Category Archives: Acquisitions

new acquisitions

Celebrating the 35th Anniversary of Hellenic Studies

dalla via athos3Alessandro dalla Via (active 1688-1729), General View of Mount Athos, printed ca. 1707. Etching and engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2015- in process. Gift of the Program in Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund and matching funds provided by a gift of The Orpheus Trust to the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, in honor of the 35th anniversary of Hellenic Studies at Princeton.

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dalla via athosThis extraordinary new engraving is the gift of the Program in Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund and matching funds provided by a gift of The Orpheus Trust to the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, in honor of the 35th anniversary of Hellenic Studies at Princeton. It is first independently issued representation of Mount Athos by the engraver Alessandro dalla Via (active 1688-1729), printed ca. 1707. The monumental view was created on four sheets joined together to form a single print 77.3 x 111.5 cm.

“This wonderful acquisition strengthens our Hellenic Collections at Princeton,” writes Dimitri Gondicas, Director of the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, “especially our excellent holdings in the Byzantine and early modern Greek fields, and complements our recently acquired collection of paper icons of Mt. Sinai in Graphic Arts. Through our Seeger fellowships, we are pleased to make accessible these research collections to students and scholars from around the world. We wish to thank the Trustees of the Orpheus Trust, in particular, Mr. Christopher Cone, President of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund, and Mr. Hubert Ashton.”

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Only three other copies have been found in contemporary collections: two in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (one hand-colored) and one in the Museum of Prince Czartoryski, Krakow. Another version also exists dated 1707 but without engraver’s name (67 x 105 cm.). It is known in a unique copy preserved at the University of Uppsala, Sweden.
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At the bottom of the sheet is a broad band divided into six columns with a description of the Holy Mountain, written in metric verse in Greek, Latin, and Russian. The text exhorts the faithful to visit Athos. At the bottom of the fourth column there is the inscription: “Sumptibus Rever(endissi)mi abbatis Domini Abbacum Adriani, et Revere(n)di Sacerdotis, et monachi Pauli Clementis ” (also in Greek at the bottom of the fifth column).

The composition is described by Dory Papastratos:

“The two aspects of Mount Athos are shown together in this view: the western face on the left, the eastern on the right; the peak, depicted twice to illustrate both flanks, appears in the center. A torrent cascades from close to the western summit, sweeping stones and boulders before it in its almost vertical course to the sea. Set among the hills on the mountainsides and atop the cliffs along the seashore, and surrounded by their lands and gardens and plantations, are the fortress-like buildings of the twenty monasteries with their defensive towers and domed churches: the Protaton, the sketes of Saint Anne and the Virgin, Prophitis Elias (skete), Mylopotamos, and the tower of Morphonou (that replaced the old monastery of Amalfitans after its destruction); at the sea’s edge are the tower-shaped arsenals or warehouses of the monasteries, their cannon firing out to sea.”

“The names of the various buildings are written in Greek and Latin on small oval tablets above them. Diminutive figures of monks move about the landscape, some on foot, others mounted on beasts of burden. A procession wends its way from Iviron monastery towards the shore where it will receive the icon of the Portaïtissa held by the monk Gabriel standing erect on the waves. Monks can be seen also on the courtyard of the Protaton. Six tall crosses project above the cypress trees lining the ridge of the mountain range.”

“Scattered about the sea in the foreground are galleys and oared ships, large fishing vessels with monks aboard, and two huge sea-monsters. With crosses at their mastheads and on their sails, the Christian vessels display Venetian or French coats of arms on their sterns, while the crescent distinguishes the Turkish vessels. The two religious scenes in the sky represent, left, the Deisis with Christ enthroned and flanked by the full-length figures of the Virgin and the Forerunner and, right, the Virgin half-length, her arms outstretched in benediction.”

dalla via athos4See also:

Mapping Pathways to Heaven: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03085694.2013.784567

Deluga, Waldemar, “Greek Church Prints”, Print Quarterly, 19:2 (2002), p. 130.

Deluga, Waldemar, “Mont Athos dans les gravures balcaniques des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles”, Balkan Studies, 38:2 (1997), p. 243.

