July 2012 Archives

Reflex camera, ca. 1905. Made by the Reflex Camera Company,
Newark, New Jersey. Adjustable lens by Voigtländer & Sohn, Braunschweig, Germany. Gift of anonymous donor.

See where this camera stands within a timeline of photographic equipment, as shown in: Douglas B. Tubbs, The Illustrated History of the Camera from 1839 to the Present (New York Graphic Society, 1975). Marquand Library (SA) Oversize TR250 .T82 1975q

Death mask of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), from the original by Domenico Brucciani (1815/18-1880) in possession of W. M. Rossetti. Previously owned by Janet Camp Troxell. Referenced in Princeton University Library Chronicle vol. 33, no. 3, p. 173.

The English poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) was in poor health during the last years of his life, particularly after being cut-out of the Kelmscott decorative arts firm by William Morris (1834-1896). He was addicted to chloral hydarate, which he had begun taking to cure insomnia. In December of 1881 Rossetti suffered a mild stroke that left him largely paralyzed and on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1882 he died. The cause was listed as Brights Disease (kidney failure).

His friends not only had a death mask made by the leading plaster caster of the time, Domenico Brucciani, but also a cast of his right hand. A directory of British bronze sculpture founders and plaster figure makers has been mounted by the National Portrait Gallery, London. Under “B” you will find a complete history of the Brucciani family’s plaster cast business and Domenico’s work as a Formatore or modeller for what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum.
http://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/british-bronze-founders-and-plaster-figure-makers-1800-1980-1/

From Pembroke College, Oxford, founded 1624. The College of Doctor Johnson.

This stone from the Houses of Parliament was presented to Princeton University by His Britannic Majesty’s Government in grateful recognition of the hospitality shown by the University to the British Service Mission in the U.S. A.

American publishers’ trade bindings are a popular topic in book collecting. One of the best designers of this genre was Margaret Neilson Armstrong (1867-1944). She worked primarily for Scribner’s, completing at least 270 books for the publisher. Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933) was one of the authors whose novels were all originally bound with Armstrong’s decorative gold stamping. Here are a few, but for a complete inventory see the database mounted in 2003 by The University of Alabama, University Libraries, in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries. http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/WebZ/SearchOrBrowse?sessionid=01-62870-520831238

See also: Charles B. Gullans, A Checklist of Trade Bindings Designed by Margaret Armstrong (Los Angeles: University of California Library, 1968). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize Z269.2.A75 G84 1968q

Désiré Magloire Bourneville (1840-1909) and Paul Regnard (1850-1927), Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière. Service de M. Charcot (Paris: Adrien Delahaye & Co., 1876-1877, 1878). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2012- in process

As a young professional Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) served his internship at Salpêtrière, a women’s hospital in Paris used as more of “a warehouse for female outcasts: women who were mad, violent, crippled, chronically ill, mentally retarded, unmarried and pregnant, or simply old and poor.” Charcot called it “that grand asylum of human misery.” [Medical Muses, 2011]

In 1862, Charcot returned to Salpêtrière as chief physician of medical services and transformed it. During his tenure, the hospital grew to house more than 5,000 patients in 100 buildings; the largest institution of its kind in Europe. It had its own farm, bakery, and by 1878, a well-equipped photography studio. (Bellevue Hospital in New York City also had a full photography department.)

Asti Hustvedt writes, “Charcot … brought hysteria, hitherto marginal, into the mainstream. He legitimized the disease by defining it as an inherited neurological disorder, not madness or malingering.” Martin Kemp noted that the doctor’s work was “an unrivaled attempt to create what may be called ‘visual psychology’ —in which imagery and environments played a central role in diagnosis, recording, clinical suggestion, treatment and the design of the patients’ surroundings.”

Charcot was deeply influenced by his predecessor at Salpêtrière, Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne de Boulogne who published his treatise Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine in 1862. Six years earlier, Duchenne had begun photographing his patients, thanks to the help of Adrien Tournachon (Nadar’s brother), as a form of “orthography of the physiognomy in motion.” Charcot began to do the same.

In 1875, he selected as an intern a young psychiatry student named Désiré-Magloire Bourneville, who was also a journalist. Bourneville wrote extensively for medical journals and eventually, published two of his own. Under Charcot, he learned to keep extensive medical histories on the patients, many of which were later published in Iconographie. It is thanks to Bourneville that Charcot’s many accomplishments became known both in his own time and today.

Another intern, Paul Regnard, was hired, in part, for his ability to make photographs. Charcot hoped these would provide visual evidence to support his conviction that hysteria was a real organic disease with particular symptoms. In 1882, photographer Albert Londe (1858-1917) was hired as a chemistry assistant and before long, took over the running of the photography laboratory. Londe published his own study in 1893 entitled La photographie médicale: application aux sciences médicales et physiologiques, dedicated to Charcot.

