Author Archives: Julie Mellby

Nobody’s Boy

Wood engraving by George Gorgas White (ca.1835-1898)

Frank Drayton, Nobody’s Boy (Philadelphia: Winner & Shuster, 1856). Graphic Arts Collection GC048 Sheet music collection

“Written expressly for and respectfully dedicated to James Lynch, Esq. of Sanford’s Opera Troupe…” Cover art designed by George Gorgas White (ca.1835-1898). Guitar. First line of text: The flow’rs of spring have pass’d away./ First line of refrain: The days are few since I was call’d.



Sinclair Hamilton thought highly of George G. White’s illustrations and attributed the design for this famous temperance book to White, engraved on wood by Van Ingen.

T.S. Arthur, Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854). Graphic Arts Collection Sinclair Hamilton 1274

Still another interesting personality about this time and a man whose death only occurred last year, was George G. White, an all-around illustrator and an exceedingly prolific workman, who, never achieving great results. nevertheless played a prominent part in the illustrative history of his times. A Philadelphian by birth, White settled early in New York and was a contributor to most of the pictorial publications of the day. He illustrated many school books and was the author of a series of drawing-books, for many years in popular favour among school boards. He possessed a most remarkable and famous collection of clippings from the European illustrated papers, which were carefully filed away ready for instant reference, and he used them freely. The work of the late Sir John Gilbert attracted him greatly and that English draughtsman was his inspiration for a long time, and indeed, his influence was ever apparent through his work. White was not over-scrupulous in appropriating from his scrapbooks, and his ability to adapt the work of other and abler men to his own requirements was well known among his professional brothers and was a standing jest. Later in life, White did all sorts of hack work. the quality and character of which reflected on him but small credit. — Arthur Hoeber, The Bookman, Volume 8 (1899), page 218

El Río. The River: A Collaboration


Zoe Leonard and Dolores Dorantes, El Río. The River: A Collaboration (Mexico City: Gato Negro, 2018). Risography. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2019- in process

“The River is a collaborative project between Zoe Leonard and Dolores Dorantes, with photography by the former and text by the latter. Richly textured images of water highlight the dynamic nature of the element, with experimental writing focused on topics surrounding dislocation, desire and devastation in a rhythm that matches the ebb and flow of the photography. With Spanish writing accompanied by English translations, the reader is spatially situated in Mexico and is invited to reflect on water as a life force.”

“The book collects unpublished photographs that the American artist Zoe Leonard has taken along the Rio Grande (or Río Bravo) in 2017 and texts commissioned for this project from Dolores Dorantes, Mexican poet and activist, who has been exiled to the United States for years. The book is an immersion into the physical context, the actual barrier; the very heart of the border between Mexico and the United States: the waters of the Río Bravo or Rio Grande. A number of figures in the water recall something else: skin, scars, wrinkles, genitals, the writing of an unknown language. A poem made of photographs, and the depiction of that sequence with a poem made of words. Or rather, a broken bilingual, visual-textual attempt of conversation over the tensions in between a simple, ever-changing but always the same flow of water, and all the terrible complexities around, above, beneath it.

The argument could be simple: at the end and at the beginning, it is only water. As simple, complex, beautiful and terrible as that. Or maybe not: to complete the argument it is necessary to summon the ghost of the body that runs through it.

https://www.gatonegro.ninja/

In the words of Dolores Dorantes: I’m going to walk on water. Say. Bring me all those parts of the body and put them here. Say. I’m the body and I’m on the table. Soy tu cuerpo y estoy sobre la mesa, en la estructura divisoria del mundo. Soy tu cuerpo y estoy sobre la mesa del mercado del mundo. Soy tu cuerpo y estoy sobre la mesa, donde se encausa la corriente del mundo. I’m the farce, arranged at strategic points of our territories. Between the face and neck, for example. Between the anchored ankle and satisfaction. http://flatartbookfair.com/en/programma/


Interview: Gato Negro — Leon Muñoz Santini from MISS READ on Vimeo.

 

León Muñoz Santini is the founder of the publishing house Gato Negro Ediciones in his hometown of Mexico City. As a young man, Santini studied political science at the Mexico’s National University but left that field to developed his career in editorial design, with a special focus in the fields of children’s literature, social design, and photography.

