Author Archives: Julie Mellby

Remedies for the vices of speech

Antoine de Bourgogne (ca. 1594-1657). Linguae vitia & remedia Emblematicè expressa (Antwerp: Widow Cnobbaert, 1652). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process.

Small oblong 16mo (74 x 97 mm). [12] leaves, 191, [1 bl.] pages ; etched title, 93 full-page etchings. Nineteenth-century red morocco with triple gilt fillet borders, spine and turn-ins gold-tooled, edges gilt over marbling, by Trautz-Bauzonnet. Provenance: James Toovey (1814-1893), London bookseller, armorial gilt bookplate with motto inter folia fructus.

 

This copy includes the cancelled leaf A8, blank except for pagination and headline on the verso. Interesting that it come at the description of an echo.

Rare book historian Nina Musinsky regards this as one of the most delightful of the Netherlandish emblem books, with 94 miniature etchings. This second Latin edition reprints the same plates and text as that of 1631, which was published at the same time as a Flemish-language edition.

Musinsky notes, “The purpose of the book was to list and propose remedies for the “vices” of speech: garrulousness, equivocation, insults, foul language, detraction, blasphemy, lying, perjury and calumny. The theme can be traced back to antiquity, having been treated by Plutarch in the Moralia; but the author, a member of the secular clergy at the Cathedral of Bruges, was more immediately influenced by Erasmus’s De linguae usu ac abusu” (1525. Princeton Rare Books 2949.32.46).

 

Part 1 provides examples of improper or sinful speech; two introductory emblems (the first a grisly vision of hell) are followed by 45 examples of such speech, each with an etched emblem on the verso and a motto and four-line poem on the facing recto, with an occasional note in smaller italic type at the foot of the page.

 


Part 2, with 45 more etchings, turns to the remedies for each kind of evil language (each number responds to the same number in the first part). The delicate unsigned etchings are attributed, apparently without question, to Jacobus Neeffs (1610-1660) and Andries Pauli (or Pauwels) the elder (1600-1639), after designs by Abraham van Diepenbeeck (1596-1675), who dominated Antwerp book illustration at the time.

See more designs by Abraham van Diepenbeeck in three other books at Princeton: The Holy Bible: containing the bookes of the Old & New. Cambridge [England] : Printed by John Field …, 1659-1660. William H. Scheide Library 63.9

The temple of the Muses, or, The principal histories of fabulous antiquity : represented in sixty sculptures / designed and ingraved by Bernard Picart le Romain and other celebrated masters ; with explications and remarks, which discover the true meaning of the fables, and their foundation in history. Amsterdam : Printed for Zachariah Chatelain, 1733. Rare Books Oversize NE1715 .P6f

William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle 1592-1676. A general system of horsemanship in all it’s branches: containing a faithful translation of that most noble and useful work of His Grace, William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, entitled, The manner of feeding, dressing and training of horses for the great saddle … with all the original copper-plates in number forty-three …    London: J. Brindley, 1743. Rare Books Oversize 4235.673f

 

 

References: Landwehr (3rd ed.) 96; Funck, Livre belge à gravures, p. 284; Forum, The Children’s World of Learning, part 7, no. 3815; cf. Praz, p. 292 (1631 Latin edition); de Vries, De Nederlandsche Emblemata132 (1631 Flemish edition).

 

 

Perforated embroidery patterns

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a group of 83 perforated designs or pounce patterns, assumed to be stencils made to transfer a design to fabric for embroidery or other decoration. In addition, there is a circular from August Bernard, described as the successor to Leon Cendrier, “designer, manufacturer, & importer of perforated French stamping patterns for braiding and embroidery,” located at 401 Canal Street, New York City. There is nothing on the sheets to verify they are from Bernard’s shop, but the flier confirms he had, at that time, the largest collection of such patterns in the United States, so it is likely these came Bernard.


One other possible source for these vegetable parchment patterns might be Mrs. T.G. Farnham. On the verso of one of the decorated initial patterns is the rubber stamp of “Mrs. T.G. Farnham, Art Needlework, Stamping, Embroidery, Etc., 16 West 14th St., N.Y. City.”

In the 1880s, Farnham advertised perforated patterns etc. for sale in such magazines as Harper’s Bazar and The Youth’s Companion and was the author of Home Beautiful, a Descriptive Catalogue of Art Needle Work (New York, 1884).

The article on the left was found in New York’s Great Industries: Exchange and Commercial Review, Embracing Also Historical and Descriptive Sketch of the City, Its Leading Merchants and Manufacturers .. (Historical Publishing Company, 1884). Neither Bernard or Cendrier are listed.

Of course, anyone can make their own patterns but these are extremely detailed and regular in their piercing, suggesting they were made by an experienced commercial vendor.

