Recently in Acquisitions Category

Thanks to the Friends of the Princeton University Library, the graphic arts collection is the fortunate new owner of a complete run of Wiener Photographische Blätter, edited by Franz Schiffner (Wien: Herausgegeben von Wiener Camera-Klub, 1894-1898), 60 issues in 5 quarto volumes. The letterpress text is profusely illustrated with images in a variety of mediums including photogravures (many with chine-collé), lichtdrucks (collotypes), gelatino-chloride prints (printing-out-papers), early half-tones, stereographs, and rotogravures.

Thirty-year-old Alfred Stieglitz was captivated and offered four of his best negatives, including Wet Day on the Boulevard; Waiting for the Return; Winter, Fifth Avenue, which he was selling for $75 each; and The Net Mender, his personal favorite at the time. Late in 1897 (perhaps under that influence of Wiener Photographische Blätter), Stieglitz began to hand-pull his own photogravures for his first portfolio, Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies (held in the Princeton University Art Museum). In addition, the Austrian journal would have a profound influence Stieglitz’s serial publications, when he issued photogravure plates as editor of Camera Notes and later his own journal Camera Work.

The Graphic Arts Collection holds a complete set of Camera Notes (1897-1903) and a complete set of Stieglitz’s quarterly journal Camera Work (1903-1917), both given to Princeton University by David H. McAlpin, Class of 1920. In addition, we hold a second incomplete set of Camera Work given by Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986).

In his 1978 book The Collection of Alfred Stieglitz: Fifty Pioneers of Modern Photography, J. Paul Getty Museum photography curator emeritus Weston Naef writes, “In January the first issue of the Wiener Photographische Blätter appeared, edited by F. Schiffner and published by the Camera-Klub in Wien with seventeen original photogravures by Hugo Henneberg, Hans Watzek, F. Mallman, J. S. Bergheim, and Adolph Meyer. Each gravure was printed with an ink of a different tone, and some like Meyer’s were mounted on colored paper, making this among the most carefully produced photography periodicals published anywhere in the world.”

Our sincere thanks to the Friends of the Princeton University Library.

Handwerkskundschaft. Wir dieser Zeit Geschwor[e]ne Vor und andere Meistere des Loebl. Handwerks derer Maurer, in der Kayserlichen .. (Bremen: Ernsting, 1791 [ink inscriptions 1798]. Engraved broadside. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013- in process

A panoramic view of the city of Bremen tops this journeyman’s certificate. It is inscribed for twenty-five year old Johann Hingstmann (born 1773), who has completed his twelve year apprenticeship to reach the level of journeyman. Hingstmann now has the right to charge a fee for his own work. To reach the highest level of master craftsman, he will have to submit an example of his work to a particular guild for evaluation and hopefully, be admitted to the guild as a master.

The certificate is engraved by Daniel Albert (Albrecht) Ernsting (1749-1820), who was himself an apprentice to a Bremen printer. Ernsting then studied in Göttingen and Copenhagen before returning to Bremen and opening a shop. His name is found engraved on portraits, business cards, playing cards, and of course certificates.

Graphic Arts recently acquired an album of tobacco wrapping papers from the Nuremberg firms of Ph. Casimir Krafft (P.C.K.& C.) and Georg Platner, undated but approximately from the 1780s to the 1830s. The collection may have been assembled by the printers of these papers or the manufacturers of the tobacco as a record of their advertising. The papers indicate that the two companies also had factories in London and Amsterdam.

In the 1700s printed trade cards and wrappers for tobacco, powdered medicines, health aids, and pins began to be used throughout Europe. Tobacco papers identified the retailer who blended and measured out the tobacco into the wrapper (Alec Davis, Package and Print: the Development of Container and Label Design (London: Faber and Faber, 1967). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) TS158 .D38 1967)

Etiquette der Tabak Fabriken Ph. C. Karfft und Platner [album], Nuremberg, no date [1780s-1830s]. 86 sheets engraved or lithographed, some color. Graphic Arts Collection 2013- in process

In the summer of 2012, Brody Neuenschwander, Class of 1981, prepared an installation at the Kapel Ten Bogaerde in Koksijde, Belgium. The master calligrapher transformed the fourteenth-century chapel into a “meditation on the death and resurrection of language.” Here is a look at the installation.

