Category Archives: Acquisitions

new acquisitions

C.E. Brock’s illustrations for Austen’s Persuasion

C.E. Brock (1870-1938), “Politely Drew Back and Stopped to Give Them Way” watercolor, signed & dated. Provenance: Chris Beetles. Exhibited at The British Art of Illustrations 1870-2010.

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired two watercolors by C.E. (Charles Edmund) Brock (1870-1938), illustrations to Jane Austen’s Persuasion, her last novel, originally published in 1816. A complete history/bibliography of Charles and brother Henry Brock’s illustrations for the Austen novels has been written by Cinthia Garcia Soria, “Austen Illustrators Henry and Charles Brock,” and can be read here: http://www.mollands.net/etexts/other/brocks.html

This is a brief exert:

…However, by 1898 a new printing technique that allowed inclusion of illustrations in colour had emerged—lithography, and Dent asked both Charles and Henry to create a new set of illustrations for the six Jane Austen novels.

The brothers agreed to share the task in equal parts: five volumes each, six illustrations per volume, one as frontispiece. Charles was in charge of Sense and Sensibility (volumes 1 and 2), Emma (volumes 7 and 8) and Persuasion (volume 10), while Henry was responsible for Pride and Prejudice (volumes 3 and 4), Mansfield Park (volumes 5 and 6) and Northanger Abbey (volume 9).

Thus the new 10-volume set of Jane Austen’s novels by J.M. Dent with illustrations by C.E. and H.M. Brock appeared in 1898 with great success. These “pen and ink drawings tinted in watercolour” gave a more exact and detailed period representation than ever before. It is classified by Gilson as E 90 and as he clearly notes, each volume included a frontispiece and five inserted plates, all in colour. They are bound in a now green-greyish gilt cloth and the covers presents a girl in Regency attire.

…The American reproduction of the 1898 illustrations took eight years to appear. In 1906, they were issued in New York by Frank S. Holby, also in ten volumes—since the publisher used the same text setting by Dent—but with an introduction by William Lyon instead of R. Brimley Johnson. This edition is also known as “The Old Manor House Edition” and Gilson catalogues it as E 106.

 

C.E. Brock (1870-1938), “Lady Dalrymple & Miss Carteret Escorted by Mr Elliot & Colonel Wallis” watercolor, signed & dated. Inscribed with publication details below mount. Provenance: Chris Beetles. Exhibited at The British Art of Illustrations 1870-2010.


 

 

Bibliography

Carroll, Laura and John Wiltshire (2006). “Jane Austen Illustrated” in Johnson, Claudia and Laura Tuite (eds.), A Companion to Jane Austen (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture, 56). Wiley-Blackwell, Singapore.

Gilson, David (1997). A Bibliography of Jane Austen. New Introduction and Corrections by the author. Delaware : Oak Knoll Press.

Gilson, David (2005). “Later publishing history, with illustrations” at Todd, Janet (ed.). Jane Austen in Context. New York : Cambridge University Press.

Kelly, C.M (1975). The Brocks: A Family of Cambridge Artists and Illustrators. London & Edinburgh: Charles Skilton Ltd.

Parker, Keiko (1989). “Illustrating Jane Austen” in Persuasions, no. 11. December, 1989. USA. JASNA. Available on-line at: http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/printed/number11/parker.htm

Rogerson, Ian. Entry for the “Brock family” in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Southam, Brian (2006). “Texts and Editions” in Johnson, Claudia and Laura Tuite (eds.), A Companion to Jane Austen (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture, 56). Wiley-Blackwell, Singapore.

 

 

Hedi Bak’s Song of Songs


Hedi Bak (born Germany, active United States and Africa, 1927-2010), The Song of Songs which is Solomon’s (Chicago: [Printed and Published by Studio 22 Inc.], 1969. 30 woodcuts. Issued in portfolio. “Thirty original woodcuts by Hedi Bak. 100 copies … numbered and signed 1 to 100 …”. One of 10 artist proof copies on Kumoi paper, a soft Japanese paper which takes fine impressions. (The edition of 100 copies was printed on Rives BFK.) The quotation is from the Holy Scriptures, as used with the permission of the Jewish Publication Society of America. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

With little else to document of life and work of Hedi Bak, here are a few paragraphs from the Bak Art Legacy Project, a virtual museum to present the works of Bronislaw and Hedi Bak.