Both Bernard and Farnham also sold the colored powders and fine felt pounces used to apply the powders to the patterns. The same waxy blue powder is found on the rectos of most of the patterns in the portfolio, indicating they were all used by the same person. One of the patterns bears a partial watermark “CO. DALTON MA”, suggesting that the vegetable parchment was made by Crane and Company.

Most paper stencils were used and soon discarded as they became worn out. The Graphic Arts Collection has a number of metal stencils and horsehair Japanese stencils but very few on paper or vegetable parchment as these have been described. This is a rare surviving collection.

83 needlework stamping patterns and a circular issued by August Bernard of New York City ([New York: August Bernard?, ca. 1880s]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process.

 

The Chalk Plate process

Cartoons Magazine 4, Issue 4 (1913): 401-03

Beginning in 1885 (copyrighted 1888), wood engraving faced serious competition from a new reproductive process. No, not the Kodak camera. It was the chalk-plate process, or Hoke process, named after Joseph W. Hoke who developed a method of free-hand drawing on a chalk covered metal plate, which was then stereotyped and ready for printing in one or two hours, greatly decreasing the time needed to produce illustrations for breaking news stories and other daily newspaper work.

According to Anne Johnson’s 1914 Notable women of St. Louis, it was Hoke’s daughter and professional artist Martha Hoke (1861-1939) who produced the first and still most famous chalk-plate illustration of a murder victim discovered in a trunk, which she was able to sketch around 1:00 p.m. and the picture printed in the regular afternoon edition of the Post-Dispatch a few hours later.

Miss Martha Hoke… was the first person in St. Louis to make drawings for newspaper illustrations. Her father, Joseph W. Hoke, made a discovery in the line of engraving which he perfected by much experiment upon plates capable of producing, in a very short time, a type which could be set up with reading matter. This was the first successful engraving process using the artist’s drawing directly. Miss Hoke gave her father much assistance in the trial drawings necessary to perfect this method. All illustrations had, up to that time, been engraved on wood, or steel, or stone, or etched on copper. Mr. Hoke prepared a chalk composition, baked upon a steel plate, of such consistency that a drawing could readily be made by a pointed stylus bent at such an angle that when held as a pen or pencil the point would be vertical.

The drawing so made is placed in a stereotyping box and as a matrix it is cast in type metal. This type could be produced in a very short time. The possibilities for newspaper illustrations—which previous to that had been very meager and poor—were developed by an emergency, which at once placed this invention in great demand and general use. The event which so suddenly brought success financially was a murder at the Southern Hotel by a man named Maxwell, who hid the body of his victim, Preller, in a trunk which he left in a room he had occupied. The discovery of this brought out an extra edition of one of the daily papers, with a drawing by Miss Hoke. This famous case made chalk plates known to all newspapers everywhere.

Outside the big city papers, such as the New York Times or the Washington Post, many publishers could not afford to maintain a full photoengraving department and so, used chalk-plates for all their illustrations well into the twentieth century. Manuel Rosenberg included a chapter in his 1922 The Manuel Rosenberg Course in Newspaper Art entitled The Chalk Plate Method for the Artist in the Small Town. “Before the invention of the photoengraving process,” he writes, “the newspaper artist and the cartoonist usually used chalk plates. Today the chalk plate is practically a medium of the past. For small-town publications, however, it is often a more serviceable medium than the up-to-date photo-engraving process.”

As late as 1941, Popular Mechanics was suggesting chalk plates for cartoonist of high school newspapers [below] and offering a full-page description of the process complete with illustrations. (volume 75, no. 1, January 1941, p.117)


Many lengthy descriptions of the process have been published. One appeared in The Art Amateur: Devoted to Art in the Household 44, no. 6 (May 1901): 158, entitled “How to make chalk plates.”

The following is the method of producing on “chalk plates” such illustrations as are used for general newspaper work: A metal plate, covered with a coating of chalk about a sixteenth of an inch thick, is put into the hands of the draftsman. It should be the actual size of the illustration to be made. The draftsman draws upon the plate with a metal point or needle, like a shoemaker’s awl; every time he makes a line he removes the chalk from that part of the plate, and the exposing of the metal makes his drawing appear dark, contrasted with the whiteness, of the chalk. [In much the same way the etcher removes his etching ground from a copper plate with the etching needle; the etching ground, however, is wax, and it usually is darkened by smoking, so that, the copper of the plate being light, the drawing appears light upon a dark ground.]

