Category Archives: Acquisitions

new acquisitions

All of ‘Creation’ [Tvorchestvo]

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a complete set of the early Soviet art magazine Tvorchestvo (roughly translated as Creation) including all 23 issues running from 1918 to 1922. A popular magazine, unfortunately the print runs gradually decreased: 10,200-20,200 copies in 1920, 10,000 copies in 1921, and 5,000 copies in 1922.

According to the dealer, “In 1918 [Tvorchestvo] was probably produced by the first illustrator of the Soviet science-fiction Anatolii Shpir (?-1951). Dmitrii Mel’nikov (1889–1956) completed the cover design of other issues, created the linocuts for internal design, and has written some articles. He was a propaganda poster maker and the artist of satirical magazines Krokodil and Bezbozhnik. At the same time the magazine design had a notable contributor, artist Nikolai Sinezubov (1891-1948), close to the art of Kandinsky and supporting him in theoretical discussions. In this period he participated in the Exhibition of the Four (1920) with Rodchenko, Kandinsky and Stepanova. Sinezubov created the linocut for one cover and a number of linocuts for the internal design.”


The earliest issues were principally literary and were full of revolutionary traces. Later the magazine began to include critical articles on contemporary art, with the beginnings of Soviet art history developing on these pages. In particular, the journal includes early articles by Soviet art historian Aleksei Sidorov (1891—1978), notable figure in the Soviet art and book design. Some of these pieces are critical of the new Museum of Artistic Culture, which flourished from 1919 to 1929, directed by V. Kandinsky in 1919-20 and A. Rodchenko during 1921-22.

Vladimir Markov, Russian Futurism: A History (University of California Press, 1968)


Isabella Piccini


Antonio de Solis y Ribadeneyra. Istoria della conquista del Messico della popolazione, e de’ Progressi nell’America Settentrionale (Venice: Poletti, 1715). Engraved frontispiece portrait and seven additional plates. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process

 

We recently acquired the second Italian edition of this account of the conquest of Mexico by Spanish forces under Hernando Cortéz (1485-1547). The work describes the three years between the appointment of Cortéz as commander of the invasion expedition and the fall of Mexico City.

Solis was private secretary to Philip IV and considered the “cronista mayor de Indias.” His account contains three marvelous full-page engraved portraits of the author, Cortéz, and Montezuma by the famous printmaker Suor Isabella Piccini and five other plates engraved by Alessandro della Via, illustrating significant scenes of the conquest.

 

For the Graphic Arts Collection, it is the engraver Suor Isabella Piccini (1644-1734), who is of particular importance. The daughter of the printer Giacomo Piccini (died 1669), she is becoming better known for her many 17th- and 18th-century engraved portraits commissioned by Venetian publishers. See also: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2017/11/09/isabella-piccini-and-angela-baroni-18th-century-engravers/  Not unlike the 20th-century Sister Corita Kent (1918-1986), Piccini sent much of her time in the Convent of Santa Croce creating art, in particular to illustrate prayer books and manuals.

 

Alessandro della Via (active 1688–1724) also engraved book plates and portraits in Venice at this time but little more is known of his biography.

 

Life Begins

Everyone agrees that publisher Henry Luce launched Life magazine on November 23, 1936, his third magazine after Time (1923) and Fortune (1930). The first issue sold for ten cents and featured a cover photograph of Fort Peck Dam in Montana by Margaret Bourke-White, five pages of Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photographs, and dozens of other photo-essays. The magazine’s circulation went from 380,000 the first week to more than one million four months later, lasting until 1972. Paper issues can be seen at: ReCAP Oversize 0901.L724q

What no one seems to agree on is why someone made a miniature facsimile edition of the first issue, seen here along with the bound original. Some collections call is a salesman’s sample but it seems unlikely Luce would reproduce the entire issue in miniature when he was pushing the large format image.

More likely is that a facsimile was made as a souvenir or keepsake, either at the moment or for a later anniversary. There is nothing in the issue to indicate why or when it was produced, and no information online to settle the question. A call to Time, Inc. did not add any useful information. Happily for us, the facsimile includes the back cover [above], which was removed from our paper issues.

Household Helpers

For 19th-century wives who did not have servants, advertisers published a wide variety of help books. Princeton University Library has a large and varied collection of household helpers, guides to home-making, manuals for entertaining, and other ephemeral publications. These few just passed by on the way to cataloguing with interesting remedies, receipts, shopping tips, advise on raising children, sewing diagrams, and many other articles along with advertisements. The Smithsonian did a nice online exhibition: http://www.sil.si.edu/ondisplay/making-homemaker/index.htm.

