Recently in Notable holdings Category

Graphic Arts has a large and until now, uncatalogued collection of American comic almanacs from Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore. Here are a few samples, primarily from the 1830s.

American Comic Almanac (Boston: Charles Ellms). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process
Elton’s Comic All-My-Nack (New-York: Elton and Harrision). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process
National Comic Almanac (Boston: Association of Gentlemen). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process
Rip Snorter Comic Almanac (New York: Philip P. Cozans). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process
Sam Slick Comic All-My-Nack (New-York: Philip P. Cozans). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process
Turner’s Comic Almanak (Philadelphia: Turner and Fisher). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process
United States Comic Almanac (Philadelphia: King and Baird). Graphic Arts GAX 2012- in process

Who knew we had so many pictures of elephants?

http://libweb5.princeton.edu/RBVisuals/index.htm

Searching the “visuals” database for graphic arts (including prints, drawings, photographs, paintings, sculpture, and other non-book items in the library) just got easier. The link above should take you to the same location but a new, easier to use access database of our collections. Thanks to Gary Buser, our Application Delivery Lead Analyst, each field is key word searchable. And, the subject key word also searches through our free-text note field.

Give it a try and let us know if you see problems.

Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628), Caelica (Newtown, Montgomeryshire [Wales]: Gregynog Press, 1936). Copy 11 of 225. Bound in decorated full leather, with binder’s stamp: Blair Hughes-Stanton, Gregynog Press Bindery, George Fisher. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2007-0474N

Sir John William Fortescue (1859-1933), The Story of a Red-Deer ([Newtown, Montgomeryshire] : Gregynog Press, 1935). Copy 12 of 250. Bound in gilt-decorated full morocco by George Fisher at the Gregynog Press Bindery. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2007-0129Q

Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch (1806-1880), The Lovers of Teruel: a Drama in Four Acts in Prose and Verse ([Newtown, Wales]: Gregynog Press, 1938). Copy 11 of 175. Bound in decorated full morocco, with binder’s stamp: Gregynog Press Bindery, George Fisher, Blair Hughes-Stanton. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2007-0472N

Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Shaw Gives Himself Away ([Newtown, Montgomeryshire]: Gregynog Press, 1939). Copy 11 of 300. Bound in gilt-decorated full morocco by George Fisher at the Gregynog Press Bindery. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2007-0486N

Salvador de Madariaga (1886-1978), Don Quixote, an Introductory Essay in Psychology ([Newtown, Wales]: Gregynog Press, 1934). Copy 12 of 250. Bound in decorated full blue morocco by George Fisher at the Gregynog Press Bindery. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2007-0473N

When George Fisher (1879-1970) went to work for Rivière Bindery in London, he chose to be a finisher, tooling the colored leather on hundreds of books. In 1924, Fisher moved to Wales to be chief binder at Gregynog Press. From that time forward, the first 20 or 25 books in each edition were given superb decorative bindings by Fisher. When the press was closed in 1940, Fisher stayed on alone for another five years to finish the work on each volume. Princeton University holds 30 of the 42 books published by Gregynog Press.

See: Dorothy A. Harrop, “George Fisher and the Gregynog Press,” The Book Collector (Winter 1970), 465-77.

Woodcut

Metalcut

Here are two French title pages with relief prints, one with the publisher’s device printed from wood and one printed from a metal plate. They each display a rose bush, two gryphons, and a dog. The woodcut includes the motto: A l’aventure (Adventure) and the metalcut has the text: A l’aventure tout vient a ponit [point] qui peut atendre (Adventure, all things come to him who waits).

There are four printers marks for Denis Rosse listed in Philippe Renouard (1862-1934), Les marques typographiques parisiennes des XVe et XVIe siècles (Paris: Champion, 1926[-28]). Firestone Library Oversize Z236.F8 R466 1926q.

Renouard tells us that Denis Roce or Rosse (flourished 1490-1517) was a printer, publisher, and binder. He worked at the sign of St Martin on the Rue St-Jacques where he published many books on his own and in association with other printers.

