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.
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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/Book_and_Paper/Faculty/Clifton_Meador.php ]]>
The Graphic Arts collection includes original work by the British artist William Blake (1757-1827). Among these is an over-painted monotype entitled "Eternally I labour on" for his Urizen project. This Blake came to Princeton in a small bound volume (4to) with a letter written by A. Edward Newton: "This is a hand colored plate by William Blake, not an original drawing, from Urizen. I bought it from Gabriel Wells when we were in London together in the summer of 1921. And I paid a pretty stiff price for it, too. Edward Newton, May 1922."
When the painted print was exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1939, the catalog noted, "Los striving to lift the Stony Roof, the 10th plate of Urizen. Painted with strong opaque pigments, printed by Blake's monotype process. The background, showing clearly the reticulation of the mill-board, is especially brilliant, being executed in a wonderful variety of bright colors. Surrounded by framing lines, and inscribed below by Blake, 'Eternally I labour on'."
How this image fits into the published and unpublished copies of Urizen has been a subject of much research. Here are a few comments.
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In 1966, collector and Francophile John Douglas Gordon, class of 1905, donated a collection of 134 seventeenth-century engravings by Robert Nanteuil to the Graphic Arts collection in memory of his wife, Janet Munday Gordon. Nanteuil was Royal Engraver to Louis XIV and the outstanding portraitist of his age. Thanks to Mr. Gordon, Princeton holds impressions from approximately one half of the plates completed by Nanteuil.
We recently digitized this entire collection and all of Graphic Arts' Nanteuil engravings can be viewed at http://diglib.princeton.edu/
Our display of pre-cinema optical devices will be on view in the second floor cases of Rare Books and Special Collections in Firestone Library for two more months. Included is this nineteenth-century French toy magic lantern projector with hand-colored slides. RBSC galleries are open to the public weekdays 8:30-4:30 and weekends 12:00-5:00.
If you are interested in these devices, you should consider attending the International Magic Lantern Society conference in Washington D.C. July 10-13, 2008. Many of the performances are free and open to the public. The entire series of scholarly lectures can be attended for only $10. For more information, see
http://www.magiclanternsociety
In the early years of the nineteenth-century, John Thomas Smith was the Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum as well as a professional illustrator. He lived on Chandos Street near Covent Garden, a rather seedy part of London, where he liked to sketch portraits of his neighbors.
Smith's 1833 obituary printed in The Gentleman's Magazine noted "Mr. Smith had much pleasure in tracing out and examining the peculiar manners and costumes of the inhabitants and visitors of this district of the metropolis. The procuring of information from various sources occupied many years of his life; and he meditated the publication of this interesting mass in two volumes, which we regret he never completed. . . but in 1817 he published a work on which he had been some time employed, entitled Vagabondiana". For more information, read Smith's autobiography: A Book for a Rainy Day (London: Richard Bentley, 1845). Firestone Library (F) 1459.863.1845
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This posting is in honor of Stephen Rea's brilliant performance at the Public Theater in Kicking a Dead Horse. http://www.publictheater.org/
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Rare Books and Special Collections holds a large collection of Irish theater plays, playbills, posters, and manuscripts given by Leonard L. Milberg in honor of the Irish poet and Princeton professor Paul Muldoon.
Shown here is a poster from an early production by Stephen Rea's Field Day Theatre Company, The Cure at Troy written by Seamus Heaney and directed by Stephen Rea. His company also originated the production of Translations by Brian Friel. Field Day now publishes books. https://marketplace.nd.edu/
fielddaybooks/index.cfm
For more information on the Irish Theater Collection, see the website http://www.princeton.edu/milberg.
Here is a finding aid to the posters: http://libweb.princeton.edu/libraries/
firestone/rbsc/aids/tc145.html
The Graphic Arts division holds a scrapbook of early paper photography compiled by the British optician and amateur photographer, Richard Willats. After several years of work by many staff members, the entire scrapbook has been digitized and is available for public view at http://diglib.princeton.edu/
Many of these men were leading practitioners of early paper photography. Robert Bingham was the author of his own manuals including Photogenic Manipulation. Part I: Containing the Theory and Plain Instructions in the Art of Photography, or the Production of Pictures through the Agency of Light.... 4th ed. (London: George Knight and Sons, [1847]) and The Collodion Process: being a supplement to Part I of Photogenic Manipulation (London: G. Knight and Sons, [1852]).
Sir John Herschel was a scientist, chemist, and astronomer. Herschel discovered the chemistry for a fixing agent or "hypo", and then in 1839, invented a photographic process using sensitized paper. Herschel coined the use of the terms "photography," "positive," and "negative."
Joseph Cundall was a leading book binder and publisher, known for his handsome illustrated children's books. He also experimented with early paper photography.
Opticians Henry Negretti and Joseph Warren Zambra formed a scientific instrument company, Negretti & Zambra, in 1850. They also printed and published photographs using various early processes.
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Bingham, Robert J. (Jefferson) (British, 1825-1870), active Paris, 3 calotypes, architectural views, 1 colored by Richard Willats, ca. 1848
First American Woodcut, ca. 1670
At the age of twenty-two, John Foster had completed his education at Harvard and was teaching English grammar in Dorchester, Massachusetts. When his friend and minister, the influential Richard Mather, passed away, members of the congregation planned a publication in his honor. Foster offered to design and print a woodcut portrait of Mather for a frontispiece to The Life and Death of That Reverend Man of God, Mr. Richard Mather. Only six copies of the print are known. It is considered the first woodcut printed in the United States.
First American metamorphosis book, ca.1775
[Metamorphosis] ([Philadelphia, ca.1775])
Graphic Arts holds three different editions of this ealy American juvenile. This one contains eight woodcuts by James Poupard. The prints are arranged into sections with four of the plates cut through the center so that the top and bottom can be raised. The lion turns into a griffin, the girl into a mermaid, etc. According to Sinclair Hamilton's Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers, some later 19th-century editions carry the title Metamorphosis; or, a Transformation of Pictures with Poetical Explanations for the Amusement of Young Persons.
In the 1820s, a group of men from Philadelphia, prevented by an obscure ordinance from enjoying their favorite pastime in their own city, began playing an early version of baseball in Camden, New Jersey. By the 1830s, other teams had formed along the East Coast, and rules to the game were published in Robin Carver's Book of Sports (1834). Carver's book included this wood engraving depicting a baseball game played on Boston Common. The same block was used to illustrate several publications over the next few years, including the first and second editions of The Boy's Book of Sports (1835 and 1838).
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Aisōpou tou Phrygos ho bios kai hoi mythoi: auxēthentes te kai pro sapēkribōmenoi pros antigraphon palaiota ton to ek tēs basilikēs bibliothēkēs = Æsopi Phrygis vita & fabulæ : plures & emendatiores, ex vetustissimo codice bibliothecæ Regiæ (Lutetiæ [Paris]: Ex officina Rob. Stephani typographi Regii, M. D. XLVI. [1546]). Greek title and Greek subtitle in Greek characters; text in Greek. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2004-3189N