Category Archives: Acquisitions

new acquisitions

Prints wearing out? Paste in new ones.

Engraved allegorical title page by Adamo Scultori (1530–1585) with a medallion scene of the Virgin and Child, flanked by Saint Dominic and Saint Vincent. Note the close trimmed print.

When the information on this new acquisition is loaded into our online catalogue in a few weeks, the link to this physical book will probably disappear, superseded by one for the Hathi Trust digital copy. During this odd year, it is one or the other. This is too bad, given the unique material properties of our copy.

First published in 1573, compiled by the Dominican Andrea Gianetti da Salò (d. 1575) from the writings of Luis de Granada (1504–1588), the book offers a guide to the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary. Scultori’s engravings caught the attention of the book’s many reader, leading to its reprinting over twenty times in the following thirty years. When Scultori’s plates became worn, they were sometimes re-engraved in later editions. This 1578 Varisco edition holds a number of prints beginning to show wear.

What is most interesting in this individual book are the rich, dark prints someone pasted on top of seven original engravings, a conservation procedure not yet found in any other copy. Our dealer notes “The lack of other similarly ‘improved’ copies seems to indicate a later intervention rather than something made at the time of printing, although the skill with which the new engravings have been pasted suggests a professional, maybe a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century binder or bookseller, rather than a former owner. See: Mortimer 218 (for the 1573 edition).”

Other owners might want to check their copies.

 

Luis de Granada. (Andrea GIANETTI, editor.) Rosario figurato della Sacratissima Vergine Maria Madre di Dio nostra avocata... (Venice, Giovanni Varisco, 1578). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

 

Here are some biographical details on Adamo Scultori (1530–1585) from Brown University:

Son of the Mantuan sculptor Giovanni Battista Mantovano (Mantuano) and brother of the engraver Diana Mantovana (Mantuana, Scultori), Adamo, like his sister, was taught to engrave as a child by his father. His earliest known work, done when still a youngster, was a series of figures from Michelangelo’s Last Judgment fresco in the Sistine Chapel. His made many engravings after the Roman court artist in Mantua, Giulio Romano, and also after the antique. He also engraved frontispieces for book illustration, and in the case of the phlebotomy manual Discorsi di Pietro Paolo Magni Piacentino sopra il modo di sanguinar… he not only designed and engraved the frontispiece of Magni’s first, 1584 edition, but also engraved–and most likely designed-the other illustrations in the book. He was active as a print dealer and publisher in Rome between ca. 1577-80.

Juggling a diabolo in 1813

Le Diable couleur de rose ou Le jeu à la mode [=The Pink Devil or The Fashionable Game] (Paris: [Louis] Janet, Libraire, rue St. Jacques No 59, [ca. 1813-1819]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process


This luxury gift book/almanac for fashionable ladies features poetry, calendars, and six etchings depicting the game of ‘devil sticks’ also called the Chinese yo-yo also known as juggling a diabolo. Although the game originated in China, it was especially popular in France in the early 19th century, as seen here. The front and back endsheets incorporate gilt loops to hold a tiny pencil but there are no notes in this volume.

Bound and published by Janet, the BnF lists Pierre-Claude-Louis Janet, also known as Louis Janet (1788-1840) as a “Bookseller and bookbinder. – Son of the Parisian bookseller-bookbinder Pierre-Étienne Janet (1746-1830) and brother of the music publisher Pierre-Honoré Janet (1779? -1832) and of the engraver-publisher François-Pierre Janet (1784-1870). First established in 1810 as a satin maker and bookbinder. Patented bookseller in Paris on June 26, 1821, in succession from his father who gave him his patent (inspector’s report of April 12, 1821). Publishes almanacs, New Year’s Eve books and gift books known as “keepsakes”. Produces cardboard boxes, serial bindings and luxury bindings. Bankruptcy declared on July 6, 1838. Died in Paris in Jan. 1840. His widow succeeded him in 1841 and would practice until at least 1875.”

Janet’s “fixé sous verre” binding includes two hand painted scenes, front and back, mounted under transparent material framed with heavy gilt paper “gauffred cartonnage” [https://cool.culturalheritage.org/don/dt/dt1504.html]. On the cover a charming lady rises from a cloud balancing cupid on the stem of a rose. Above her is “Avis Aux Dames” or Ladies View or Ladies Point of View.

