Author Archives: Julie Mellby

The Shakespeare that almost didn’t happen


The newspaper headline read: “Spruce Street fire, Monday night, set accidentally by a porter in the basement of the building owned by Newell and Company, were insured.”

In the fall of 1845, the wood engraver and manager of the printing office at Spruce Street Nathaniel Orr wrote to his fiancé, “Here I am, not dead but alive and kicking . . . I had a pretty narrow escape last night. But thanks to my “guardian angel” I made my exit from the burning [building] with scarcely a bruise. Just my luck. My loss will be but trifling. Though [Henry W.] Hewet paid me twenty dollars per week. I have already had offers equally as lucrative.”

“The Harpers tell me all will be right as soon as Hewet returns. I wrote to him last night and shall expect him tomorrow morning. When I found my passage completely cut off by the falling of the stairs I most assuredly thought my time had come. Oh, a thousand thoughts rushed upon my mind in a moment. I thought of you, of my bright hopes, of the horror of perishing in the flames. It was life or death, so I made the leap and here I am your own.”

A week later, Nathaniel wrote again to say that “Every article in our office was entirely destroyed and when I think of my own narrow escape I can but attribute it to a most merciful providence . . . I passed three windows (four stories from the ground) on the outside that I might get in a position for jumping on a small outhouse, two stories from the window. Had I [fallen] there I should not only have been killed but burned to ashes in the ruin. . . . The first John [Orr] knew of my adventures was on his way home, some four or five hours after I had astonished the natives, he met an acquaintance who inquired if I had been found! When he called on me I was asleep, preparing to repeat my leap to the tenor of the spectators.”


By mid-November, Nathaniel wrote to say “the cloud that hung over me for a few days after my late exit from the third story window . . . has entirely disappeared, and I now find myself most delightfully situated in splendid rooms at 289 Broadway under the patronage of Hewet, or more properly, Harper and Brothers, for they have concluded to have all the plates that were destroyed at the late fire reengraved forthwith. It will probably take us eighteen or twenty months to complete the work. So, you see, Phoenix-like I rise again . . . .”

 

William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Shakespeare’s Plays. With his life. Illustrated with many hundred wood-cuts, executed by H.W. Hewet, [and Nathaniel and John Orr], after designs by Kenny Meadows, Harvey, and others. Ed. by Gulian C. Verplanck, LL. D. (New York: Harper & brothers, 1847). RECAP 3925.1847

Letters by Nathaniel Orr in Orr Family Papers, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.

 

Severo Sarduy list

Kamel Ouidi, Portrait of Severo Sarduy, ca. 1980. Gelatin silver print. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012.02149

 


Our collection of visual art by poet, playwright, and novelist Severo Sarduy (1937-1993) has received so much attention in the past month, we are posting a PDF of the collection with images and call numbers to make patron requests easier. sarduy list with call numbers.

This can, of course, be searched through our online catalogue but given the abstract nature of these works and the lack of any individual titles, the list might prove more helpful.

The collection came to Princeton University with the assistance of the Executive Committee for the Program in Latin American Studies in 2011. Also included are artifacts from his studio, along with several works by his friends Roland Barthes, Jorge Camacho, and José Luis Cuevas.

 

Severo Sarduy (1933-1996), Triptyque I, II, III, 1990. Gouache, watercolor, coffee, and various other mediums. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2012.02170

 

 

The Parthenon of Books

This weekend, the second half of Documenta 14, entitled “Learning from Athens,” opens in Kassel, Germany following the exhibits in Athens, Greece, which have been on view since April. One of the highlights will be the installation of Marta Minujin’s “The Parthenon of Books” on the Friedrichsplatz opposite the Fridericianum, a recreation of her 1983 “El Partenón de libros” shown in Buenos Aires.


The books came from a public call last October to donate nearly 100,000 formerly or currently banned books from all over the world. At the end of the exhibition, the books will be removed and given to visitors, returning them to circulation.

Minujin’s installation commemorates the 2,000 books that were burned by the Nazis at this location in Kassel on May 19, 1933, during the so-called “Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist” (Campaign against the Un-German Spirit). Press information reminds us also that “in 1941, the Fridericianum—which was being used as a library at the time—was engulfed in flames during an Allied bombing attack, and another collection of about 350,000 books was lost.” The list of forbidden books was compiled in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Nikola Roßbach, guest professor Dr. Florian Gassner, and students of the University of Kassel.

