Author Archives: Julie Mellby

The Kokoon Arts Club photo file

“The undressed human form has been a major subject in Western art since the classical period, but presented particular challenges to photographers who depicted real rather than idealized bodies.” This begins the description for the Princeton seminar in the history of photograph “The Naked and the Nude in Photography.” The course explores the practices of fine arts, pornographic, medical, and ethnographic representations of the body, but who knew this might also include the members of your local arts society?

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a photography album attributed to Edward J. Schwartz called Kokoon Club Photographer’s Index Album, which contains 1,296 gelatin silver prints of the Club models, members (only men allowed), and the Great Lakes Exposition ([Cleveland: KoKoon Arts Club, ca. 1934-1938]). A label on cover reads “PHOTO PRINT FILE.”

This is of particular interest to our collection because of our strong holdings by the Cleveland artist William Sommer (https://www.princeton.edu/~graphicarts/2012/06/sommer.html). The Kokoon Club was founded in 1911 by Sommer and his friends who were sometimes called the “Cleveland Secessionists,” an informal group of artists who embraced the ultra modernist art of the Fauves, the Blue Rider group and the Dadaists. Many of the early members, like Sommer, were employed with the Otis Lithograph Company, a major producer of stone lithographic posters based in Cleveland.

From its inception, the KoKoon Club artists gathered for life drawing sessions, hiring female models for the (male) members. This album is largely composed of figure studies taken at the Kokoon Arts Club headquarters. A smaller group depicts Club members, including a “Vagabond Party,” “Halloween Dance,” a “KoKoon Artists Masquette,” the 1935 “Bal Artistique”, the 1937 “Costume Bal”, and the 1938 “Silver Jubilee Bal.” About 80 images were made at the Great Lakes Exposition of 1936-1937.

While the identity of the creator of the album is not stated, the most likely candidate is Edward J. Schwartz, who had been photographing Bal Masque events at least since 1925 and was listed in the 1931 Kokoon Arts Club Narrative and Roster as the official photographer.

1818 Print Sale with Buyers and Prices

We all appreciate how useful it is to know who was doing the buying in the fine art print world at any given period and what they were paying. Annotated catalogues such as this help us follow the provenance of a particular engraving and provide a gage as to the strength and scope of the art world at the time. Of the three names that appear often in this sale, John White is too generic a name to be sure who is making these purchases but possibly J White (publisher/printer; British; 1801 – 1812; fl. c.) also known as J White & Co; Fleet Street, London, publisher, possibly the same as the John White in Tavistock St in 1789 [British Museum].

John Thane (1747?-1818) was a dealer in prints, medals, and manuscripts.

Thane was living at 24 Gerrard Street, Soho, London, and from here he published regular catalogues of his retail stock of prints. He was a friend of Joseph Strutt, engraver and antiquary, who lived for a time in Thane’s household; Thane published Strutt’s Regal and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of England in 1773. By 1781 Thane had moved to Rupert Street nearby, where he dealt in manuscripts, coins, and medals, becoming well known for his expert knowledge of these, besides pictures, and other objects of virtu as well as prints.

In 1781 he took on a second shop with the printseller Anthony Torre: they insured the contents of this ‘shop and the Warerooms communicating in the brick dwelling of Mr Greenwood auctioneer situate no. 28 Haymarket’ for £1000. The new outlet was probably dedicated to modern prints, for from about this time Thane became a significant publisher of contemporary pictures in stipple. He guided the formation of several notable print collections including that of the banker William Esdaile.

He himself was particularly interested in antique portraits and autographs. The collection of some 2000 portraits assembled by John Nickolls and sold at his death to Dr John Fothergill were sold at Fothergill’s death in 1780 to Thane for either £150 or 200 guineas (sources differ); he broke up the volumes and disposed of the portraits to the principal collectors of the time.”