“Hedi Bak was a prolific printmaker, painter and educator. While working as a conservator at the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany, she was tasked with printing the first edition of prints from the newly rediscovered illustration blocks of the Luther Bible. Bruno and Hedi’s lives intersected World War II, immigrant life of artists in America – the south and the midwest and in Hedi’s case even Africa.”

“The origins of the project began in 1984, shortly after Hedi Bak suffered a massive stroke and lost her ability to walk. It was only a few years since Bronislaw died unexpectedly from a heart attack, and she was in danger of losing her home and studios right off the campus of Georgia Southern in Statesboro Georgia. With hundreds of works of art in danger, a committee was formed led by many faculty members, friends and neighbors. Clemens Bak, the son of the artists was elected secretary and represented the family. An agreement was struck with the College, to move the work into temporary storage on campus. The Library at Georgia Southern offered to keep Bronislaw’s papers and also ended up with a considerable collection of prints and several paintings. The rest was moved to Atlanta, where Hedi and her sons and their families settled.”

“In the 1960’s [Bak] managed Studio 22 and produced a volume of prints; both her own and in collaboration with Bronislaw. Later, when Bronislaw’s health gave out, the couple moved to Europe where she was employed, doing preservation work at the Gutenburg Museum in Mainz, Germany. In 1972 they returned to America and established studios in Statesboro, Georgia. Hedi continued to teach until 1980. In 1982 the year after her husband died, Hedi suffered a serious stroke while undergoing surgery. Told that she would never walk again, she struggled to regain her life. The next year her youngest son, Pieter died in a car crash.”

“In 1990, Hedi married another very talented artist, Charles Counts, a renowned potter, painter and poet from Tennessee. Charles had been teaching and living in Nigeria for many years. He took his wife back to Maiduguri in Northern Nigeria where he encouraged her to take up writing as well as her art, resulting in two delightful books, many stories and prints from her time in Africa. She spent many of her happiest years of her life with Charles, until he died unexpectedly in 2000.”

 

 


This is a biographical video about Bak’s husband Bronislaw.

A biography of her childhood: Hedi Bak, Mazel ([Place of publication not identified] : Rosedog Press, 2005).

Found in The Seed 4, Issue 4 (08-15-1969):

Trinidad and Tobago

The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired an album of 96 albumen and gelatin silver photographs of Trinidad and Tobago from the last years of the 19th century. Images include government buildings, botanic gardens, groups of officials and staff, parades, a memorials addressed to Queen Victoria, and much more. There is a cocoa harvest and a fair highlighting the year’s produce. In addition, are several pen and ink drawings.

The black half morocco binding is stamped “Trinidad” on upper cover, and ‘H.E.H.J.’ on lower cover, which refers to the owner Sir Hubert Edward Henry Jerningham, KCMG, DL (1842-1914), Governor of Trinidad and Tobago between 1897 and 1900.

By 1830, Trinidad and Tobago was the world’s third highest producer of cocoa, after Venezuela and Ecuador, producing 20% of the world’s cocoa. This was before Ghana began its large-scale cultivation of cacao. The cocoa industry eventually dominated the local economy between 1866 and 1920 during which time the world demand for cocoa products increased, and cocoa prices remained stable at an appreciable level.

Subsequent to 1921, when local cocoa production peaked at 75 million lbs (34,000 tons), a combination of events led to the gradual decrease in production. World cocoa prices declined due to a glut on the market resulting from over-production, particularly in West Africa, then came the onset of the Great Depression of the 1920’s, the appearance of Witches’ Broom disease (WB) in Trinidad and Tobago in 1928, the increase in world sugar prices, and the development of the local oil industry, which competed for agricultural labour. –Frances L. Bekele, “The History of Cocoa Production in Trinidad and Tobago,” The Cocoa Research Unit, The University of The West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago, September 20, 2003.

British rule
1797 – A British naval expedition captures Trinidad from Spain.
1802 – Spain cedes Trinidad to Britain under the Treaty of Amiens.
1814 – France cedes Tobago to Britain.
1834 – Slavery abolished; indentured workers brought in from India to work on sugar plantations.
1889 – Trinidad and Tobago administratively combined as a single British colony.
1945 – Universal suffrage instituted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madeleine Gras binding

Remy de Gourmont, Lettres a l’Amazone (Paris: George Cres et Cie., 1914). Binding by Madeleine Gras housed in original chemise and slipcase. One of 8 copies on papier de chine, from a total edition of 1075. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

Madeleine Gras (1891-1958) was a Parisian binder (born Switzerland) who first appeared in 1922 at the Salon de la Société nationale des beaux-arts. While her name is known, there are few bindings identified through institutional collections, OCLC, or major auctions. The variant spellings of her name may have played a small part in this, appearing as Madeline, Madeleine, Madelaine, and Madelene, either by accident or misunderstanding.

