Author Archives: Julie Mellby

They were handsome, gregarious troublemakers: the story of James Beresford, Thomas Rowlandson, and Dickson Queen Brown.

Save the date for an afternoon talk on Sunday, September 17, 2:00 p.m. in 101 McCormick Hall: “That’s So Annoying! Thomas Rowlandson and The Miseries of Human Life”

Graphic Arts Curator Julie Mellby will discuss Princeton University Library’s collection of satirical drawings by Thomas Rowlandson given by Dickson Queen Brown, Class of 1895, and their relationship with James Beresford’s 1806 comic bestseller The Miseries of Human Life. A reception in the Museum will follow.

http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/in-the-galleries

Merton College Fellow James Beresford addressed his book “To the miserable,” and began:

“Children of misfortune, wheresoever found, and whatsoever enduring, –ye who maintain a kind of sovereignty in suffering, believing that all the throbs of torture, all the pungency of sorrow, all the bitterness of desperation, are your own…! Take courage and renounce your sad monopoly.

Dispassionately ponder all your worst of woes, in turn with these; then hasten to distil from the comparison an opiate for your fiercest pangs; and learn to recognize the lenity of your Destinies.”

Please join us in September.


The Cries of New York

In honor of the U.S. Open, here is a tennis player carved into the Murray Hill Building at 285 Madison Avenue. Nearly 100 grotesques frame the ground floor doors of this 1926 office building designed by Rouse & Goldstone for developer Isaac Harby. The building’s first tenants were Mad Men Young and Rubicam, fulfilling their contract with Jello to move the company to New York. Here are some other figures at 285 Mad.



See also: Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), Cries of London (London, 1820). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize Rowlandson 1820.01q

Ronald Sheridan, Gargoyles and grotesques (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975). Marquand Library (SA) NB170.S47

Laurel Masten Cantor, The gargoyles of Princeton University ([Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, Office of Communications/Publications, 1983]). Architecture Library (UES) LD4611 .C36

The Modern School and Ferrer Colony

Bird bath in the front yard

In 1915, Samuel Goldman (1882–1969) constructed and then carved reliefs into the exterior of his stucco home at 143 School Street, in the North Stelton neighborhood of Piscataway Township, New Jersey. The symbols reflect his Marxist beliefs and membership in the Francisco Ferrer Association, founded in 1901 by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.

The Ferrer Colony was a libertarian community where, among many programs, they established the progressive Modern School, an alternative to public schooling and traditional living arrangements. At its largest, the Stelton Colony included 90 houses, although most residents only occupied their homes on the weekend.

Thanks to the generous donations of Donald Farren, Class of 1958, the Graphic Arts Collection holds a nearly complete run of The Modern School: A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Libertarian Ideas in Education, edited by Carl Zigrosser and printed by Joseph Ishill.

The magazine includes linocuts (primarily) by many contemporary printmakers, such as William Zorach, Man Ray, and Rockwell Kent, who designed its logo and chapter initials. Man Ray was also one of the first adult students to attend night classes at the Modern School, while it was still in New York City.


 

On Friday afternoon, October 27, 2017, the Friends of the Modern School hold their 45th annual meeting at Alexander Library, Rutgers University, also the home of the Modern School archives.

For more information, see:
http://friendsofthemodernschool.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/FMS-2017-Meeting-Announcement.pdf

For more photographs, see: http://www.talkinghistory.org/stelton/modschoolmag.html

The Modern School. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2009-2180N and 2015-0579N

Magic Lantern Actors and Actresses

Going on vacation. Can you identify the unknown actors and actresses while I’m gone? Thank you.
Julia Marlowe Taber as Lydia Languish

top left: Chauncey Ollott as Sir L. Trigger–Powers as Bob Acres. bottom left: Mr. J. Jefferson as Bob Acres. bottom right: Captain [ Jack] Absolute, The Rivals.

 

top left: unknown. bottom left: Helen Hayes, What Every Woman Knows. top right: John Baldwin Buckstone as Bob Acres 1802-1879. bottom right: unknown.

Eva Le Gallienne (1899-1991)

All unknown.

Bobbie Clark as Bob Acres?

All unknown.