The entire Colnaghi family seems to have participated in the print world as art dealers,

“established in England by Paul [Paolo] Colnaghi (1751–1833), who was born in the Brianza region near Milan, the younger son of Martino Colnago (d. 1783), a distinguished Milanese lawyer, and his wife, Ippolita Raggi. Having settled his father’s encumbered estate, Paul left Italy for France in 1783 and became the Paris agent of Antony Torre to sell English prints from a shop in the Palais Royal in 1784. Antony Torre was the son of Giovanni Battista Torre (d. 1780), who had established himself, first in London in 1753, then in Paris in 1760, as a maker of fireworks and instruments (principally barometers and thermometers) and bookseller. Antony ran a London branch at 14 Market Lane, Pall Mall, from 1767. On his father’s death, Antony entered briefly (1780–82) into partnership with an optician, Ciceri of Milan (who had employed Paul Colnaghi on his arrival in Paris), before asking Colnaghi, on Ciceri’s recommendation, to open his Paris branch….

In 1799 Paul Colnaghi moved his London premises to 23 Cockspur Street, where he held monthly 3 o’clock levees attended by the aristocracy and landed gentry. From these sprang a series of engraved portraits entitled Royal and Noble Ladies; Lawrence was paid £700 for permission to engrave his painting of Princess Charlotte (1817; Belgian Royal Collection). Appointed printseller to the prince regent, Colnaghi received further royal warrants from him as George IV, and from William IV; other royal patrons included the duc d’Orléans and the duc d’Aumale.”

Samuel Sotheby, A Catalogue of prints, chiefly of the modern celebrated engravers of the English, French, and Italian schools; comprising the best works of Strange, Woollett, Sharp, Bartolozi, Morghen, Wille, Bervic, Desnoyers, Hogarth, Earlom, Heath, Vivares, Sherwin and others. … In this collection will be found nearly the whole of the works of Hogarth, Strange, Woollett, Bartolozzi, Earlom, and Sherwin, together with a small selection of foreign portraits of the French and Flemish schools of the 17th century, the whole collected by a gentleman, who has spared no expense to procure fine impressions. Which will be sold by auction, on Friday, January 9, 1818 (London: Wright and Murphy, printers, 1818). Manuscript names of buyers and prices for each lot. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

Joe Weider’s Mr. America Muscle Building Course

The Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies is not only about women. The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a collection of Joe Weider body building pamphlets and ephemera dating from the late 1950s into the 1960s. They include: Joe Weider’s Mr. America Muscle Building Course, in its original folder; Joe Weider’s “Trainer of the Stars.” Sex Education for the Bodybuilder; How to Develop a He-Man Personality; and many more.

From the official Joe Weider website, here is a little history:

Today it is universally accepted that to be healthy one must exercise and eat a nutritionally balanced diet. But it wasn’t always that way. The world owes this understanding, in large part, to the lifelong efforts of Joe Weider. Joe Weider is recognized as the man who changed the way the world understands the connection between exercise, nutrition, and good health. He created the famous fitness magazine empire that was the first to bring information about training, nutrition, and his beloved sport, bodybuilding, to men and women eager to improve their physical lives. He created, popularized and sold machinery and weights that are seen in gyms and homes everywhere and his belief in nutritional supplements was instrumental in the formation of today’s huge vitamin and supplement industry. Today the Weider name is synonymous with health and fitness. …For years Joe oversaw a publishing empire that included the “Bible” of bodybuilding, Muscle & Fitness, Muscle & Fitness Hers, Flex for the hard-core bodybuilder, Men’s Fitness for the active man, Shape for the active woman, and Fit Pregnancy and Natural Health.

Born in 1920, Joe Weider grew up in a tough neighborhood in Montreal, Canada during the hard times of the Great Depression. When young Joe left public school at age 12 to pull a small wagon 10 hours a day delivering fruit and groceries for a market, it was an act of survival for both him and his family. Standing 5’5” and weighing a mere 115 pounds, Joe became easy prey for teenagers looking to score some quick change, which prompted him to head off to the Montreal YMHA and request a tryout with the wresting team. The coach turned him down, for fear he would be hurt. Undaunted, he made his way to a local newsstand and purchased two used magazines for a penny, including a 1930 edition of the Milo Barbell Co.’s Strength magazine. Those publications inspired him to lift weights, and later to begin his own magazine. Joe scavenged a local train yard for an old axle and two flywheels, which he cobbled into a makeshift barbell. He lifted, pumped and pressed this scrap metal endlessly, and his scrawny physique was rewarded with sprouting sinews of muscle. By the time he turned 15, neighborhood bullies no longer bothered Joe. A scout from the Verdun Barbell Club in Montreal invited to Joe to join. Two years later, Joe competed in his first amateur contest, the Montreal District Senior Meet, where he lifted 70 pounds more than competitors in his weight class. His total surpassed even those of the light-heavyweights and heavyweights and earned him a national ranking.

