 in process.

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The Philadelphia-born artist D. C. Johnston was proficient as a lithographer and engraver. He drew, etched, and published this narrative broadside, which uses a simple nursery rhyme to make a powerful condemnation of slavery. The ‘house’ in the title refers to the slave pen seen in the first vignette. ‘Jeff’ is Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) the President of the Confederate States during the American Civil War.

Here are the twelve texts:
1.This is the house that Jeff built.
2.This is the cotton, by rebels, called king (Tho’ call’d by Loyalists no such thing) that lay in the house that Jeff built.
3.These are the field chattels that made cotton king, (tho’ call’d by Loyalists no such thing), that lay in the house that Jeff built.
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4.These are the chattels babes, mothers, and men, to be sold by the head, in the slave pen;— A part of the house that Jeff built.
5.This is the thing, by some call’d a man, Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, From yearlings to adults of life’s longest span; In and out of the house that Jeff built.
6.These are the shackles, for those who suppose their limbs are their own from fingers to toes; And are prone to believe say all that you can, that they shouldn’t be sold by that thing call’d a man; Whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
7.These buy the slaves, both male and female, and sell their own souls to a boss with a tail, who owns the small soul of that thing call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
8.Here the slave breeder parts with his own flesh to a trader down south, in the heart of secesh, thus trader and breeder secure without fail, the lasting attachment of him with a tail, who owns the small soul of that thing call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adult’s of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
9.This is the scourge by some call’d the cat, Stout in the handle, and nine tails to that, t’is joyous to think that the time’s drawing near when the cat will no longer cause chattels to fear, nor the going, going, gone of that thing call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
10.Here the slave driver in transport applies, nine tails to his victim, nor heeds her shrill cries, Alas! that a driver with nine tails his own, should be slave to a driver who owns only one, albeit he owns that thing call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
11.Here’s the arch rebel Jeff whose infamous course, has bro’t rest to the plow and made active the hearse, and invoked on his head every patriots curse, spread ruin and famine to stock the slave pen, and furnish employment to that thing among men, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.
12.But Jeff’s infamous house is doom’d to come down, so says Uncle Sam and so said John Brown. — With slave pen and auction shackles, driver and cat, together with buyer and seller and breeder and that, most loathsome of bipeds by some call’d a man, whose trade is to sell all the chattels he can, from yearlings to adults of life’s longest span, in and out of the house that Jeff built.

Joanna Southcott, Prophetess

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Charles Williams (active 1797-1850), Spirits at work- Joanna conceiving- ie- blowing up Shiloh, 1814. Etching. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process. Published as the frontispiece for Scourge v.8 (July 1814). Note the book Joanna has been reading is The Art of Humbugging, chapter one. Above her head is a bag labeled: Passports to Heaven, five shillings each or two for Seven.


Joanna Southcott (or Southcote) (1750-1814), wrote prophecies “at the command of the spirit of God.” From 1792 to her death, Southcott attracted many followers as well as skeptics. Her most important prophecy came in 1813 when she announced that she would give birth to a messiah, called The Shiloh. Southcott was sixty-four years old but spent the last year of her life expecting a child by “the power of the Most High,” who was to “rule the nations with a rod of iron.”

Throughout the year, caricatures and cartoons were published ridiculing her. Here are two examples from July and November 1814. A baby was supposedly born in December and Southcott died soon after.

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Charles Williams (active 1797-1850), Delivering a Prophetess, 1814. Etching. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process. Published in Scourge v.8 (November 1814). Joanna’s water has broken and four doctors prepare for the birth of The Shiloh. A ‘Preacher to the Virgin Johanna’ is bottling her water for later sale. Quotes come from Macbeth and the three midwives are reminiscent of the three witches who made prophecies in that play.

Rare Books and Special Collections holds over 100 books and pamphlets concerning Southcott. A favorite: Joanna Southcott (1750-1814), Prophecies Announcing the Birth of the Prince of Peace: Extracted from the Works of Joanna Southcott (London: W. Marchant, printer, Ingram-Court, [1814]). (Ex) BF1815.S7 S68 v. 5

See the private thoughts of other people.