When the artist has finished his drawing—which is really a scratching away of the chalk—the plate is handed to a stereotyper, who makes a stereotype of it. This is done in the following way: It is put into a casting box, not unlike an iron waffle pan, which when closed leaves an opening about one-fourth of an inch in front of the plate, and on the top of which there is an opening, into which the stereotyper pours liquid type metal, as a boy pours melted lead into a bullet mould. The metal fills the vacuum in front of the plate and runs into each gully or furrow which the draftsman’s needle point has made. Of course where the chalk has not been removed, the type metal does not go; when the metal is cold and the casting—box opened, we find a thin plate of metal where the lines rise to an even height, wherever the artist has scratched a line down to the metal plate; but the plate is lower wherever the unremoved chalk prevented the liquid touching the metal plate. This crust of type metal fastened to a block, so that it is type high, resembles a wood engraving or a photo-engraved plate, and serves the same purpose. When the inked rollers of the printing press go over it, they ink the raised lines only, which correspond to the lines the artist drew, and hence it prints just like type.

This method of making illustrations for the newspapers has great advantages and disadvantages. It has the advantage of cheapness, for the plates cost next to nothing, and when the castingbox is once bought the expense of type metal and the recoating of the plates is very slight. It is a very quick method also, as an artist can draw a portrait half an hour before the paper goes to press. His drawing may take fifteen minutes and the casting fifteen minutes more. In photo-engraving, the photographing and etching of the plate takes a couple of hours. The disadvantage of the method is that the artist must make his drawing the exact size it is to be printed, while for photo-engraving he usually works on a larger scale, which is not only easier for him, but when a drawing thus made is reduced it has a greater appearance of fineness and finish than a drawing made small. Then, too, the laying bare of the plate with a metal point, and raising a dust of chalk, which sometimes covers up the lines, is not as pleasant a way of working—does not seem as natural as drawing with a pen on Bristol board. In pen drawing. also, more pressure on the pen turns a thin line into a thick one; in the chalk-plate process, to thicken a line you either have to go over it several times, removing chalk on its sides, or else use a larger instrument than you used for the fine lines.”

See also: R.M.A., “Stereotyping Chalk Plates,” The Inland Printer 28, no. 2 (November 1901): 194-96.

Note, chalk-plates should not be confused with chalk manner engraving from the eighteenth century. https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000020168

Neither should it be confused with relief line block printing, a technique that uses a negative of a line drawing being contact printed onto a photosensitized metal plate. Light hardens this emulsion into an acid resist while non-exposed areas are washed away in warm water. When etched in a bath of acid the metal surrounding the emulsion protected lines is eaten away forming a low relief, which can be printed as any relief matrix.

Chaucer to appear in the 2020 Rose Bowl Parade, check your local listings


For the first time in 50 years, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens will be represented with a float in the Rose Bowl Parade on January 1, 2020 (see the list of floats below). The design “Cultivating Curiosity” by Phoenix Decorating Company depicts iconic elements in The Huntington’s collections, celebrating its 100th anniversary as part of a yearlong Centennial Celebration running from Sept. 2019 through Sept. 2020.

The float’s various sections include the Pavilion of the Three Friends (bamboo, pine, and plum) from the Huntington’s Chinese Garden; the Rose Garden Tempietto sculpture, Love, the Captive of Youth; the Japanese Moon Bridge; Breakfast in Bed by Mary Cassatt (1897); Long Leg by Edward Hopper (1935); and the library’s Ellesmere Chaucer.

“The elaborately decorated Ellesmere manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales was created sometime between 1400 and 1410. It contains what is believed to be a portrait of Chaucer as well as miniature paintings of 22 other fictional pilgrims who tell stories in order to enliven the journey from London to Canterbury. The medieval manuscript is on parchment.”

 

The first Tournament of Roses began in 1890 by the Valley Hunt Club members, led by Charles Frederick Holder, which prompted the club to add a parade before the competition, where entrants would decorate carriages with hundreds of colorful blooms. The Huntington is the only library represented.

The 2020 floats are sponsored by 2020 Royal Court; AIDS Healthcare Foundation; Amazon; Blue Diamond Almonds; Burbank Tournament of Roses Association; China Airlines; Chinese American Heritage; Chipotle Mexican Grill; City of Alhambra; City of Hope; City of Torrance/Torrance Rose Float Association; Dole Packaged Foods; Donate Life; Downey Rose Float Association; Farmers Insurance; General Society of Mayflower Descendants; Honda; Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens; Kaiser Permanente; Kiwanis International; La Canada Flintridge Tournament of Roses Association; Lions Float Inc.; Lutheran Hour Ministries; Meyers Clean Day; Northwestern Mutual; Oddfellows Rebekahs Rose Float; Rotary Rose Parade Float Committee, Inc.; Shriners Hospitals for Children; Sierra Madre Rose Float Association; Sikh American Float Foundation; South Pasadena Tournament of Roses; The Cowboy Channel; The SCAN Foundation; The UPS Store; Trader Joe’s; Underground Service Alert (Dig Alert); Wescom Credit Union; and Western Asset Management Co.