“The photographs in the Iconographie haunt its pages,” writes Hustvedt, “[they are] the ghosts of women who refuse to be reduced to medical illustrations.”

See also:
Asti Hustvedt, Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2011). Firestone RC339.52.C453 H87 2011

Ann Thomas, Beauty of Another Order: Photography in Science (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press in association with the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1997). Marquand Library (SAPH): TR692 .T466 1997

Yale graduate Noah Webster, Jr. (1758-1843) is responsible for changing the word “colour” to “color” and “musick” to “music.” Webster wrote the first American dictionary, entitled A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806) and followed it with An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828).

Before the age thirty, Webster had already published a three volume study: A Grammatical Institute of the English Language, including a speller (1783), a grammar (1784), and a reader (1785).

In its first fifty years in print, the speller sold 15 million copies.

Not all his ideas were accepted. In “An Essay on the Necessity, Advantages, and Practicality of Reforming the Mode of Spelling …”, Webster described the alterations he wished to make. Here are a few:

1. The omission of all superfluous or silent letters; as a in bread. Thus bread, head, give, breast, built, meant, realm, friend, would be spelt, bred, hed, giv, brest, bilt, ment, relm, frend.

2. A substitution of a character that has a certain definite sound, for one that is more vague and indeterminate. Thus by putting ee instead of ea or ie, the words mean, near, speak grieve, zeal, would become meen, neer, speek, greev, zeel.

3. Thus ch in French derivatives should be changed into sh; machine, chaise, chevalier, should be written masheen, shaze, shevaleer; and pique, tour, oblique, should be written peek, toor, obleek.

Attributed to John Henri Isaac Browere (1792-1834), Bust of Noah Webster, no date. Casting plaster. Gift of Mrs. Theodore L. Bailey. Ex 4766

Rare Books and Special Collection at Princeton, holds a Model No. 1 Remington Type-writer from 1874. The manufacture of this machine began at the gun works of Eliphalet Remington (1793-1861) in 1873 but the first sales were not made until the following year. Remington called his machine a Type-writer and it wrote capital letters only. Demand for a greater variety of fonts led to a second model in 1878.

The young Remington began working as a blacksmith in Kinne Corners, New York, where he invented a new barrel for an hunting rifle. Its success led Remington to build a factory, where he could manufacture the guns himself. Remington & Sons also produced and sold bicycles, farm ploy blades, and sewing machines but it is the type-writers for which they had their greatest success.

Barthélemy Roger (1767-1840) after a drawing by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758-1823), La raison parle, et le plaisir entraîne (Reason Speaks and Pleasure Carries One Away), ca. 1796-1799. Stipple engraving. Goncourt 78.ii; Laveissière 80-81.36; Beraldi XI.229. Graphic Arts Collection. GA2012-02315. Gift of Mary M. Schmidt.

“In order to succeed in what was for printmakers a perilous period, Prud’hon had to have more than sensitivity to contemporary taste,” notes Elizabeth Guffey. “Prud’hon’s print Love Reduced to Reason, which went on sale in later 1793 … was an unqualified success… . [The artist] followed it up with a series of similar projects, including Virtue Struggling with Vice: Reason Speaks, Pleasure Entraps; Love Caresses Before It Wounds; Innocence Prefers Love to Wealth; and Love Seduces Innocence, Pleasure Entraps, Remorse Follows.”

Unlike many artists who allowed the publisher to handle the printing, publication, and sale of their work, Prud’hon kept a hand in every aspect of the process. His prints sold for as much as 7 livres (compared to the 3 livres charged for prints by Jacques-Louis David, 1748-1825). The investment and the sale of Prud’hon’s work was shared between his publisher and friend Constantin, the engraver (in this case Roger), and the artist.

For this print, Reason Speaks and Pleasure Carries One Away (also translated Pleasure Entraps), Prud’hon made two drawings, one ink and the other in two colors of chalk. Both are in the collection of the Fogg Art Museum. It may be that the artist and the engraver were considering a two color engraving, although no example of this has been found. Also shown below is the similar Virtue Struggles with Vice.

(c) Fogg Art Museum

(c) Fogg Art Museum

[left]: Prud’hon, La Raison parle et le Plaisir entraîne (Reason Speaks and Pleasure Carries One Away), ca. 1795-1799. Chalk drawing. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.888
[right]: Prud’hon, La Vertu aux prises avec le Vice (Virtue Struggle with Vice), ca. 1795. Chalk drawing. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.884

See also:
Elizabeth E. Guffey, Drawing an Elusive Line (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 2001). Marquand Library ND 553.P9G83 2001

On February 12, 1892, the Princetonian published this notice: “Mr. Barton Cruikshank has resigned the instructorship in Graphics to become superintendent of the Hammond Typewriter Co. Mr. F. C. Torrey, of the Electrical School, will succeed him for the remainder of the year.” Cruikshank had only just accepted the position of assistant professor the previous fall, teaching a “course of graphics” at the John C. Green School of Science, Princeton College.