He has received multiple awards, among them the New Horizons in Bologna Ragazzi Awards (2009 and 2013); 50 Books / 50 Covers of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (2009); Quorum Award (2009); and repeatedly Caniem Editorial Arte Award, the White Ravens in Germany and the Book Bank of Venezuela. https://www.leonmunozsantini.com/

 

The First Ferris Wheel

A Brief History of the Invention and Construction of the Ferris Wheel together with a short biography of George W.G. Ferris, Esq. (Chicago: The Ferris Wheel Company, 1893). Graphic Arts collection GA 2019- in process.

A rare little pamphlet has come into the Graphic Arts collection depicting the world’s first modern Ferris Wheel. Seven pages of letterpress open to a center fold birds eye view entitled: Birdseye view of Exposition Building from the summit of the Wheel.” The booklet includes technical details about the construction of the Wheel, ending “Each revolution took twenty minutes, passengers remaining on board during two revolutions.”

See also:
CONDERMAN v. CLEMENTS.
(Circuit Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit. July 14, 1906.)
No. 5S0.
1. PATENTs–-INVENTION.—PLEASURE WHEEL. The Conderman patent, No. 669,621, for a pleasure wheel similar to the Ferris wheel, except that it is lighter and the parts are detachable, so that it may be taken apart to facilitate its transportation from place to place, is void for lack of invention; the only changes over prior portable structures of the kind being such as required only mechanical skill to make.

Dore’s Folies Gauloises

Gustave Doré (1832-1883), Folies gauloises depuis les Romains jusqu’à nos jours : album de mœurs et de costumes (Paris: Au Bureau du Journal Amusant, [between 1852 and 1859]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

At the age of seventeen Dore composed a very amusing book, called “The Unpleasantnesses of a Pleasure Trip” (” Desagrements d’un voyage d’Agrement”), illustrated with twenty-four lithographs and one hundred and seventy-four drawings. This was brought out at Arnould de Vresse’s, and attained immense popularity….

His next little work was for the Journal Amusant called “Folies Gauloises depuis les Romains jusqu’a’ nos jours. Album des mceurs et des costumes.” This book was no less successful than the preceding ones. Dore worked so quickly that he amazed even his publishers. It sufficed to suggest a notion to him; he forthwith gave it artistic being upon the wood; and while Paris was devouring his latest production, another was already in process of preparation. He seemed possessed by a demon of work, and was the despair of all his contemporaries, who had only one hope, viz., that he would tire of such excessive labour. But they hoped in vain.

He worked for the pleasure of working, never for mere gain. His drawings were only fairly paid for at that time; indeed he produced them with such marvellous facility that he was oftener under-paid than not. Publishers readily saw how little effort production was to the gifted lad, and were not slow to make capital out of his very quickness. He absolutely flooded the market with his work. Perhaps this was unwise. “But one paramount idea beset him,” said M. Lacroix, “to be constantly at work and constantly before the public. When his sketches were not accepted and paid for, he often gave them away, in order to be able to say, ‘So-and-so is my publisher.’ For a time he literally depreciated the value of his own labour by the enormous prodigality of his pencil.”
–Blanche Roosevelt, The Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré (1885). Marquand Library ND553.D7 M2

A Fox Shimmy (Foxtrot)


The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired this illustrated sheet music for a Spanish foxtrot titled Ku-Klux-Klan fox-shimmy, with music by W. Keppler Lais (pseudonym for Patricio Muñoz Aceña, 1894-1940) and lyrics by Dowler-Sam (Madrid Unión Musical Española, 1923).

Published in Madrid, the two verses end with a similar but contradictory chorus:
Ku-Klux-Klan… a mi me das horror… Yo pensaba ir… mas ya no voy a Nueva-York.
Ku-Klux-Klan… Ya no me das horror… no pensaba it… Mas ya me voy a Nueva-York

Ku-Klux-Klan … you give me horror … I thought to go … but I’m not going to New York anymore.
Ku-Klux-Klan … You don’t give me horror anymore … I didn’t think about it … But I’m going to New York!

[poor translation] In the catacombs of New York City the white sect of terror have their lair. They have sworn to exterminate all Negros and the Ku-Klux-Klan is feared throughout Atlanta. They travel disguised with hoods and robes as Nazarenes in mysterious processions. And at midnight, in the shadows of the night, the Ku-Kux-Klan burns Negros at the stake.

 

Patricio Muñoz Aceña wrote a second foxtrot the same year:

See more: Danny O. Crew, Ku Klux Klan Sheet Music: An Illustrated Catalogue of Published Music, 1867-2002 (2015).