See also: https://cirque-cnac.bnf.fr/en/diabolo


 
 
Want to learn how to juggle the diabolo?

 

Universal Penman variations

“…hmmm. First edition, second issue…Second edition, first issue…”

George Bickham the Elder (1684-1758), The Universal Penman, or, The Art of Writing Made Useful to the Gentleman and Scholar, As Well As the Man of Business (London: Printed by and sold for the Author, 1741). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process


 

 

A classic text in the history of writing and printing, the engraved copybook The Universal Penman by George Bickham the Elder is a must for any serious rare book collection. According to most sources, Bickham began collecting samples of English penmanship in 1733 from 25 London writing masters. A master engraver by trade, he then transferred the ink calligraphy to engraved copper plates and issued them in 52 parts between 1733 and 1741. The popular collection was reprinted and reissued continually, most recently by Gale in 2018.

Is there a definitive first edition?

Princeton University Library now holds three early collections of Bickham’s parts. Our most recent is complete with an engraved frontispiece by Hubert-François Bourguignon, commonly known as Gravelot (1699–1773), two engraved title pages, and 212 engraved plates of calligraphy. The table of contents matches one other volume but not the front matter, while the pages match a second volume but not the index. This post is not a solution but only the question, whether one set of parts is more correct than another.

Kim Sloan writes for the Dictionary of National Biography:

Bickham, George (1683/4–1758), engraver and writing-master, was born in London; he was said to have been seventy-four when he died in 1758. …Bickham was apprenticed to the writing-master and engraver John Sturt and quickly gained a good reputation among writing-masters as an engraver of calligraphy. Joseph Champion claimed Bickham surpassed his master by being the first to cut through wax on copper without tracing the design first, thus transmitting the master’s original more faithfully. …In his first surviving trade card, of 1705, Bickham advertised himself as a copperplate-engraver and teacher of drawing at Hoop Alley in Old Street, London.

…In 1723, while living in the parish of St Leonard, Shoreditch, in London, he was declared insolvent and imprisoned. Three years later he designed and engraved several plates in Thomas Weston’s Writing, drawing and ancient arithmetick for the use of the young gentlemen at the academy at Greenwich, a school at which his son George later taught drawing. Several combination drawing and writing copybooks were published by George Bickham in the 1720s and early 1730s, and it is impossible to say for certain whether father, son, or both were responsible for them, since by this date both taught drawing and both were skilled engravers.

Often—as in the case of The Drawing and Writing Tutor—the first edition is undated and later editions contain additional plates clearly engraved by the son. However, the invention of plates which cleverly combined simple drawing examples with calligraphic text can undoubtedly be attributed to the father.

In the 1730s the elder Bickham seems to have settled fairly permanently in the Clerkenwell district of London, where his Penmanship in its Utmost Beauty and Extent (1731) was sold from his premises in Warner Street. Two years later he embarked on his most important contribution to British engraving, The Universal Penman, a joint work with his son and John Bickham (fl. 1730–1750), his son or brother, which was sold from his house in James Street, Bunhill Fields. Issued in fifty-two parts from 1733 to 1741, it was the culmination of his work as an engraver of calligraphy: it contained examples by twenty-five contemporary writing-masters on 212 folio copperplates, many embellished with decorations engraved by his son, as the elder Bickham firmly believed that drawing was a necessary qualification for the man of business.

Or woman of business
 

 

“By the Arts of Reading and Writing we can sit at Home and acquaint our selves with what is done in all the distant Parts of the World, & find what our Fathers did long ago in the first Ages of Mankind.”

 

 

George Boileau Willock cartoons

The Graphic Arts Collection recently added an album of 259 original cartoons, watercolors, and pen-&-ink sketches on 170 pp., along with a few printed cartoons, including one “sent to Punch January 1868.”

 

George Boileau Willock (born 1832), Gore Wynyard Willock (1861-1910), et al., Scraps by Many Hands, [ca. 1855-1885]. Embossed cover “G.B.W.”

Some work has already been done on the albums provenance, which is repeated here:
A collection of original art work by G.B.W. (George Boileau Willock, born 1832) and his artistic friends. The album was passed to his son, G.W.W. (Gore Wynyard Willock, 1861-1910). George came from an Imperial family that included Alexander Willock, London merchant and slave owner in the West Indies, his son Francis (1785-1834), naval officer and brother of Sir Henry Willock (1790-1858) chairman of the East India Company, and Captain Frank Gore Willock (1829-1857) who died at Delhi.