Gras is often most identified with her first teacher, master binder Henri Noulhac (1866-1931). Thanks to Tom Conroy’s “Teaching Genealogies of American Hand Bookbinders” in the Guild of Book Worker Journal 28, no. 1 and 2 (Spring/Fall 1990) we have the important chronology:

“Few French binders were attracted to America, and the few who came made no mark as teachers. In consequence, French influence on American binding came mostly through advanced training in France; and it worked more on finishing and design than on forwarding or philosophy. By far the most popular French teacher was Jules Domont (1847-1931), a finisher and professor of the greatest distinction. In he Guild of Book Workers Yearbooks from 1908 to 1946, 37 members named Domont among their teachers; no other teacher was named by more than 15. At least five of Cobden-Sanderson’s dozen American pupils also went to Domont. Many of the Americans who studied with Domont also studied with Henri Noulhac (1866-1931), a specialist in “jansenist” bindings, whose French pupils included Rose Adler and Madelaine Gras; or to Louis Jacobs, an onlay specialist, in Brussels.”

 

 

See also:

Alastair Duncan and Georges De Bartha, Art Nouveau and Art Deco bookbinding: French masterpieces, 1880-1940 (New York: H. Abrams, 1989).

Reliures du xxe siècle de Marius Michel à Paul Bonet. Exposition à la Bibliothèque royale de Belgique du 23 mars au 13 avril 1957 ([Bruxelles?]: Société des bibliophiles et iconophiles de Belgique; Bibliothèque royale de Belgique. ; Lessing J. Rosenwald Reference Collection, 1957).

Catalogue of a collection of fine French illustrated books and bindings of the eighteenth to twentieth century: the property of Senhor Nicolau Lunardelli (sold for the benefit of the Institute Saõ Paulo) (London: Sotheby’s, 1969).

 

Female Equitation

Mrs. Stirling Clarke, The Ladies’ Equestrian Guide, or, The Habit & the Horse: a treatise on female equitation, with illustrations lithographed by Messrs. Day & Son, from photographs by Herbert Watkins (London: Day & Son, [1857]). 9 plates, tinted lithographics by Day & Son after photographs by Herbert Watkins (1828-1916). Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage 2021- in process.

Nannie Lambert Power O’Donoghue (1843-1940) and A. Chantrey Corbould (1852-1920), Riding for Ladies, with Hints on the Stable (London: William Clowes & Sons for W. Thacker & Co., Calcutta, Thacker, Spink, & Co., and Bombay, Thacker & Co., 1887). Woodburytype frontispiece. Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage 2021- in process

 

The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired two works by female authors concerning horsemanship for upper class women in the 19th century. It is unfortunate that the earliest by a Mrs. Clarke cannot be identified with her own name but only by her husband’s. Written in 1857, Clarke’s book comes a full twenty year before that of Nannie Power O’Donoghue’s work. It is a thorough discussion of horsemanship including notes on stabling, training, shoeing, and doctoring, by and for women.

Mrs. Stirling is a mystery beyond her marriage, she even leaves her name off the title page, preface, or introduction. Her preface begins by assuring any man reading the book that he need not worry. She has no desire to “trench upon ground hitherto trodden by the more privileged sex” nor does she offer “any suggestion for their enlightenment.” So, if you are of the male sex, shut your computer and stop reading.

Stirling continues, “I write exclusively for the guidance of my own sex, well knowing the vast importance to the fair novice of a manual which brings her acquainted with that equal pride of prince and peasant—the horse—and with the fascinating and elegant science which teaches how to guide and govern him, and how to guide and govern herself with respect to this noble creature.” Riding well needs training, as Stirling quotes, “True knowledge comes from study, not by chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance.”