His dream, however, was to publish a magazine committed to sharing accurate, complete training advise with routines with its readers. So, with $7 in his pocket, he began to work on what would become the first issue of Your Physique, to be published in August 1940. Orders poured in, and within 18 months Joe had made a $10,000 profit—a small fortune at a time when a loaf of bread cost 4 cents and a gallon of gas 11 cents. Remembering his own difficulties in tacking down equipment, Joe started the mail-order Weider Barbell Co. in 1942; his magazine now offered weight sets and other equipment as well as some rudimentary vitamin and mineral supplements. In 1946, Joe and his brother Ben rented Montreal’s Monument National Theater to host the first Mr. Canada contest, and former the International Federation of Bodybuilders that night. In 1965 he created the Mr. Olympia contest, which is the premier contest in all of bodybuilding. Among the most famous Mr. Olympia winners is Arnold Schwarzenegger, a seven-time titleholder. In recognition of women’s dedication to the sport, Joe went on to create the Ms. Olympia contest in 1978, and added the Fitness Olympia contest in 1995. There are presently 170 countries affiliated with the IFBB and it now ranks as one of the top seven international sport federations in the world.

Rot-Thi-Sen and Réachkol (and Atonn, the talking crocodile)

Auguste Pavie, Deux légendes Cambodgiennes. Réachkol. Rot-Thi-Sen. Exemplaire unique [in honor of] Charles Thomson, Gouverneur de la Cochinchine 1884 ([Saigon, 1884]). Illustrations executed by a single, unidentified artist in pencil, black ink, and grey wash. Graphic Arts Collection 2019- in process

A unique and remarkable item, uniting printed text and striking original illustrations for two Cambodian folktales, produced in honor of Charles Antoine François Thomson (1845-1898), French governor of Cochinchina between 1882 and 1885, who established more direct French administrative control over the protectorate of Cambodia. The text of the two legends is taken from Excursion dans le Cambodge et le royaume de Siam (Saigon, Imprimerie du gouvernement, 1884) by the French explorer and diplomat Auguste Pavie (1847-1925), who spent sixteen years exploring the Indochinese peninsula and who later served as the first governor-general of the French colony of Laos.

Whereas the Excursion features only six illustrations to the legends, our Deux légendes includes 58 charmingly drafted original images, including a title to each legend in Cambodian, apparently executed by a local artist especially for this volume. They show great creativity in depicting the extraordinary course of each tale. The first legend tells of prince Réachkol who had two wives, Néang-Roum-say-sack and Néang Mika. When Réachkol abandoned Mika and their baby, Mika sent her talking crocodile, Atonn, to attack his boat. Having tried in vain to appease Atonn with chickens and ducks, Réachkol was saved by Say-sack’s magic, which turned Atonn into a mountain (known as Crocodile Mountain). A great battle ensued between Réachkol’s wives, with Say-sack emerging victorious and decapitating and disembowelling her rival. The tale ends with the victorious couple establishing a temple.

The second legend tells of a poor woodsman who abandoned his twelve daughters in the forest only for them to be captured by the queen of the Yaks, Santhoméa, who planned to eat them. Saved by a white rat, the twelve sisters were taken in by the king of Angkor, but Santhoméa won his favour and had the pregnant sisters blinded and consigned to a cavern. Here they ate all their newborns except for one boy called Rot-thi-sen. Intending to kill him, Santhoméa sent Rot-thi-sen to her daughter, but the young pair married and Rot-thi-sen escaped with the blinded sisters’ eyes. Having evaded his wife, creating a lake in the process, Rot-thi-sen killed Santhoméa and restored the blinded sisters’ sight.

Here are a few selected plates.

