Author Archives: Julie Mellby

Erigeron Philadelphicum and other Medical Flora

Constantine S. Rafinesque (1783-1840), Medical Flora; or, Manual of the Medical Botany of The United States of North America (Philadelphia: Printed and published by Atkinson & Alexander, 1828/1830). Two volumes. 100 plates printed in green. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2016- in process.

Constantine Samuel Rafinesque was a botanist and professor. Originally born in Turkey, he came to Philadelphia in 1802. He met Thomas Jefferson in July 1804 while traveling through Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia to study the local flora. Although this was their only meeting, they corresponded sporadically for the next twenty years. During their first bout of correspondence, Rafinesque expressed keen interest in the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Jefferson suggested that he might prove useful in a proposed expedition along the Red River. Rafinesque did not join this expedition, having left the country for Italy before receiving the letter. He remained there for the next ten years.

Rafinesque returned to the U.S. in 1815, and accepted a position as a botany professor at Transylvania University in 1819. Rafinesque wrote to Jefferson after a silence of nearly fifteen years to inquire after a professorship at the University of Virginia. Jefferson promised to “lay [his] letter before the board in due time.” Rafinesque was ultimately unsuccessful in securing a position at the new university, despite applying to Jefferson several more times over the next few years.Rafinesque remained at Transylvania University and did extensive archaeological and linguistic work on the early people in the Ohio Valley. In 1826, he moved to Philadelphia where he continued to write until his death by cancer.” –The Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia: https://www.monticello.org/site/house-and-gardens/rafinesque-constantine-samuel

Rafinesque opens volume one with 74 main points, beginning:
1. THE Science of Botany was at all times intimately connected with medical knowledge.
2. Several ancient nations, such as the Grecians, Romans, Hindoos, Chinese, &c. considered Medical Botany as equivalent to both botanical and medical knowledge.
3. Medicine was then, and is still among rude nations, nothing more than the application of an empirical knowledge of vegetable substances.
4. Thence the usual vulgar division of Plants, into the five great Classes of ALIMENTS, SIMPLES, POISONS, FLOWERS and WEEDS, or alimentary, medical, poisonous, ornamental and useless plants.
5. At the revival of learning in Europe, this notion being general, the first works on Botany, were of course mere sketches of Medical Botany, and comments on Grecian or Roman writers.
6. When Tournefort and Linnaeus, about a century ago, became botanical reformers, and made Botany a separate Science, their efforts and improvements were resisted by those who at all times contend against useful innovations.
7. Linnaeus in his Materia Medica, gave a model of systematical Medical Botany, equally concise, perspicuous and accurate; but destitute of the help of figures. . .

He ends with 12 concluding remarks:
1. Physicians do not agree on the mode of action of the properties, nor the proximate and intricate operation of remedies; but the ultimate effects and results being ascertained, they are sufficient for practical use.
2. Drugs are Vegetable substances prepared for use, and kept for sale by Druggists or Pharmacians.
3. Those which are imported, are often adulterated, or inferior kinds are substituted; for instance Peruvian Bark or CINCHONA, and Saffron or CROCUS, are hardly to be met with in the U. S.—Caribean bark or PORTLANDIA, and Bastard Saffron or CARTHAMUS, are usually sold instead, which are very weak substitutes.
4. This arises from a want of medical inspections and officinal knowledge: the results are, that prescriptions fail, physicians are disappointed, and patients suffer.
5. To avoid in part these evils, it is desirable to employ our own genuine medical substances, whenever they afford sufficient remedies and suitable equivalents.
6. Medical substances being often impaired by age, it is desirable to obtain them fresh, or in yearly rotation.
7. Fresh and genuine substances can only be obtained at all times from medical gardens, or honest dealers.
8. The best medical gardens in the United States are those established by the Communities of SHAKERS, or modern Essenians, who cultivate or collect about one hundred and fifty kinds of medical plants.
9. They sell them cheap, fresh and genuine, in a compact and portable form. Pharmacians would do well to supply themselves with them, or to imitate their useful industry.
10. Several of our medical plants and drugs are already an object of trade to Europe and elsewhere. Many more may become in demand, when their valuable properties will be better known.
11. A new branch of trade may thus be opened, which it is our duty to encourage, by collecting and cultivating our medical plants.
12. Herbalists and Collectors are often ignorant and deceitful. The best way to prevent their frauds and correct their blunders is, by enlightening them, adopting botanical names, and refusing spurious drugs.