A Personal Writing Machine






The Longest Purse in Wall Street

Inside a box of unprocessed material, this small group of “Nickel Weeklies” (a cheaper version of the Dime Novels) turned up. Some of the major series titles are included here, Work and Win: An Interesting Weekly for Young America (featuring Fred Fearnot), Pluck and Luck, and Tip Top Weekly: An Ideal Publication for the American Youth (featuring Dick Merriwell). Each sold for 5 cents, with a full color cover. There were 732 stories about Fearnot over 14 years written by Harvey K. Shackleford, under the pseudonym Hal Standish, until his death in 1906, and then by George W. Goode using the same penname.

The January 13, 1905 issue of Work and Win features a story about Fred Fearnot with the subtitle “The Longest Purse in Wall Street” meaning the richest man. The saying “the longest purse wins” was featured prominently in a cartoon by William Newman published in the March 1, 1864 issue of Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun, in which Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln try to settle their disputes with enormous purses.

Here is a short biography for Newman from The Vault at Pfaffs

…In 1841, he was invited “to join a new, superior, three penny weekly to be called Punch.” Newman’s primary role at Punch was to provide small cuts, while on occasion he did some large cuts. By 1850, he had left Punch and had taken up work as a bookseller. He returned to journalism in 1854 as a cartoonist for Diogenes. In the winter of 1860, struggling to make ends meet for his growing family and wife, Newman was offered a job that offered more stability. The position was the “chief cartoonist for a new humor magazine, to be called Momus, which would cause him to relocate across the ocean in New York (Brown and West 158). While “all cartoons in Momus by Newman have previously been ascribed to William North,” a myth that was perpetuated by Frank Luther, scholars Jane Brown and Richard Samuel West have disproven such a notion. As they demonstrate, “North had committed suicide on November 14, 1854,” so it would have been impossible for North to have completed this work. With the demise of Momus in sight, “Newman found work on Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun, the best of the American comic monthlies. …During the Civil War, Newman also “became part of the corps of artists bringing scenes of the war into the parlors of North homes” with contributions to both the New York Illustrated News and Harper’s Weekly. In the fall of 1862, he began to contribute work again to one of Leslie’s publications, Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun, which continued relatively consistently for the next eight years. According to biographers Brown and West, “after the War, Newman paid less attention to national politics and more to American foreign policy and international affairs,” especially the relations between the United States and England and France.

The Cotsen Collection holds Work and Win no.1-1382; 1896-1924. ReCAP – Cotsen Library Off-Site Storage Work and win 151026

Paper made from straw (rye, wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, lentils, and corn)


Louis Piette (1803-1862), Die Fabrikation des Papieres aus Stroh und vielen andern Substanzen: im Grossen nach zahlreichen Versuchen beschrieben und mit 160 Mustern von verschiedenen Papiersorten beweisen: nebst einer Beschreibung der neuesten Erfindungen in der Papierfabrikation, für Fabrikanten und alle Freunde der Forschritte in Cultur und Industrie (Cologne: Dümont-Schauberg, 1838). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection has a number of early sources on papermaking, often with paper samples tipped in. This volume, recently acquired, is not the earliest but certainly is one of the rarest of all papermaking books, with 25 more samples than most other recorded copies (ok, yes, the copy at the University of Amsterdam apparently has 192 samples but who’s counting).

The papers are chiefly from various kinds of straw (rye, wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, lentils, and corn), singly or in combination; some mixed with hay and/or rags; and some bleached or colored. There are also five samples of cardboard made from straw and other fibers and ten non-straw papers (hay, oakum, wood, linden bark; some with rags).

In 1827, Louis Piette, a native of Belgium, took over the paper making factory started by his father in Dillingen and performed many experiments using different materials to produce various suitable kinds of paper, operating the mill from 1819 to 1854.  Note in particular leaves 203-33 are themselves made of various straw papers.

“Louis Piette followed in the footsteps of noted papermaking researchers of the 18th century…These early attempts, however, were not as successful as the finished papers made by Louis Piette. The significance of Piette’s investigations is very simple: his papers made from straw remain clean and almost as pliable as comparable papers made from rag…Piette’s papers, moreover, really are straw papers, without mixing in small amounts of flax fibers. Piette’s experiments showed a great understanding of papermaking from a production standpoint, and, with the increase use of the fourdrinier machine, his work led directly into the use of esparto grass prior to the discovery of chemical bleaching for soft- and hardwood paper manufacture…By the 1860‘s, the age of modern machine papermaking was at hand, and Piette’s earlier papermaking experiment showed how well he understood the future of papermaking.“–The Paper Trail. Quarterly Newsletter of the Robert C. Williams American Museum of Papermaking (Vol. 2, Nos. 1 & 2, January- March & April-June 2004). In these two articles the author states there are only four known copies of this book.