New Light on the Understanding of Music in 1739

Quirinus van Blankenburg (1654-1739), Elementa musica, of, Niew licht tot het welverstaan van de musiec en de bas-continuo [= Elements of music, or, New light to the understanding of the music and the basso continuo] (s’Gravenhage: Laurens Berkoske, 1739). Graphic Arts Collection 2019- in processThis unusual volume by Quirinus van Blankenburg lays out his principles of music theory both in text and diagrams, including several working volvelles. The dealer’s description is quoted here in full:

‘Quirinus van Blankenburg (1654-1739), son of an organist, followed in his father’s footsteps when he was sixteen, first in Rotterdam, Gorinchem, and then the Waalse Kerk in Den Haag; in 1699 he was appointed organist at the Nieuwe Kerk in Den Haag. Van Blankenburg matriculated at the University of Leiden and became a well-known teacher of music. His earliest work for harpsichord, a Preludium full of ornaments and sudden changes in tempo, is found in the London Babell MS (British Library Add. MS 39569) from 1702.

None of his earlier works have survived, though it seems likely that he would have started to write music early in his life. From the works that we know now he comes across as an experienced composer.’ ‘Van Blankenburg published three works toward the end of his life, though it is possible that he wrote them earlier ….The majority of van Blankenburg’s keyboard works are short, the most elaborate being the Fuga obligata, published in his treatise Elementa musica, 1739, which covers basso continuo and other subjects, including details about enlarging the ambitusof harpsichords. Interestingly, a fugue with the same theme had been published by G. F. Handel in 1735, and, although the autograph of this fugue dates from around 1720, van Blankenburg accused Handel of plagiarism! He seems to be the first in the Netherlands to mention overlegato, which he calls “tenue”, and his fingerings are based on those found in François Couperin’s L’art de toucher le clavecin(1716)’ (Ton Koopman, ‘The Netherlands and Northern Germany’, in TheCambridge companion to the harpsichord, ed. Mark Kroll, 2019, pp. 71-92, pp. 77-8).

The contemporary annotations in this copy, which deserve further study, are frequently of the character one might expect an author to make in preparing his work for a further edition. Certainly the changes to punctuation and sentence structure would be unusual in even the most assiduous reader. However, a clarificatory marginal note on p. 99, referring to the plate opposite p. 119 (‘De Wet der Nature’), reads ‘van’t Orakel der Natuur, Q: V: B: [i.e. Quirinus Van Blankenburg]’, which perhaps suggests that the annotator was not the author. It must also be remembered that Van Blankenburg died in the year of publication. Whatever the case, the annotator was certainly someone of considerable musical learning.Hirsch I 73; RISM, Écritsp. 15

Reports to the art lovers who do not seem ignorant

Fawkes family photograph album

Fawkes family photography album compiled by Ellen Fawkes (Yorkshire, ca. 1860s). 42 leaves, containing 89 albumen silver prints. Graphic Arts Collection 2019- in process

We recently acquired this Victorian photograph album, compiled by Ellen Fawkes (1841-1890) of Farnley Hall, North Yorkshire, containing individual and group portraits of family and friends. Fawkes was the daughter of the Rev. Ayscough Falkes, and the granddaughter of Walter Ramsden Fawkes (1769-1825), MP for Yorkshire, abolitionist, and friend and patron of J.M.W. Turner. She married Sir George John Armytagein in 1871 and this album is presumed to predate her marriage.

The album includes many portraits of the Fawkes family, along with portraits of the Calleys, Calverleys, Haworths, Hothams, Parkers, Smyths, Vernons, Whartons, Wilkinsons, and Wilmots. Several prints can be attributed to the French photographer Camille Silvy, who moved to London in 1859 and opened a studio. These include Edith Cleasby (f. 13); Mrs Calley (f. 18); and the prominent opera singer Adelina Patti (1843-1919) (f. 38). The buildings depicted include Farnley Hall, where J.M.W. Turner frequently stayed; Thorpe Green; Sawley Hall; Lincoln Cathedral; Stainburn chapel; and Magdalen College, Oxford.