Mylonas, Paul M., Ὁ Ἄθως καί τά μοναστηριακά του ἱδρύματα μεσ’ ἀπό παληές χαλκογραφίες καί ἔργα τέχνης, Athens 1963, no. 4.

Papastratos, Dory, Paper Icons: Greek Orthodox Religious Engravings, 1665-1899, translated by John Leatham, 2 vols, Athens 1990, no. 420.

Provatakis, Theoharis, Χαρακτικά Ἑλλήνων λαϊκῶν δημιουργῶν, 17ος-19ος αἰώνας, Athens 1993, no. 72.

Tolias, George, “Ἀθωνική ἱερή χαρτογραφία. Οἱ ἀπαρχές”, in E. Livieratos (ed.), Ὄρους Ἄθω γῆς καί θαλάσσης περίμετρον. Χαρτῶν Μεταμορφώσεις, Thessaloniki 2002, pp. 158 -62.

The History of the Monument, Extra-Illustrated

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Charles Welch (1848-1924), History of the Monument (London: City Lands Committee of the Corporation of the City of London, 1893). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015- in process.

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired this extra-illustrated copy of Welch’s history of the London Monument, including many engravings, printed broadsides, albumen silver prints, related printed ephemera, printed guides to the Monument, as well as manuscript letters and notes. The whole was collected by Aleck Abrahams of Willesden Green, London, who assembled the collection and had it bound in black morocco and marbled boards, ca. 1910 by T. Ross, Binders to the King. There is a pocket on inside lower cover containing additional printed guide books.
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This is an extraordinary assemblage of images and printed ephemera relating to Christopher Wren’s Monument, which was erected in the city of London in 1677 to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666. The Doric column had a viewing platform at the top, the highest vantage point in the city of London, with unparalleled 360 ° views across London.

Unfortunately it was also a suicide hotspot, particularly for women, and Welch records a number of actual deaths (p. 54). Abrahams has added to this several large, popular broadsides depicting suicides. “Another Dreadful Suicide at the Monument by a Young Woman” was printed and published by E. Lloyd, ca. 1842. The woman falling to her death has been identified as Jane Cooper, a servant, who threw herself off the Monument. Another hand colored print, ca. 1810, shows a man and woman together leaping off the column, while onlookers watch from below.
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There is also a printed pamphlet Another Suicide by Precipitation from the Monument (London, 1839), with large folding woodcut of man falling from the Monument, in plain contemporary purple wrappers. News accounts of suffragettes marching and picketing around are juxtaposed with caricature and cartoons making fun of the structure. And much more.

At the end of his published book, Welch lists all the different “Views of the Monument” (p. 95-99) as well as printed books (mostly guide books) pertaining to the Monument (pp.99-100). Abrahams followed these lists and managed to find a large number of the prints and photographs, which he pasted, bound, and stuffed together into this single book. Here are a few examples.

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monument1Charles Welch:
“The City of London heard with much regret of the death on Monday of Mr. Charles Welch, F.S.A., who for many years was the Librarian of the Guildhall,” reported The Times on January 17, 1924. “He was in his 76th year, and has been in retirement since 1906. The son of a physician at Hackney, Mr. Welch was born on July 21, 1848, and was sent to the City of London School under Dr. Mortimer. On leaving school joined at once the then small staff in the Guildhall Library, which consisted of a librarian and two assistants. During his service of more than 40 years he helped the library to develop into the largest in London, next to the British Museum . . . On the history and antiquities of the City Mr. Welch became an authority second only to the late Dr. R. R. Sharpe. He wrote lives of civic worthies in the Dictionary of National Biography, and contributed to the Victoria County Histories . . . His Modern History of the City of London, which justifies its title, is of great value to the student.”– Obituary. The Times Thursday, Jan 17, 1924; Issue 43551; pg. 14; col D — Mr. Charles Welch

Book of Darkness

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The Book of Darkness. Eleven poems by Chard deNiord; eleven etchings and paintings by Michele Burgess (San Diego: Brighton Press, 2015). Copy 27 of 30. Graphic Arts collection GAX 2015- in process. Text hand set in Perpetua and printed letterpress on Gampi paper. Etchings printed on Gampi. Paintings in gouache on Twinrocker paper. Housed in a clamshell box covered in hand woven cotton from Guatemala.