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How would you like the ability to see another person’s secret thoughts? Even if it is a fictional person. This is the basis of a graphic novella called SVK (special viewing kit). The small paperback is written by Warren Ellis with art by Matt “D’Israeli” Brooker, foreword by William Gibson, and published by the London design firm BERG (Jack Schulze). Their publicity describes the book as “a story about cities, technology, and surveillance, mixed with human themes of the power, corruption and lies that lurk in the data-smog of our near-future.”

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Warren Ellis and D’Israeli, SVK. Foreword by William Gibson ([London]: BERG, 2011). Book and UV flashlight. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process.

The trick comes when the detective story is illuminated with a small ultraviolet light (included with the book) and the secret thoughts of various characters appear. More than a gimmick, the invisible text moves the plot along, exposing character strengths and weaknesses you wouldn’t otherwise know.

The leading character is a security consultant named Thomas Woodwind. “A man of six feet or so, quite lean, with a good Patrick Stewart-ish skull fuzzed with very short pale hair. Paranoid eyes. Tending to very long black coats, with poacher’s pockets sewn on the inside. A bluetooth earpiece cupping each ear. Black gloves - no fingerprints, reduction of epithelials.”

Also included is a short essay by comic historian Paul Gravett on the history of the word balloon, as well as at least one ultraviolet advertisement. I wonder if you get a discount for advertising in invisible ink?

Escape from Fantasylandia

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Enrique Chagoya, Escape from Fantasylandia: An Illegal Alien’s Survival Guide, 2011. 10/30. Lithograph on papel de amate printed in ten colors with gold metallic powder from nine aluminum plates. Published by Shark’s Ink, Lyons, Colorado. Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process

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“Chagoya limits his use of the Western written word, instead favoring pictorial signifiers combined with the glyph-based syllabaries of the Mitzec-Zapotec, Nahua (of whom the Aztec were members), and Maya cultures. The books are also printed on amate (a traditional Pre-Columbian paper made of banana fibers) and folded in the traditional accordion style. Within these parameters, the artist sets out epic cultural exchanges in which he “cannibalizes” Western culture in the same way that traditional Mesoamerican cultures have been appropriated into contemporary Mexican and U.S. culture.” —Sarah Kirk Hanley (Art in Print January/February 2012)
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Chagoya writes, “My artwork is a visual reflection on various, and often opposite, cultural realities that I have experienced during my life, from growing up in Mexico, living a couple of times in France, and becoming a citizen of this country in the year 2000 after being a permanent resident living in the Bay area for 20 years. I integrate diverse elements: from pre-Columbian mythology, Western religious iconography, ethnic stereotypes, ideological propaganda from various times and places, American popular culture, etc.”

Enrique Chagoya lives in San Francisco where he is a professor of Art at Stanford University. See also: Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Friendly Cannibals. Art by Enrique Chagoya (San Francisco: Artspace Books, 1996). Firestone Library (F) PS3557.O459 F75 1996

Visual Poetry Inspired by the Statue of Liberty

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Klaus-Peter Dencker, Dero Abacedarius (Achill Island, Ireland: Redfoxpress, 2011). Graphic Arts 2012- in process.
28 + 2 collages/visual poems in box.
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“I started work on Dero Abecedarius in mid-July 2001,” writes the artist Klaus-Peter Dencker. “…it develops alphabetically and uses New York’s Statue of Liberty as a primary motif. Dero presents the statue, a sort of public-relations symbol, in several variations. This allows me to explore the theme of freedom—poetically and theoretically—as it relates to the somewhat absurd representations of it that abound in consumer culture.”

“Within this work are personal experiences of many visits to the USA and the absurd idea, that a letter has its own meaning/importance. The ABC as an own sign-world and as an example for the dealing with seeming/apparent unliberties and so called rules. I work on the sequences usually by making first all collages on the pages, then the text-elements and finally a follow-up of a few corrections in the existing collages.”