 

 

Riding was in the mid-nineteenth century a regular activity among women, as she comments: “Some years ago, riding was by no means general amongst the fair sex; then ladies on horseback were the exception and not, as now, the rule, but “grace à notre charmante Reine,”

“Whose high zeal for healthy duties
Set on horseback half our beauties,”

there is now scarcely a young lady of rank, fashion, or respectability, but includes riding in the list of her accomplishments; and who, whether attaining her end or not, is not ambitious of being considered by her friends and relatives, “a splendid horsewoman.’ Yet how few can really claim this envied appellation! Habit may do much, and, coupled with science, a great deal more; but good riding, with very few exceptions, is neither a habit nor an instinct. Dancing we all know to be an instinctive motion, a natural expression of joy ; but mark the dancing of the rustic milkmaid, and that of the educated and accomplished lady; the one is an untutored, clumsy bound, the other the very poetry of motion ; and the latter should riding be.”

 

The second acquisition by a woman for women is Nannie Lambert Power O’Donoghue‘s Riding for Ladies [top] with illustrations by A. Chantrey Corbould (1852-1920). Perhaps it was her athleticism that allowed Power O’Donoghue, also known as Ann Stewart Lyster Lambert, to live to be 97 years old. While she wrote many books, she was best known for Ladies on Horseback, followed a few years later by Riding for Ladies (1887).

Originally published in a series of articles in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News and Lady’s Pictorial, Riding for Ladies brought her writing together in a book so popular it is recorded as selling “more than 94,000 copies.” Unlike Stirling, her name is proudly announced on the title page and the book is filled with her many achievements and personal stories.

 

 

 

Meekly Obstinate Pious VS The Fejee Islanders, January 1858

Unidentified artist, Rev’d Meekly Obstinate Pious vs. the Fegee Islanders. January 1858 [England, mid-19th century]. Fourteen watercolors in oblong album. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

 

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a pictorial narrative set on the island of Fiji and dated January 1858. It tells the story of a British missionary known as Rev. Meekly Obstinate Pious and his wife, who sail to Fiji in order to convert the indigenous people to Christianity. Through a series of events, they build a church and make friends with their neighbors but ultimately are killed and eaten. When British sailors arrive in search of Rev. and Mrs. Pious there is a battle and everything on the island is destroyed.

The story is told through fourteen watercolors and brief captions. It is unclear if the sequential narrative was meant to be reproduced and published, nothing similar can be traced. Some images are disturbingly racist and only a selection are reproduced here.

The presentation of savage cannibals in the South Seas was routinely found in English books, newspapers, and theatricals, such as in the 1831 Theatre Royal, Covent-Garden performance Neuha’s Cave, or, The South Sea mutineers, partly based on Lord Byron’s poem “The Island, or, Christian and his comrades” (1823).

 



Actual missionaries might have served as the basis for this parody. From 1838 to 1856, James Calvert (1813-1892) and his wife Mary Fowler Calvert (1814-1882), along with John Hunt (1812-1848) lived in Fiji, promoting Christianity. Calvert quickly learned the native language and over time, published religious books in Fijian as well as Fijian dictionaries for English speakers. Hunt published a Memoir of the Rev. William Cross, Wesleyan missionary to the Friendly and Feejee islands (1846) and after Hunt’s death in 1848, the missionary Thomas Williams wrote a memoir of Hunt’s life and work, also know under the Fijian title: Tukutuku kei Misa Oniti (1848).

 

Walter Lawry’s 1850 book Friendly and Feejee Islands: a missionary visit to various stations in the South Seas, in the year 1847 emphasized the practice of cannibalism and painted an unflattering portrait of a primitive society. Here is a section:

Their cannibal propensity is well known. They do not attempt to disguise it. The eating of human flesh is not confined to cases of sacrifice for religious purposes, but is practised by them from habit and taste. There can be no question that, although it may have originated as a sacred rite, it is continued in the Feejee group for the mere pleasure of eating human flesh as food. Their fondness for it appears from the custom they have of sending portions of it to their friends at a distance, as an acceptable present; and the gift is eaten, even if decomposition has begun before it is received. So highly do they esteem this food, that the greatest praise they can bestow on a delicacy is to say, “ It is as tender as a dead man.”

 

 


50 years after: {39:2} Expectans expectavi. Dominum, et intendit mihi = I have waited expectantly for the Lord, and he was attentive to me.