The Hammond typewriter was still a fairly new machine, having been introduced in 1884 at the New Orleans Centennial Exposition. It differed from the Remington typewriter in its round, rotating type shuttle. To change fonts or languages, the owner purchased separate shuttles and switched between them as needed. The Hammond Company slogan was: “For every nation, for every tongue.”

Princeton’s Hammond is a variation on the Hammond No.1. The Hammond No. 2 was introduced in 1895 and No. 3 in 1896. The machines sold well into the 1920s, when the name was changed to the Varityper and continued for another fifty years.

See also: Darren Sean Wershler-Henry, The Iron Whim: a Fragmented History of Typewriting (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007). Firestone Library (F) Z49.A1 W47 2007
Wilfred A. Beeching, Century of the Typewriter (London: Heinemann, 1974). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Z49.A1 B43 1974

Hammond typewriter, 1880s. Museum objects collection.

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

Leopold Grozelier (1830-1865), Lucretia Mott, 1853. Lithograph. Graphic Arts Collection, GA 2012- in process

The Quaker minister Lucretia Mott (1793-1880) fought for the rights of women and of African Americans. A mother of six, Mott traveled and preached throughout the Eastern United States in front of both Black and White, both male and female organizations. She helped found the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society and attended the World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. Together with twenty-five year old Elizabeth Stanton, Mott organized the first women’s rights convention held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848.

Here is a video of the honorable senator from New York Hilary Clinton’s speech on August 26, 2008, honoring Mott, Stanton, and the other women who fought for their rights.

See also: Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), Discourse on Woman (Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson, 1850). Rare Books: Miriam Y. Holden Collection (ExHolden) HQ1423 .M9

After John Hafen (1856-1910), Last Public Address of Lieut. Gen. Joseph Smith,
no date, original 1888. Albumen silver print of a lithograph. Graphic Arts Collection. GA 2012- in process

After John Hafen (1856-1910), Lieutenant-General Joseph Smith. First Commander of the Nauvoo Legion, 1888, original painting 1887. Graphic Arts GA 2008.00903

Unidentified artist, Martyrdom of Prophet Joseph Smith, 1890. Lithograph. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2008.00904

Smith was arrested for treason and was taken to Carthage jail but on June 27, 1844, an angry mob stormed the jail. They killed both Joseph and his brother Hiram Smith. The remaining LDS Church followers united behind Brigham Young, who moved them to Utah, centered in Salt Lake City. This is where the artist John Hafen joined them in 1860s.

Edward Hopper (1882-1967), Night Shadows, 1921. Drypoint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01456

In October 1924, after ten years as the leading progressive American weekly, The New Republic magazine filed for bankruptcy. Founded in 1914 under the editorial leadership of Herbert Croly (1869-1930) and Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), the magazine was losing subscribers, Lippmann and other writers were being lured away by other publications, and The New Republic desperately needed a plan.

In December of the same year, the magazine ran an advertisement announcing a subscription bargain: if you purchase a two-year subscription to The New Republic, you will also receive a portfolio of six etchings by the American artists Peggy Bacon (1895-1987), Ernest Haskell (1876-1925), Edward Hopper (1882-1967), John Marin (1870-1953), Kenneth Hayes Miller (1876-1952), and John Sloan (1871-1951). The price was $12 (a regular one-year subscription was $5). They had no idea what a bargain this would be.

Hopper’s Night Shadows was completed at the beginning of 1921, just in time for the January 25 opening of the Chicago Exhibition of Etchings sponsored by the Chicago Society of Etchers. The drypoint was seen again that year in the National Academy of Design’s winter exhibition and in 1922 at the First International Exhibition of Etchings, organized by the Brooklyn Society of Etchers and held at the Anderson Galleries in New York City.

Hopper’s friend, Louis Bouché and manager of the Belmaison Gallery inside the Wanamaker Department Store, chose Night Shadows for a show in May of 1922 and again in May of 1923. It was easily Hopper’s best-known and best-loved print.

Surprisingly in 1923, Hopper stopped making prints and when The New Republic asked for a printing plate, he happily offered them one of his best. Most collections hold the 1924 reprinting, but the sheet in Princeton’s Graphic Arts collection is from 1921, printed by Hopper himself.

The collection holds one other print by Hopper, seen below.

