Yearly Archives: 2014

On Stuffed Animals Hanging from the Ceiling

This post is in honor of William H. Helfand’s wonderful article in the Gazette of the Grolier Club, new series number 63 (2012 but just released) entitled “On Stuffed Animals Hanging from the Ceiling.” Helfand quotes Anthony Grafton when he notes that visitors to the workrooms of the pharmacies and physician’s offices “gaped at their magnificent collections, the shelves stocked with shells, fossils, monstrous fish, and Siamese-twin animals, the ceilings hung with everything from starfish to crocodiles.” (from “the Moonstruck Tuscan” in Bookforum Feb/March 2011).

“So, why were the stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling in the pharmacies, doctor’s offices, dentist’s operating rooms, and alchemist’s laboratories?” writes Helfand. To find the answer, you will have to read his article.

Thomas Cook (1744-1818) after William Hogarth (1697-1764), Hudibras beats Sidrophel and his man Whacum, plate 8 from Hudibras, no date [1800]. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2005.01365

For Hogarth’s original book illustrations, see Samuel Butler (1612-1680), Hudibras: in three parts, written in the time of the late wars; corrected and amended, with additions, to which is added annotations, with an exact index to the whole; adorn’d with a new set of cuts, design’d and engrav’d by Mr. Hogarth (London: Printed for B. Motte … , 1726). Rare Books (Ex) 3660.5.34.135

Anthony Grafton’s article is available to Princeton full-text through Proquest at: http://search.proquest.com/docview/853755745/142D2D35D4F9122DC1/1?accountid=13314

London Almanack for the Year 1816

London Almanack for the Year of Christ 1816. [London]: Printed for the Company of Stationers, [1815] . Miniature with original decorated red morocco binding, gilt, onlays in buff, blue and green and a central hot-air balloon. Matching slipcase. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process

The Stationers’ Company (British publishing guild) issued a series of miniature almanacs. The earliest in OCLC is 1748 and the most recent 1852, all approximately 55 mm. Many feature an engraving at the front depicting a British landmark significant to that year. The almanac recently acquired by the Graphic Arts Collection has a panoramic view of the New Bethlehem Hospital, folded and bound as p. [2-5].

Property was purchased in 1810 at St. George’s Fields in Southwark for the building of a new Bethlehem Hospital. James Lewis’ design took three years to build, finally opening to patients in 1815 with an additional wing completed in 1816.

Fall of Montmorenci

The British artist and soldier, Lieutenant George Bulteel Fisher, sailed up the St. Lawrence River to Quebec in 1775-76 and made drawings of the spectacular views he found. Later, engraver John William Edye created six huge aquatints after Fisher’s sketches, published in 1796.

This view of the Fall of Montmorenci was one. The Graphic Arts Collection also holds Fisher’s Falls of Montmorenci from the Island of Orleans, from the same series. Each is inscribed “To His Royal Highness Prince Edward, Major General, Commanding His Majesty’s Forces in the Province of Nova Scotia, &c. &c. These Views of North America, most of them taken whilst he had the honour of attending His Royal Highness in that country, are humbly inscribed … by G. B. Fisher.”

Both were donated to Princeton by Leonard L. Milberg and featured in the exhibition Early American Views from the Collection of Leonard L. Milberg,’53 in 1983.

John William Edye, 1760-1802; after drawings by George Bulteel Fisher, 1764-1834. Fall of Montmorenci, 246, Perpendicular Feet, 1796. Aquatint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013.00888. Gift of Leonard L. Milberg, Class of 1953.

Traité théorique et pratique de lithographie

The nineteenth-century French artist and printer Godefroy Engelmann (1788-1839) founded the Industrial Society of Mulhouse (SIM) with his son Engelmann II after studying lithography with Aloys Senefelder in Munich.

Twenty years later, having establishing companies in Paris and London, Engelmann then returned to Mulhouse to focus on the new process of chromolithography, awarded a patent on July 1837.

His final treatise, A Discussion on Theoretical and Practical Lithography was published posthumously. Surprising to a twenty-first century audience, there are no illustrations in his manual beyond the decorative title pages.

Happily, we also recently acquired Michael Twyman’s monumental A History of Chromolithography: Printed Colour for All, which offers 850 color illustrations along with detailed descriptions of all variations of planographic color printing.

Twyman’s book is the first since the process was in its heyday to offer a detailed account of how chromolithographs were made, tracing the evolution of this hand-drawn color-printing process from its tentative beginnings in Germany in the early nineteenth century to its spread from Europe to the United States and beyond.

Michael Twyman is Emeritus Professor of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, and has played an active role in several societies concerned with printing, particularly the Printing Historical Society and the Ephemera Society.

His publications include many articles and book chapters, in addition to over a dozen books, among them: Printing 1770-1970 (1970; 1998), Lithography 1800-1850 (1970), Early lithographed books (1990), Early lithographed music (1996), The British Library guide to printing (1998), Breaking the mould: the first hundred years of lithography (2001), and Images en couleur (2007).

Godefroy Engelmann (1788-1839), Traité théorique et pratique de lithographie (Mulhouse, Haut-Rhin: Engelmann père et fils, 1839, 1840. Graphic Arts collection GAX Oversize 2013-0078Q

Michael Twyman, A History of Chromolithography: Printed Colour for All (London: British Library; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2013). GARF 2013- in process

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