The son of Sir Henry Willock and Elizabeth Davis, George married Georgina C.M Willoughby in 1857 and together they had three children, Beatrice, Gore and Frank. Gore was born at Mussoorie, (a hill station pictured in the album) in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, north of New Delhi, and served in the Indian army before retiring to London. The Boileau connection was through Mary Elizabeth Boileau (1838-1919), who married Henry Davis Willock in 1859.

It is assumed that Gore compiled his father’s drawings into this album, including 124 cartoons signed G.B.W. or G.B. Willock; and about 80 others unsigned but probably by Willock. George was clearly an accomplished artist but many of the drawings present racist views of Asian, African, and Indian people, both in the image and the text. They are not included here. A portrait [at the top] presumed to be George Willock is included with a photograph of his face pasted to a sketch of a man on horseback

 

There are 20 non-humorous watercolors or pen-&-ink drawings of landscapes in England, Scotland, and India.. Eighteen cartoons are signed with the initials of other artists: 8 by C.A.R., 4 by J.L., 2 each by H.M.J. and W.T., one each by W.F.L. and M.E.
The two printed items laid into the album are:
Legend of Broadstairs. For Private Circulation only (Broadstairs: Printed by E. Cantwell, ca. 1875). Signed G.B.W. at end. Inscribed to “Gore from the Author,” [ca.1875].
A True Tale told by Mariah Hanne to Sarah Jane. 3pp. on a single folded sheet [ca.1880], inscribed to “Gore from the Author.”

 

 

Alisa Banks’ Fire

 

Alisa Banks, Fire (Dallas, Texas: A Bee Press, 2020). No. 1 of 4. Wool, silk, cotton, thread, paper, wax, ink, and dye with handwritten text. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

Visual artist Alisa Banks writes, “… my work addresses the quest for understanding identity and all it encompasses. … Each individual, quiet story coalesces to form a cultural memory that is shaped by experience, ritual, belief, places and relationships, and is called upon to explore connections. …It continues when stories that reference culture, the body, memory, and place are shared. It continues when an object relays an experience, either by paint, thread or paper. It continues.”

The Graphic Arts Collection acquired our first book in Banks’ elemental series. “Part autobiography, part auto-biology, elemental focuses on aspects of identity in relation to the elements Earth, Fire, Air and Water. In each, the viewer is invited to dig through layers that are sometimes easily accessible and sometimes not.”

Fire is the last of this series.

 


 

Based in Dallas, Texas, Banks produced each book in an edition of only four copies. Fire is fashioned of wool, silk, cotton, thread, paper, wax, ink, and dye with handwritten text. Pamphlet cover with pockets containing an envelope with a scroll, inner envelope, and paper rock. The artist notes, ”Fire – orange to red, to blue, to white – is both intimate and universal. Fire catches and holds on to matter, consuming it until it is transformed into something else, an essence. Fire is mesmerizing, in turn lulling and igniting fervor. In religion and mythology, it is the element that represents awareness and consciousness.”

 

 

“Fire features stories of the transformative power of action, understanding, and experience. A fabric envelope features text about fire and transformation. The envelope is opened to reveal a scroll that features an account of desegregating an elementary school. The story unfolds to reveal another fabric envelope featuring an account of the transformative power of motherhood. Inside the envelope is a paper rock that speaks to the unboundedness of love.”

 

https://www.alisabanks.com/news

https://www.alisabanks.com/body

 

 

 


Francisco de Araoz’s Division of the Printed World of Learning


Allegorical engraving of Wisdom by Jean de Courbes (1592-1630 or after)
Top: Psalm 118:130
Declarátio sermónum tuórum illúminat et intelléctum dat párvulis.
The declaration of your words gives light and understanding to children.
Bottom: Proverbs 8:12-14
Ego sapientia, habito in consilio, et eruditis intersum cogitationibus.
I, wisdom, dwell with prudence; I possess knowledge and discretion.

Francisco de Araoz (1583-1658), De bene disponenda bibliotheca: ad meliorem cognitionem loci & materiae, qualitatisque librorum, litteratis perutile opusculum [= The library is well managed: to improve their knowledge of the matter, and the quality of books, learned a valuable work]/ auctore D. Francisco de Araoz … (Madrid: F. Martínez 1631). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process.