This special edition is published by Redfoxpress, founded in 2000 by the Belgium artist Francis Van Maele. In 2002, he moved to Ireland and settled on Achill Island, along the cliffs of County Mayo overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. To learn more, see www.redfoxpress.com

Le Hanneton

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Le Hanneton: illustré, satirique et littéraire (Cockchaffer: Satirical and Literary Comics) (Paris: [s.n.], 1962-1868). Complete run of the weekly magazine with stenciled color. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2011- in process

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The artists for this satirical weekly include Honoré Daumier (1808-1879), André Gill (1840-1885), Alfred Le Petit (1841-1909), and Philippe Auguste Cattelain (1838-1893), among others. Cattelain published his first drawings in Le Hanneton and worked regularly until his career was interrupted by a three-year jail sentence for his part in the Paris Commune.

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Le Hanneton is a large French beetle

The Political "Siamese" Twins, 1864

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The Political “Siamese” Twins: The Offspring of Chicago Miscegenation, 1864. Lithograph. Published New York: Currier & Ives. Graphic Arts GA 2011- in process.

The firm of Currier & Ives produced this caricature around the Chicago Democratic National Convention in 1864. The oddly-paired democratic ticket included George B. McClellan (1826-1885) and “Gentleman” George Hunt Pendelton (1825-1889), shown here as Siamese twins. They are held together by “the party tie.” McClellan says, “It was not I that did it fellow Soldiers!! but with this unfortunate attachment I was politically born at Chicago!” Pendleton says, “I dont care how many letters Mac writes, if it brings him votes; for every vote for him, count one for me!!”

S.J. Woolf: Drawn from Life

woolf15.jpgSamuel Johnson Woolf (1880-1948), Self-portrait, 1938. Charcoal and white chalk on paper. Graphic Arts collection 2006-02518

In December of 1949, The New York Times ran an article announcing a new exhibition at the Princeton University Library entitled “Drawn From Life: Original Portraits by S.J. Woolf.” Woolf had died of Lou Gehrig’s disease the year before and the show was undoubtedly organized by Elmer Adler (1884-1962), who also exhibited Woolf’s portraits in 1930 at his Pynson Printer’s gallery, located in the New York Times building.

“It represents three decades of Woolf’s activities in catching the celebrities of this generation in the mirror contrived by his pencil and his pen,” writes H. I. Brock. “The subjects are men and women famous in many walks of life…. And it is not less interesting because most of the portraits … were made originally for the [New York] Times .”

Brock’s only complaint was that Woolf’s most famous portrait, that of George Bernard Shaw, was not included. Days later, in a letter to the editor, Howard C. Rice, Jr. of Princeton’s Department of Rare Books & Special Collections reported that Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Colen of Holicong, PA had read the story and loaned the drawing, which they owned, to the University exhibition.

After the close of the exhibition, all the charcoal drawings were returned to Woolf’s widow. Now, over sixty years later, thanks to the generous gift of Sue Kessler Feld and Stuart P. Feld, Class of 1957, we again have a substantial collection of Woolf’s portraits. Here is a small selection.

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Aristide Briand (1862-1932). Served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France. Drawing published on the front page of The New York Times, May 25, 1930.

woolf1.jpgSamuel John Gurney Hoare, 1st Viscount Templewood (1880-1959). British Foreign Minister; authored the Hoare-Laval Pact with French Prime Minister Pierre Laval. Published in Newsweek Aug. 31, 1935
woolf5.jpg Helen Rogers (Mrs. Ogden Mills) Reid, (1882-1970). President of The New York Herald Tribune; Herald Tribune Corporation; and Chairman of the Board. Published in Newsweek Nov. 23, 1935.