The history of Farnley Hall:

Farnley hall was occupied in the 1780s by Francis Fawkes. After his death in 1786, Farnley Hall was inherited by Walter Hawkesworth of Hawksworth Hall, who adopted the surname Fawkes by Royal Licence and commissioned John Carr to build the new range alongside the old. When Walter Fawkes died in 1792 the hall passed to his son, also Walter Hawkesworth, who also adopted the surname Fawkes, and was known as Walter Ramsden Fawkes. He was MP for Yorkshire in 1806 and was High Sheriff of Yorkshire for 1823.

During his tenure a regular visitor was the Victorian artist and philosopher John Ruskin, who was taken with the enormous collection of paintings by J.M.W. Turner, a close friend of the Ramsden Fawkes. Between 1808–1824 Farnley was a second home to Turner. Ramsden Fawkes owned over 250 Turner watercolours and 6 large oil paintings. A selection of Turner’s works from the Farnley Hall collection were sold in 1890 for £25,000. Frederick Hawksworth Fawkes of Farnley Hall was High Sheriff for 1932. During the Second World War the hall served as a maternity hospital. Nicholas Horton-Fawkes owned and carefully restored the house until his death in 2011. Horton-Fawkes served as President of the Turner Society. Guy Fawkes was related to the Fawkes of Farnley.

Fiskeby paper mill, founded in 1637

In recognition of twenty-five years of service, this 1923 photograph album was prepared and presented to Nils Arvid Svenson, Director of Fiskeby Paper Mill, located outside Norrköping, Sweden. Eighty-six gelatin silver prints are mounted on forty-seven pages with Svenson’s monogram on the front cover.

Forty-four prints show the Fiskeby Paper Mill interspersed with forty-two oval portrait photographs of the executives and employees of the factory. There are interior views of the machine halls for the production of the large paper sheets and rolls, including details of machines and equipment. The final section of the album shows other buildings based in the forests and lakes where the trees were cut, collected, and transported both in the summer and winter.

Founded in 1637, the Fiskeby Board AB is today one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of packaging board and is Europe’s oldest manufacturers of paper and board. In 1872, Fiskeby totally renovated its plant, inaugurating a new modern paper mill based on the innovative cellulose technique and this is why the album, dated 1923, celebrates their 50th anniversary.

“A green company with a long history. That is one way to describe Fiskeby,” notes the company website. “Already in the 1630s Queen Kristina handed us a privilege letter to start paper production. Today we are the only mill in Scandinavia that offers a packaging board made by 100% recovered fibre. Fiskeby is one of Europe’s oldest manufacturers of paper. Over the years we have made everything from wall and silk paper to today’s packaging board manufactured from recovered fibre.

Our story starts in 1637 when Nils Månsson and Anders Mattsson receive a letter of privilege from Queen Kristina with permission to start paper production in Fiskeby. The letter becomes the starting point for a paper mill that will use discarded textiles as raw material for many years to come. Handmade manufacturing continues in Fiskeby until 1852. Technological development is moving rapidly in the world at this time and as a result, a revolutionary machine mill is established in Fiskeby in 1872. Almost a century later, in 1953, Fiskeby installs a new board machine and launches Multiboard.

The board machine is rebuilt in 1987. In 2010 the mill is complemented with a new solid fuel boiler and in 2015 Fiskeby inaugurates its own biogas plant. Even today, all our manufacturing takes place at the same location where everything began almost 400 years ago, at Motala River’s outlet to lake Glan in Norrköping. With the exception of a short interruption in the mid 1800’s, the production has been ongoing since Queen Kristina’s privilege letter in 1637.–http://www.fiskeby.com/about-fiskeby/our-history/?lang=en

1788 Dutch board game

Neerlands Staatkundi[g] Werpspel [Dutch Political Throwing Game],1788. Engraving and letterpress on laid paper. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019-in process

The Graphic Arts Collection acquired this scarce Dutch dice game, published one year after the defeat of the Patriotic party by an avid follower of the Orangist party. A simple sheet with an ingenious optical illusion mocking the political ambitions of the Patriots, symbolized by the figure of Johan Jacob le Sage ten Broek (1742-1823), a Dutch professor of philosophy, theology, and an avid Patriot. Other copies of the game come with a printed eight-page brochure but we are content to play without it.

one of the side vignettes

verso

This engraved board game has four folding flaps and when all flaps are closed an engraved title appears across the front. There is a vignette beneath of a Dutch scholar (Johan Jacob le Sage ten Broek) accompanied by an 8 line engraved poem (overall dimension ca. 264 x 215 mm).