The curator describes Neuenschwander’s work, “The chapel’s two large windows were encased in lanterns bearing writing, typography and the impressions of books. In the center of the space was a library of 500 black books, with the hands of the artist rising from them or sinking into their darkness. At the end of the chapel, on the axis of the black library, were six large panels of lines, texts and gestures rendered on Japanese kozo paper.”

Brody Neuenschwander, Documentation (Koksijde, Belgium: Kapel Ten Bogaerde, 2012) Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Alfred L. Bush.

in this book
the pen

under strain

splits

tries to explain

tears the page

with blood black pain
pauses at the tip
to drip

a line

to love in vain

—Brody Neuenschwander

“In Illegal Alien’s Meditations on el Ser y la Nada, Chagoya continues his exploration of the codex format inspired by surviving pre-Colombian Mayan and Aztec books. In this, his twelfth book, Chagoya examines cultural realities with satire and humor. Using an historical lexicon of Mexican images with an overlay of abstract Buddhist meditation paintings and appropriated images from popular culture, Chagoya juxtaposes ordinary and spiritual life. The title is a comical tongue-in-cheek reference to Sartre’s On Being and Nothingness.“—Shark Press

Chagoya’s book was printed by hand in eleven colors from ten aluminum plates with chine collé and gold metallic powder on 14 x 88 inch handmade Amate paper folded concertina-style. The lithographic plates were made from Mylars created by the artist that combine Xerox transfers with hand drawing, using pencils, toner and ink washes. The edition consists of 30 numbered impressions, plus proofs, pulled by Master printer Bud Shark, assisted by Evan Colbert, between August 21st and November 29th, 2012.

Now come the days of changing beauty,
of summer’s parting as the monsoon comes,
when the eastern gales come driving in,
perfumed with blossoming arjuna and sal trees,
tossing the clouds as smooth and dark as sapphires:
days that are sweet with the smell of rain-soaked earth.
—Bhavabhūti, eighth century, translated from the Sanskrit by Daniel H. H. Ingalls

Ranjani Shettar’s Varsha (the rainy season in the Hindu calendar) evokes aspects of sixteen phases of the monsoon and the classical Indian astronomy used to predict them. In a recent interview, the artist said, “I wanted to take something that was inspired by my geographical location, so I borrowed from the concept of the panchang [local almanac based on solar and lunar movements] and tried to interpret the monsoon visually.”

Shettar conceived and prepared the artwork in Karnataka, India. The accordion-folding volume (11 x 15 inches closed, 40 feet open) is bound in a hand-worked zinc-alloy cover inlaid with silver. To make the covers, the artist collaborated with the craftsman M. A. Rauf and his son Mohammed Abdul Bari in Bidar, Karnataka. Rauf and his associates continue a centuries-old tradition of combining zinc and copper, which is brought to a rich black color when cooked in the unique soil of the Bidar Fort.

The prints are named after sixteen nakshatras (from a total of twenty-eight in a calendar year), each with its own astrological, mythopoetic, and religious significance:
1. Ashwini. Solar etching and laser cut
2. Bharani. Solar etching, silkscreen, and laser cut
3. Krittika. Solar etching and laser cut
4. Rohini. Solar etching and laser cut
5. Mrigashira. Woodcut and laser cut
6. Ardra. Laser cut
7. Punarvasu. Laser cut
8. Pushya. Woodcut and laser cut
9. Ashlesha. Spit-bite etching and laser cut
10. Makha. Woodcut and laser cut
11. Purva Phalguni. Woodcut and laser cut
12. Uttara Phalguni. Woodcut and laser cut
13. Hasta. Woodcut and laser cut
14. Chitta. Pigment print and laser cut
15. Swathi. Woodcut and laser cut
16. Vishaka. Solar etching and laser cut