The Inaugural Gillett G. Griffin Memorial Lecture

Please save the date for the Inaugural Gillett G. Griffin Memorial Lecture:

The London Circle: Early Explorations of Photography

delivered by
Sara Stevenson

on Sunday, 2 April 2017 at 3:00 p.m. in The Friends Center, Princeton University
corner of William Street and Olden Street, Princeton, New Jersey

Dr. Sara Stevenson was chief curator at the National Galleries of Scotland for thirty-six years and responsible for building and developing the Scottish National Photography Collection. She is the author of numerous books and catalogues, the most recent written together with Alison Morrison-Low is Scottish Photography: The First Thirty Years (2015).

The focus of Dr. Stevenson’s talk will be the Richard Willats album of early paper photography purchased by Gillett G. Griffin for the Graphic Arts Collection, Rare Books and Special Collection, Princeton University. Additional information forthcoming.

This lecture series is held in honor of Gillett Good Griffin (1928-2016).

“Born in Brooklyn, New York, on June 22, 1928, Griffin grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. While attending Deerfield Academy, he developed an interest in and began to collect New England children’s books printed before 1846. In 1951, the same year he graduated from Yale, he wrote, illustrated, and printed A Mouse’s Tale, which was nominated one of the Fifty Books of the Year for its design by the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

Griffin came to Princeton in 1952 as curator of graphic arts in the Princeton University Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections division, a position he held until 1966. In 1957 he took a leave of absence to design books for Princeton University Press and write articles on the history of printmaking and related graphic themes.” -Jamie Saxon, Arts and Humanities Writer. For the complete obituary see: http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/story/gillett-griffin-collector-curator-and-scholar-dies-87

Don’t miss it

All photography seen here was reproduced from the Richard Willats album, permanent link: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/k930bx11x

Inspiration for orators, poets, painters, architects, and sculptors

This difficult to read title page translates roughly: A Lot of Useful and Artistic Imagery, or, Hieroglyphic Images of the Virtues, Vices, Emotions, the Arts, and the Sciences: where by Orators, Poets, Painters, Architects, Sculptors, Designers, and others pursue their ideas, Or, in the case of a blocked period, provide inspiration so that one will not be troubled for a long time.

Johann Christoph Weigel created 300 emblems to represent, as the title indicates, virtues, vices, emotions, and other curiosities, then described each one in German, Latin, and French.

The engraver and his older, better-known brother Christoph Weigel (1654-1725) worked closely with the most prominent of the Nuremburg map publishers J.B. Homann and the printer, Kohler. Following the death of the older Weigel in 1725, control of the firm passed to his widow, who published a number of Weigel’s maps and atlases posthumously.

It has been speculated that this emblem book was published by one of the Weigel wives after Johann’s death in 1726.

Johann Christoph Weigel (1661?-1726), Viel nutzende und Erfindungen reichende Sinnbild-Kunst, oder, Hieroglijphische Bilder, vorstellung [sic] der Tugenden, Laster, Gemuts-Bewegungen, Künste und Wissenschafften: wodurch Rednern, Poeten, Mahlern, Bauverständigen, Bildhauern, durch Zeichnungen und einer Kurtzen Beschreibung Ansatz ihre Gedancken ferner auszuüben gegeben ferner aus zu üben gegeben oder beij gäh verfallenden gelegenkeiten ihne gnugsame Materi vor Augene gelegt wird, damit sie sich nicht lang besinnen dörffen (Nürnberg: Verlegt und zu finden beij Johann Christoph Weigel …, [1730?]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2016- in process

The paper of the text and plates are watermarked with a bishop above NMH. This watermark is not recorded in Heawood, but is known to be used for other publications by Weigel all dated ca. 1730. See also: John Landwehr, German Emblem Books 1531-1888. A bibliography (Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert; Leiden, Sijthoff [1972]). Marquand Library (SA) Z1021.3 .L35J: 306, 641.

Election Night at Princeton

The American Whig-Cliosophic Society is Princeton University’s largest and oldest student organization, based in Whig Hall.

Tonight the American Whig-Cliosophic Society will host an Election Night Extravaganza starting at 7:00 p.m. until election results are announced. According to the Daily Princetonian the event is open to all students of the University community. There will be 270 bubble teas, representing the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency, 1000 Dunkin’ Donuts, pizza, a photo booth, a raffle for a grand prize of Beats Headphones, and more. There will also be screenings on all four floors, with MSNBC showing in the basement, CNN on both the first and second floors, and Foxon the third.

Additionally, a Cannon Green photo booth will be open all day between Whig Hall and Clio Hall. A photographer will be present to take photos of people with Nassau Hall in the background as well as balloons that spell “VOTED.” A Snapchat filter will also be available on the spot.

COOP

We are pleased to have acquired Princeton Lecturer in Visual Arts Fia Backström’s newest book COOP, which documents the Swedish artist’s performances of two recent scripts, continuing her exploration of language, marketing, disorders and performance.