woolf10.jpgEdouard Herriot (1872-1957). French politician, served three times as Prime Minister and President of the Chamber of Deputies. Published in NY Herald Tribune, Feb. 17, 1929.
woolf3.jpgHugh Gibson (1880-1948). American diplomat, active in Poland 1919-1924. Published in NYT Magazine, June 21, 1931.


woolf8.jpgDr. Graeme M. Hammond (1858-1944). Neurologist and professor of nervous diseases at NYU Medical School. Published in NYT Magazine Mar. 13, 1938.
woolf9.jpg Margaret Grace Bondfield (1863-1935). English Labor politician, the first woman Cabinet Minister and one of the first three female Labor MPs. Published in NYT Magazine July 28, 1929.
woolf6.jpgLeonor Fresnel Loree (1858-1940). President of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad, among others. Chairmain of the Rutgers Board of Trustees Committee on New Jersey College for Women (now Douglass College). Published in Newsweek Sept. 14, 1935.
woolf12.jpgEvangeline Cory Booth (1865-1950). Founder of the British Salvation Army and later General of the United States Salvation Army. Raised over $12,000 for relief work after SF earthquake. Published in Newsweek Nov. 10, 1934.

woolf7.jpg Maude Royden (1876-1956). England’s most famous woman preacher and suffragist; first woman to receive a Doctor of Divinity. Published in Newsweek, Jan. 23, 1937.
woolf4.jpg J. Ramsay MacDonald (1866-1937). British politician who was the first Labor Prime Minister. Published in NY Herald Tribune Magazine, Sept. 1, 1929.

L'ordre des oiseaux

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Saint-John Perse (1887-1975) and Georges Braque (1882-1963), L’ordre des oiseaux (The Order of Birds) ([Paris]: Au vent d’Arles, 1962). 44 x 56 cm. “L’édition originale … a été tirée a cent trente exemplaires dont trente exemplaires numérotés de 1 à XXX accompagnés d’une suite des eaux-fortes signées et numérotées par l’artiste, et cent exemplaires numérotés de 1 à 100 signés par les auteurs…”—Colophon. Bound in black morocco-backed moiré silk-covered boards by Jean Duval, upper board with onlaid paper collage bird design after Braque. Graphic Arts GAX 2011- in process.
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In 1962, the Nobel-Prize winning French poet-diplomat, Saint-John Perse, composed a poem in honor of the artist Georges Braque’s eightieth birthday. He wrote about birds in general, but also about Braque’s birds in particular. Braque responded with twelve aquatints, realized at Aldo Crommelynck’s atelier in Paris. Together these were published as L’ordre des oiseaux (The Order of Birds).

The men only met twice, in 1958 and again in 1961, introduced by Jean Paulhan at the artist’s request. Braque had recently visited the bird sanctuary in Camargue and he spoke to Perse about developing a project around these birds. They worked independently and Braque chose as their epigram Perse’s line: “…L’oiseau plus vaste sur son erre voit l’homme libre de son ombre, à la limite de son bien.”

Victor Brombert writes, “Saint-John Perse’s unexpected collaboration with Braque began as a poetic meditation on birds and turned into a poem about space and the rapture of the poet. Exile, migrant and navigator of the air, Perse’s bird, like the rhapsodist, brings the seasons together. His allegiance to life and to nature is that of the ascetic. Launched on his wings, doubly loyal to air and land, he liberates himself from the “tragic shores of the real,” only to reaffirm, through the austerity of flight, a sense of peace and unity achieved at the very frontiers of man. He is a “prince of ubiquity,” a creator of his own flight.” (Hudson Review, 1966)

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See also: http://www.sjperse.org/oiseaux.html

A complete English translation of Perse’s poem can be found in Birds (New York: Pantheon Books, 1966) Firestone Oversize PQ2623.E386 O73713 1966q

Brady's House of Representatives

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Mathew Brady (1822-1896), Composite of the Members of The United States House of Representatives, 1860. Salted paper print, Graphic Arts GA 2011- in process. Gift of Wm. B. Becker. [It’s just a shadow at the corners, nothing is wrong with the photograph]

In 1858, Mathew Brady opened a Washington D.C. gallery in Willard’s Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th street. http://tinyurl.com/bradygallery. Built eleven years earlier, the hotel was both close to the White House and frequented by both northerners and southerners. Some called it the “Residence of Presidents.” Nathaniel Hawthorne said it was “more justly called the center of Washington and the Union than either the Capitol, the White House, or the State Department.”