Listen to the artist speak about a previous work:

Nicolas Duval (born 1634 or 5), Nouvelles heures: gravées au burin: dediées au Roy ([Paris]: … se vendent à Paris chez J. Mariette, 1670). Engraved throughout by Louis Senault (1630-ca.1680) with fine calligraphic sectional title-pages, decorated initials, head- and tail-pieces, ornaments and title-frames. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2012- in process

This all-engraved book of hours is dedicated to Louis XIV. The French writing master Duval and his brother, calligrapher Senault, created a number of calligraphic books of hours dedicated to various French dignitaries. Senault’s daughter Elizabeth assisted and continued in the profession after their death.

Our collection includes several other French engraved books of hours:
Heures nouvelles tirées de la Sainte Ecriture écrites et grauées par L. Senault (Paris: Chez l’autheur rüe du Petie Lion au Fauxbourg St Germain en la maison de Mr Frontié, et chez Claude de Hansy sur le Pont au Change a l’Image St Nicolas, [not before 1680]). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2004-3308N

Heures nouuelles dédiées à Monseigneur Dauphin écrites et grauées par Elisabeth Senault (Paris: Chez de Hansy, libraire sur le Pont au Change à St. Nicolas, [ca. 1690]). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2004-3388N

Lambeth has been home to many artists over the years. It is to London what Brooklyn is Manhattan. Whitman went to Brooklyn, Blake went to Lambeth. This post will add a small amount to the history of Thomas Palser (ca.1776-1843) and his Lambeth print and book shop, which served these artists. If you missed the beginning, see The Print Shop Window http://printshopwindow.blogspot.com/2012/08/thomas-palser-fl-1797-1843.html

When British watercolorist David Cox (1783-1859) first moved to London in 1804, he rented rooms at 16 Bridge Row, described as six doors down from Thomas Palser’s print and book shop. Cox visited Palser regularly, who was one of the first to buy and sell the artist’s work. Visitors to the shop would also find the work of Samuel Prout (1783-1852), John Mortimer (1740-1779), and many others.

John Hamilton Mortimer (1740-1779), A Series of Twelve Heads after Shakespeare ([Lambeth]: published by Thomas Palser, 1812).(Ex) Oversize 3925.8245f

Caricaturist and military painter William Heath (1794-1840) lived much of his early life at 5 Stangate, Lambeth. If you zoom in on the map above, you will see that Palser, Cox and Heath all lived at the bottom of the Westminster Bridge on the Surrey side. This was the perfect position to take advantage of the crowds traveling from the wealthy neighborhoods around St James’s and the Strand to the theaters of Lambeth.

This is a self-portrait of William Heath in his studio on Stangate Street. Fifteen-year-old Heath designed, printed, and self-published eight caricatures during 1809-10 before he gratefully joined Palser’s shop. He was one of several local artists who benefited from their neighbor’s help with promotion and distribution.

During the 1790s, William Blake (1757-1827) and his wife lived a few block away at 13 Hercules Buildings (now Hercules Road) and knew the Palser family (Thomas’s son became an important collector of Blake’s drawings). In 1800, the bookseller and satirist William Hone (1780-1842) opened a book and print shop with a circulating library a little further south in Lambeth Walk but was not as well situated as Palser and soon moved across the Thames.

The performer Joseph Grimaldi Senior (died 1788), father of the famous clown Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837), lived down Stangate street from Heath. The Grimaldi family retained the house and that relationship probably led Palser and Heath to publish a series of prints celebrating Grimaldi’s Covent Garden successes in 1812.

William Heath (1794-1840), Grimaldi’s Leap Frog, in the Comic Pantomime of The Golden Fish, January 12 1812. Etching. Published by T. Palser; Bridge Road, Lambeth. Graphic Arts Collection GA2011.00894

In 1980, the French surrealist and ethnographer Michel Leiris (1901-1990) refused to accept the National Grand Prize of Letters, commenting that he did not want to be a topic for the media. In his obituary, The New York Times noted that Leiris compared the process of writing to a bullfight and likened the writer to a matador.