Graphic Arts, Book-leaf collection

Gli Adornatori del Libro in Italia (The Adoration of the Book in Italy) (Bologna: Officina della Scuola di Arte Tipografica del comune di Bologna, 1923-1927). Editor: Cesare Ratta (1857-1938). Critical texts by Petri Stanislao and others. Edition limited to 850 copies; complete in 9 volumes. From the Printing Collection of Elmer Adler. GA Oversize 2009-0190Q

See also: Cesare Ratta, L’Arte del Libro e della Rivista ([Bologna: C. Ratta, 1927-28]). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize Z276 .R23q

At his feet are five books. Four have their spines to the front, so that we can see they are the works of Cicero, Principia, Locke, and Hume. What is the fifth book? (Why Newton isn’t listed instead of his book, Principia, is a question for another time). We finally climbed to the top of the 7-foot-7-inch plinth on which the statue stands to look behind Witherspoon’s feet.

Constance Whitney Warren (1888-1948), Bronco Rider, 1921. Bronze. 46 x 49 x 16 cm [approx.]. Museum Objects Collection.

We are often asked, “Who is the artist of the western sculpture in the classroom? Is it Remington?” Students are usually surprised to learn the work is by a woman. Constance Whitney Warren was one of the first women to produce large scale bronze sculptures in the early twentieth century.

Born in the heart of New York City to wealthy family, Warren grew up hearing stories from her father, Henry Warren, about his years as a mining engineer in the American West. She loved to draw horses and cowboys. Later, living in Paris, Warren learned the art of sculpture and designed a number of large-scale works now seen around the United States. This work may have been the model or maquette for one of those larger works.

Also on display in our west classroom: Constance Whitney Warren (1888-1948), Untitled [Bronco Rider], ca. 1921. Bronze. 47 x 32 x 18 cm [approx.]. Museum Objects Collection.

Vic Payne (born 1960), There’s a Valley Ahead, 1994. Bronze. Edition: 50. Museum Objects Collection. Depiction: Stage coach with four-horse team, cowboy, and woman. 44 x 108 x 48 cm [approx.]

Boris Atzybasheff (1899-1965)

Elmer Adler (1884-1962) formed the Pynson Printers in 1922 with his partners Walter Dorwin Teague, David Silve, and Hubert Canfield. They opened for business on the second floor of a garage on East 32 Street that belonged to W. Goadby Loew. Adler had three presses and one customer.

Rockwell Kent (1882-1971)

Wharton Esherick (1887-1970)

Donald McKay (1914?-2006)

Lucian Bernhard (1883-1972)

Carl Noell (active 20th century)

Arthur Allen Lewis (1873-1957)

Walter Dorwin Teague (1883-1960)

Pynson Printers original drawings, GC049.

Shakespearean actor Edward Loomis Davenport (1815-1877) began his career in 1835. However by 1875, “he was out of the fashion so long that until a far-sighted management engaged him to play the part of Brutus during the famous run of Julius Caesar at Booth’s Theatre, he was only known to the younger generation of theatre-goers, when known at all, as Miss Fanny Davenport’s father!”—Harper’s Magazine

Davenport played Brutus to Lawrence Barrett’s Cassius for 222 performances, performing over a year on Broadway and then, on tour all along the east coast. A special celebration was held March 22, 1876, for which this bust may have been sculpted.

To see one of Davenport’s personal prompt copies, see: John Howard Payne (1781-1852), Brutus, or, The Fall of Tarquin (London: T. Rodwell, 1819). ThX TC023 Box 104.

The Ladies’ Wreath (New York: Martyn & Ely, 1846-1855). Monthly. Graphic Arts collection GAX 2004-0010M

“We commenced this work … without a subscriber, and now our subscription list numbers between six and seven thousand, and is rapidly increasing… . The expense of getting up our Magazine, in the superior style in which it is issued, and of the plates and flowers, is so great, in proportion to the extremely low price at which it is offered, that less than ten thousand subscribers will not support it. We have made arrangements for the coming year, which will render the Wreath still more valuable, by adding a short botanical department, for the benefit of our fair readers who love and cultivate flowers. No expense or trouble will be spared to render the work still more worthy the popularity it has already gained; and in return, we trust our subscribers will not only continue with us another year, but wherever practicable, exert their influence with others in our behalf.”

Special thanks to Michael Heist, Senior Bibliographic Specialist, for finding the missing issues to our collection.

Certainly, it’s the first one that glows. Radioactive’s cover is printed with phosphorescent ink so that it glows in the dark.

In an interview with Megan Gilbert, Redniss spoke about the design and printing of the physical volume, “Many of book’s images are made using a technique called cyanotype printing. Cyanotype is a 19th-century, camera-less, photographic process in which chemically saturated paper turns blue when exposed to the ultraviolet rays of the sun.”

