Recently in Ephemera Category

Graphic Arts recently acquired thirty-two announcements or fliers inserted as advertising supplements in the Moskovskie vedomosti (Moscow News), one of Russia’s largest newspapers. They include announcements of bull and bear baiting, lottery results, horse auctions, new medicines, mechanical theatricals, and new books, ranging in date from 1820 to 1835. While issues of the newspaper have been archived and microfilmed, these supplements were often discarded and so, have become rare ephemera sheets.

Moskovskie vedomosti was established by Moscow University in 1756 and ran continuously for over 150 years. The newspaper began by publishing once a week, went to twice a week in 1812, and three times a week in 1842. It was closed by the Bolsheviks on November 9, 1917, two days after the October Revolution.

Eight of the notices are illustrated with woodcuts, as seen here. Several exhibitions and public performances are noted, including a Moscow French theater show featuring horse-riding, drumming, and gymnastics. A performance of the mechanical theater of Kuparenko (Iordache Cuparencu) and Krames is announced, where their newest automated instrument, the “buzuton” would be seen. A fight between a wild Black Sea bull and the bear Evil Makrida was advertised on March 12, 1833, to which the audience was invited to bring their own dogs to participate if the bear was not killed during the performance.

Final chromolithograph

First stone

Scribner’s Magazine, launched in 1887, is credited with being the first magazine to include color illustrations. Here is a progressive set of proofs for the color cover.

Second stone

Third stone

Fourth stone

Fifth stone

Sixth stone

Seventh stone

Eighth stone

Ninth stone

This metamorphosis or transformation card is an advertisement for the Peerless Wringer washing machine, printed in the 1880s by the Donaldson Brothers based in the Five Points (lower Mulberry Street) in New York City. It features Dennis Kearney (1847-1907), an Irish immigrant who settled in San Francisco. The charismatic Kearney was the leader of the Workingmen’s Party of California, whose platform announced, “The Chinese laborer is a curse to our land, is degrading to our morals, is a menace to our lives, and should be restricted and forever abolished, and the Chinese must go.”

Their efforts resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act, signed into law on May 8, 1882. Chinese immigration was suspended for ten years, including Chinese “skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining” already settled and working in the United States.

On the card, Kearney is seen enticing a Chinese laundry worker named Ah Sin (after Bret Harte’s poem “The Heathen Chinee”) to insert his queue (braid) into the modern washing machine. The text reads, “‘What makee dis?’ said bland Ah Sin. Said Dennis, ‘Put your pig-tail in.’” The lifted flap shows Ah Sin caught in the wringer and finishes the verse, “Ah Sin Obeys! Though rather slow! The Question’s solved, Chinese must go.”

Donaldson Brothers printing company was established by George, Frank, John, and Robert Donaldson in 1872. Their high-speed steam presses produced, among other things, trade and advertising cards with bright chromolithographed images in large quantities. The Donaldsons merged with the American Lithographic Company in 1891 to form one of the largest commercial printing company in New York.

This transformation book was produced for the 1880 presidential campaign of Republican James A. Garfield (1831-1881), running against the Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock (1824-1886). Garfield was a fervent abolitionist. This card not only predicts Hancock’s failure, depicting him as a cock that looses his feathers, but accuses him of racism in the verse on the back. In his campaign, Garfield used this slogan, “Hancock. Hancock. Cock-a-doodle-doo. Hancock. Hancock. Boo-Hoo-Hoo.”

It is curious to find the copyright owned by George H. Hanks, who, in the 1860s, was a Colonel of the 18th Infantry, Corps d’Afrique (a Union corps composed entirely of African-Americans) and later became Superintendent of Negro Labor. I have not found any record of Hanks’s role in Garfield’s campaign.