“Backström’s work focuses on the fabric of our co-existence with and construction of subjectivity through the social life of images. Backström works with structures of political address, corporate logic, and pedagogical methods , destabilizing authorship and the semiotics of images. She uses exhibition as a format for these structures, while turning social situations into operative displays where methods and media are chosen according to the situation and theme. Her work unfolds via a wide range of media including language, marketing, propaganda, typography, broadsides, objects, and performance. Her environments, live events and projects challenge our habitual notions of what constitutes an exhibition – its institutional context, its dialogue with the audience, and even the works of art that are presented. Frequently works by other artists are incorporated, as well as peers, visitors and institutional staff alike, while she fluidly reworks the terms of engagement.”–Lewis Center for the Arts, Princeton University

Backström came to Princeton in the spring semester of 2010. Apart form teaching at Princeton, Backström also teaches at the Columbia University MFA Graduate Department since 2008, and co-chairs the Milton Avery Bard MFA photography department. She has lectured widely on her work and been a visiting artist in schools such as NYU, Yale University, Rhode Island School of Design, PennU and MICA.

Shakespeare panel on Friday

Merry Wives of Windsor

On Friday, November 11, a panel discussion will be held in conjunction with the exhibition, “Remember Me”: Shakespeare and His Legacy at the Princeton University Art Museum.

Speakers include Bradin Cormack, professor of English; Eric White, curator of rare books; and Michael Caddin, chair, Lewis Center for the Arts. Calvin Brown, associate curator of prints and drawings, will serve as moderator.

The exhibition, on view through December 31, 2016, is a collaboration between the Art Museum and Firestone Library’s Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.

Friday, November 11, 2016, at 2:00 p.m. in McCormick 101
A reception in the Museum will follow

Chelsea Old Town Hall

Each fall for the last twenty years, an Antiquarian Book Fair has been held in the historic Chelsea Old Town Hall on The King’s Road. Completed in 1886, the building’s architecture and decoration rival the exhibitor’s offerings for a visitor’s attention.

The Chelsea Old Town Hall is at the junction of Sydney Street and the King’s Road, which was just that, Charles II’s private road to Hampton Court. Visitors to the fair walk down a long marble-floored corridor and through carved mahogany doors that open to the grand Main Hall. Topped with a vaulted ceiling, candelabra chandeliers, stained glass windows, and grand marble columns, the Hall features a series of wall murals commemorating celebrities who lived in “the Royal Borough,” including George Eliot, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Carlyle and many others.

There was no information in the hall identifying the mural artists but according to The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, having won a competition in 1912, Mary Sargant Florence (1957-1954) decorated in tempera the “Literature” panel in Chelsea Town Hall.” Other sources speculate that Sargant-Florence may have completed more than one work for the Hall.

Regardless of the setting, the fair itself is relatively casual, with piles of prints open to anyone willing to pick through them. No wonder long lines stood in the rain this week for the pleasure of attending this fair.

Les Fantasies

Joseph Alexander Pecsenke (1942-1989), ‘Les Fantasies’, Vita et, Historia del Commedia dell’Arte (New York: n.p., 1981). 10 etchings printed in different colored inks on various colored papers. Graphic Arts collection GC097.

A reference question came to the department recently concerning the Hungarian/American artist Joe A. Pecsenke. As an actor, director, painter, printmaker, musician, and graphic designer, Pecsenke is particularly difficult to search because he worked under many different names in so many different mediums. Some work is listed as Joe A. Pecsenke, some under Giuseppe Pecsenke, Joseph Pecsenke, József Pecsenke, and other variations.

Born in Hungary, Pecsenke graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1967 and worked as a book illustrator, poster designer, and muralist while also acting in several motion pictures. Here are a few sources for additional information. http://budapestposter.com/artists/pecsenke-jozsef ; http://opa.uchc.edu/Artists/Joe%20A.%20Pecsenke.pdf ; http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0669811/

In 1974, Pecsenke moved to New York City where his work continued to merge visual arts with theater and music.

He wrote, “My first creative activity took place when I was eight years old. I painted stripes on a pushcart at the market and also made a sketch on a sheet from my school notebook of the pushcart owner bear-like face. That same year I became an apprentice in the studio of a painter. During the following two decades I had many teachers, still I consider this first one as my real master. His name was Jules Hornyánszky. He taught me how matter, form, light and color compose . . . In the Spring of 1974, Midnight Cowboy starring John Voight was shown in a small German movie house. Four weeks later I was on my way to New York with eighteen dollars in my satchel, one hundred photos of my work, and the obligatory toothbrush.”