Several other works focus on books, including Maria Eichhorn’s installation of books stolen from Jewish collections, still held in the state libraries of Berlin.

http://www.documenta14.de/en/public-exhibition/

Geography of the Heavens

A missing section of the southern sky from Elijah Hinsdale Burritt’s 1833 Atlas, Designed to Illustrate the Geography of the Heavens, was recently found and returned to its portfolio. Each map is delicately hand colored in pastel shades of yellow, pink, and blue. Curiously, some of the sections are square, some oval, and some round. It is possible that the engraved plates from the various editions (Princeton has 7 paper copies) have been mixed over the years.

Geographicus Rare & Antique Maps posted a nice biography of the original engraver Thomas Illman, repeated in part here: Thomas Illman (died 1858) attended Trinity College, Oxford, where he received a degree in theology but never pursued it as a career, turning instead to the art of engraving. His first professional work was illustrating Thomas Carlyle’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater.

Illman emmigrated to New York City in 1828, almost immediately partnering with Edward Pilbrow, advertised as Illman and Pilbrow. David H. Burr used them to engrave maps for his Universal Atlas and when Burr took a position as topographer and cartographer for the United States Post Office, the project was finished by their firm.

Outside the parnership, Illman pursued his own art, which included engraved portraits and landscapes. At some point he may have relocated to Philadelphia where his sons, H. Illman and G. Illman joined the business in 1845 as Illman & Sons.

Elijah Hinsdale Burritt (1794-1838), Atlas, designed to illustrate the geography of the heavens … (Hartford: Published by F.J. Huntington, 1833). 1 atlas (VII leaves of plates): all ill. (some col.); 39 cm. Maps are hand colored engravings by Illman & Pilbrow after the author’s drawings. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2006-0162F

Elijah Hinsdale Burritt (1794-1838), Atlas designed to illustrate the geography of the heavens … Edition New edition. (New York: Published by Huntington and Savage, 216 Pearl Street, [1835?]). VIII leaves of plates (2 double-page): ill., star charts (col.); 42 cm. Engraved by W.G. Evans. Rare Books: Historic Maps Collection (MAP) Oversize 2015-0036F

Elijah Hinsdale Burritt (1794-1838), Atlas, designed to illustrate the geography of the heavens…
Edition New edition (New York: Published by F.J. Huntington and Co, 174 Pearl Street, [1835?]). Engraved by W.G. Evans. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2006-0163F

Elijah Hinsdale Burritt (1794-1838), The geography of the heavens and class book of astronomy: accompanied by a celestial atlas. Edition 5th ed. with an introduction by Thomas Dick (New York: Huntington & Savage, 1843, c1833). RECAP 8407.229.11

Elijah Hinsdale Burritt (1794-1838), Atlas: designed to illustrate the geography of the heavens.
Edition New ed., rev. and corr. by Hiram Mattison (New York: F. J. Huntington, 1850). RECAP 8456.228.11f

Elijah Hinsdale Burritt (1794-1838), 1794-1838. Atlas designed to illustrate Burritt’s Geography of the heavens: comprising the following maps or plates …Edition New ed., rev. and corr. / by Hiram Mattison (New York: Mason Brothers, c1856). RECAP 8456.228f

Elijah Hinsdale Burritt (1794-1838), The geography of the heavens, and class-book of astronomy: accompanied by a celestial atlas. Greatly enlarged, revised, and illustrated by H. Mattison, A.M. Edition New and rev. ed., cor. in 1873 (New York, Sheldon & company [c1873]). RECAP 8407.229

To Trenton, in search of the picturesque

As children, John William Orr (1815-1887, top right) and Nathaniel Orr (1822-1908, top left sitting upright) moved every few years from New York to Belfont, Pennsylvania; London Canada; Detroit, Michigan; and Perrysburg, Ohio. Their father died in Ohio and the family moved once more to live with relatives in Buffalo, New York. John was fourteen, Nathaniel was seven, and both dreamed of becoming artists.

To help support the family, John spent his teenage years working as a clerk in the Buffalo Post Office. This mundane work ended only a few days after his twenty-first birthday, when John left for New York City to study under the artist William C. Redfield, brother of the publisher Julius S. Redfield. At the end of the year, John returned to Buffalo and became a leading force in the local arts community, elected president of the Society of Fine Arts in 1839.

Meanwhile, his younger brother Nathaniel finished a Buffalo apprenticeship and was accepted as a student of John H. Hall, one of only five students of the earliest and best American engraver Alexander Anderson (1775-1870). Nathaniel moved to Albany where Hall lived and John soon followed.