Artist’s rendering of The Huntington’s 2020 entry in the Rose Parade®, designed by Phoenix Decorating Company.

The Rose Parade will be broadcast live in the United States beginning at 8:00 AM PST, on January 1, 2020. Please check your local broadcast listings for more information.

“One day Filliou will be a great classical poet”–Dieter Roth

The Graphic Arts Collection recently added a rare piece of Fluxus art by Robert Filliou (1926-1987) entitled Research in Dynamics and Comparative Statics [Recherche en dynamique et statique comparée] (Bruxelles: Lebeer Hossmann, 1973). It is a wooden suitcase (50 x 31 x 12.5 cm), unvarnished, with single brass hinge screwed into right-hand side, two metal clasps at front edge, and a wire handle, supplemented by cautionary manuscript note that warns of the handle’s fragility; “mieux faut porte le honorable valise sous le bras.” The work’s title is inscribed by Filliou to a green index card, [once tied to the handle now inside the box]. To the top inside of the lid, a manuscript label reads “16704 cm3 de Pre-Territoire de la République Géniale;” green chalk measurements to the lid outline a space of 48 x 29 cm. At the bottom side of suitcase is Filliou’s signature and date in pencil.

The only other examples of this work are in France at the BnF, the Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, and MAC Lyon. Princeton’s copy comes from Filliou’s son.

Contents inside suitcase comprise: (1) 28 folders of various colours, each featuring large manuscript labels to front covers, with approximately 248 pages of manuscript and typescript facsimiles; (2) a table of contents, in facsimile manuscript (5 pp.) [with this copy appearing to miss the penultimate page]; (3) an audio cassette, in original case, with manuscript labels to both sides A and B (“Singing Sade” and “The Wisdom of R. Filliou”); (4) a further manuscript label, affixed to inner lid: “1958-1965 Mss brought out today (comparative statics) to create tomorrow the Ding Dong Territory of the Genial Republic (dynamics)”; and (5) a typescript manifesto (in French), on a sheet of pink graph paper (30 x 21 cm.), with manuscript corrections and an additional manuscript note at bottom, where this copy is hand-numbered as 16 of 30.

Writing for the New York Times, Grace Glueck noted, “Filliou, a charter member of Fluxus, the 1960’s performance group that specialized in esthetic nonevents, believed that art didn’t have to express itself in the form of objects. He saw it as a form of play that could even occur as unrealized notions. … Ephemeral as it is, Filliou’s gadfly work refreshes by undermining heavy notions of what art is or should be. Like the French composer Erik Satie, he knew how to play with the serious.” https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/24/arts/art-in-review-robert-filliou.html

Princeton holds a number of important works by Filliou, beginning with the 1965 Ample food for stupid thought (GAX 2006-2009N). **Note, unfortunately our library now offers images in the online catalogue that are not taken from our material but found somewhere on the internet and may not, in many cases, represent that work owned by our library. Generic pictures of a book jacket are one thing, but works of graphic art frequently differ in significant ways from one impression to another. The image pictured with Ample Food is not the copy in the Princeton University Library.

At one time, Filliou and his friends managed their own gallery along the French Riviera, near the French-Italian border. “The Smiling Cedilla was a non-shop,” commented the artist, “because it was only open on demand. This Centre of Permanent Creation, by George Brecht, Marianne Staffeldt, Donna Brewer and myself, opened in Villefranche-sur-Mer in 1965 and lasted three years. Our activities were multiple. They were summarized in the book Games at the Cedilla, or The Cedilla Takes Off (Something Else Press, New York, 1967). When the Smiling Cedilla closed its doors, it announced the birth of the “Eternal Network, La Fête permanente.”

The box now in the Graphic Arts Collection comes from the period Filliou called The Eternal network, a movement when neither he nor his work had a permanent home.

 

Here is a bit more of his interesting history taken from: https://metropolis.free-jazz.net/robert-filliou-art-is-what-makes-life-more-interesting-than-art/artist-portraits/70/

In 1943, Robert Filliou joined the Resistance movement organized by the communists and became a member of the French Communist Party during the war (he would later leave it after Tito’s exclusion for the Communist International). In 1947, he went to the United States to meet his father who he had never known. After working as a labourer for Coca Cola in Los Angeles, he began to study (while continuing to do “odd jobs” to earn his living) and achieved a masters in economics.