#Gettyfire

People heading to work drive through the Sepulveda pass on the 405 freeway as the hills burn from wind driven wildfire near the Getty Center Monday. Brentwood CA. Oct 28, 2019. Photo by Gene Blevins/Contributing Photographer.

The “Gettyfire” has effected over 10,000 structures (both residential and commercial) in the Mandatory Evacuation Zone. Eight homes have been destroyed and others damaged. The Getty Museum has been closed to the public today and will be closed tomorrow (Tuesday) while it being used by fire fighters as a lookout.

MANDATORY EVACUATION: The official Evacuation Map indicates Mandatory Evacuation Zones in RED. You can search for an address in the upper right corner of the map.

https://twitter.com/hashtag/GettyFire

“The southbound 405 Freeway was completely shut down between the 101 Freeway and Sunset Boulevard. Drivers were advised to completely avoid the freeway if possible. The northbound lanes were open. Part of the reason that the incident commanders are shutting down the southbound freeway…is because of the potential of bringing in the large fixed-wing aircraft that also will drop that retardant. We don’t that to spread over to people’s vehicles as they’re driving, The Getty Center itself was not threatened at this time, Scott said. However, both the Getty Center and the Getty Villa would be closed Monday.”

 

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-28/fire-along-interstate-405-near-getty-center
Note, The LA Times has dropped its pay wall and is providing information on the fire to everyone free of charge.

Hiroshima to Fukushima, the Road to Self-Destruction


[left] A kind visitor offered to show how big this book really is.

 

Sam Kerson, Hiroshima to Fukushima: the road to self-destruction, lino-cuts by Sam Kerson; concept and design by Sam and Katah; hand-pulled prints, book binding by Katah (Trois-Rivières, Québec: Produced by Dragon Dance Theatre at our print making workshop, 2018). 33 unnumbered leaves; 61 x 46 cm, on sheets 87 x 67 cm. Edition of 30. Graphic Arts Collection 2019- in process.

 

 

ARTIST STATEMENT –Looking more closely at the experience of the nuclear era is daunting, to say the least. The accidents don’t end, the fall-out from the bombs doesn’t go away. The waste from the plutonium factories, the nuclear reactors, is saved and isolated in concrete and stainless steel cylindrical casks. These specialized storage units might contain the radioactive waste for a few hundred years, while critics talk of the radiological hazard lasting for hundreds of thousands of years. The bomb continues to haunt us!

Technology often threatens, “improvement”, a “better” bomb, they say, a more “intelligent” bomb. These radioactive mountains of waste are our inheritance from a war drunk, old uncle who made a terrible mistake, which he called, “science”, decades ago. They have not been able to admit it to this day. Quite the contrary our scientist, and his scientific method have gone into full denial, a sort of extreme denial, which denies that which is obvious to anyone who dares to look. They deny the effect of the accident at Three Mile Island. They deny the mortal consequences of the disaster at Chernobyl. They deny the extreme fragility of this technology, even after the three reactors melted down at Fukushima. We must see for ourselves; see with our own eyes what is obvious and self-evident.

In this book we have selected a number of incidents which we believe will let the historian see that, we of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, were aware of the consequences of this technology. Our book might also support the protesters by recalling some of those protests that have been occurring since the invention of the bomb. We hope our book will be helpful to students of this end of the world technology and phenomenon. Our intention is to encourage resistance, even though it is late; the environment is compromised with dangerous radiation, our genes have been impacted, our offspring are mutating, therefore we must stop as soon as possible. Stop the bombing, testing and production. Shut off the nuclear reactors. –Sam Kerson, January, 2019

 

Membership Cards to Fascist Trade Unions

A collection of tessera di riconoscimento (membership cards) from 1920s and 1930s fascist trade unions was recently acquired, including several with photographic portraits of the owners. Many have colorful designs and logos, representing the various professions including farmers, postal workers or taxi drivers. The Fascists organized these trade unions or syndicates to “replace Socialist or Catholic organizations, to provide mass membership, and to control labor.”


“The trade unions were also brought under the authoritarian control of the state. The law of April 3 1926 on labour relations made strikes illegal and created a ‘magistracy of labour’ to resolve all disputes between labour and employers. Eleven trade unions received legal recognition, and these were all Fascist organizations. The Confederation of Fascist Trade Unions that had been set up in 1922 had become a powerful organization and was led by Edmondo Rossoni. Rossoni was committed to the ambitious plan of implementing an integralist from of syndicalism that would have brought all workers and employers under the control of his federation. But in 1928 Mussolini destroyed this project when he insisted that the federation should be broken up into smaller organizations.