Between 1838 and 1846, John Orr illustrated part or all of a series of guidebooks to Niagara Falls and upstate New York, including Settlement in the West: Sketches of Rochester (1838); The Falls of Niagara, or Tourist’s Guide to This Wonder of Nature (1839); The Travellers’ Own Book to Saratoga Springs, Niagara Falls and Canada (1842); Pictorial Guide to the Falls of Niagara (1842); The Picturesque Tourist: Being a Guide Through the Northern and Eastern States and Canada (1844); Peck’s Tourist’s Companion to Niagara Falls, Saratoga Springs, the Lakes, Canada, etc. (1845); A Picture of New-York in 1846 (1846); and Sketches of Niagara Falls and River (1846).

Little by little, Nathaniel took over the work being offered to J. H. Hall, including the wood engraving for J. A. Adams (1803-1880) and Harper’s Illuminated Bible (1846). Adams was impressed with Nathaniel’s work and encouraged the young artist to move to New York City, where he became the shop manager for Henry W. Hewet and his multi-volume edition of Shakespeare’s Plays (1847). Once again, John followed his younger brother, setting up a studio at 75 Nassau Street.

In 1851, Nathaniel received a commission to engrave the cuts for Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867), Trenton Falls: Picturesque and Descriptive and became acquainted with the wilderness across the Hudson River in New Jersey. At the same time, John engraved the blocks for George William Curtis (1824-1892), Lotus-Eating…, with chapters on the Hudson and the Rhine; Catskill; Catskill Falls; Trenton; Niagara; Saratoga; Lake George; Nahant; and Newport (1852).

As time allowed, Nathaniel and John, both ardent hunters and fishermen, journeyed out of Manhattan to explore the neighboring state. Fellow Harper’s artist John R. Chapin (1827-1907) who lived in Rahway, must have accompanied the men, finally recording and publishing their adventures in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine as “Artist-Life in the Highlands,” in April 1860 and “Among the Nail-Makers,” in July 1860.

In Chapin’s stories, John is called Neutral Tint, “a tired artist in search of relaxation from a period of close application.” Nathaniel is called “Snell,” and described as a bit of an artist as well as a follower of Izaak Walton (author of The Compleat Angler). The stories are good but even better are the visual portraits drawn of the two brothers, giving us insight into their physical character and relationship.


Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867), editor. Trenton Falls, picturesque and descriptive, The principal illustrations from original designs by Heine, Kummer and Müller. Engraved on wood by N. Orr (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1851). (F) F129.T7 W7 1851

 

Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (New York: Harper & Brothers, [1850-1900]). Recap 0901.H295

 

 

Liber Bilibaldi Pirckheimer


Early in the 16th century, the Renaissance humanist Willibald Pirckheimer (1470-1530) convinced his good friend Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) to design a bookplate for his extensive library. Although it is not signed, the woodcut holds the words “Sibi et amicis P[ositus]. Liber Bilibaldi Pirckheimer” (Bilibald Pirckheimer’s book. [Placed on?] oneself and one’s friends). The Graphic Arts Collection holds a metal relief plate reproducing Dürer’s woodcut (similar to other metal plates produced by Elmer Adler).

The design includes Pirckheimer’s coat of arms on the right (a birch tree) and the arms of his wife Margretha Rieterin on the left (the double-tailed mermaid). Above them are two angels holding a helmet and scepter, along with garlands and other decoration. At the top is inscribed in Latin, Greek and Hebrew: “Inicium Sapientice Timor Domini” (The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, Psalm 111.10).

Digitally inverted and laterally reversed.

Princeton has a copy of Dürer woodcut in this book originally in Adler’s library:

Junianus Maius, De priscorum proprietate verborum (Venice: Joannes Rubeus Vercellensis, 1490). Bookplate of Willibald Pirckheimer, designed by Dürer. In 1636 Thomas Howard, 2d Earl of Arundel, bought Pirckheimer’s library in Nuremberg. In 1667, through John Evelyn’s efforts the library was presented to the Royal Society by the Earl’s grandson, Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk. In 1925 the Royal Society sold its duplicates at auction. Also has the bookplate of the Royal Society below Pirckheimer’s. ExI copy is from the printing collection of Elmer Adler. Evidently purchased by Adler in 1925 (lot 122, Sotheby’s [London], May 4, 1925 sale). (RB) EXI Oversize 2529.611q

 

A true blew Priest, ca. 1689

[Copper plate digitally laterally reversed, note the Book of Common Prayer on the floor]

“A true blew Priest, a Lincey Woolsey Brother.
One Legg a Pulpitt holds, a Tubb the other,
An Orthodox, grave, moderate, Prestbyterian.
Half Surplice, Cloake, half Priest, half Puritan;
Made up of all these halfes, hee cannot pass,
For anything; intirely, but an Ass.”