… In Paris, in the Contrescarpe area, Daniel Spoerri introduced him to the world of the plastic artists. This was in the middle of the boom of the 1960s, with the return in strength of Duchamp’s ideas, the appearance of Fluxus and the effervescent avant-garde of the Nouveaux Réalistes. … In 1962, determined to remain outside the exhibition circuit, Robert Filliou carried his gallery in his hat. He became his own exhibition space: “La Galerie Légitime” [The Legitimate Gallery]. His works, gathered together in his beret and stamped “Galerie Légitime Couvre Chef d’Oeuvre” [Legitimate Gallery Masterpiece Hat], circulated in the streets with him (the idea is reminiscent of Marcel Duchamp’s suitcase). He then met George Maciunas, the centralizer of the activities of Fluxus.

… In 1965, with George Brecht, Robert Filliou founded the gallery “La Cédille qui sourit” [The Smiling Cedilla) in Villefranche-sur-Mer, although it was usually closed because the artists were at the local café: “In my opinion, that’s where you get your best ideas”.

In his book-length interview with Lebeer (Secret of permanent creation), Filliou repeatedly refers to this box as a failure. “If I could, I’d give people their money back. If I could find a way I’d do that. Because what I said I was going to do I haven’t done. I had the feeling I got the money under false pretences.” Lebeer, as publisher, repeatedly assures him that sales were positive; Dieter Roth was one of the first buyers, stating “one day Filliou will be a great classical poet.”

The Suffolk Engraving & Electrotyping Company

The Graphic Arts Collection acquired an early 20th century sample book from the firm of John Andrew & Son, Department of the Suffolk Engraving & Electrotyping Co., 394 Atlantic Avenue, Boston, Mass.

After an introduction (see below), the reader is shown 36 plates with examples of their photogravure work including 2 letterheads, 2 engravings, 1 etching, 1 painting, 3 Edward Curtis Indians (1 from Flute of the Gods), 1 portrait of Edward Curtis (unmarked), 26 photographs of scenery, goods, and portraits of George Washington (1732-1799); William Henry Moody (1853-1917); John William Dawson (1820-1899); William McKinley (1843-1901); King Camp Gillette (1855-1932); William Molson (1793-1875); and others.

[1] John Andrew & Son. In presenting this selection of reproductions by photogravure of a varied line of subjects … / John Andrew & Son. Boston : John Andrew & Son, [1915?] [Text] In presenting this selection of reproductions by photogravure of a varied line of subjects, we desire to call attention to the superiority of this process to any in existence at the present day for the reproducing of pictorial or commercial subjects. Its place, as regards the reproduction of paintings and book illustrations, needs no comment, and its use, in presenting high-class goods to select lists of patrons, presents possibilities which can be readily appreciated from the samples shown in this booklet. Its distinctive quality suggests the same quality of goods advertised.

The wide range of selection of paper and the method of printing insure a result, in the final product, absolutely equal to the first finished proofs, with no falling off of in quality as in half-tone or other mechanically printed reproductions. It is a process of plate-making and printing that at once lifts a piece of advertising matter out of the ordinary. We respectfully solicit your correspondence, or an invitation to confer with you, regarding the production by photogravure of any work you may have in mind. Following a brief description of plate-making and method of printing by this process. 30 cm. Page no. [1]

[2] John Andrew & Son. Photogravure. Photogravure has been justly called the aristocracy of photographic reproductive processes. Boston : John Andrew & Son, [1915?] [Text] Photogravure. Photogravure has been justly called the aristocracy of photographic reproductive processes. It is an intaglio process having every advantage of photographic accuracy, and the depth and richness of a steel engraving or an etching. It is printed in exactly the same manner as the latter, from a copper plate, the surface of which is protected with a delicate coating of steel. It must be borne in mind that it is exactly the opposite from relief or letterpress printing, inasmuch as the paper is squeezed into depressions in the plate, which are filled with ink, instead of taking the ink off of a surface which is covered with ink. The process of plate-making is as follows: On a highly polished copper plate is deposited a very fine dust of bitumen, which is a resinous powder. This is subjected to a proper degree of heat which melts the fine particles of the powder to a certain extent, and gives a plate covered with very fine resinous grain. This copper plate is then coated with sensitized gelatine in practically the same manner as a photographic dry plate is made.

A regular toned negative, of the same nature as would be required to make a good print on photographic paper, is made, and from this a positive of the size called for in the final photogravure print. This positive is of the same nature which we see in a window transparency or latern slide. The sensitized grained copper plate is then placed in contact with the positive in a printing frame and placed in the proper light, exactly as if we were making a photographic print on paper.