Thanks to the Chair of Princeton University’s Center for African American Studies, Eddie Glaude, Jr., we have been able to acquire this wonderful 1968 poster: Bobby. Huey. Political Prisoners of USA Fascism (San Francisco: Ministry of Information Black Panther Party, 1968). Poster 27 1/2 x 23 1/4 inches. Graphic Arts GA 2010. in process

Launched in the fall of 2006, the Center for African American Studies (CAAS) expands upon the initiatives begun by the Program in African American Studies at Princeton University. Since its founding in 1969, the program has offered an interdisciplinary certificate that has allowed students to draw on the insights and techniques of various disciplines in an effort to understand the experiences, history and culture of African-descended people. The new center will build upon that earlier vision and extend its reach broadly across the campus and throughout the curriculum. http://www.princeton.edu/africanamericanstudies/

Power to the People (California, ca. 1970). Red felt banner, 30 x 12 inches. Graphic Arts GA 2010 -in process.

In 1966, Robert George “Bobby” Seale (born 1936) and Huey Percy Newton (1942-1989) founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in Oakland, California.

The BPP differed from other groups with its message of “revolutionary intercommunalism” - essentially a socialist way of approaching issues within a community, where all shared in the responsibility of building the community. They also developed survival programs, where social institutions were developed within the community itself to benefit the community without seeking relief from outside organizations or agencies. The Ten-Point Program formed the foundation of ideology for the Black Panther Party; it became the list of demands of the party and the goals of the struggle to regain their Black communities.

For more information, see: San Francisco State: on strike / a film from California Newsreel (San Francisco, CA: California Newsreel, [1998]) Humanities Resource Center (VIDL): Video Coll. East Pyne VCASS 439

Not directly related but also of interest, this conference is coming up soon: http://www.librarycompany.org/africanamericanprint/
Early African American Print Culture in Theory and Practice
Philadelphia, March 18-20, 2010

This is a parody of the “shinplasters” or worthless paper money issued by banks leading up to the U.S. Panic of 1837.

Although President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) had been able to pay off the national debt in 1835, the surplus cash was distributed by state governments only in paper notes. Before leaving office, Jackson issued the Specie (coin) Circular, declaring that the Treasury would not accept these paper notes. By 1837, the new president, Martin Van Buren (1782-1862), was faced with a national panic.

Sarony’s original satirical “Treasury Note” had a central panel framed by panels on either side. In the center is a winged chimera with the head of Van Buren riding a wagon, labeled Treasury Department, driven by John Calhoun (1782-1850). They are pulled by men rather than horses and roll over the bodies of others as they rush to Wall Street.

On the left is an image of Jackson dressed as a woman saying “More glory.” Princeton’s copy is missing the section on the right, possibly removed through censorship because of the graphic nature of the design. It shows an ass with Jackson’s face excreting “mint drops” collected by a monkey with the head of Van Buren.

The text of the treasury note states:

“We promise to Pay out of the joint Fund of the United States Treasury Seven Years after it is convenient the Sum of Seventy Five cents Payable at their Office.”

Read more: Harry Twyford Peters (1881-1948), America on Stone: the Other Printmakers to the American People (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Doran, 1931), p.338. Graphic Arts: Reference Collection (GARF), Oversize NE2303 .P4q

Raymond Pettibon (born 1957), Captive Chains (Lawndale, Ca.: SST Publications, 1978). Graphic Arts GAX 2010- in process.

California artist Raymond Pettibon has published forty-four zines, 120 fliers, and a variety of album covers, as documented in the 2008 exhibition organized by David Platzker at Specific Object. http://www.specificobject.com/projects/pettibon/index.cfm?project_id=18

The first, entitled Captive Chains (1978) has also been labeled an artists’ book and/or a graphic novel, depending on who is reviewing the material. Pettibon’s early work was published and distributed by SST Records, an imprint established by his brother, Greg Ginn, the guitarist for the punk band Black Flag. The band also used Pettibon’s art for their fliers, album covers and T-shirts, as did other bands that joined the label, including the Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, the Meat Puppets and Sonic Youth.

Since that period, Pettibon has gone on to make a career for himself and his art apart from the California punk scene, including important exhibitions at The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

“But my drawing also came out of editorial-style cartoons I was doing at the time. Music was one thing and art was another, and there weren’t really any standards for my art. If you look at old punk album covers they were mainly Russian constructivist or Heartsfield [sic] collages. There was no defined punk look or style. Not in art at least. Maybe in fashion. My work was just drawings, and basically drawings just as I would do now. They weren’t done with any aspirations of becoming a part of that scene.”