Marx Memorial Library

In 1934 Viscount Hastings, who studied under Diego Rivera, executed a large fresco for the Marx Memorial Library’s first-floor reading room. A number of influential figures within the history of British labor are depicted in this painting, entitled The Worker of the Future Clearing Away the Chaos of Capitalism.

Here are a few more of the many graphic arts that decorate the walls of the library, along with a little of their history.

A Welsh Charity school was built on the site of Marx House in 1738. It educated boys and later a few girls, the children of Welsh artisans living in poverty in Clerkenwell. Gradually the intake became too large and the school moved to new premises in 1772. After this the building was divided into separate workshops one of which became the home to the London Patriotic Society from 1872 until 1892.

The Twentieth Century Press occupied what had by then been labelled as 37a and 38, and expanded into 37 by 1909 – thereby returning the site to single occupancy for the first time since its days as a charity school. The Twentieth Century Press was founded by the Social Democratic Federation as printer for its journal Justice and was the first socialist Press in Clerkenwell. An early benefactor was William Morris, who guaranteed the rent of the Patriotic Club to the Twentieth Century Press. During its time in Clerkenwell Green, the Twentieth Century Press produced several of the earliest English editions of the works of Marx and Engels. The Twentieth Century Press remained at the building until 1922.

Lenin was exiled in London and worked in the building from April 1902 to May 1903. During this period he shared the office of Harry Quelch, the director of the Twentieth Century Press, from there he edited and printed the journal ISKRA (The Spark), which was smuggled into Russia. The office is still preserved and open to visitors.

In 1933, the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, a delegate meeting comprising trade unionists, veteran socialists belonging to the Labour Party and Communist Party, and representatives of the Labour Research Department and Martin Lawrence Publishers Ltd., considered setting up a Permanent memorial to him. That year also saw the Nazis in Germany burning books. In these circumstances the meeting resolved that the most appropriate memorial would be a Library. Thus the Marx Memorial Library and Workers School (as it was then known) was established at 37a Clerkenwell Green that year. Study classes, held in the evenings, became the distinguishing feature of the Workers’ School, which was divided into faculties of science, history and political economy.

Note that William Morris was one of the comrades present at this 1890 meeting.

See also How I Became a Socialist. A series of biographical sketches (London: Twentieth Century Press, [no date]). I. H.M. Hyndman. II. E. Belfort Bax. III. William Morris. IV. Walter Crane. V. J. Hunter Watts. VI. John E. Williams. VII. Andreas Scheu. VIII. H.W. Lee. IX. James Macdonald. X. R. Blatchford. XI H. Quelch. XII. Tom Mann. Firestone RECAP HX241.H83

Sorting Through the “Miseries of Human Life”

Beginning in 1928 and continuing until his death, Dickson Q. Brown, Class of 1895, donated prints, books, and drawings by the artist Thomas Rowlandson to the Princeton University Library. Included was a small volume of drawings, previously unpublished and later described by Joseph Rothrock in the Princeton University Library Chronicle 36, no. 2 (winter 1975): 87-110: http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/pulc/pulc_v_36_n_2.pdf.

The British Museum’s prints and drawings collection has a similar volume of Rowlandson sketches. Neither group repeats the same scenes but similar characters appear in both, such as this fierce alligator (Princeton above and British Museum below).

Of particular interest in both groups are sketches related to Rowlandson’s series after James Beresford’s Miseries of Human Life.

[above, a sketch in the British Museum for one version of the Miseries of London]

First published in 1806, the book was so popular that several dozen editions followed. While the first books only had one frontispiece plate, later editions added more. Several artists designed and published small volumes of prints after Beresford’s text, Thomas Rowlandson and John Augustus Atkinson in particular.

This has led to trouble cataloguing the prints, with many different scenes and different artists using the same titles.These two, for instance, both illustrate the Miseries of Reading and Writing (Rowlandson above and Atkinson below).

See: The Miseries of Human Life; or the Groans of Samuel Sensitive, and Timothy Testy; with a few supplementary sighs from Mrs Testy. In twelve dialogues. As overheard by James Beresford, A.M. Fellow of Merton College, Oxford (London: Printed for W. Miller, Albemarle-Street, by W. Bulmer and Co. Cleveland-Row, 1806). Graphic Arts Collection Rowlandson 1806.31.11

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John Augustus Atkinson (1775-1833), Sixteen Scenes Taken from The Miseries of Human Life. By one of the wretched (London: Wm. Miller, 1807). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Rowlandson 1806.32

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827), Miseries of Human Life; designed and etched by T. Rowlandson (London: R. Ackermann, 1808). A collection of plates issued singly in 1806, 1807 and 1808. Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Rowlandson 1806.33

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The London Circle: Early Explorations of Photography

delivered by Sara Stevenson

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delivered by
Sara Stevenson