The London Circle: Early Explorations of Photography


PDF: Sara Stevenson
Last spring, we invited Sara Stevenson to Princeton University to deliver the inaugural Gillett G. Griffin Memorial Lecture, a series of talks established in honor of our former Graphic Arts Curator. Each talk will highlight one important acquisition made under Gillett’s curatorship.

On a bright Sunday afternoon, Sara entertained and enlightened a full auditorium with her talk entitled “The London Circle: Early Explorations of Photography: The Willats album in the Firestone Library.” Our sincere thanks to Sara and to the entire staff who made this event possible.

We promised to make this talk available online for the many international researchers and fans who could not be in Princeton to hear it in person. Given many delays in rephotographing and posting the Willats album for our new online site and the writing of a web page for the posting of our Griffin lecture series, we decided not to wait any longer.

Here without fancy decoration or the illustrations still in process is a PDF of Sara Stevenson’s text. At a later date, we will do a more elaborate posting. Please circulate to photography researchers, collectors, and enthusiasts.

Henry Hall decoration

The Class of 1904-Howard Henry Memorial Dormitory (first occupied in 1923) was designed by M B. Medary, Jr. as an upper-class dorm honoring Howard Houston Henry (1882-1919), Samuel Franklin Pogue, and John Baird Atwood, members of the class of 1904, who died during World War I.

While at Princeton, Henry played football for the Tigers and was selected as an All-American halfback in 1903. To each side of the Henry Hall front door are memorials to Henry’s athletic achievements [above].



Under the windows are reliefs with familiar revolutionary war scenes of George Washington crossing the Delaware and the Battle of Princeton. Around the corner on Foulke Hall (first occupied in 1921) is a similar relief celebrating aviation.

The March 11, 1955, Alumni Weekly clarifies it further:

The stone carvings which decorate virtually every building on the Princeton campus are a source of wonder to us, especially as they are so little known or observed. This one is at eye level on the east façade of Foulke Hall. The significance of the airplane is the Walter L. Foulke ’05, in whose name the dormitory was given by his family and classmates, was a pioneer aviator. Among his more colorful exploits was his leadership of a party of aviators who flew from Long Island to the Yale-Princeton football game of 1915-16. Foulke died in service in World War I, not as an aviator, but as the fatal victim of pneumonia. …

 

Above each building’s plaques are statues of St. George and St. Michael by A. Sterling Calder,  flanked by swords overlaid with open books. For more information, take the gargoyles tour: http://m.princeton.edu/tours/tourstop?code=GARGOYLES&ordinal=14

 

 

 

Trouvelot’s chromolithograph of the 1878 eclipse

As everyone is preparing for the total eclipse of the sun on Monday, August 21, 2017 (live streaming at https://www.nasa.gov/eclipselive) we pulled out the chromolithographs after pastel drawings by Étienne Léopold Trouvelot (1827-1895).

The French artist and astronomer moved to Boston in 1852 and through a Harvard contact, Joseph Winlock, he was invited to use their telescopes to make drawings, similar to what James Nasmyth and James Carpenter were doing in The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite (1874) https://www.princeton.edu/~graphicarts/2012/08/james_nasmyth.html

Records show he produced approximately 7,000 quality astronomical illustrations, 15 of which were reproduced as chromolithographs and published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1881. We keep the oversize prints separate from the text volume. There were so many layers of color printed to form these images, along with a top varnish, the sheets are slightly warped, as you can see in these reproductions.

There is no need to pay for these images. The New York Public Library is offering three different resolutions downloaded for free at: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/the-trouvelot-astronomical-drawings-atlas#/?tab=about

See “The splendor of the cosmos in a trailblazing marriage of art and science more than a century before modern astrophotography” by Maria Popova at https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/07/07/trouvelots-astronomical-drawings/

 

 


Étienne Léopold Trouvelot (1827-1895), The Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings Manual (New York: C. Scribner’s sons, 1882). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) QB68 .T8 1882 and GC167

Final note: Another online site mentions that Trouvelot’s pastels were exhibited “alongside Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone, Heinz Ketchup, the first commercially successful typewriter, and the torch-clutching right arm of the Statue of Liberty at the first World’s Fair in Philadelphia.”