Left and right side flaps open to reveal another central engraved vignette of a Dutch soldier (the scholar turns into soldier) in front of two Dutch houses that turn up on the verso of the two lower flaps.

When the lower flaps are opened you see richly embellished round and square playing fields numbered 1 through 28 with satirical topics framing the central vignette. Our scholar turned soldier is now a captured hussar (the Dutch soldier turns into an Austrian hussar) as the gallows printed on the verso merges with the recto image and behold! the devil is hanging the hussar.

Can anyone translate the cover poem for us?

Moss Engraving Company

[John Calvin Moss (1838-1892)], The Moss Engraving Co. (New York: John C. Moss, ca. 1881). Graphic Arts Collection 2019- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired an important specimen catalogue accomplished by means of photo-engraving, a revolutionary technique developed by the firm’s founder John C. Moss. Developed in 1863, his process allowed for the mass production of illustrated books and magazines with speed and efficiency that would have been impossible with traditional wood engraving.

In 1873 Moss founded the Moss Photo-Engraving Company. “By the early 1880’s, according to [Benson] Lossing, his 200 employees were annually turning out an amount of work that would have required at least 2000 wood engravers … Thanks to Moss, America became the leader in the world for mass-producing periodicals and books that contained actual photographs instead of wood-engraved drawings.” In 1880, Moss left that company and founded the Moss Engraving Company, whose product is the subject of this catalogue.

“…The first one to attempt photo-engraving as a business, I have been told, was a Frenchman. named Charles Henry. This was in i865. I believe he made some successful maps. His method was a combination of photo-lithography and zinc etching. The first man to make a substantial success, in a business way, of photo-engraving was without doubt John C. Moss. I well remember the first establishment he had, for I applied there for work. This was in Cortlandt Street. New York, and the year was 1874. I thought I knew all about photography in those days, and I was not slow to tell Moss so. He was anxious to keep his process secret, and naturally did not employ me. I found employment, however. with the Daily Graphic, and soon after Moss moved his business but a dozen doors away from the Graphic building, so that for the subsequent ten years I had an excellent opportunity to watch with interest the growth of his business.

His was the original ‘Photo-Engraving Company‘ and in his place was made about all the photo<engraving there was. He was unable to keep his process secret, some of his employees discovered his methods and went into business themselves. His relief plates were made by what is known as the swelled gelatine method. When he had demonstrated that there was money in photo-engraving other experimenters succeeded in devising a process of photo-engraving called the ‘wash-out method.’ This supplied an electrotype. Competition and price-cutting began then. In 1881, the writer tried to introduce zinc etchings to the publishers of New York, but failed. He was ahead of the times.

In 1884 William Kurtz tried the same thing. He received assistance from a master of business methods—F. A. Ringler—and they founded the Electro-Light Engraving Co. of New York. The zinc-etching method of photo-engraving by which this firm produced all their work proved to be the quickest and most economic one. Moss took it up later, but not until he had lost his grip on the trade that he had only a few years before monopolised. Though not the original photo-engraver, John C. Moss pioneered the way to photo-engraving as a business.“——unidentified author, The Inland Printer, December, 1899 quoted in The Photogram 7 (1900)

Noach gaat met zijn familie en de dieren aan boord van de ark

Cornelis Cort (ca. 1533-1578) after Maarten van Heemskerck (1498-1574), Noach gaat met zijn familie en de dieren aan boord van de ark, = Noah boarding the ark with his family and animals; in the series Geschiedenis van Noach, 1559. Engraving. New Hollstein Dutch 4-3(3). Graphic Arts Collection GA Dutch/Netherlandish prints.

This is number three in a series of six plates depicting the story of Noah (New Hollstein 2-7) published by Hieronymus Cock (ca.1510-1570) from his Antwerp shop, ‘Aux Quatre Vents,’ one of the most important print publishing firms outside Italy at that time. The firm was continued by his widow (Volcxken Diercx) until her death in 1600 (the inventory of her estate survives with a list of her plates).

The five other plates are not in our collection:

plate one