Of particular importance in this volume, found on pages 246-91 is the second printing of Moritz Illig’s Anleitung auf eine sichere, einfache und wohlfeile Art Papier in der Masses zu leimen (first edition 1806). According to Leonard Schlosser’s 1971exhibition catalogue, only two copies are known of the first edition. This text describes Illig’s “momentous” (Schlosser) invention of rosin-alum sizing. The addition of this mixture aided in making the paper take writing ink with less necessity for sizing with glue, as had been the vogue for five hundred years. It provided a simple, sure method for sizing paper more rapidly with non-putrescible materials. Illig’s book was literally consumed in use and only two copies are known.–Special thanks to Yoshi Hill for his research on this volume.

Some of the other early papermaking sources in the Graphic Arts Collection include:

Papeterie: contenant quatorze planches, dont une double ([A Paris: Chez Briasson … David … Le Breton …, 1767]. Graphic Arts Collection Oversize 2011-0013F

Louis-Charles Desnos (1725-1805), Dissertation historique sur l’invention des lettres, ou caracteres d’écriture: sur les instrumens dont les anciens se sont servi pour écrire; & sur les matières qu’ils ont employées: suivie d’une Instruction raisonnée sur le papier nouveau que le sieur Desnos annonce au public: & dont on trouvera à la fin une suite de feuillets pour écrire & dessiner dans tel genre que ce soit avec un stylet ou pointe d’un métal composé pour cet usage (Paris: Chez Desnos, ingénieur-géographe & libraire de Sa Majesté danoise … , 1771). The 52 blank leaves at end are samples of Denos’ paper, intended for use as a notebook; cf. p. 3 (2nd group). Graphic Arts Collection 2009-0605N

Charles-Michel, marquis de, Villette (1736-1793), Œuvres du marquis de Villette (Londres. [i.e. Langlée, France: P. A. Léorier Delisle], M. DCC. LXXXVI. [1786]). “Ce volume est imprimé sur le papier d’écorce de tilleul.”–Verso of half title. Based on the 18mo format, the sheet size is ca. 48 x 36 cm. (crown), though Hunter reported his copy as 16 x 10 cm. (thus ca. 60 x 48 cm, royal, calculated from the same format). Issued also on rose-colored paper and on paper made from marshmallow. Includes 20 sample leaves of Léorier Delisle’s experimental paper made from various plant materials: marshmallow, nettles, hops, moss, reeds, conferva (3 kinds), burdock, burdock-colt’s foot, and thistles; quack-grass root; hazel wood and spindle wood; and bark of willow, spindle tree, oak, poplar, osier and elm. Each leaf includes printed identification of the material used: papier de guimauve, d’ortie, de houblon, de mousse, de roseaux, de conferva (première / seconde / troisième espèce), de racines de chiendent, de bois de coudrier, de bois de fusain, d’écorce de fusain avec son épiderme ou croûte, d’écorce de chéne, d’écorce de peuplier, d’écorce d’osier, d’écorce d’orme, d’écorce de saule, de bardanne, de bardanne et de pas-d’ane, de chardons. Graphic Arts Collection 2004-0061S

Matthias Koops, Historical account of the substances which have been used to describe events, and to convey ideas, from the earliest date to the invention of paper (London: Printed by T. Burton …, 1800). “Printed on the first useful paper manufactured soley [sic] from straw.” Appendix (p. [85]-91) printed on “paper made from wood alone … without any intermixture of rags, waste paper, bark, straw, or any other vegetable substance.” Laid in: sample blank folded sheet of straw paper, 35 x 43 cm. folded to 18 x 12 cm. Watermark: “Neckinger Mill.” Graphic Arts Collection Oversize TS1090 .K66q

The Sister arts, or, A concise and interesting view of the nature and history of paper-making, printing, and bookbinding: being designed to unite entertainment with information concerning those arts, with which the cause of literature is peculiarly connected: embellished with three engravings ([Lewes]: Sussex Press, Lewes: Printed and published by J. Baxter, and sold by the principal booksellers in London, 1809). GAX copy: From the library of P. J. Conkwright. Graphic Arts Collection 2003-0052N

Biblia / Pietá

Biblia/Pietá originated from a performance art piece that took place in the Instituto Francés de Cultura (French Institute of Culture) in Santiago, Chile, during May 1982, created by Juan Domingo Dávila, Carlos Leppe, and the critic Nelly Richard. The event was recorded in photographs by Julia Toro Donoso and republished last year in a limited edition box set, recently acquired thanks to funds provided by the Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS). Special thanks go to Professor Javier Guerrero, Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Chair of the Section on Venezuelan Studies of LASA, who discovered this rare surviving box.

