Category Archives: Acquisitions

new acquisitions

Tesoros musicales de la Nueva España: Siglo XVI. Tacámbaro de Codallos

María Isabel, Tesoros Musicales de la Nueva España: Siglo XVI. Tacámbaro de Codallos ([Mexico]: Taller Martín Pescador, 2018). One of 210 copies. Graphic Arts collection GAX 2019- in process

Publisher’s quote: “Dr. María Isabel Grañén Porrúa is Mexico’s leading scholar of 16th-century printing in the Viceroyalty of New Spain and Juan Pascoe of the Taller Martín Pescador is Mexico’s greatest living handpress printer.

Her scholarship, based on archival research and the minute study of early colonial-era printed musical texts, and his precise and meticulous presswork are here combined to give us a masterful study of a neglected area of the history of the book in Mexico, in a volume that is joy in the hand and a jewel to the eye.

Prior to publication here, the extended essay had been ‘presentado en el simposio ‘El libro en la Nueva España. Historiografía en Construcción.’ Dirección de Estudios Históricos del INAH, octubre de 2017.'”

Florencio Ramírez composed the text using Dante, Centaur, Poliphilus, and Blado type. Juan Pascoe and Martín Urbgina printed the work on Tamayo De Ponte paper using a Vandercook cylinder press and two Washington handpresses. The work was bound by Fermín Urbina.




Maxim Gorky and Zena Peschkoff, his adopted son


In clearing out an office recently, a platinum print was found signed by the American photographer Alice Boughton (1865-1943). It is a portrait of Maxim Gorky and Zena Peschkoff, his adopted son taken around 1910. This appears to be a slightly different moment than the print owned by the Metropolitan Museum: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/270412

The April 1914 issue of Wilson’s Photographic Magazine [Graphic Arts Collection HSV 2007 0005M] offers a biographical profile of Boughton written by Beatrice C. Wilcox that mentions the sitting:

While she is interested in illustrative work and in out-of-doors studies, Miss Boughton’s principal work is in portrait photography. Many celebrated men and women have sat to her for their portraits, and not the least interesting part of her work is in coming in contact with these various personalities. An experience never to be forgotten was the kindliness of Prof. William James, who had time for everybody, and the sympathetic touch and vivid personality of Ellen Terry.

Celebrities are not always kindly and sympathetic, or even interested in their own pictures, but the photographer must in some way try to get in touch with each one. For instance, Maxim Gorky, who spoke no language but Russian, sat gloomily absorbed in his own thoughts and expected the photographer to do everything. Miss Boughton finally penetrated his gloom and got a look of responsiveness through her interest in his young adopted son, who spoke French and acted as interpreter.

She has taken actors in small dressing rooms, on the roof, and fire escapes, and has overcome many obstacles and perplexities of lens and camera, but, in her opinion, handling the people is the hardest work of all. A photographer must have the social instinct, a sympathetic personality, tact and the infinite patience to make his sitters feel at ease and to bring out the best qualities of each one.

Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) lived in Europe and then America from 1906 to 1913. In the United States he started his classic novel The Mother about a Russian Christian woman and her imprisoned son, who both joined revolutionaries under the illusion that revolution follows Christ’s messages. Here is the New York Times announcing Gorky’s visit:

GORKY’S ADOPTED SON TELLS OF WRITER’S PLANS. On His Way Here to Get Aid for the Revolutionists. TO SPEAK IN MANY CITIES Pleshkoff Says His Foster Father Will Show Russian Life as It Really Is. Nikolay Zavolzsky Pieshkoff, adopted son and protege of Maxim Gorky, the famous Russian writer, who is due here in a few days, talked with a TIMES reporter yesterday. For more than a year, the young man, who fled from Russia to escape persecution by the agents of the Government, has been living quietly on the east side and earning his living in the mailing room of Wilshire’s Magazine. [full article: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1906/04/08/101773168.pdf]

Whilst Time is unveiling, Science is exploring Nature

Museum late Sir Ashton Lever’s Albion Place the Surry side of Black Fryers Bridge. Admission ticket engraved by William Skelton (1762-1848) after a design by Charles Reuben Ryley (1752?-1798) [London], ca. 1788. Graphic Arts Collection 2019- in process

In William Hone’s 1838 The Every-day Book and Table Book; Or, Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastimes, Ceremonies, Etc, this ticket for the Leverian Museum is illustrated and the following explanation given:

“It seems appropriate and desirable to give the above representation of Mr. Parkinson’s ticket, for there are few who retain the original. Besides—the design is good, and as an engraving it is an ornament. And—as a memorial of the method adopted by sir Ashton Lever to obtain attention to the means by which he hoped to reimburse himself for his prodigious outlay, and also to enable the public to view the grand prize which the adventure of a guinea might gain, one of his advertisements is annexed from a newspaper of January 28, 1785.