See the catalogue raisonné of Pettibon’s artists’ books: Raymond Pettibon: the Books 1978-1998 (New York: D.A.P. Distributed Art Publishers, c2000) Marquand Library (SA) N6537.P393 O3713 2000

and

Joel J. Rane, Scream at the Librarian: Sketches of Our Patrons in Downtown Los Angeles. Illustrations by Raymond Pettibon and Cristin Sheehan Sullivan ([Brooklyn]: Booklyn Artists Alliance, 2007). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX), 2008-0124N

“This is not autobiographical work, by any means. Even the emotions involved. If someone thinks they understand me and disagree, then okay. But there’s something in the nature of comedy and especially in the element of caricature and cartoons that my work retains. An editorial cartoon is trying to be positive. It’s usually really very cloying and sappy and there’s no hook to it at all. I also don’t like my humor to be in the service of making fun of people based on superficialities. People get picked on or looked down at. I’m conscious about that as a problem.”

The Kineograph (later called flip book) was patented in 1868 by John Barnes Linnett. Graphic Arts holds eleven modern and historical examples. For over 5,000 examples see http://www.flipbook.info/index_en.php

Fatima moving picture dance book: the Maxixe ([S.l.]: Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company, [1914]); 50 x 65 mm. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2007-0082S

The Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company (better known as L&M) produced a brand of Turkish cigarettes under the name Fatima. L&M marketed Fatimas through magazines, radio, television, and much more. In 1914, L&M released ten flipbooks under the theme of modern dance. “These moving picture booklets on the Dances of to-day … make it possible for all to know what the latest accepted dances are and how to dance them.” The flipbook shown here offers a Russian dance called the Maxixe, with images and step-by-step instructions.

Season’s greetings from Solomon & Gelman ([S.l. : s.n., 19—]). 51 x 82 mm. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2007-0081S

The cartooning team of Woody Gelman (1915-1978) and Ben Solomon (active 1930s-1950s), working for Max Fleischer Studios, created the first animated versions of Popeye (1930s) and Superman (1940s), and the original Bazooka Joe for Bazooka bubble gum (1953). In addition, they published a series of juvenile novelettes called Triple Nickel books because they sold for three nickels (15 cents).

One year, as a Christmastime treat, the team created this flip book showing two men wearing Santa Claus masks on the back of their heads. As the pages flip, the heads slowly turn and we see their real faces along with their names.

C.F. Bridgman, Monumenta (Lewes, ca. 1880). Red and black ink and watercolor wash. Graphic Arts GA2010- in process

This pattern book for Victorian grave stone designs and stone roundels for grave ornaments contains eighty miniture designs with twelve large relief roundels. According to the antiquarian dealer Charles Wood, C.F. Bridgman was a well-known firm. Mr. Wood found this entry for them: http://www.rootschat.com/history/hastings/content/view/78/29/

The records of C.F.Bridgman, a firm of Stonemasons (formerly Parsons) based in Lewes from the early 18th century, were deposited in the East Sussex Records Office in 1965 by Hillman Sons, Vinall and Carter, Solicitors of Lewes, and consists of some 98 volumes of Ledgers, Day Books, Letter Books, Wage and Cash Books together with Classified Accounts which cover the period 1834-1959…

Alling & Cory Company, Book Jacket Papers (New York: Alling & Cory Co., [19—?]). [24] pages with 28 sample booklets. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2010- in process

The U.S. Geological Survey’s Preparation of Illustrations pamphlet (1920) suggests “For relief shading on small black and white maps Ross’s hand-stipple drawing paper may be used. By rubbing a black wax crayon or pencil over the surface of the paper the desired effect is produced in fine dots or in stipple, which may be varied in density of shade at the will of the draftsman.”

The inventor and distributor of these papers or scratch boards that helped commercial artists add shade and dimension to their illustrations was Charles J. Ross. According to Peterson’s Entomological Techniques (1953), “we find little on Ross’s company, which apparently operated in both New Jersey and at the “Ross House” in North Philadelphia. As late as 1959, we find that company was apparently still active servicing the medical illustrator/graphic artist community and operating as C.J. Ross at 1925 Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia.”

