Puzzle: https://jigex.com/ZX6K
If you are not able to attend today’s 2:00 talk “New Theories on the Oldest American Woodcut: The Portrait of Richard Mather by John Foster, ca. 1670,” which is almost fully registered, (https://libcal.princeton.edu/event/6715887) at least you can enjoy the Mather portrait puzzle designed here:https://jigex.com/ZX6K
Thanks to the template provided by Jigsaw Puzzle Explorer.
Below is a link to the recording of the presentation:
https://mediacentral.princeton.edu/media/New+Theories+on+the+Oldest+American+WoodcutA+The+Portrait+of+Richard+Mather+by+John+Foster%2C+ca.+1670/1_s9zed1co
Thank you for your help!
Here is the timeline covered in the presentation:
1630 Dorchester founded, just a few months before the founding of the city of Boston
1635 Reverend Richard Mather arrived at Boston and settled in Dorchester
1638/39 The first European printing press arrived in Colonial America
1648 John Foster born in Dorchester and baptized by Mather
1667 Foster graduated from Harvard College and returned to Dorchester as a schoolteacher
1669 Richard Mather died
1670 Increase Mather wrote The Life and Death of that Reverend Man of God, Mr. Richard Mather
1670? Foster carved a portrait of Mather and printed the two composite blocks on the Cambridge press of Marmaduke Johnson and/or Samuel Green
1674 Johnson moved his press to Boston but died the same year. With Increase Mather’s help, Foster took over the press and became the first printer in Boston
1681 Foster died of consumption age 33 and equipment went to Bartholomew Green (and blocks?)
1732 Green died and equipment went to John Draper (and blocks?)
These are the sizes of the collotype reproductions printed with Gillette Griffin’s article 1959. They are not from the original impressions:
Harvard University 150 x 122 mm
University of Virginia 151 x 125 mm
American Antiquarian Society 153 x 122 mm
Princeton University 154 x 128 mm
Mass. Hist. Society 153 x 128 mm
Here is a selected bibliography so you can read more about Foster’s woodcut:
Increase Mather (1639-1723), The Life And Death Of That Reverend Man Of God, Mr. Richard Mather, Teacher Of The Church In Dorchester In New-England: [seven lines of quotations] (Cambridge [Mass.]: Printed by S.G. and M.J. [i.e., Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson], 1670). William H. Scheide Library 101.19. Dedication signed: Increase Mather. Boston N.E. Septemb. 6. 1670. WHS copy has engraved portrait of Increase Mather pasted on verso of t.p., with inscription: Crescentius Matherus. Aetatis Suae 49. 1688. Vanderspirit pinxit. R. White Sculp. Londini. WHS copy is Thomas M. Waller and Edith A. Pollard’s copy, acquired 6/2/38 from Goodspeed; inv. 483.
Thomas Tilestone, A Funeral Elegy, Dedicated To The Memory Of His Worthy Friend, [Microform]: The Learned & Religious Mr. John Foster; Who Deceased In Dorchester, The 9th. Of September. 1681 ([Cambridge, Mass.: Printed by Samuel Green, 1681]).
Richard Mather (1596-1660), Journal of Richard Mather, 1635: His Life And Death, 1670 (Boston [Mass.]: D. Clapp, 1850). Reproduction of the original from the American Antiquarian Society.
Samuel G. Drake (1798-1875), A Memoir Of The Rev. Cotton Mather, D. D., With A Genealogy Of The Family Of Mather (Boston: C. C. P. Moody, printer, 1851).
Samuel A. Green (1830-1918), John Foster: the Earliest American Engraver and the First Boston Printer (Boston: Published by the Massachusetts Historical Society at the Charge of the Waterston fund, No. 2., 1909). Graphic Arts Collection Z232.F7 G8. Graphic Arts copy “Elmer Adler, Princeton”–Written in pen on p. [2] of cover.
“An Early Printer: John Foster the First to Establish a Press in Boston,” The Hartford Courant, November 12, 1909: 5.
Frederick I. Weis, “Checklist of the Portraits in the American Antiquarian Society,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society; Worcester, Mass. Vol. 56, issue 1, (January 1, 1947): 55.
Sinclair Hamilton, “Portrait of a Puritan: John Foster’s Woodcut of Richard Mather,” The Princeton University Library Chronicle 18, no. 2 (Winter 1957): 43-48
Sinclair Hamilton, Early American Book Illustrators And Wood Engravers, 1670-1870: A Catalogue Of A Collection Of American Books Illustrated For The Most Part With Woodcuts And Wood Engravings (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1958).
Gillett Griffin (1928-2016), “John Foster’s woodcut of Richard Mather,” PaGA, Printing & Graphic Arts v. 7, no. 1 (1959): 1-19.
Richard Holman, “Some Remarks on Mr. Richard Mather,” PaGA, Printing & Graphic Arts v. 7, no. 1 (1959): 57-63.
Increase Mather (1639-1723), Life and Death of Richard Mather (1670). A facsimile reprint with an introd. by Benjamin Franklin V, and William K. Bottorff (Athens, Ohio: 1966). Firestone Library BX7260.M368 M3 1670. Facsim. of the Boston Public Library copy, except the port.
Robert Middlekauff, The Mathers; Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971). Firestone Library F67 .M4865 1971.
Melissa Johnson Kane, John Foster, the Ingenious Mathematician & Printer ([Charlottesville, Va.], 1973). Thesis: M.A.; University of Virginia; 1973.
B. R. Burg, Richard Mather of Dorchester ([Lexington, Ky.]: University Press of Kentucky, 1976). ReCAP BX7260.M368B87
James Lawton, “John Foster (December 1648-9 September 1681),” American Colonial Writers, 1606-1734, edited by Emory Elliott. Dictionary of Literary Biography 24 (1984): 123-25.
Herschel C. Logan, John Foster and America’s First Woodcut: 1670 (Fellerton, CA: Lyceum Press; Lorson’s Books & Prints, 1988).
Cotton Mather (1663-1728), Two Mather Biographies: Life and Death and Parentator, edited by William J. Scheick (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 1989). ReCAP, BX7259 .M32 1989
Georgia Brady Barnhill, “The Catalogue of American Engravings: A Manual for Users,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society; Worcester, Mass. Vol. 108, Issue 1 (January 1, 1998): 113.
Elisabeth Louise Roark, Artists of Colonial America (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2003).