“…For Radioactive, I designed everything: front cover, back cover, spine, endpages, all the pages in between. It was important to me that the design of Radioactive be as carefully considered as the written narrative and the artwork—to echo the story’s themes and to layer the book with meaning. …I designed a typeface based on the frontispieces of old scientific manuscripts in the New York Public Library. I hand-drew every letter and number, the punctuation, the symbols and accents. I wanted the typeface to have a stately but imperfect quality. I named the font Euspia LR, after Eusapia Palladino, an Italian Spiritualist medium whose séances the Curies attended.”

Lauren Redniss, Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love & Fallout (New York: !t Books, 2010). Dixon Books (Dixon) in process.

In conjunction with the book, Redniss created a website where, among other things, you can create your own cyanotype: http://exhibitions.nypl.org/radioactive/

This commemorative plaque was given to President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) in 1916 by the newly formed Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines in gratitude for Wilson’s help in establishing an autonomous Filipino government. On August 29 of that year, Wilson signed the “Jones Law” or the “Philippine Autonomy Act of 1916” into law. This bill replaced the Philippine Commission with a sovereign Philippine senate, the first step towards granting independence to the Philippine Islands.

It was not until April 1946 that free elections were finally held and Manuel Roxas became the first president of the independent Republic of the Philippines. The following July, the United States ceded its sovereignty over the Philippines.

Philippine Autonomy Act of 1916 commemorative plaque, 1916. Copper plate, metal with gilding. Museum objects collection.

François Colletet (1628-1680), Traittez des langues estrangeres, de leurs alphabets, et des chiffres (Paris: Iean Promé, marchand libraire, en sa boutique proche des Augustins, à l’enseigne du Cheual de Bronze, 1660). Cover signed: Charles Miton à Tours, no. 13. GAX copy is from the printing collection of Elmer Adler. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2004-3777N

Spine title: Unusual alphabets, Paris, 1660

1660 was a busy year for the poet and journalist François Colletet. He had a disagreement with his publisher, Jean Baptiste Loyson, who filed a lawsuit against the writer. This was either before or after Colletet left the firm, depending on whose version you read. Then, Colletet copied and republished a text on ciphers and the use of “foreign alphabets,” which may or may not have even been copied correctly. (No one seems to have cared enough to file a lawsuit against this.)

Why he ventured into this area of study is unclear. Later biographies mention only his shortcomings, such as The Saturday Review (July 1, 1871): “All readers of Bolleau, of instance, remember that unfortunate François Colletet, whose wretched poetry could not bring him in enough to buy his daily bread, and who used to wonder about from kitchen to kitchen in quest of a dinner.”

Later, Colletet decided to self-publish a journal about Paris but after only one issue had been released, he was arrested and sent to prison. See also: François Colletet (1628-1680), Le Journal de Colletet, premier petit journal parisien (1676) (Paris: Moniteur du bibliophile, 1878). RECAP: 0904.262

Special thanks go to Steve Ferguson for finding this lost book.

The Push Pin almanac (New York: Push Pin Studios, 1953-1955). Graphic Arts collection GAX 2009-2161N

To read more about Edward Sorel's work and the exhibition at School of Visual Arts, see: http://www.schoolofvisualarts.edu/sa/index.jsp?sid0=201&page_id=482&event_id=1635.

Edward Sorel will have a public conversation with James McMullan on Tuesday, October 25, 7:00 p.m. at the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23 Street, NYC

Poor Richard Improved: Being an Almanack and Ephemeris … for the Year of Our Lord 1749: … Fitted to the Latitude of Forty Degrees, and a Meridian of Near Five Hours West from London: But May, Without Sensible Error, Serve All the Northern Colonies (Philadelphia: Printed and sold by B. Franklin, and D. Hall, [1748]). Graphic Arts (GAX) Hamilton 27.

“In 1732 I first published my Almanack, under the name of Richard Saunders; it was continu’d by me about 25 Years, commonly call’d Poor Richard’s Almanack. I endeavor’d to make it both entertaining and useful, and it accordingly came to be in such Demand that I reap’d considerable Profit from it, vending annually near ten Thousand… . I consider’d it as a proper Vehicle for conveying Instruction among the common People, who bought scarcely any other Books. I therefore filled all the little Spaces that occur’d between the Remarkable Days in the Calendar, with Proverbial Sentences, chiefly such as inculcated Industry and Frugality, as the Means of procuring Wealth and thereby securing Virtue, it being more difficult for a Man in Want to act always honestly, as (to use here one of those Proverbs) it is hard for an empty Sack to stand upright.”—Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Autobiography

This issue of Poor Richard Improved is the first to contain woodcuts showing the astrological symbols and occupations of the months.