Talking John Birch 1962

 

Beginning in February 1962, Agnes “Sis” Cunningham (1909-2004), her husband Gordon Friesen, and their daughters gathered around the kitchen table to mimeograph and then distribute a small magazine they called Broadside. Their friend Pete Seeger (1919-2014) provided the funds and served as a consultant. They used as their inspiration The People’s Songs Bulletin, which Cunningham, Seeger, Alan Lomax, Lee Hays, and others published twenty years earlier. The long period in between was due in part to the fact that Cunningham, Seeger, and the others were blacklisted by U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy and could not perform or publish.

The mimeograph machine they used was famously discarded by the American Labour Party and salvaged for this project. Included in issue no. 1 are the lyrics by a young folk singer named Bob Dylan, his first published and copyrighted song (still in copyright). Dylan’s recording of Talking John Birch can be heard on the Alexander Street database, presumably recorded at Cunningham’s home : https://search-alexanderstreet-com.ezproxy.princeton.edu/view/work/be%7Crecorded_cd%7Cli_upc_889176297359. This link is only for Princeton.

 

 

 

Also available online is The best of Broadside 1962-1988 [electronic resource]: anthems of the American underground from the pages of Broadside magazine / produced, compiled, and annotated by Jeff Place and Ronald D. Cohen. Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, c2000.

Read: Sis Cunningham, Red dust and broadsides: a joint autobiography, Agnes “Sis” Cunningham and Gordon Friesen; edited by Ronald D. Cohen; foreword by Pete Seeger (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, c1999). Mendel Music Library ML420.C985 A3 1999

This story is often repeated: “Dylan was given the opportunity to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show and wanted to sing “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” on the program. CBS worried that including the song on the show could result in a defamation suit from members of the John Birch Society. Dylan refused to perform a different song on the show, and he walked off its set; the incident garnered publicity. The controversy surrounding the song caused Columbia Records to remove “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” from subsequent copies of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), though it was released on later Dylan albums. The song has been praised for its humor and deemed politically relevant decades after its release by both progressive and conservative publications.”

https://blogs.princeton.edu/mudd/2016/12/bob-dylans-honorary-princeton-university-degree/
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781942130369/bob-dylan
https://www.beachamjournal.com/journal/2021/02/sean-wilentz-princeton-university-historian-and-expert-on-bob-dylan-is-70-years-old-today.html

Graphic Arts Collection, in process

March 26: Mithila Art in 2020: Life, Labor, and COVID-19 in South Asia

Don’t forget to register for Mithila Art in 2020: Life, Labor, and COVID-19 in South Asia, Friday morning at 10:00 am Eastern Times. This live webinar will highlight representations of the pandemic in South Asian art that were recently acquired by the Princeton University Library.

The panel discussion will include Amanda Lanzillo, Cotsen Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows; Lina Vincent, art historian and curator based in Goa, India; and Peter Zirnis, curator and collector of Mithila art; hosted by Julie Mellby, Graphic Arts Curator and Ellen Ambrosone, South Asian Studies Librarian.

Throughout 2020, artists in India have been engaging with pandemic-related themes that reflect the vast inequity with which the pandemic has manifested in the lives of South Asians. While some have managed to maintain safety and stability, many more have experienced food insecurity, displacement, disease, and loss of income. The Mithila art in Princeton’s collection expresses moments of both serenity and sorrow in the midst of the recent crisis. Panelists will discuss and reflect on the particular expressions of COVID-19 in this art, as well the impact of the pandemic on artisan labor and art markets.

Register by clicking here.

Date:
Friday, March 26, 2021
Time:
10:00am – 11:00am
Campus:
Virtual
Audience:
Public

This webinar is part of the Special Collections Highlights Series. Recordings of previous webinars are available. To request disability-related accommodations for this event, please contact pulcomm@princeton.edu at least 3 working days in advance.

Valor y Cambio

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a set of bank notes from Valor y Cambio. The directors of the project, Frances Negrón-Muntaner and Sarabel Santos-Negrón, had worked together in a range of projects before but this is their first artistic collaboration.

“Valor y Cambio is a story-telling, community-building, and solidarity economy project started by artist Frances Negrón-Muntaner and visual artist Sarabel Santos Negrón. Started in Puerto Rico amidst the economic crisis and currently [back in Puerto Rico], Valor y Cambio is out to spark a broad conversation about what is a just economy and how to foster collective empowerment in the face of austerity and neoliberal policies locally and nationally.