Robinson Crusoe … preserved by pirates

Travels of Robinson Crusoe. Written by himself (Worcester (Massachusetts): Printed by Isaiah Thomas, and sold at his book-store, MDCCLXXXVI: where may be had a variety of little books for children., [1786]). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) PR3403 .A2 1786s

Defoe’s Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was first published on April 25, 1719, and before the end of the year had run through four editions. An abridged children’s version was published ca. 1784 in Boston, printed and sold by N. Coverly, price three pence.

Two years later Isaiah Thomas (1661?-1731) printed and sold the novel from his bookshop in Worcester, Massachusetts, as “Travels of Robinson Crusoe.” The book was as big a success for Thomas in the United States as it had been in England.

Here are plates from the 1786 and 1795 editions. Note that Crusoe is not only taller in 1795 but he has a new hat and loses his shoes between the editions.

Daniel Defoe (1661?-1731), The Most Surprising Adventures, and Wonderful Life of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: containing a full and particular account how his ship was lost in a storm, and all his companions were drowned, and he only was cast upon the shore by the wreck and how he lived eight and twenty years in an uninhabited island, on the coast of America, &c. With a true relation how he was at last miraculously preserved by pirates, &c. &c. &c. (Worcester, Mass,: Printed [by Isaiah Thomas] and sold at the Worcester bookstore, 1795). 15 cm. Contains a woodcut frontispiece and 12 (one repeated) woodcuts in the text. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton 163





 

See also: Daniel Defoe (1661?-1731) The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe : being the second and last part of his life, and of the strange surprizing accounts of his travels round three parts of the globe / written by himself (London: Printed for W. Taylor …, 1719). Princeton copies 1-3: First edition, first issue; copies 4-5: first edition, second issue. Rare Books (Ex) PR3404 .xF37 1719

1786
1795

‘Twas in this ship, which fail’d from Hull,
That Crusoe did embark;
Which did him vex, and much perplex,
And broke his parents heart.

Next week: Typecon

Next week brings the opening of TypeCon 2017, the annual conference of the Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA), an international organization dedicated to the promotion, study, and support of typography and related arts.

Each year, the SOTA Typography Award is presented to an outstanding member of the type community. Recipients have included Hermann Zapf (2003), Ed Benguiat (2004), Matthew Carter (2005), Adrian Frutiger (2006), David Berlow (2007), Gerrit Noordzij (2008), Gerard Unger (2009), Doyald Young (2010), Erik Spiekermann (2011), Mike Parker (2012), Zuzana Ličko (2013), Fiona Ross (2014), Robert Slimbach (2015), and Fred Smeijers (2016). This year the award will be presented on Saturday, August 26.

Martina Flor will be this year’s keynote speaker. Based in Berlin, Flor runs a leading studio specializing in lettering and custom typography for clients around the globe, including: The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Harper Collins, and Cosmopolitan, among others.

Here are some of the many talks and events:
Friday, August 25th
8:50 a.m. Bruce Kennett: W. A. Dwiggins, Hermann Püterschein, and the Fictional Society of Calligraphers
9:35 a.m. Tucker McLachlan: Typography Ghost Stories
9:55 a.m. Jennifer McKnight: Victorian Grande Dames and German Engravers: How Type Design Taught a City to Dream
10:35 a.m. Peter Bella & Caleb Fairres: Making the Machine Human: Embracing Printing Technologies in Crafting a Present-day Moveable Typeface
10:55 a.m. Petra Dočekalová: New Lettering Forms
11:20 a.m. Catherine Leigh Schmidt: Yatra: A Journey in Painted Signs
11:40 a.m. Linh O’Briant: Playing by the Rules—Type & Origami Design Rules
2:00 p.m. Bobby Martin: The Meeting Point of Type, Design, and Brand
2:45 p.m. David Jonathan Ross: EXTRA! EXTRA!
3:05 p.m. Judy Safran-Aasen & Mike LaJoie: Deconstructing the Construction of the Microsoft Emoji Font
3:25 p.m. Scott Boms: Imperfection Machines: Low Res in a High Res World
4:05 p.m. Geri McCormick & James Grieshaber: Dr. Strangefont or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Make Chromatic Type
4:25 p.m. Meaghan Dee: The Slow Death of Handwriting
4:45 p.m. Rachel Elnar: Cultivating Creative Communities