These two scrapbooks, now in the graphic arts collection, provide a concentrated overview of Ross’s activities in the late 1880’s. Included is correspondence with artists, publishers, booksellers, lithographers, photography suppliers, zinc etchers, art stores, paper suppliers, and so on. There are also pricelists and paper samples demonstrating the variety of effects that were possible with variations of dots, horizontal lines, diagonal lines, and an overall pattern similar to an aquatint.

A U.S. government patent for his “relief stipple paper” was granted on October 3, 1882. In it Ross states “The object of my invention is the production of a drawing paper or equivalent material having a surface of fine uniform dotted stipple-points in relief, on which drawings in crayon or ink may be made, more especially for reproduction by photolithographic or phototypographic processes …”

He continued to work on new methods of drawing and reproducing images, such as these directions for the placing and management of the line-ruling machine below:

A. D. Faber, Cigar Label Art (Watkins Glen, N.Y.: Century House, 1949). Limited edition of 500 copies. Graphic Arts GAX in process.

This unusual reference book, compiled by the collector A.D. Faber, was issued in a facsimile cigar box. In his introduction, Faber writes “My collection of cigarania and cigar label art started rather casually. It seemed at first that I was the only person interested in preserving such reminders of a bygone age. Lately, however, I have been urged to tell others something of what I have discovered. The result is given herein.”

“The thing that distinguishes Cigar Label Art (and also accounts for its higher price) is the inclusion of a number of original cigar box labels and edgings as tip-in’s. These examples of early lithographic art are already collector’s items, far more interesting and valuable than are the old trade cards now collected so avidly by many. Naturally in a book of this size, there are limitations on the number of items that can be shown. But I have kept my story down as much as possible, letting the old labels and top-brand dies speak mainly for themselves.”

A. D. Faber. Ithaca, N.Y., Sept. 15, 1949.

St. Michael’s Temperance Diploma (New York: printed by Major & Knapp, 186?). Chromolithograph. Graphic Arts GC179 broadside collection.

“I promise with the Divine Assistance, to Abstain from All Intoxicating Liquors, except in case of Sickness, and to Prevent by Advice and Example, Intemperance in Others.”

Before the laser printer, before the Xerox, and before the carbon copy, there was the mimeograph machine. In 1876, Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931) filed a United States patent for autographic printing by means of an electric pen. A second patent further developed his system to “prepare autographic stencils for printing.”

Albert Blake Dick (1856-1934) licensed the patent and began manufacturing equipment to make stencils for the reproduction of hand-written text. In 1887, the A.B. Dick Company released the model “0” flatbed duplicator selling for $12. It was an immediate success. Dick named the machine The Edison Mimeograph.

Dick’s hinged, wooden box, measuring 13 x 10 ¾ x 4 ½ inches, has a large stenciled label on the top reading “The Edison Mimeograph invented by Thomas A. Edison, made by A.B. Dick Company, Chicago, Ill.” A series of patents are noted on the label, the last dated 1890. Inside the box are a printing frame (missing the screen), inking plate, ink roller, a tube of ink, and a tube of waxed wrapping paper. One container is empty, perhaps for a stylus and/or other writing tools.

A description of the process reads: “To prepare a handwritten stencil, a sheet of mimeograph stencil paper is placed over the finely grooved steel plate and written upon with a smooth pointed steel stylus, and in the line of the writing so made, the stencil paper will be perforated from the under side with minute holes, in such close proximity to each other that the dividing fibers of paper are scarcely perceptible.” This stencil was placed in the frame and when inked, produced a copy of the hand-written text on paper below.

The Edison Mimeograph Machine (Chicago, Ill.: A.B. Dick Company, ca.1890). Gift of Douglas F. Bauer, Class of 1964. Graphic Arts GA 2009. In process

The German artist-activist John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfelde, 1891-1968), created images in photomontage using labels, newspaper ads, photographs, and engravings. These were cut, assembled, and re-photographed (by Janos Reisman) for half-tone reproduction. Heartfield himself was not a photographer but a collage artist who prepared the work for commercial reproduction. George Grosz said he and Heartfield invented photomontage “in my South End studio at five o’clock on a May morning in 1916.” (George Grosz, “Randzeichnungen zum Thema,” Blätter der Piscatorbühne, Berlin 1928). Unlike other reproductive work, the published half-tones are usually bought and sold as Heartfield originals.