It was from this location that Brady and his staff began to photograph the politicians and celebrities of Washington D.C., including the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. When he finished capturing all the heads of the Thirty-Sixth Congress, Brady combined the individual portraits into two enormous panels measuring three by five feet. Then, he rephotographed them and sold large prints at $5.00 each. See the Senate photograph in an earlier post.

As the Southern states began to secede from the Union, Brady’s photographs were copied to wood engravings and published in magazines such as Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Monthly. Sales to Brady, however, were not good and he lost a great deal of money on this project.

For more information, see
Mary Panzer, Mathew Brady and the Image of History (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), Firestone TR140.B7 P36 1997

Sonorama: the Sound of the News Magazine

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Sonorama: le magazine sonore de l’actualité. Edited by Claude-Maxe. Paris: [Sonopresse], No 1, Octobre 1958-No 42, Juillet-Août 1962. Graphic Arts GAX 2011- in process

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Graphic Arts is fortunate to have acquired a complete run of Sonorama, an innovative French news magazine that readers can both read and play. Published eleven times a year, each issue consisted of six articles and six flexi discs offering contemporary news, sports, interviews, speeches, and music. The discs are playable by folding back the pages and placing the entire issue onto a turntable (note the center hole).

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Featured celebrities include Edith Piaf, Brigitte Bardot, Sacha Distel, Maurice Chevalier, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Pagnol, André Malraux, and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Albert Camus is interviewed about his new play Les Possédés, only months before his death. Musicians include Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Maria Callas.

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This complete run of forty-four issues includes the supplement to No 15 on cycling legend Fausto Coppi and a special number, hors série, celebrating Charles de Gaulle’s December 20, 1960 speech on Algeria.

Severo Sarduy, novelist, critic, poet, and painter

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Severo Sarduy (1937-1993), Landscape, 1980. Acrylic on cloth. 27 x 41 cm.

Thanks to the assistance of the Executive Committee for the Program in Latin American Studies, Graphic Arts recently acquired thirty-four painting and drawings by the novelist, critic, poet, and visual artist Severo Sarduy (1937-1993). Artifacts from his studio accompany the paintings, along with several works by his friends Roland Barthes, Jorge Camacho, and José Luis Cuevas.

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Kamel Ouidi, Portrait of Severo Sarduy, ca. 1980. Gelatin silver print.

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Severo Sarduy (1937-1993), Triptych (I, II, III), 1990. Coffee and acrylic on linen. 27 x 19 cm.

sarduy extra3.jpg Jorge Camacho (1934-2011), Placard Sarduy, 1976. Text by Sarduy. Lithograph. Edition of 500. 87.4 x 59.4 cm.
sarduy extra4.jpg Severo Sarduy (1937-1993), Untitled, no date. Mixed media on paper. 53.5 x 35.5 cm.

Born in Camagüey Cuba, Sarduy was sent to Paris in 1960 to study art at the École du Louvre and never returned. Even after becoming a French citizen, however, he wrote, "I am a Cuban through and through, who just happens to live in Paris." His second novel De donde son los cantantes (From Cuba with a Song) involves three narratives intertwined with the history of Cuba.

In Paris, Sarduy became close friends with Roland Barthes, Philippe Sollers, and other writers connected with journal Tel Quel. His third novel, Cobra (1972), translated by Sollers won the Prix Medicis for a work of foreign literature in translation. In addition to his own writing, Sarduy edited, published and promoted the work of many other Spanish and Latin American authors first at Editions Seuil and then Editions Gallimard.