The action of the light on the sensitized grain on the copper hardens it in different degrees, according to the different tones in the positive. The highlights or transparent parts of the positive allow the strongest action of light, which hardens the particles of grain protecting these parts of the plate to the greatest extent, so that when we come to etch the plate the acid has very little chance, or none at all, to disturb the surface of the copper. The shadows being acted upon less, or not at all, leaves the copper in different degrees of protection, and gives the acid a chance to bite into copper to a greater or less extent, as called for in different values of shadows or blacks in the subject. We must bear in mind all the time that this operation is exactly opposite from that which we wish to obtain in a half-tone or relief plate, as we wish the lights to be solid metal and the darks to be depressions in the metal, hence the use of a positive instead of a negative. When we get a proper print on the copper and have washed away the superfluous gelatine, we have a plate which is protected in varying degrees in accordance with the tones of the subject. 30 cm. Page no. [2]

[3] John Andrew & Son. Next step is to protect all the surface of the copper outside the boundaries of the picture, as this must be perfectly polished copper. Boston : John Andrew & Son, [1915?] [Text] The next step is to protect all the surface of the copper outside the boundaries of the picture, as this must be perfectly polished copper. This is painted over with an asphaltum varnish, as well as the back of the plate, and we are ready to etch. The etching is done with perchloride of iron solution as an acid, and the result is then dependent on the skill and judgment of etcher.

The plate is then thoroughly cleaned, and we have in the darks of the picture a roughness of copper, but extremely fine in texture, and this roughness or grain smoothing itself out through the different tones until, when we get to where we wish white paper, we have no grain at all, but smooth, polished copper. Any defects are corrected, or minor changes are now brought about, in the same manner that a steel engraver or etcher would manipulate a steel or copper plate, and we are ready for a proof. The plate is put on the bed of the press, which is flat, and kept slightly heated, and the ink applied by a hand roller in quantity sufficient to fill all the interstices of the grain in the plate, and the excess wiped away with cloth, and afterward with the bare hand.

The paper, which can be of almost any nature, except coated or highly sized, is dampened and laid on the plate. The bed is then run under a roller covered with a woolen blanket, with considerable pressure, which squeezes the paper into the filled-in grain, and the result is a print which in depth of shadow and beautiful gradation, and softness of tone, cannot be equaled by any other photographic reproductive process. As soon as this proof is considered approved, and we are ready to print an edition, the plate is electro-plated with a very thin coating of steel which in no way affects the quality of the tones, but protects the delicate grain which would soon wear away, as the copper itself is too soft to stand the continued wiping and general wear of printing. Photogravure has been used to the greatest extent for high-class book illustration and the reproduction of paintings for framed pictures.

 

It has come into use recently, however, along commercial lines where the edition has not been too large, and many exquisite booklets, covers, menus, announcements, etc., have been produced. These have the quality and value of steel engravings, but are much more artistic and yet not so prohibitive in regard to expense as the latter. The impression of quality is heightened when the photogravure is printed on one of the many imported hand-made papers from Japan, Italy, France, Spain and England. 30 cm. Page no. [3]

 See also: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2018/06/05/who-printed-the-north-america-indian/

A Bouquet of the Last Century


James Gillray (1756-1815), A Bouquèt of the last Century. – t’was thus, heretofore, honest Dames shew’d their Faces, / When Ball Nights & Birth Nights, call’d forth all their Graces! – / But now, (-las-a-day!) what with Wigs and with Vails, / Our Fair Ones, hide Faces, and all, – but their Tails!, February 1, 1802. Hand colored etching and aquatint. Graphic Arts Collection GAX

Dorothy George wrote “An elderly lady sits very upright in a glass-fronted coupé, the side window forming a frame. She has simply-dressed powdered hair on which is a turban-like drapery; a fichu covers her neck. Her dress, in front of which is a large bouquet of flowers, is shaped to the waist in a way very different from the fashion of the day.”–Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum, VIII, 1947. George identified the lady as the Dowager Lady Dacre (Mary, née Fludyer, 1755-1808, widow of the 18th Baron Dacre (d. 1794) whose tomb she is said to have visited daily.

After the death of her husband, Lady Dacre inherited Lee Place in Kent, as well as a share in the estates of Trevalyn Hall and Plas Teg in Flintshire. Agreements among the heirs resulted in Lady Dacre’s full ownership of the Plas Teg estate (near Hope, Flintshire) by 1799. …Of her life at her principal residence at Lee Place, “It is reported that the widow visited his tomb, at Lee, near Blackheath, daily, until her decease in 1818 [sic]. She usually rode from her mansion to the Churchyard on a favourite pony, wore a large flapping drab beaver hat, and cloth habit trailing to the ground. At home, she evinced an eccentric reverence for her deceased husband; his chair was placed, as in his lifetime, at the dinner table, and the unfilled seat seemed to feed her melancholy*.”–“Some Account of the Citizens of London and Their Rulers, from 1060 to 1867” p. 154, Benjamin Brogden Orridge, 1867.