Michele Burgess, of Brighton Press, writes: “I asked Chard [deNiord] how he felt about the idea of ‘night’ as an archive of thought. He sent me these poems. After reading them I thought about and drew shafts of moonlight and sunlight in the woods of Vermont.

Chard had recently and reluctantly cut down 100 trees to protect his house from falling limbs and to create a meadow on his property. This seemed a very dramatic event to me, as a woman from the arid southwest, and I was captured by the duality expressed in it.

I used those trees as metaphors for his poems to explore the way darkness orients and reorients itself in nature and in the human imagination. The paintings felt necessary to add physicality to the blackness and to enclose the etchings.”

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This fall, Chard deNiord will be named Vermont’s eighth Poet Laureate. A cofounder of the New England College MFA program in poetry, he is the author of Asleep in the Fire (1990), Sharp Golden Thorn (2003), Night Mowing (2005), and The Double Truth (2011). His latest poetry collection, Interstate, is due out next month.

DeNiord joins an exclusive club of official Green Mountain bards. Vermont’s first poet laureate, Robert Frost, was appointed in 1961 and served until 1963. He was followed many years later by Kinnell (1989-93), Louise Glück (1994-98), Ellen Bryant Voigt (1999-2002) Grace Paley (2003-07), Ruth Stone (2007-11) and Lea (2011-15). –this is taken in part from “Chard deNiord Appointed Next Vermont Poet Laureate,” Posted by Ken Picard on Mon, Aug 24, 2015.
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Michele Burgess is the Director of Brighton Press and a prolific artist. For more information, see:
http://www.ebrightonarts.com/public/index/index.php

Edition Et

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Edition Et ([Berlin]: Verlag Christian Grützmacher, 1966-1967). Edited by Bernhard Höke (except for no. 4, edited by Rochus Kowallek). Issues 1-2, 13-15 published in 1966; issues 3 and 4 published in 1967. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015- in process.

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The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a complete set of this artist-designed and produced serial, edited by the German conceptual artist Bernhard Höke. It is rare to find a complete set of this title, which was issued unbound in cardboard portfolios. Both private and institutional collectors have often separated individual projects by celebrated artists originally found within Edition Et and discarded the less well-known works.

Each volume of this set is complete with the required 50 plates and a few folded posters, photomontages, xeroxes, typographical art, screenprints, concrete and visual poetry.

Editon Et presents an international selection of artists, musicians, and writers active in the 1960s including George Brecht, Gomringer, Ben Vautier, Emmett Williams, Max Bense, Eugen Gomringer, Dick Higgins, Gerhard Rühm, Wolf Vostell, Roy Lichtenstein, Nam June Paik, Dieter Roth, Christo, Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, Gerhardt Richter, and dozens of others. Volume 15 is the work of a single artist, Dieter Roth, and makes up one part of a complex work he titled “Snow”.
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The publication follows in a long tradition of fluxus multiples. “The term ‘multiple’ was coined by Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri” writes Maja Wismer, “when he introduced his publishing project Edition MAT (Multiplication d’Art Transformable) in Paris in 1959. Spoerri’s project aimed to undermine the exclusivity of the original work of art by creating replicated objects, still claiming each to be an original. Without providing an exhaustive account of the different strategies of multiplication developed and carried out by various artists in the succeeding years, it is worth noting that the multiple proliferated rapidly throughout the United States and Europe during this time.”

“In 1963, just a few years after Edition MAT introduced the multiple, George Maciunas founded Fluxshop in downtown New York, solidifying the form as a critical tool for questioning the exclusivity of art and challenging the separation between art and life.” –Maja Wismer, One of Many, The Multiples of Joseph Beuys (Walker Art Center, 2015).
edition et2When asked about his use of the multiple, Joseph Beuys commented, “Well, it’s a matter of two intersecting things. Naturally, I search for a suitable quality in an object, which permits multiplication.… But actually, it’s more important to speak of distribution, of reaching a large number of people.… I’m interested in the distribution of physical vehicles in the form of editions because I’m interested in spreading ideas.”