 

This rare Spanish bibliography develops a classification structure of 15 branches of knowledge, offering representative authors for each category. One scholar identifies this work as “one of the first to positively mention Cervantes’ Don Quixote and F. Martinez was the first printer to publish the complete Madrid, Don Quixote (1st ed. 1605 & 1615 of 2 parts).”

“Dictionaries, spellers and grammars come first then broad subject surveys of all fields. Rhetoric and eloquence, history, dramatic comedy and secular poetry, are the next three categories followed by the quadrivium. The seventh section includes science, medicine, agronomy and gastronomy, metallurgy and precious stones. Moral philosophy, emblems, fables, symbology and proverbs form a class, as do the practical undertakings of politics and civil law. The remaining sections are of a piece — canon law, scholastic theology, scripture (and its commentaries), ecclesiastical history, Church Fathers and doctrine, and, lastly, sacred verse, devotionals and liturgical works.”

The French engraver living in Madrid, Jean or Juan de Courbes was active with Spanish publishers, designing a number of frontispieces.

Nacido en París, debió de llegar a Madrid hacia 1620, llamado por su hermano, el librero Jerónimo de Courbes, que tenía tienda abierta en la calle Mayor frente a las gradas de San Felipe. Su primera obra conocida, datada ya en Madrid en 1621, . . .

Autor prolífico, trabajó para todas las imprentas madrileñas e ilustró con sus grabados las portadas arquitectónicas o heráldicas de numerosos libros, como la Relación de las fiestas que la insigne villa de Madrid hizo a la canonización de (…) San Isidro, relación festiva de la que se encargó Lope de Vega, impresa por la viuda de Alonso Martín, 1622. En 1626, tras un paréntesis de tres años en los que pudo haber retornado a Francia, la portada del libro de Juan Pablo Mártir Rizo, Historia de Cuenca, con los retratos de los caballeros de la casa de Hurtado de Mendoza, señores de Cañete, recogidos en páginas interiores.

Sobre dibujo de Juan de Noort grabó en 1628 la portada del Quadragesimal sobre los Evangelios del padre fray Francisco de Rojas, impreso por Juan de la Cuesta. Del mismo año es la portada de la Vida de la bienaventurada Ritta de Casia de Alonso de Aragón, obra publicada en Madrid, en la imprenta de la viuda de Luis Sánchez; de 1630 la portada del Tratado de confirmaciones reales de Encomiendas, de Antonio de León Pinelo, impreso por Juan González, con las alegorías del Perú y la Nueva España, y del mismo año la de los Asuntos predicables para los domingos después de Pentecostés obra de Diego Niseno. …https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_Courbes

 

Do You Recognize St Louis, King of France?

 

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired this large (302 x 208 x 21 mm) pearwood woodblock titled at the bottom “Saint Louis Roy de France.” The standing figure of St Louis, King Louis IX of France (1214-1270) holds a scepter in one hand and a crown of thorns in the other. On his right, a ship sails towards land on the left, which has been identified as Aigues-Mortes, his departure point for both the Seventh and Eighth Crusades. Sadly he never returned from the latter, victim of an epidemic, probably typhus, that devastated his army.

 


“St Louis, King Louis IX of France (1214-1270). Christian saint; son of Louis VIII and Blanche of Castile, succeeded his father as King of France in 1226 (although his mother acted as regent until 1234). In 1234 m. Marguerite of Provence. Leader of the Crusades (1248 & 1270), he was taken prisoner in Egypt and released in return for the surrender of the French army and a ransom. Died near Tunis. Canonized in 1297.”—British Museum database

The size of this woodblock leads us to believe it was intended for a broadside or large popular print. Do you recognize it? We would love to identify the print(s) made from this striking woodblock.

Le Gueux = The Beggar

Eugène Héros (1860-1925) editor, Le gueux. January 1891-October 1892. Monthly. [Paris, 35, rue d’Hauteville: Gueux, 1891-92]. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

 

 

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired 16 individual fascicles, a complete run, of the short lived satirical monthly Le gueux (The Beggar), edited and printed by the lyricist Eugène Héros. A trained lawyer and member of Le chat noir, Héros later became managing director of the Théâtre du Palais Royal (1907-1910) and manager of La Scala (1914-1918). In between writing popular songs, he published the pamphlet Suppression de l’assistance publique (Paris: P. Andreol, 1890), followed by La partie de baccara: comédie-vaudeville en un acte, the first of many plays.