The abandonment of the programme of Fascist syndicalism was to the advantage of the employers, and for the workers was only partially compensated by the social and welfare policies of the regime, consisting in the establishment of collective contracts, of measures to reduce unemployment, and the organization of workers’ free time through the activities of the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro.

The regime hailed its law on the trade unions as the first step towards the realization of a new corporate order that would lead to what the Charter of Labour (21 April 1927) called the ‘united organization of all forces of production’. A ministry of Corporations was established in 1926 and the National Council of Corporations created in 1930 was designed to be the central constitutional body of the new state, although the corporations themselves did not come into being until 1934.” –Roger Griffin and Matthew Feldman, Fascism: The ‘fascist epoch’ (2004). Firestone JC481 .G694 2018

We hope to set up an excel sheet with all the information on the cards and attach it to the online record in the near future.


Confederazione nazionale dei sindacati fascisti and Confederazione delle Corporazioni Fasciste


 

Propositiones metaphysicae

Vincenzo Pozzi, O.P. (praes.) [Vincenzo Palazzoli, O.P. (resp.)], Propositiones metaphysicae, quas ad mentem D. Thomae Aquinatis v. ecclesiae doctoris publico exponit certamini Fr. Vincentius Pallazzoli de Bergomo Ord. Praed. philosophiae auditor […] Disputabuntur in Templo S. Dominici Cremonar Anno 1762 mense Majo Die [blank] Hora [blank] Praeside Vincentio Pozzi de Brixia ejusdem ordinis philosophiae institutore. Cremonae, apud Petrum Ricchini [1762].Broadside, 71.7 x 79 cms. (63.5 x 64 cms. within engraved area). Graphic Arts Collection

 

Adding to the collection of European thesis prints, the Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired this engraving advertising a metaphysics disputation undertaken by a Dominican monk, with another presiding. The engraving at the top is complete, while the text of the thesis has been removed leaving the bottom title information reattached to the top (slightly crooked).

The subject of the print, engraved by the relatively unknown Carlo Jos[eph] Cerutti, may be the heroic 4th century B.C.E. Roman General Marcus Furius Camillus receiving news that the Gauls have entered Rome (see Plutarch’s Lives, multiple editions, Firestone 2550.5971 v.2). How this relates to the three propositions to be argued is uncertain.

Some of the other thesis prints in our collections:

https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2015/03/07/print-your-thesis-on-satin/

https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2018/03/14/quaestio-theologica/

https://blogs.princeton.edu/rarebooks/2009/04/jesuit-thesis-print-douay-1753/comment-page-1/

You might also enjoy reading more about thesis prints in Susanna Berger, The Art of Philosophy: Visual Thinking in Europe from the Late Renaissance to the Early Enlightenment (2017). Firestone BH39 .B47 2017

 

 

Touarick alphabet and drawings

James Richardson, Touarick Alphabet, with the Corresponding Arabic and English Letters. First edition (London: T.R. Harrison, 1847). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

Dealer’s note: “This rare pamphlet is prefaced with a note from Richardson to John Bidwell at the Foreign Office. “I think I may say without hesitation, that the enclosed Alphabet is the most remarkable, as well as the most interesting contribution to the Science of Philology which has been brought into Europe during the present year.”

It commences with the Toureg alphabet in column form alongside that of English and Arabic. Richardson states that this alphabet, and how it corresponds to the other two languages, was dictated to him by a Toureg. This is accompanied by Richardson’s observations on the pronunciation of the language and some of its irregularities, and completed with lithographed “Specimens of Touarick Character.”

Richardson was born in Lincolnshire. He trained as a missionary and set out for North Africa in 1845. He travelled “openly as a European and a Christian, and headed southwest to Ghadames, where he remained for three months. He then went on to Ghat, where he concentrated on establishing friendly relations with the inhabitants.

He styled himself ‘Consul for the English’, met Sheikh Hatita who had helped Lyon, Clapperton and Laing, and was given presents to take back to Queen Victoria. He also collected much valuable information about Timbuktu, but was warned against undertaking the journey himself. Richardson returned to Tripoli with a caravan of slaves, having spent nearly nine months in the interior, then took a ship for London, arriving in 1846. (Howgego).