Saturday, August 26th
8:35 a.m. Lucas Czarnecki: An Ethnography of Garbage (Fonts)
8:55 a.m. Hrant Papazian: protoType: The Book (?)
9:15 a.m. Mary Catherine Pflug: Results of the Second Font Purchasing Habits Survey
10:00 a.m. Christopher Rouleau: Brush Lettering Demo
10:25 a.m. Qiu Yin & Ming Wei: Thinking and Practicing Chinese Type Design on Screen
10:45 a.m. Mark Jamra & Neil Patel: Lessons Learned in Designing Type for Africa
11:10 a.m. Richard Kahwagi: Arabic Typography and Popular Culture
11:50 a.m. Masataka Hattori: Fundamentals of Japanese Metrics Editing
1:30 p.m. Geri McCormick & James Grieshaber: Chromatic Wood Type Printing Demo
2:00 p.m. Elizabeth Carey Smith: Type in Couture
2:45 p.m. Ana Monroe: The Typography of Bling
3:05 p.m. Jess Meoni: Liner Notes & Ligatures: A Reflection on Typography in the Age of Vinyl
3:45 p.m. Amelia Hugill-Fontanel: Typographic Realia: Cataloging and Connecting Wood and Metal Resources
4:05 p.m. Spencer Charles & Frances MacLeod: The Left Handed Path: A Twisting Journey Through Left-Handed Lettermaking

Sunday, August 27th
8:35 a.m. Yves Peters: Type With Character(s)—Reclaiming Control Over OpenType Fonts
9:20 a.m. Jason Pamental: Variable Fonts & The Future of Web Design
9:45 a.m. John Roshell: ZAP! POW! BAM! Comic Book Lettering, From Pens to Pixels
10:10 a.m. Radek Sidun: Typefaces for Television
10:30 a.m. David Shields: Muster Hundreds! Towards a People’s History of American Wood Type
11:10 a.m. Ina Saltz: The Rise of Typographic Tattoos
11:30 a.m. Douglas Wilson: A Multimedia Extravaganza Through the World of Printing Films
11:55 a.m. Jason Campbell: Mojo’s Workin’: Blues Typography & Album Art
12:15 p.m. James Walker: Type Hike: A Typographic Exploration of America’s National Parks

One soldier’s photography album from World War I

World War I photography album. France, 1918-1936. 137 silver gelatin prints with typed captions. Oblong folio. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process.

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a photography album with 137 views of World War I battlefields, action, and damages in France, compiled by a soldier in the United States Signal Corps. Described in extended, typed captions, this engaging compilation of contemporary wartime action photographs also includes images from a later tour of the area by a veteran who was there.

Although several prints are stamped with Signal Corp logos, the photographs do not appear to duplicate any in the digital collection of US Army Signal Corps WW1 Photographs created by the US Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Their collection contains some 700 images from photographs taken during the First World War in France, Germany and Luxembourg, which can be searched at the following link.

http://cdm16635.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/collection/p16635coll16!p16635coll22/order/title/page/1

 

The album holds one photograph that shows a group of soldiers working in a field, captioned, “The worst job of all. Cutting wire under fire before the advance on Very,” while another reads, “A view of the Cheppy Road looking north. We advanced up this September 26, 1918. Engineers are here repairing the mine craters.” [see last photograph below]


The first page of the album is entitled “No Mans Land,” and contains a trench photo of two men and a later picture of a man standing in the woods, with a caption that reads,

“The most confusing thing about old no-mans land is the fact that there is a national highway now running down the middle of it from Varennes thru Avocourt and on to Verdun. The picture above is the only one in action in 1918 by our outfit and shows some of Co. F, dodging shell fire in no-man land…. The picture to the left is myself standing where Cy Noble was killed on the dirt road from Cigalleri to No-mans land.”

The middle section of the album continues with photos of the French countryside containing remnants of the war and the cemeteries full of war casualties alongside images of the areas taken during the war. The final section contains images of World War I artillery and aviation, as well as several aerial shots of French cities, much of which relates to the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, fought in the final days of the war before the armistice.