Heartfield joined the German Communist Party in 1918 and remained sympathetic to these ideals throughout his life. His younger brother, Wieland Herzfelde, founded the publishing house of Malik Verlag where leftist writers were championed, such as American Upton Sinclair who sought to expose social injustice and economic exploitation through his writing. Heartfield created many of the dust jackets for his brother’s publications.

Heartfield’s cover designs involved two images, one for the front cover and one the back, interrupted by a separate spine element. The two images for Sinclair’s Das Geld schreibt depict a group of writers as puppets of the state on the front and the family of German writer Emil Ludwig (1881-1948) on the back. Ludwig, who was himself persecuted by the National Socialist Party, threatened to sue Malik for defamation of character. As a result, the faces of the Ludwig family, including the dog, were punched out on all unsold copies. Princeton now owns both the censored and the original uncensored copies.

Heartfield was eventually forced to leave Germany in the 1930s but thanks in part to Berthold Brecht, was able to return in 1950 when he worked primarily in theater design.

Below, see two of the color variations Heartfield created for Oil! (Petroleum), Sinclair’s novel recently translated to film as There will be Blood, by Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Daniel Day Lewis. Heartfield tried the design both in green and in gold, representing both paper money and hard currency.

For more, try this volume on bindings and dust jackets of Berlin Publishing Houses: Blickfang: Bucheinbände und Schutzumschläge Berliner Verlage 1919-1933 by Jürgen Holstein (2005).

Magdalena Dabrowski, “Photomonteur: John Heartfield,” MoMA magazine no.13 (Winter/Sprint 1993): 12-15.

Peter Selz, “John Heartfield’s ‘Photomontages’,” The Massachusetts Review 4, no. 2 (Winter 1963): 309-36.

The first U.S. patent (no. 1,767) for “settable-unit stencils” was filed in 1840 by Edwin Allen, who designed stencils of individual letters that could be joined together to form words. This and other U.S. patents can be read at www.uspto.gov.

Samuel Widdows Reese (1843-1913) was a veteran, who served in the 1st Pennsylvania Reserve Cavalry. After the war, he moved to Chicago where he is listed in the city directory as a stencil cutter. Reese filed his first patent for a series of adjustable stencil letters in June 1873 (no. 148,087) and filed a second in 1876 for stencils with an S-fold on one edge to lock together with adjacent letters. The stencils were “machine-cut in spring brass with steel dies”. A broadside advertised Reese’s stencils

for shippers in marking merchandise and produce … manufacturers for labelling contents on boxes … merchants and real estate men in making signs and bulletin boards … cheese factors for dating cheese … in fact nearly all classes find them useful, profitable and desirable.

1876 was also the year his firm S.W. Reese and Company opened in Chicago, where one could buy stencils, badges, and other sign-making equipment. Although the company continued to operate under Reese’s name, he left it in the hands of his partner Christian Hanson (1843-1914) and moved to New York City. A second business called Reese and Company was established on Pearl Street in Manhattan, where it remained until late in the twentieth-century. So successful was the Reese interlocking stencil design that it is still used today.

See Eric Kindle, “Patents Progress: the Adjustable Stencil,” Journal of the Printing Historical Society no. 9 (Spring 2006): 65-93
and
Eric Kindle “Recollecting Stencil Letters,” Typography Papers 5 (Reading, 2003)

George Herriman (1881-1944), Krazy Kat: A Wail in the Night. A Watch in the Night. Pen and ink drawing, April 21, 1940. GA 2006.01942

George Herriman (1881-1944), Krazy Kat: [Krazy Kat follows Kitten, fends off Mouse], Pen and ink drawing on board, October 17, 1943. GA 2006.01941

Cartoonist George Herriman had a number of early comic strips before he found characters that clicked, including Major Ozone, Musical Mose, Acrobatic Archie, Professor Otto and his Auto, Two Jolly Jackies, Goosebury Sprig, and The Dingbat Family. In the last strip, he began a subplot in the margins of the main story, which involve the family’s cat and mouse. By 1913, the black cat and white mouse got their own strip called Krazy Kat. The cartoon ran for over thirty years and was going to continue after Herriman’s death but when William Randolph Hearst saw the work of the new artists, Krazy Kat came to an end.