“He admitted that he had an obsessive desire to make literature ‘into an act, a drama by which I insist on incurring, positively, a risk - as if this risk were the necessary condition for my self-realization as a man.’”

In a 1975 interview, Leiris spoke about his early career. “The first writer that I knew personally was Max Jacob. He’s a man whom I’ve always considered to be a truly great poet and a great writer, and who,” Leiris recalled, “in a tattered, fragmented life full of contradictions had something quite exemplary. He was a poet in the true sense of the word…. It is through him that I came to know the painter André Masson, the one I refer to as my mentor in L’Age d’Homme; and, it is shortly thereafter, following an exhibition of Masson’s work, that I made contact with Breton, and that our whole little group of friends became surrealists.”

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired several early, limited editions by Leiris and the Surrealist circle, including:
Michel Leiris. Miroir de la tauromachie. [Paris]: Éditions G.L.M., 1938]
André Breton. Trajectoire du rêve. [Paris]: Éditions G.L.M., 1938
Michel Leiris. Le point cardinal. Paris: Éditions du sagittaire chez Simon Kra, 1927
Michel Leiris. Tauromachies. Illustrations by André Masson. Paris: Éditions G.L.M., 1937
Robert Guiette. Mort du fantôme: avec un dessin de Fernand Léger. Paris: Éditions G.L.M., impr. G. Lévis Mano, 1937

William Parrott (1813 - 1869), London from the Thames (London: Henry Brooks, 87, New Bond Street, printed by C. Hullmandel [1841]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX oversize 2012- in process.

Parrott’s lithographic title page vignette shows the Tower of London at the time of the Lord Mayor’s embarkation, with ceremonial barges at the wharf. An 1843 journalist noted, “Since the first mayoralty procession, in the year 1215, probably there have been few finer pageants than that of Thursday last, when the November sun even gilded with his beams the somewhat tarnished splendour of the City state.”

3.Lambeth & Westminster From Millbank, November 1841
4. Waterloo Bridge from the West with Boat Race, June 1841
5. Somerset House, St Paul’s & Blackfriars from Waterloo Bridge, Undated
6. Southwark Bridge from London Bridge, April 1841
7. The Pool. From London Bridge. Morning., April 1841
8. London Bridge from the Pool-, November 1841
9. The Pool looking towards London Bridge, May 1841
10. West India Docks from the South East, October 1840
11. Westminster & Hungerford from Waterloo Bridge, Undated
12. Ship Building at Limehouse, the President on the Stocks, March 1840
13. Greenwich and the Dreadnought, Undated.

With thanks to Stephen Ratchliffe and John Bidwell, we have now confirmed that Princeton University holds four volumes with original calligraphy and illumination by Alberto Sangorski (1862-1932), elder brother of bookbinder Francis Sangorski (1875-1912).

They are:
The Sermon on the Mount. Being the King James Version of the Gospel of Matthew, Chapters 5, 6, and 7, 1911. 14 leaves (23 pages) as designed, written, and illuminated by Alberto Sangorski. Onlaid morocco binding by Riviere & Son with morocco onlay doublures and watered silk free endleaves. Housed in a velvet-lined morocco clamshell case. Gift of an anonymous donor. Graphic Arts Collection GAX2012- in process.

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892). Morte d’Arthur, a Poem, 1912. 14 leaves (24 pages). Onlaid morocco binding by Riviere & Son with morocco onlay doublures and watered silk free endleaves. Housed in a velvet-lined morocco clamshell case. Gift of an anonymous donor. Graphic Arts 2012- in process

Dante Gabriel Rosetti (1828-1882), The Blessed Damozel, no date. 10 leaves. Rare Books: Manuscripts Collection (MSS) C0199 (no. 923)

And pictured here, Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), The Lady of Shalott, 1908. Scheide Library, owned by William Scheide, Class of 1936.