 

 

Each issue of Gueux has a singular color lithograph on its cover designed by H. Gray (Henri Boulanger 1858–1924), Jules-Alexandre Grün (1868–1938), Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen (1859-1923), Victor Sorel, Lilé, Jasmin, and Tzar. Number 9 has the a center fold by Steinlen, also seen on sheet music, titled Mon petit salé (My salted pork).

 

Also included in one issue is a subscription card and receipt card designed by H. Gray (Henri Boulanger 1858–1924).

 

Zapata from Yolla Bolly Press

If you were very fortunate in the 1980s or 1990s, you got to visit the Yolla Bolly Press, “Publishers of Modern Literature in Fine Press Limited Editions,” in Round Valley, Mendocino County, four hours north of San Francisco, deep in California’s Coast Range mountains. The press, founded by James and Carolyn Robertson, ceased printing/publishing with the death of James Robertson in 2001. Happily, many of their books are still available.


The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired Zapata: a narrative, in dramatic form, of the life of Emiliano Zapata written by John Steinbeck with woodcuts by Karin Wikström (Covelo, Calif. : Yolla Bolly Press, 1991). Copy 33/100. Graphic Arts Collection Q-000936 (note: printed with several different colored papers)

 

“This work formed the basis for the screenplay, Viva Zapata!” notes the t.p. verso. Steinbeck’s text is accompanied by: Zapata, the man, the myth, and the Mexican Revolution : commentary on John’s Steinbeck’s narrative by Robert E. Morsberger.

Princeton University Library Forrestal Annex, Reserve PN1997 .V56 1993 c.1; c.2; c.3; c.4

“One hundred copies were printed, of which fifty numbered copies accompany the portfolio version of the Steinbeck narrative” “Forty copies, numbered 11 to 50, have seven handcolored illustrations, an additional Wikström print, a supplemental text, and are enclosed in a portfolio of archival board covered in buckram with bone closures. One hundred ninety copies, numbered 68 to 257, are enclosed in a slipcase of archival board covered with buckram. Copies numbered 1 to 10 and 51 to 67 are reserved for the Press”–Colophon.


La Flaca, La Madeja Politica, La Carcajada, and El Lio

La Flaca, La Madeja Politica, La Carcajada, El Lio (Barcelona, March 1869 – March 1876). Complete with 256 weekly issues bound in 3 volumes, sophisticated copy. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2020- in process

 

Latin American Studies and the Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a scarce complete run of this remarkably well-illustrated satirical weekly, which began life as La Flaca. Each issue is typically comprised of one bifolium with a full-page color lithograph in volume 1 and in volume 2 ans 3, a double-page lithograph. More digital images have been posted at: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Flaca&prev=search&pto=aue

Published in Barcelona, the Republican magazine faced intense government censorship and so, frequently changed its name, switching from La Flaca to La Carcajada, then La Madeja, La Madeja Política, and finally El Lio to avoid the censors. Biting criticism of the Spanish government and church was a staple while promoting freedom of the press.

The magazine’s chief illustrator was Tomás Padró y Pedret (1840-1877), who should be listed among the great caricaturist of the period. Born in Barcelona to a family of artists, he studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. It has been noted that another student, Mariano Fortuny, introduced him to the drawings by Paul Gavarni, an obvious influence in his satirical work. it is interesting that many plates use the iconography of drawing or writing or printmaking in their satirical message.


“The title was an ironic allusion to the plight of the Spanish people: the rickety woman with a shield bearing the country’s coat of arms and laurel wreath, accompanied by an equally starving lion on the cover of the magazine was a satire allegory of the woman and the lion fomented by the authorities in the 19th century and supposed to embody the alliance between the monarchy and the people.”

The contents are as follows:
Volume 1: La Flaca, nos. 1-100 (3rd of April 1869-3rd of September 1871). NB: no. 1 not dated.

Volume 2: La Carcajada, nos. 1-37 (17th of January 1872-31st of October 1872); La Flaca, nos. 38-84 (7th of November 1872-4th of October 1873).

Volume 3: La Madeja Politica, nos. 1-14 (1st of November 1873 – 31st of January 1873); El Lio, nos. 1-7 (7th of February 1874-18th of April 1874); La Madeja, nos. 22-50 (2nd of May 1874-19th of December 1874); La Madeja, nos. 1-22 (2nd of January 1875-3rd of March 1876).