There were a number of spin-offs. Herriman partnered with the composer John Carpenter to create Krazy Kat: A Jazz-Pantomime, which opened at New York’s Town Hall in January 1922. Herriman not only wrote the scenario but also designed the scenery and costumes.

Princeton is fortunate to hold several of Herriman’s original Krazy Kat panels in the graphic arts collection. Mendel Music Library has the score for his Jazz-Pantomime, along with a DVD of Carpenter’s score.

John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951), Krazy Kat; A Jazz Pantomime (New York, G. Schirmer [c1922]). Mendel Music Library (MUS) Oversize M33.C3K7q

In researching our new poster for The Colored Concert Company we found one article by Josephine Wright, “Songs of Remembrance” from the Journal of African American History 91:4 [Fall 2006] p.413-424rs that mentioned the group in a footnote:

Three other African American musicians besides Robert Hamilton compiled and published text and music anthologies of Negro spirituals in the early 1880s: M. G. Slayton, ed.. Jubilee Songs, as Sung by Slayton’s Jubilee Singers (Chicago, 1882), 14 songs; Marshall W. Taylor, comp., A Collection of Revival Hymns and Plantation Melodies, Composition by Miss Josephine Robinson… (Cincinnati, 1882), 64 plantation songs; and Jacob J. Sawyer, air., Jubilee Songs and Plantation Melodies (Words and Music), as Sung by the Original Nashville Students, the Celebrated Colored Concert Company (N.p., 1884), 12 songs. Jacob J. Sawyer served ca. 1882 as pianist for Slayton’s Jubilee Singe

Otherwise, this celebrated organization is not mentioned in any of the major newspapers or magazines of the period. Not mentioned in the International Index to Black Periodicals; African American Music Reference http://aamr.alexanderstreet.com/; African American Newspapers: The 19th Century (1827-1882); the archives of the Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College, Chicago, http://www.colum.edu/cbmr/; or the The Harvard Guide to African-American History.

We did however have luck with the dating by matching the clothing in the index: http://www.marquise.de/en/1800/index.shtml).

Graphic Arts holds a small collection of souvenir serviettes (paper napkins), chiefly from the 1902 coronation of Edward VII. The ceremony was originally scheduled for June 26, but two days before on June 24, Edward had to undergo an emergency appendectomy (at the time a dangerous operation). He recovered beautifully and the ceremony was rescheduled for August 9. However, this meant the napkin vendors had to purchase and reprint a completely new set of serviettes with the correct date.

As noted in Michael Twyman’s Encyclopedia of Ephemera (GARF Oversize NC 1280.R52 2000Q), the first appearance in Britain of the printed souvenir table napkin was in July 1887 when a quantity of decorated blanks, brought from Japan, were overprinted by John Dickinson Ltd. for their annual dinner. The fashion caught on and before long large quantities of the flimsy squares were being imported. They carried a decorative border, which was printed in up to five colors in Japan; the locally printed commemorative message and image occupied the centre area, often overlapping the color border. The printing was done by a few London firms who specialized in this genre, including S. Burgess of the Strand and Mathews of Hoxton. These napkins, along with other souvenirs, would have been sold by street vendors on ceremonial and processional occasions.

Anthony Morris Family Tree, compiled by Anthony Saunders Morris, lithographed by L. Haugg, 1861. Graphic Arts division (GA) 2009- in process

Anthony Saunders Morris (1803-1885) must have had great interest in the history of his family because in the 1860s, he began compiling a complete Morris family tree. When he succeeded in documenting nine generations of male decedents, he hired lithographer Louis Haugg (1856-1894), one of Philadelphia’s leading printmakers, to draw the family tree in its entirety.

The result is this massive sixteen-plate panorama of an actual tree (approximately six by five feet), which holds all the names of the Morris family. Note that the men are the branches that continue the lineage and the women the foliage, only good for decoration.

Printed by F. Bourquin and Company on Chestnut Street, it is unclear how large an edition Morris commissioned. No other copy of this print is currently recorded.