John Reddie Black (1826-1880) was born in Scotland but lived most of his life in China and Japan. Of the many newspapers and journals he published, The Far East (founded in 1870) is appreciated in particular because of the original photographs used as illustrations. Black was himself a photographer and although he employed both English and Japanese photographers, Black also published his own work from time to time.

In his memoir, entitled Young Japan, Black writes about the portrait [above], which he chose for the frontispiece of his book:
“I well remember the excitement in Kioto as the time approached for opening Osaka and Hiogo to foreigners. I was but 15 years old, and yet I fully recollect that my prejudices against foreigners were as strong as those of others of my countrymen. I never heard the Tycoon make any remark about them; although I was present when at Osaka the French Minister visited him, and received a sword with the Tokugawa badge as a gift, which he immediately transferred to his sword-belt and wore as he left the palace. I also was present when an English photographer from one of the English men-of-war, was invited to take the Tycoon’s portrait, and I had the honour of receiving a copy of the portrait, in conjunction with my adopted father. I have it still. (A reduced copy of it serves as the frontispiece to the first volume of this work.)”

Black’s memoir was widely published and reprinted (it can easily be found today), but only a few copies were issued with original albumen photographs pasted into the book as illustrations. The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have recently acquired one of these rare editions.

The first volume holds fifteen photographs, only one of which is almost completely faded (a map of Japan). Black died before volume two of the memoir was completed and so, perhaps, only had a hand in selecting images for the first volume.

John Reddie Black (1826-1880), Young Japan. Yokohama and Yedo. A Narrative of the Settlement and the City from the Signing of the Treaties in 1858, to the Close of the Year 1879 (London and Yokohame: Trubner and Kelly & Co. [printed at the private printing office of the author, Yokohama], 1880-1881). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2012- in process.

See also Terry Bennett, Photography in Japan: 1853-1912 (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle, 2006). SAPH Oversize TR105 .B45 2006q

The exhibition catalogue for Ann Hamilton: the Event of a Thread, which opened last night at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, is published in the form of a twenty-four page newspaper. A copy is currently being accessioned into the Graphic Arts Collection.

Listen to Hamilton talk about her work:

A few fortunate students are wrapping up their semester in ART 445 / ARC 445 with Prof. John Pinto, focusing on the Rome of Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778). For the rest of the world, you can now have the pleasure of hearing Prof. Pinto’s insights into this fascinating artist and his city, with the publication of Speaking Ruins: Piranesi, Architects, and Antiquity in Eighteenth-Century Rome.

We are especially excited to see the book, as it draws on the Princeton University Library collections (among many other institutions) and our rich holdings of Piranesi’s books and prints.

John Pinto is the Howard Crosby Butler Memorial Professor of the History of Architecture at Princeton University. A Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, Pinto’s research interests center on architecture, urbanism and landscape in Rome, especially in the eighteenth century. Among his other publications are The Trevi Fountain (1986) and Hadrian’s Villa and its Legacy (1995), the latter co-authored by William L. MacDonald. Pinto makes extensive use of technology in his teaching, including the Nolli project, an inter-relational database of texts and images linked to a digital version of Giambattista Nolli’s 1748 plan of Rome.

“As they had during the Renaissance, ruins in the eighteenth century continued to serve as places of exchange between antiquity and modern times and between one architect and another. Rome functioned as a cultural entrepôt, drawing to it architects of the caliber of Filippo Juvarra, Robert Adam, Charles-Louis Clérisseau, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Through their collaboration, on-site exchanges, publications, and polemics, architects contributed notably to fashioning a more critical and sophisticated view of the material heritage of classical antiquity, one that we associate with the Enlightenment and the origins of modern archaeology.”—book jacket

John A. Pinto, Speaking Ruins: Piranesi, Architects and Antiquity in Eighteenth-Century Rome (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2012).

Soldiers Memorial. A Memorial Register of the 7th Regiment Maryland Volunteers, Company D, 1863. Chromolithographic broadside. Gift of Russell E. Marks Jr., Class of 1954. Graphic Arts Collection broadsides, in process.