Tree of Codes, the book and the ballet

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In 1912, Stéphane Mallarmé’s L’après-midi d’un faune (1876) inspired the ballet The Afternoon of a Faun, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky for the Ballets Russes.

In 2015, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes (2010) inspired Wayne McGregor’s Tree of Codes, performed by fifteen soloists and dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet and Company, with music-scapes by JamieXX and visual-scapes by Olafur Eliasson.


In a few weeks, Tree of Codes comes to New York City. The publisher Visual Editions writes “Making Jonathan Safran Foer’s vision a reality four years ago, with the help of the incredibly talented Sara De Bondt, not to mention the only printers in the world who would do it, Die Keure in Belgium, and Jon Gray’s cover design, has been a big emotional part of Visual Editions: a benchmark for how far we, through the collective creative power of ambition and can-do-ness, can push the boundaries of how we read and what a book as an object can be.”

Jonathan Safran Foer, Tree of Codes ([London]: Visual Editions, 2011, c2010). Artist’s book with a unique die-cut on every page of the story. Publisher’s note: “In order to write The Tree of Codes, the author took an English language edition of Bruno Schulz’s The Street of Crocodiles and cut into its pages, carving out a new story.” Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2011-0591N

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), L’après-midi d’un faune (Paris: A. Derenne, 1876). Copy 57 of 175. Prints by Édouard Manet (1832-1883). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2011-0088Q

Ĉtyři básně

visual poetry5Thanks to Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Librarian Thomas Keenan, the Graphic Arts Collection has acquired this rare book of visual poetry by the experimental Czech writer Bohumila Grögerová (1921-2014). Entitled Ĉtyři básně (Four Poems), OCLC records only one other copy of this fragile volume in the United States.

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Bohumila Grögerová and Alois Chvála, Ĉtyři básně ([Prague]: UB, 1965). “Upravil, vysadil a na ru čním lisu vytiskl Alois Chvála …”–Colophon. Graphic Arts collection GAX 2015- in process

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http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ivysilani/10121102744-cesko-jedna-basen/311295350080021-cesko-jedna-basen-bohumila-grogerova

visual poetry6visual poetry4See also: Vrh kostek : česká experimentální poezie / [editors, Josef Hiršal, Bohumila Grögerová ; Zdeněk Barborka … et al.] (Praha: Torst, 1993). Firestone Library (F) PG5025 .V74 1993

Cuba, ca. 1850

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cuba album2After Frédéric Mialhe (1810-1881), Album pintoresco de la isla de Cuba ([Havana]: B. May y Ca., 1850-1853?). 27 chromolithographs, 2 maps. Graphic Arts Collection 2015- in process
cuba album1Cover title: Album Pintoresco de la Isla de Cuba.

Frédéric Mialhe (1810-1881) arrived in Cuba in 1838 under contract to the printers Real Sociedad Patriótica to record views of the island. In the late 1840s, they published a set of chromolithographs under the title Viaje Pintoresco al Rededor de la Isla de Cuba.

In the 1850s, the work was pirated several times by the Berlin publisher Bernardo May, “who succeeded in defending himself against a breach of copyright suit by Mialhe and his Havana publisher Louis Marquier. Ironically May’s pirated edition guaranteed the availability of Mialhe’s well into the future for the original Havana edition is virtually unobtainable today.” It is one of the pirated editions that we have acquired for the Graphic Arts Collection.

cuba album11Dia de Reyes. The Holy Kings Day.