See more: https://plasteg.com/index.php/history/

 

t’was thus, heretofore, honest Dames shew’d their Faces,
When Ball Nights & Birth Nights, call’d forth all their Graces! –
But now, (-las-a-day!) what with Wigs and with Vails,
Our Fair Ones, hide Faces, and all, – but their Tails! –

An American Rasputin

Reproduced in Henry Vincent, The story of the Commonweal: Complete and graphic narrative of the origin and growth of the movement (Chicago: W. B. Conkey company, 1894).

[left Carl Browne as Christ]

The Los Angeles Times called Carl Browne a blackmailer, liar, fraud, swindler and editor [who descended as] a swarm of devouring locust on the rapidly flourishing city of Los Angeles.” Elsewhere he is simply labeled a charismatic cartoonist or P.T. Barnum with a pen. What are we to make of this artist who obtained national stature, both good and bad?

Additional material on Carl Dryden Browne (1849–1914) is being collected for an extended article, especially pre-1894. Thank you for your help.

“The members of the Bimetallic Convention* at Chicago must feel greatly flattered at the presence in their midst of that inexpressible fraud and fakir [sic], Carl Browne, who yesterday “shot off his mouth” to the extent of several hundred words of Associated Press report. This long-haired, bearskin-coated freak of nature, who calls himself an artist, because he, in common with monkeys and children, has the ability to deface white paper with black lead—which he does in a manner that would disgrace a first-grade pupil—has organized a league of some sort, to be run of course, for revenue only. Since he dealt out nauseous taffy to the Southern Pacific Company in one of his disreputable sheets—which should have been impounded for pubic soliciting—he has resided on a comfortable ranch in Napa county. A nice [?] sort of a character this, to champion the cause of the down-trodden people! The silverites ought to purge themselves of such cattle as Carl Browne if they desire to retain the respect of the people.–“Carl Browne” Los Angeles Times, August 3, 1893.

[*The American Bimetallic League, founded by silver mine owners in 1889, perfected a national organization in 1892, took on a wider pubic membership during the depression of 1893 and organized massive public meetings across the country throughout the next three years. –Daniel Klinghard, The Nationalization of American Political Parties, 1880–1896 (2010)]

Gillray’s portrait of a traitor

James Gillray (1756-1815), Evidence to character; Being a portrait of a traitor, by his friends & by himself, October 1, 1798. Etching. Graphic Arts Collection. First published in Anti-Jacobin Review, September 1798, p.285 [above] then issued as a separate print. [below]

On 27th February 1798 [Arthur O’Connor] and his friend Rev. James O’Coigley… with Binns, Allen, and Leary, were arrested at Margate, on their way to France, on a supposed mission from the United Irishmen. In O’Connor’s baggage were found a military uniform, £900 in cash, and the key to a cipher correspondence with Lord Edward FitzGerald. …
O’Coigley, who was sentenced to death, and executed on Pennington Heath…O’Connor…was transferred to Dublin and committed to Newgate.
…The examination of O’Connor and his fellow-prisoners before select committees of the Irish Lords and Commons throws the fullest light upon the origin and progress of the movement that led to the Insurrection of 1798.–https://www.libraryireland.com/biography/ArthurOConnor.php

Rather than caricature current events, here James Gillray merely transcribed the testimony at the trial of Arthur O’Connor (1763-1852) on May 22, 1798 at Maidstone. Extracts were published in damaging juxtaposition in Wright’s pamphlet, Evidence to Character; or, the Innocent Imposture: being … [ut supra] [below]. The introduction concludes: ‘It is not often that such Information as this can be obtained for the Public, from the Parties themselves on Oath.’

Lord Carlisle wrote: “If there is a lower political hell than any we before have witnessed, I think the opposition have found it out for themselves, by their connection with O’Connor and such worthies.” Auckland Corr.’ iv. 52.

In Gillray’s print O’Connor stands at the bar making a confession which, though condensed, does not differ substantially from that made by him, McNevin, and Emmet, published in the Report of the Secret Committee made to the Irish House of Commons on 21 Aug. “I confess, that I became an United Irishman in 1796 & a Member of the National Executive, from 1796, to 1798. …”

The witnesses include Fox: “I swear that he is perfectly well affected to his Country, – a Man totally without dissimulation – i know his principles are the principles of the Constitution”. (Fox said: “I always thought Mr O’Connor to be perfectly well affected to his country . . . attached to the principles and the constitution of this country, upon which the present family sit upon the throne, and to which we owe all our liberties.”