In Sarduy's 1993 obituary in The Independent, James Kirkup wrote, "Sarduy was a genius with words, one of the great contemporary stylists writing in Spanish. ... Sarduy will be remembered chiefly for his brilliant, unpredictable, iconoclastic and often grimly funny novels, works of a totally liberated imagination composed by a master of disciplined Spanish style. He encompassed the sublime and the ridiculous, mingling oral traditions with literary mannerisms adopted from his baroque masters ...."

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Severo Sarduy (1937-1993), Untitled, 1967. Acrylic on paper. 14 x 20 cm.

Sarduy continued to draw and paint throughout his life. A retrospective of his art was held in 1998 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and many of the painting now at Princeton were first seen by the public at this exhibition.

"I write only in order to make myself well," Sarduy once said. "I write in an attempt to become normal, to be like everybody else, even though it's obvious I am not. I am a neurotic creature, a prey to phobias, burdened with obsessions and anxieties. And instead of going to a psychoanalyst or committing suicide or abandoning myself to drink and drugs, I write. That's my therapy."

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Severo Sarduy (1937-1993), Untitled, 1991. Acrylic on paper. 32 x 47.5 cm.

More information on Sarduy and this new collection will be published in an upcoming issue of the Princeton University Library Chronicle, including an essay by his colleague François Wahl. Until then, here is an interview with Sarduy completed shortly before his death:



Libros San Cristobal

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Catherine E. Docter, William George Lovell, and Christopher Lutz, The Village Churches of Santiago de Guatemala, 1524-1773 / Fachadas de las Iglesias de los Pueblos de Santiago de Guatemala, 1524-1773 (Santiago Zamora Sacatépequez, Guatemala: Libros San Cristóbal, 2010. Copy 7 of 200. Graphic Arts 2011- in process.
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This fine press edition documents the remaining sixteenth-century village churches in and around Santiago de Guatemala. Pen and ink drawings of twenty-two buildings were transferred to metal relief plates, printed and hand-colored by Grove Oholendt. The accompanying two letterpress books—one in English and one in Spanish—include twenty-two tipped-in photographs by Mitchell Denburg. Each volume is covered in traditional Maya hand-woven petate paper weaving and the woodcut endpapers are printed by the Guatemalan artist Guillermo Maldonado.

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“Libros San Cristobal is a fine book press and atelier located in Antigua, Guatemala. Our hand-publishing studio produces limited edition fine books and portfolios on Central American subject matter. …Between Mexico and Colombia, we are the only fine press making [letterpress] books about the region, in the region. …All publications are made under one roof, by a team of three Americans and four Guatemalans, all Kaqchikel Maya. We do [letterpress] printing with type [cast] in San Francisco and metal plate impressions made in Guatemala City; we hand craft our boxes, case work, and fine bindery; we illuminate, paint, hand stamp on imported as well as our own fine amate fig park paper … .”

“For the past 23 years, all books have been designed, crafted, and printed by bookmaker Christopher Beisel…. The press team for all books is: Sergio Bucu Miché, bookmaker and binder; Felipe Bucu Miché, printer and binder; Carlos Bucu Miché, painter and printmaker; Roquel Lopez, papermaker, printer, and master painter/designer, Grove Oholendt.”

See also:
Italo Morales, U cayibal atziak: imágenes en los tejidos guatemaltecos = images in Guatemalan weavings (1992). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) F1465.3.T4 M67 1992q
Ana Livingston Paddock, Onamuh y la luna: un mito de la creacion = Namuh and the moon: a creation myth (1994) Rare Books: Western Americana Collection (WA) 2005-0096Q
Barbara G. Nottebohm, Ancient ceremonial hachas of Southern Mesoamerica (1996). Rare Books: Western Americana Collection (WA) F1434.2.S38 N67q
Caly Domitila Kanek, Hueso de la tierra (1996). Rare Books: Western Americana Collection (WA): PM3576.Z95 S5 1996
Christopher Beisel, Guatemalen designs from woven paper (2005). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2009-2354N

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