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cuba album8Contents: 1. Morro y entrada puerto de la Habana; 2. Vista de la Habana; 3. Vista de la Habana : parte de Estramuros; 4. Haban; 5. Habana; 6. Habana; 7. Plaza de Armas; 8. Puertas de Monserrate; 9. Teatro de Tacon y parte del Paseo de Isabel II; 10. Fuente de la India en el Paseo de Isabel IIa.; 11. Alameda de Paula; 12. El quitrin; 13. El panadero y el malojero; 14. El casero; 15. Valla de gallos; 16. Dia de reyes = The holy kings day; 17. El zapateado = The zapateado (national dance); 18. Matanzas; 19. Morro y entrada del puerto de Santiago de Cuba; 20. Vista genl. de la ciudad y montañas de Baracoa; 21. Cercanias de Baracoa; 22. Vista de la iglesia major y de la Ermita del Buen Viaje; 23. Vivienda de los pescadores de esponjas; 24. Trinidad; 25. Corrida de toros; 26. Vista de una casa de calderas; 27. Vista de una vega de tabaco.
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cuba album5Vista General de la Ciudad y Montanas de Baracoa (Costa del Norte)

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 See also Emilio Cueto (born 1944), Mialhe’s Colonial Cuba: the prints that shaped the world’s view of Cuba (Miami: Historical Association of Southern Florida, 1994). Firestone Library (F) NE2325.5.M5 A4 1994

 

A Collection of Morning Glories

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The artist of this Asagao mura (collection of morning-glories) has not been identified although the date 1817 has been attached to the book in English.

We hope to have the volume translated soon but if you recognize it, could you let us know?

Thank you.

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Tamayo’s Apocalypse de Saint Jean

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Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991), written by Issac-Louis Lemaistre De Sacy (1612-1684), Apocalypse de Saint Jean (Monaco: Club international de bibliophile: Jaspard, Polus & cie, 1959). Printed by Jean Paul Vibert, Grosrouvre, and Lucien Détruit, Paris. “Le texte de la présente édition reproduit integralement la version de Lemaistre de Sacy, publiée pour la première fois à Paris, en 1672”–Title page verso. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015-in process

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When the Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo died in 1991 at the age of 91, Michael Brenson wrote an extended obituary for the New York Times. He called Tamayo “a force in Mexican art for more than 60 years and one of the leaders of the Mexican Renaissance.” He continued “Mr. Tamayo was prolific. Although he is best known for his painting, he was an influential printmaker who liked being involved in every step of the process, including making his paper by hand.”

The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired the most beautiful livre d’artiste by Tamayo, Apocalypse of St. John (Apocalypse de Saint Jean), which he completed in 1959. The cardboard clamshell box with Tamayo’s design across the front and back, is in surprisingly good condition after almost 60 years. The color of his lithographs is fresh and pure. It is Tamayo’s color that many of us loved the best.

“If I could express with a single word what it is that distinguishes Tamayo from other painters of our age,” commented Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet and Nobel laureate, “I would say, without a moment’s hesitation: sun. For the sun is in all his pictures, whether we see it or not; night itself is for Tamayo simply the sun carbonized.”

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Making Paper

bertram2The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a rare trade catalogue from the Scottish firm Bertram, presenting their entire line of papermaking machinery. Note below the watermark printed on each plate so that people can’t steal and reproduce their images.

 

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Paper Makers’ Catalogue ([Edinburgh]: [James Bertram & Son], printed by Mackenzie and Storrie, letterpress and lithographic printers, 1890). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015- in process

Happily the Capital Collections site for Edinburgh Libraries and Museums recently posted the history of this important manufacturer and the quote here is a portion of their text:

Bertram Limited, Sciennes was founded in 1821 in Edinburgh and developed into a major manufacturer of papermaking machinery. The firm was founded by George and William Bertram, who came from a family which had been involved in papermaking in Midlothian for generations.

After spending about twenty years in Dartford, Kent learning their craft as papermaking machinery engineers, the brothers returned to Edinburgh to set up their own business, a workshop erected near Sciennes, with a few machines and a small forge. The company moved to new, larger premises around 1859, on the site which it was to occupy for over a century. Another engineering company James Bertram & Son was set up in Leith Walk, by a younger brother in 1845.

In 1860 William Bertram retired after 40 years in the business. He died the same year. George continued to supply not only papermaking machines but other machinery used in the paper making process, including steam engines. David, George’s son took over the business from his father. He was the last of the direct line of Bertrams. When he died in 1907, the family name disappeared from the board.

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