Next stands Sheridan: “I know him intimately; – I treated him, & he treated me, with Confidence! – & I Swear, that, I never met with any man, so determined against encouraging French Assistance”. The last words resemble those of Sheridan, with the significant omission ‘in this country’.

Next is Erskine: “His friends, are all MY friends! and I therefore, feel MYSELF intitled upon MY Oath, to say, that he is incapable, in MY judgement, of acting with treachery, & upon MY oath, I never had any reason to think that his principles differed from MY own so help ME god” Though abbreviated, this is only very slightly burlesqued.

Next is the Duke of Norfolk: “I consider him attached to constitutional principles, in the Same way as myself”. His evidence ended ‘I consider him as a gentleman acting warmly in the political line and attached to . . . [ut supra]”.

The trial of O’Connor, with O’Coigley and others, at Maidstone is combined with the proceedings in Dublin after the Irish Rebellion. For the confessions see ‘Report from the Committee of Secrecy of the House of Commons in Ireland’, 21 Aug. 1798, Appendix xxxi. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008586460

The first printing of a Mozart cantata commissioned by Franz Heinrich Ziegenhagen

First of several music plates

This is the first printed appearance of Die ihr des unermeßlichen Weltalls (also called Eine kleine deutsche Kantate; Little German Cantata) (K619) written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) in 1791, the same year as he wrote The Magic Flute and also the year of his death. The setting here is for soprano and piano but later composers have arranged the work for orchestra as well as string quartets.

The libretto by Franz Heinrich Ziegenhagen (1753–1806), who commissioned the work from his fellow mason, covers the relationship of the progressive and masonic ideal to the commandment of love as outlined in Ziegenhagen’s book Lehre vom richtigen Verhältniss zu den Schöpfungswerken.

Franz Heinrich Ziegenhagen (1753-1806), Lehre vom richtigen Verhältniss zu den Schöpfungswerken und die durch öffentlicche Einführung derselben allein zu bewürkende allgemeine Menschenbeglückung [=The Teaching of the Right Relationship to the Works of Creation and the General Happiness That Can Only Be Admirable by Public Introduction of Them]. Herausgegeben von F. H. Ziegenhagen… einer Musik von W.A. Mozart (Hamburg: Herausgeber, 1792). Prints by Daniel Niklaus Chodowiecki (1726-1801). Graphic Arts Collection 2019- in process

Ziegenhagen was a German industrialist, freemason and philanthropist who spent his entire fortune trying to realize his utopian ideals in actual communities.

The utopian minded philanthropist Franz Heinrich Ziegenhagen appeared just as “revolutionary” in Hamburg in 1792. …. Ziegenhagen’s utopian concept of a social order of “Liberté, égalité et fraternité” rested upon Rousseauian principles, and he … conceived of agrarian colonies where everything is built upon communal property and communal work. Here the political principle that every member of the community is electable would rule, that is to say that there would be an absolute democracy. Indeed, Ziegenhagen dared even to send an abbreviated version of his essay to the National Convention in Paris in the fall of 1792 with the demand to implement his suggestions as soon as possible in France. However, neither the French National Convention nor the few German princes and universities to whom he sent this book reacted to his appeal. –Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Patriotism, Cosmopolitanism, and National Culture: Public Culture in Hamburg 1700-1933 (Rodopi, 2003)

At the heart of the community was Ziegenhagen’s passion for educational reform: An “Erziehungs-kommune,” or educational commune, was to be set up where all children would be educated together without distinction based on birth, wealth or any other kind of status. An emphasis was also to be placed on activities, with practical lessons taught alongside the theoretical.

Ziegenhagen actually founded an agricultural community along these lines in Billwerder, near Hamburg but failed to gain the wider support needed for his initiative to succeed. Forced to sell the property in 1802, Ziegenhagen retired to his home town of Elsass where he committed suicide in 1806.

The etched plates are by Daniel Niklaus Chodowiecki (1726-1801), born in Poland but who spent most of his life in Berlin and became the director of the Berlin Academy of Art. His largest folding plate depicts the realization of Ziegenhagen’s utopian project, featuring [above] the author on horseback surveying the busy scene of the community in action. The frontispiece [top] shows a lecture hall with its tall walls filled with illustrations of natural history and students packed into the benches. Six other etchings depict classroom scenes, including a scene with older children in a laboratory, a ‘Kunst-Kammer’ in the background, being taught how to dissect a pig.


 …Love me in my works,
Love order, proportion, harmony!
Love yourselves and your brothers!
Strength and beauty shall be your ornament
And clarity of understanding your nobility.
Hold out the brotherly hand of everlasting friendship;
It was delusion, not truth, that withheld it for so long.