–altered slightly from Hudibras, p. 1, c. iii. l. 1224.

Unidentified artist, A Trimmer, ca. 1689. Graphic Arts Collection Block collection.

The British Museum holds a mezzotint by “W.H.” called  A Trimmer, ca. 1689. They also hold a line engraving of the same figure dressed “half like a Puritan standing in a tub, and half like a clergyman standing in a pulpit, at the side of which is fixed an hourglass upon its stand, such as was used in the sixteenth century.” Falling out of a bag are a broken scepter, divided crown, miter, tiara, an archiepiscopal crosier and orb.

The Graphic Arts Collection has a copperplate engraved with the scene as in the BM’s line engraving. It might be a practice plate because it has been used a second time for another engraving on the verso.

According to Dorothy George, of the BM, this is supposed to be a satirical representation of Bishop Burnet, of whom it has been said that he was “in profession a prelate, a dissenter in sentiment.”  Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury (1643-1715) became Bishop of Salisbury and Chancellor of the Order of the Garter in 1689. He was also the author of The History of the Reformation in England.

On the verso of this copper plate is a very warn engraving, possibly of a wedding. No signature or chop can be seen on either side.

 

See also: Samuel Butler (1612-1680), Hudibras. The first part (London: Printed by J.G. for Richard Marriot …, 1663). Rare Books (Ex) 3660.5.34.115

The First Princeton Tiger

Woodblock for tiger used in The Princeton Tiger, ca. 1881. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of W.R. Deemes, Class of 1891.

An alumnus in another column asks when the Princeton cheer came to be known as the “Princeton Tiger.” It was but natural that when first adopted by the College the cheer should lie known as the “rocket.” It is descriptive of the explosion of a rocket and was everywhere called by that name lief ore its adoption here; and it is even now occasionally spoken of in the College as the “rocket.” But while the “Princeton Tiger” has largely supplanted “rocket” as the name of Princeton’s cheer, the public are responsible for this rather than the students themselves. The now name has come into use only during the last few years. The inter-collegiate contests, in which Princeton has so largely figured, gradually engaged the interest and attention of the public until the rocket cheer had become so repeatedly associated with Princeton, that when the press called it Princeton’s Tiger. The “Princeton Tiger” it became. It is interesting to note in this connection that the fourth word of the cheer not only gave to the Princeton cheer its name, but suggested the Tiger as the emblem of the college. And when the undergraduates some four years ago started an illustrated magazine and christened it “The Tiger,” and that magazine represented Athletic Princeton as a Bengal Tiger, the “orange and black” lord of the jungle became Princeton’s emblem forever. And this has reacted not a little on Princeton’s devotion to her cheer.
Daily Princetonian, Volume 10, Number 61, December 11, 1885

Digitally inverted

Composite of Circus People

The Graphic Arts Collection holds two composite photographs of circus people. One is organized and indexed. The second, well, the second isn’t.

Both are heavily varnished, adding to glare in these reproductions. Here is the first:

Here is the second, with a few details:

The owner of his own Midwest circus, Charles (Uncle Charley) Andress (1852-1933) was also a circus historian, publishing several articles and photo-essays, including Route Book of Barnum & Bailey [Circus], 1905.

In 1907, Show World magazine announced “Will Make Large Picture. Charles Andress, of the Barnum & Bailey Show, is making rapid progress in collecting photographs of performers and circus people for the largest photograph ever made. When completed it will contain over 1,200 people. This photograph is being made irrespective of any particular show. The center will be made up of the representative circus men of the past and present, in this and foreign countries; and the rest of the photograph will be of performers and musicians, staff officers, etc., of the various shows throughout the country.”

The Poet of the Future

This sheet of drawings by John McLenan (1827-1865) turns up in a scrapbook at the New York Public Library, with no explanation. Over the years, the central portrait has been assumed to be Walt Whitman (1819-1892).

McLenan’s final published prints were discovered recently in our set of the Harper’s New Monthly Magazine CXXI, no. 20 (June 1860), p.141-42. The central drawing is titled “The Poet of the Future.” Below is our death mask of Whitman so that you can decide for yourself whether or not the sketch is meant to be Whitman.

The Future President; Organ of Veneration; Gushing Poetess; The Great Artist [self-portrait of John McLenan].
Well-balanced Head; Benevolence; The Great Captain; The Poet of the Future; [Embryo] Financier.

“Gifted by nature this subject–with a head that’s swollen with Literary talent–is allow to go to grass…”

Death mask of Walt Whitman (1819-1892), 1892. Laurence Hutton Collection of Life and Death Masks.