J. R. Ashton Lever’s Lottery Tickets are now on sale at Leicester house, every day (Sundays excepted) from Nine in the morning till Six in the evening, at One Guinea each; and as each ticket will admit four persons, either together or separately, to view the Museum, no one will hereafter be admitted but by the Lottery Tickets, excepting those who have already annual admission. This collection is allowed to be infinitely superior to any of the kind in Europe. The very large sum expended in making it, is the cause of its being thus to be disposed of, and not from the deficiency of the daily receipts (as is generally imagined) which have annually increased, the average amount for the last three years being 1833l. per annum.

The hours of admission are from Eleven till Four. Good fires in all the galleries.

The first notice of the Leverian Museum is in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for May, 1773, by a person who had seen it at Alkerington, near Manchester, when it was first formed. Though many specimens of natural history are mentioned, the collection had evidently not attained its maturity. It appears at that time to have amounted to no more than “upwards of one thousand three hundred glass cases, containing curious subjects, placed in three rooms, besides four sides of rooms shelved from top to bottom, with glass doors before them.” The works of art particularized by the writer in the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” are “a head of his present majesty, cut in cannil coal, said to be a striking likeness; indeed the workmanship is inimitable—also a drawing in Indian ink of a head of a late duke of Bridgewater…”

The winner of the 1786 lottery was estate agent James Parkinson (1730-1813), who moved the collection to the “Rotunda” near Blackfriars Bridge. Our ticket dates from this time, notably the Blackfriar’s address appears in the title.

Below the image is the text: Whilst Time is unveiling, Science is exploring Nature.

Read more: J. C. H. King, “New Evidence for the Contents of the Leverian Museum,” Journal of the History of Collections, 8, no. 2 (1996): 167–86.
https://doi.org/10.1093/jhc/8.2.167

Adrienne Lois Kaeppler, Holophusicon–the Leverian Museum : an eighteenth-century English institution of science, curiosity, and art (Altenstadt, Germany: ZKF Publishers; Honolulu, HI: Distributed in the United States by Bishop Museum Press, 2011). Marquand Library Oversize AM101.L67 K34 2011q

Reynolds Stone

“Under God’s power she flourishes”

The Graphic Arts Collection just received a copy of Humphrey Stone’s new biography Reynolds Stone: a memoir (Stanbridge, Wimborne Minster, Dorset : Dovecote Press, 2019). GA 2019- in process. A small part of Stone’s legacy involved Princeton University Press and the design of the Princeton University Library’s bookplate, still used today [above].

Engraver and designer Reynold Stone (1909-1979), named after his ancestor, Sir Joshua Reynolds, went to Magdalene College, Cambridge to read history before starting work in 1932 as a graduate apprentice at Cambridge University Press. There he met their typographical adviser Stanley Morison who was to become a personal friend. Morrison later described Stone as the “best letterer in the country since Eric Gill died.” Stone already had a natural flair for typesetting winning the first prize of five guineas in 1931 for title pages set in Monotype in the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) Industrial Design Competition. The following year he again took the first prize.

For more information on the many, many bookplates used over the years at Princeton, see: http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/rbsc2/libraryhistory/shlfmks/shelfmarks.html

This is a list of the shelf marks and ownership marks of the Princeton University Library. Here also is a listing of ownership marks of collections and libraries absorbed into the main collections. http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/rbsc2/libraryhistory/shlfmks/shelfmarks2.html

See also Myfanwy Piper, Reynolds Stone ([London] Art and Technics, 1951). Graphic Arts Collection NE1217 .S78 P5 “First published 1951 by Art and Technics ltd. … London …”–t.p. verso.

 

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).

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