The project has encouraged participants to consider the question of how a community can create different conceptions of wealth —one that promotes values such as accessible education, a clean environment, creativity, self-governance, solidarity, food security, and gender, labor, and racial equity.” —https://www.valorycambio.org/

The first and only edition of Valor y Cambio features seven people and one community: Puerto Rican athletes, activists, writers, and community members that have acted on their values to enrich peoples’ lives and demonstrated that “change is in your hands” over the last centuries. In the first printing, each peso includes bills in 1, 2, 5, 10, 21, and 25 denominations.

All of the iconic figures that appear on the Puerto Rican pesos experienced the impact of forced migrations in their lifetimes, and several —such as Ramón Emeterio Betances, Julia de Burgos and Luisa Capetillo— share a deep connection to New York City or the Puerto Rican diaspora.

•El peso Maestros Rafael (b. 1790), Celestina (b. 1787) and Gregoria Cordero y Molina (b. 1784), all born in San Juan https://herring-fife-a7xp.squarespace.com/thecorderosiblings

• El peso Ramón Emeterio Betances (b. 1827, Cabo Rojo) https://herring-fife-a7xp.squarespace.com/ramon-e-betances/

• El peso Luisa Capetillo (b. 1879, Arecibo) https://herring-fife-a7xp.squarespace.com/luisacapetillo

• El peso Julia de Burgos (b. 1914, Carolina) https://herring-fife-a7xp.squarespace.com/juliadeburgos

• El peso Roberto Clemente (b. 1934, Carolina) https://herring-fife-a7xp.squarespace.com/robertoclemente

• El peso Caño Martín Peña https://herring-fife-a7xp.squarespace.com/comunidad-cano-de-pena


Good conduct medals for Jamaican sugar plantation

As a young boy, Henry Thomas de la Beche (née Henry Beach, 1796-1855) inherited a sugar plantation from his father. Located in Clarendon, Jamaica, Halse Hall was managed primarily by enslaved Jamaicans and provided de la Beche, living in England and later Wales, with a substantial income. It wasn’t until December 1823 that he first traveled to Jamaica, spending one year on the island to conduct a survey and learn about the Jamaican men and women who ran his plantation. Back home in 1825, he published Notes on the Present Condition of Negroes in Jamaica. The introductory notes begin:


“Jamaica Negroes Cutting Canes in their Working Dresses,” lithographic frontispiece in Henry T. De La Beche, Notes on the Present Condition of the Negroes in Jamaica (London: Printed for T. Cadell, in the Strand Source, 1825). Original in the John Carter Brown Library

 

De la Beche wrote “that I am no friend to slavery in any shape, or under any modification,” but never fully denounced the practice at his own estate.

“At the time of De la Beche’s visit Halse Hall owned 207 mainly ‘creole’ slaves, mostly born on the plantation. They are woken at five o’clock by the bell of the ‘head driver’, and start work at daybreak. Breakfast is at nine, and dinner at half past twelve, though the negroes skip the meal and spend their time tending their ‘provision grounds’. Work resumes and continues without a break until half an hour after sunset, after which the slaves can ‘spend the evening as they think proper’. De la Beche is proud that his drivers don’t carry whips, as they do on other plantations, and punishments are carried out by their overseers. The head driver at Halse Hill, we’re assured, ‘is an intelligent, human and steady man’. Failure to complete digging the allotted number of cane-holes leads to withdrawal of rum and sugar rations. ‘Weakly adults’ and children perform lighter duties. At crop time – four months of the year, and apparently a ‘merry time’ for the slaves – the workforce is split into two shifts, and work continues day and night.”– https://gwallter.com/history/henry-de-la-beche-defends-slavery.html

It was around this time that de la Beche had a medallion produced by engraver Tomasso Saulini (1793-1864), which could be given to his workers in recognition of “Good Conduct.” One side carried his own profile and the other the words “Reward for Good Conduct. Halse Hall, Jamaica.” Long after slavery had been abolished in Jamaica (1833) de la Beche had a second, larger medal produced by the engraver William Wyon (1795-1851), again with his profile on one side and a Jamaican landscape on the other along with “Reward for Good Conduct. Halse Hall, Jamaica.”

Tomasso Saulini (1793-1864), Award for Good Conduct medal, ca. 1824. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

William Wyon (1795-1851), Award for Good Conduct medal, 1841. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process.

For a more complete record of Halse Hall see: Gwallter, a blog and more from Swansea by Andrew Green / blogfan a mwy o Abertawe gan Andrew Green.