“This [company] was organized and mustered into the U.S. Service for the term of three years at Baltimore, Md., Aug. 26, 1862, for the 7th Regt. Md. Volunteers. The Regt. joined the Army of the Potomac Sept. 19, 1862, but were [sic] soon after detached from it to guard the fords of the Upper Potomac, where it remained until ordered to Md. Heights.”

“The Co. and Regt. remained in this vicinity doing duty during the months of Jan., Feb., March and April, 1862. They rejoined the Army of the Potomac at Frederick City, Md., July 1, 1963, in which Army they have since remained, participating in all its battles and marches under Generals Grant and Meade.”

See also:
T. Stephen Whitman. Antietam 1862 Gateway to Emancipation. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2012. Firestone Library (F) In the Pre-Order Process

George Brinton McClellan (1826-1885). Report of Major-General George B. McClellan, upon the organization of the Army of the Potomac, and its campaigns in Virginia and Maryland, from July 26, 1861, to November 7, 1862. Boston: Published at the office of the Boston Courier, 1864. Rare Books: John Shaw Pierson Civil War Collection (W) W49.734.6.13

See pp. 68-72 in Julies Chéret (1836-1932), La Belle Époque de Jules Chéret: de l’affiche au décor / sous la direction de Réjane Bargiel et Ségolène Le Men (Paris: Les Arts décoratifs/BNF, 2010). Marquand SA ND553.C582 B374 2010q

“For some months, the latest craze on the vaudeville stage has been the vitascope, which I think is invented by Edison. At any rate, it is known by his name. It is practically a kinetoscope enlarged and the instantaneous pictures thrown upon a screen.”

” …This week a still newer development of this has been shown at one of the music halls, having come from France. This is known by the name of cinematographe and was perfected in the great photographic laboratory of Messrs. Lumiere, in Lyons. The remarkable feature about it is that the figures not only go through the action, as in the kinetoscope, but appear and disappear, walk, run, and grow smaller or larger, as seen in perspective or near by.” — Esther Singleton, “Life in Picture Films: Wonders of the Cinematographe Shown in Gotham’s Hall. Out Does the Kinetoscope” Washington Post July 5, 1896, p. 12.

It was on December 28, 1895 that the Lumière Cinématographe opened commercially in Paris. Soon after a home-version was developed and the Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have recently acquired one.

Le Cinématographe Jouet [Cinématographe toy], ca. 1900. Original paper box and toy. Graphic Arts Collection 2012- in process. Rolls of images include the dancer, the acrobats, the cooks, the boxers, and the fencers. Box label in French, English, and German.

In 1862, Albert Nees (1836-1874) and his brother Theodor founded the paper manufacturing company A. Nees & Co. in Aschaffenburg, Germany. Four years later, they developed an innovative method of coating colored paper with a layer of shellac, producing Cambricpapier, and distinguishing the firm among the many decorative paper companies in Aschaffenburg.

Graphic Arts recently acquired a collection of over one thousand paper samples from A. Nees & Co., along with a bound sample book of colored and decorated papers for the year 1936. A printed price list for the same year is laid in.

Richard J. Wolfe, in his study Marbled Paper; Its History, Techniques, and Patterns (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990) places the Nees firm in the context of the German decorated paper industry and its spread from Aschaffenburg throughout the world. At one time, the four leading Aschaffenburg firms employed over a thousand people and produced wall papers, paste papers, wrapping papers, and hundreds of other varieties of colored and decorative papers. [Graphic Arts Collection GA Oversize Z271 .W638 1990q]

A. Nees & Co., Buntpapierfabrik. Neuheiten, 1936 (Colored Paper Manufacturer. New Products 1936) (Aschaffenburg: Nees, 1936). Approximately 1000 additional paper samples. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012- in process

The American caricaturist William Charles drew several prints around the War of 1812. This satire focuses on King George III attempting to restore lost ships after battles on the Great Lakes in 1813 and 1814. Charles was clearly aware of his British contemporaries Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray, and George Cruikshank, who each drew satires using the image of a politician as baker. Here are a few other caricatures with the same iconography.