Biblia/Pietá contains the text by Carlos Leppe María Dávila on a 15 mm acrylate plate; a facsimile edition of the article in Art & Text, along with the translation by Patricio Marchant; and eleven signed photographs on rag paper.

“The performance consisted of a staging of La Pietá with inverted gender roles, where Dávila represented the Virgin and Richard died Jesus Christ; Leppe, meanwhile, enters the scene dressed in a suit and tie, but with face makeup and false eyelashes. Leppe washes his face and lights a projection of a video where the scene of La Pietá is repeated, but this time with two men. While the video is being shown, Leppe reads aloud a text about his position on Chilean art.”

For more, see: http://carlosleppe.cl/1982-la-pieta/

José Angel Toirac’s “Parables”

“Parables, with Cuban artist José Angel Toirac and writer Robert Glück, is an extension of Toirac’s life project of examining how the Cuban State has used press imagery to manufacture consent and sell the Revolution which Fidel lead in 1959,” writes Loring McAlpin, ’83. “It’s a sumptuous book meant to be a scripture for Fidel and the Cuban Revolution.”

You may have missed the evening last spring at The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), Harvard University, where Toirac, Glück, and McAlpin present their limited edition, fine press book gathering photographs from magazines and newspapers like Granma, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, and re-purposing the Cuban Revolution as a Gospel, a new religion with a new scripture.

But you can still catch them if you happen to be in Washington D.C. in October 2018, when artists Meira Marrero, Loring McAlpin, and José Angel Toirac will join in a conversation about Parables with Michelle Bird at National Gallery of Art. https://www.nga.gov/calendar/lectures/lectures-signings/parables-the-conversation.html
 


They note:

Parables (the project/exhibition) by Meira Marrero and José Angel Toirac is a collection of 33 photographs of Cuban life published by the official Cuban press. Sources range from magazines and newspapers like Granma, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, to books on the history of the revolution. These photographs constitute a narrative of the Cuban Revolution as well as a retelling of the Gospels, with Fidel Castro performing the life of Christ from his childhood in Nazareth to his ascension into Heaven. Just as Christianity appropriated pagan festivals, the Cuban state has incorporated biblical stories into its narrative of the Revolution. Christian expressions have been fashioned into official slogans such as “these are the days to unite.”

In Parables the religious roots of this idolatry are exposed. Poet, fiction writer, editor, and New Narrative theorist Robert Glück was invited to write the “scripture” accompanying these images, as if compelled by the faith they conveyed, without mention of either Fidel or Jesus. Parables (the book) is a limited-edition artist book of 33 parables, each with a corresponding image, designed by Cynthia Madansky and Loring McAlpin.

In Fidel’s Shadow: Cuban History (and Futures), One Year On

 

José Angel Toirac, Meira Marrero, and Robert Glück, Parables, design by Cynthia Madansky and Loring McAlpin ([New York?]: Faithful Castle Press, 2017). Graphic Arts Collection 2018 in process.

 

Des Systématiques and other Caricatures Politiques

In this rare 1798 edition of political caricatures, recently acquired by the Graphic Arts Collection, five classes of Republicans are pictured and described. The humor of the texts, written and possibly also drawn by Antoine Joseph, comte de, Barruel-Beauvert (1756-1817)–cousin of Rivarol, editor in 1791 of the monarchical newspaper Acts of Apostles–is not easily translated but presents: l’Indépendant, l’Acheté, l’Enrichi, l’Exclusif, le Systématique.

 


Note that in 1850, Barruel-Beauvert is described as an author of political pamphlets of no merit:

BARRUEL-BEAUVERT, (Antoine Joseph, comte de,) born at the castle of Beauvert, in Languedoc, in 1756, of a family of Scottish origin, was by profession a soldier, and rendered himself in some little degree remarkable by his loyalty during the French revolution, but much more so by his vanity and selfconceit. Although constantly on the list of persons proscribed, he still contrived to remain in Paris undiscovered by the police till 1800, when he was imprisoned, but obtained his liberty in 1802. After the restoration, his disappointment at not receiving the rewards and honours which he imagined to be his due, led him to publish several pamphlets, for which he was obliged to leave Paris, and went to Italy. He died at Turin 1817. He was the author of many political pamphlets, of no merit. (Biog. Univ. Suppl.)

–Hugh James Rose, New General Biographical Dictionary, Vol. 3 (1850).

Riez-en si vous voulez…, mais surtout ne vous en fâchez point = Laugh at it, if you want… but don’t forget the point.

 

Antoine Joseph, comte de Barruel-Beauvert (1756-1817), Caricatures politiques ([Paris?], an VI [i.e. 1798]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process

See another rare copy without color: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k1257218.image