Edward Hopper (1882-1967), Eastside Interior, 1922. Etching. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01455

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

Attributed to Frank Childs, [View of Nassau Hall, Princeton, New Jersey], ca. 1859. Oil on canvas. Graphic Arts American Paintings

“On the night of Saturday, March 10, 1855, Nassau Hall was destroyed by fire,” writes Robert C. Smith. “At precisely half past eight, as the Philadelphian Society was ending its meeting on the fourth floor of the building, the cry of fire was heard from below. ‘Every effort,’ President Maclean later told the Trustees, ‘was made to subdue the flames but without success.’ As soon as it was realized that the firemen, without sufficient water to prime their noses, were powerless to stop the flames, whipped to the roof by a strong wind, the work of salvaging began.”

“‘The students and professors worked finely at the fire,’ one student wrote, ‘and all distinction seemed to be lost in the general confusion.’ Henry C. Cameron, Tutor in Greek, and a student named Gilchrist ‘burst open’ the door of the picture gallery and began handing the portraits to safety. George Musgrave Giger, Professor of Latin, and his colleagues Professors Duffield and Alexander forced their way through the blaze to rescue papers and other valuable property. The old bust of Homer was hauled down from over the center door, while ‘General’ Perrine, a Princeton character of the time, rode up to direct the evacuation.”

“By midnight all was over and everything of moment to the College had been saved, except the bell, which had survived the earlier fire of 1802. Some students had lost all they possessed, but no one was hurt save James Bayles of Kingston, who fell and broke his leg.” From Robert C. Smith, “John Notman’s Nassau Hall,” in Princeton University Library Chronicle XIV, no. 3 (spring 1953). http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visualmaterials/pulc/pulcv14n_3.pdf

This painting depicts Nassau Hall (built in 1756) after it was restored and revised by the architect John Notman (1810-1865). Notman made a number of exterior changes to the building, including the staircases at the ends of the building and the arched front doorway.

“In 2004, The Museum of Modern Art approached typographer Matthew Carter about “refreshing” their icon MoMA, set in Franklin Gothic. Carter said it was, ‘like asking an architect to design an exact replica of a building.’ The result: The new logo - rechristened MoMA Gothic - looks just like the old one, but stretched vertically one eight-hundredth of an inch… . Will anyone notice? Glenn D. Lowry stated: ‘I suspect that if we’re really successful the public won’t really notice the difference, it will just feel right.’”

If I understand the evolution correctly, this text is a portion of an essay by Andrew Blum, originally published in The New York Times, July 21, 2003, as “The Modern’s Other Renovation.” In the winter of 2011-12, it became part of Identity, a wonderful exhibition video prepared by Dexter Sinister (Princeton University lecturer in graphic design David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey) at The Artists’ Space in New York City. Most recently, it is part of The Serving Library’s 3rd issue and the exhibition catalogue for Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language at the Museum of Modern Art until August 27, 2012.

Bulletins of the Serving Library (Berlin, Germany: Sternberg Press; New York, NY: Dexter Sinister, 2011- ). Electronic resource http://servinglibrary.org/

Complete Identity catalogue: http://artistsspace.org/aspace/wp-content/files_mf/identitybookletdigital.pdf

“Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language brings together historical and contemporary works of art that treat language not merely as a system of communication governed by grammatical rules and assigned meanings, but as a material that can be manipulated with creative freedom, like paint, clay, or any other artistic medium.”—MoMA press release http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/ecstaticalphabets/

Robert Seymour (1798-1836), Returning Fra the North, or, The Effects of Unco Gede Living, [November 1, 1834]. Lithograph with hand coloring. Published in McLean’s Monthly Sheet of Caricatures or The Looking Glass, no. 58. Graphic Arts 2012- in process

The Looking Glass was originally drawn by William Heath (ca. 1795-1840) while based in Glasgow from 1825 to 1826. The satirical newspaper was revived in 1830 by publisher Thomas McLean (1788-1875) under the title McLean’s Monthly Sheet of Caricatures or The Looking Glass.

Artist Robert Seymour (1798-1836) replaced Heath as the chief contributor and turned out hundreds of caricatures, large and small, colored and uncolored, to meet the ridged monthly deadlines for the next six years. Working primarily in lithography, Seymour was also producing weekly drawings for Figaro in London, edited by Abbott à Beckett and later, Henry Mayhew.

The caricature depicts Scottish judge and publisher Lord Jeffrey (1773-1850) who edited the Edinburgh Review from 1802 to 1829. Jeffrey was elected to parliament in 1831, living primarily in London, and introduced the Scottish Reform Bill in 1832. Two years later, not long before Seymour drew this image, Jeffrey was named Lord Jeffrey and returned to Scotland to served as a judge.

The words “Unco Gede” are a Scottish term for exceptionally good or strictly moral. Jeffrey had a reputation for his strict morality, which may account for the reference.

For the complete story of McLean’s magazine, through various titles and formats, see: http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/june2005.html