Two nineteenth-century olla from the Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico. Gifts of Nathaniel Burt, Class of 1936. An olla is a large wide-mouthed earthenware vessel used (as by Pueblo Indians) for storage, cooking, or as a container for water.

Our donor, Nathaniel Burt (1913-2003), was a writer, novelist, poet, composer, and educator. He taught in the Department of Music at Princeton University from 1939 to 1941 and 1950 to 1952. Later, he composed pieces in a wide variety of genres, including ballet, musical score, orchestral overture, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and short stories. Burt is best known for his two books on the American aristocracy: The Perennial Philadelphians (Firestone 1214.228.2) and First Families (Ex 3658.74.334). Burt lived in Princeton for over fifty years with his wife Margaret “Winkie” Clinton Burt.

Laurence Sterne insisted on including a sheet of marbled paper within his novel Tristram Shandy, hand-set into volume three, usually p. 169. He called the paper “the motly emblem of my work.” Of the 4,000 copies of the first edition published, Princeton University owns seven, each issued in nine volumes from 1759-1767. Volume three, Shandy is born, came in 1761.

Rare Books (Ex) 3943.7.391 v.1-9
Rare Books (Ex) 3943.7.391.11 v.1-9
Rare Books (Ex) 3943.7.391.12 v.1-9
Rare Books: William H. Scheide Library (WHS) 25.2.11-19 vol.1-9
Rare Books: Robert H. Taylor Collection (RHT) 18th-563 vol.1-9
Rare Books: Robert H. Taylor Collection (RHT) 18th-555 vol.1-9
Rare Books: Robert H. Taylor Collection (RHT) 18th-562 vol.1-9

To celebrate this occasion, 169 artists and writers have created a one page emblem of themselves, now in the exhibition The Emblem of My Work, at Shandy Hall, Coxwold, UK (see: www.emblemofmywork169.blogspot.com). For better or worse, it’s up to you and me to match the name of the artist or writer to his or her work. Can you match the emblem to the artist?

The Butterfly (London: Grant Richards for The Butterfly Press, No.1, March 1899-No. 12, February 1900). Graphic Arts GAX 2011- in process

In 1897, Grant Richards (1872-1948) opened a publishing house on 9 Henrietta Street in Covent Garden, London, using his name as the imprint. He published works by G. B. Shaw, A. E. Housman, G. K. Chesterton, Alfred Noyes, John Masefield, Hector H. Munro (Saki), Arnold Bennett, and Maurice Baring, among others.

In 1899, Richards attempted to revive a literary monthly created by Walter Haddon in 1893 called The Butterfly. Like the earlier magazine, Richards bound his in yellow wrappers (ours are slightly washed out), a style also followed by The Yellow Book (1894-1897). The title may be a reference to the celebrated painter of the moment, James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), whose signature was a butterfly and whose art marketing company (established 1897) was named the Company of the Butterfly. Contributors to The Butterfly, which only lasted twelve issues, included H. D. Lowry, Arthur Morrison, Nora Hopper, and many others. Each issue was heavily Illustrated with reproductions of drawings by Max Beerbohm,
S. H. Sime, and Joseph Pennell, among others.

John J. Sharkey, Pentacle (Sherborne [Eng.]: South Street Publications, 1969). Graphic Arts GAX 2011- in process

A concrete poem is best seen and not heard. The term originated with Max Bill and Öyving Fahlström in the 1950s and while calligrams, ideograms, and poesia visiva have certainly been around for many years, the concrete movement reached its height in the 1960s in a response (in part) to the Pop Art movement in painting.

The use of the typewriter played a large part in the making of the poetic letter forms. Recently, however, Dr. Roberto Simanowski investigated concrete poetry in digital media, writing, “concrete poetry deals with the relation between the visible form and the intellectual substance of words. It is visual…because it adds the optical gesture of the word to its semantic meaning.”

An Anthology of Concrete Poetry, edited by Emmett Williams (New York: Something Else Press, 1967). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) 2006-1243N

Roberto Simanowski, Digital Art and Meaning: Reading Kinetic Poetry, Text Machines, Mapping Art, and Interactive Installations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011). Marquand Library (SA) N7433.8 .S56 2011

http://ww2.rediscov.com/sacknerarchives/Welcome.aspx?8152011110211
Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry