Category Archives: Books

books

The Long Never

When The Long Never arrived yesterday, there was a brief moment of uncertainty as to whether we had received a book without the promised story by Jonathan Safran Foer. A jump to the colophon provided the note, “Foer’s text was printed in the debossed image areas using a lithograph printing press. All plate images were scanned and separated using tritone separation. Plates were printed using tritone lithograph printing on Phoenix Motion Xantur 115 g/sm paper, trimmed and hand-tipped into the debossed image areas.”–Colophon.

 

Hiroshi Sugimoto, The Long Never; story by Jonathan Safran Foer; designed by Takaaki Matsumoto ([New York: Matsumoto Editions, 2014, New York: Matsumoto Editions]). Copy 215 of 360. Graphic Arts Collection.

We are fortunate to have acquired number 215 from the first edition of 365 copies, which we understand is now sold out. Along with Foer’s story, the special edition book presents sixty-five prints by the Japanese photographer and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Press copy for the book says, “The sequence of images in this book conjures a natural history of the planet, perhaps even one untouched by humans. The black-and-white photographs are hand-tipped onto the pages of the book, which is wrapped in silk cloth. Celebrated author Jonathan Safran Foer has written an original story for this book. Foer’s text sits on the page underneath each artwork, so the reader must lift up each photograph in order to read the story.”

 

Ocherki perom i karandashem iz krugosvi︠e︡tnago plavanīi︠a︡

Aleksei Vysheslavt︠s︡ev (1831-1888), Ocherki perom i karandashem iz krugosvi︠e︡tnago plavanīi︠a︡ v 1857, 1858, 1859 i 1860 [Sketches in Pen and Pencil from a Trip Around the World in the Years 1857, 1858, 1859 and 1860]. 2nd corrected edition (Saint Petersburg: M.O. Wolf, 1867). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2918- in process.

 

 

Illustrated with 24 tinted lithographs (including the title page seen at the top), this Russian travelogue takes the reader around the Cape of Good Hope to Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Hawaii, and Tahiti. Vysheslavt︠s︡ev was a doctor sailing around the world from 1857 to 1860, writing and sketching along the way.

He traveled with a military commission inspecting the Russian territories acquired with the Russian-Chinese Treaty of Aigun. The ship returned by way of the Strait of Magellan, Buenos Aires, and Rio de Janeiro.

Vysheslavt︠s︡ev’s “Letters from the Clipper Plastun” appeared from 1858 to 1860 in the Russky Vestnik, later known as the Russian Herald, where Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky also published. By 1862, the doctor was back in Saint Petersburg and published his collected letters with lithographs printed from his sketches by from the studio of Paul Petit. This second edition was published five years later by Mauritius Osipovich Wolf (1825-1883) with the same illustrations.

 


Professor Ella Wiswell notes,

“In Montevideo the Plastun had to undergo some repairs, and the author was transferred to the corvette Novik which was also returning from Japan. The transfer saved Vysheslavtsev’s life because the Plastun was sunk by an explosion just as the two ships were approaching the home port of Kronshatdt in Russia.

Only nine members of the 79-member crew were rescued. The cause of the explosion was never determined, but it was suspected that a fire was started by a sailor resentful of ill treatment by the commanding officer. The final page in the book describes the disaster.” https://evols.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10524/390/2/JL17076.pdf

 

 

 

 

The Kittens Are Gone to St. Pauls

Between 1888 and 1896, the Boston-based publisher Joseph Knight (1829-1907) partnered with Ernest Edwards (1837-1903), president of the New York Photogravure Company, to publish a series of small gift books illustrated with photogravures. Most were produced in editions of 500 with similar printed paper covers and horizontal formats, selling for around $2.00.

Chicago photographer Mary Ann (Mrs. N. Gray) Bartlett (1846-1913) made three books with Knight, the first in 1892 entitled Old Friends with New Faces. “The most original and genuinely pictorial product of photography we have seen for a long time,” wrote Edward Wilson. “It is a handsomely arranged series of photogravures of children grouped to illustrate Old Friends, the stories of Mother Goose. The New Faces are evidently good friends of the admirable artist, who so deftly caught them here and there in the garden and by the stairs, and so on, for she has made lovely pictures of them.”

“. . . This is no “hand-camera” or “snap-shot” work, but that of a thoughtful, artistic photographer, able to tackle pictures of a good size, and to make them well. . . . The pictures must be on whole-size plates, and they are, every one, technically excellent.”– Wilson’s Photographic Magazine 30, no. 434 (February 1893).

Born Mary Ann McCune, Bartlett married the chemist N. Gray Bartlett (1840-1917) and together they had four children: Greyson, Bertha Madelon, Allyn, and John. It’s Madelon [seen above] who poses for the frontispiece of “Old Friends” dressed up as Mother Goose with a camera and the verse:
A Curtsy
From many a year of sweet repose,
From work of earlier days,
With youth renewed, I’m roused again
By photographic craze.
With shutter, camera and stop,
And trappings not a few,
I’ve ventured forth, my skill to test,
On faces bright and new.
1892 Mother Goose 1719

Both husband and wife became active in the Chicago photography scene, but it was Mrs. Bartlett who rose to prominence among the amateur practitioners. Posing her children and neighbors in the backyard of their stately red brick home at 44 Ray Street, Bartlett took first prize for platinotypes at the Art Institute of Chicago’s 1888 exhibit. By 1890, she is named Director of the Camera Club of Chicago and illustrating stories in St. Nicolas, Outings, Scribner’s, and other national magazines.

In 1893, when the World’s Columbian Exposition came to Chicago, Bartlett was appointed chairman of the committee of the woman’s department of photography for the world’s congress auxiliary. She prepared a second book with Knight, Mother Goose of ’93, to be exhibited and sold in the Woman’s building, the Children’s building and the State of Illinois building.

 

She produced only one more book with Knight and the writer Marian L. Wyatt, called A Girl I Know. The entire narrative centers around her daughter Madelon, now a teenager.

Joseph Knight’s photogravure-illustrated books include:

Bits of Nature: Ten Studies in Photo-Gravure ([Troy, N.Y.: Nims & Knight, 1888]. Marquand Library in process

William Cullen Bryant, An Autumn Pastoral, the Death of the Flowers. With 15 illustrations by the Photogravure Co. after original drawings by C.E. Philips (Boston: Nims & Knight, 1888).

Thomas Gray, Gray’s Elegy and Its Author. Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard with an Introduction and Illustrations from Original Photographs by Dr. J. L. Williams (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1890). 16 photogravures

S. R. Stoddard, Camp Life (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1890). 12 Photogravures.

W.G. Mitchell, Afternoon Tea: Photogravures from Original Photographs ([Boston: Joseph Knight Company, publishers, 1891]). 8 photogravures. Cotsen Children’s Library Eng 19Q 74839

Mary A. Bartlett, Old Friends with New Faces. Photographic illustrations by Mrs. N. Gray Bartlett ([Boston, Mass: Joseph Knight Company, 1892]). 10 photogravures. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process

Henry Irving, The Drama; Addresses by Henry Irving (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1892).

Bits of Nature: Ten Photogravures of American Scenery. no. 2 (Boston: Joseph Knight, 1893).

Mary A. Bartlett, Mother Goose of ’93 ([Boston, Mass: Published by Joseph Knight Company, c1893]). 10 photogravures. A souvenir of the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Cotsen Children’s Library Eng 19Q 30529

Alfred (Lord) Tennyson, Song of the Brook (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1893).

William Cullen Bryant, Thanatopsis; and, A Forest Hymn (Boston: Joseph Knight Co., 1893). 13 photogravures.

Washington Irving, Rip Van Winkle (Boston: J. Knight Company, 1894). 24 photogravures

Mary A. Bartlett and Marian L. Wyatt, A Girl I Know ([Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1894]). Cotsen Children’s Library Eng 19 74822

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad; or, The New Pilgrim’s Progress, in two volumes (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1895).

Seneca Ray Stoddard, Camp Life: Twelve Photogravures. No. 2 (Boston: Joseph Knight Co., 1895). 12 photogravures

Thomson Willing, Corp Dames of High Degree: being portraits after English masters, with decorations and biographical notes (Boston: Joseph Knight Company, 1896).

See more about Edwards: https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2018/01/11/picture-periodical-without-letterpress/

Espaces aveugles

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired one of the seventeen copies of Espaces aveugles (Blind Spaces) editioned by the filmmaker and visual artist Charles Billot. Best viewed in a dark room, the reflections from each location also add to the visual narrative.


Espaces aveugles is a book with no binding or spine, no introduction or index, no gutter or endsheet. The pages of Billot’s book are comprised of a series of photographs (inkjet on velum paper) to be viewed on a light box, which constitutes the book block. Readers are given the freedom to create their own unique narrative every time they page through the book. “Charles processes his film in complete darkness before exposing it to light. The edition, both a book and a work of art in itself, is a reflection of the artistic process behind the images it brings together.” https://www.instagram.com/storm_editions/


The book is published by the Brooklyn-based studio Storm Editions, which states “We create beautiful objects that are books.” According to their website “Storm Editions is born from love for books. And a need of new ways of interacting with art books. Founded by Nour Sabbagh Chahal, Storm Editions focuses on collaborations between multidisciplinary artists. We are an independent edition house.”

The prototype of Espaces Aveugles is dated 2016 but in truth, the edition was only recently finished and shipped. Special thanks to Nathaniel Wojtalic, who worked with Storm Editions to design and manufacture the light boxes.

Charles Billot, Espaces Aveugles (Brooklyn, NY: Storm Editions, 2017). Copy 11 of 17, numbered and signed. Graphic Arts collection GAX 2017- in process

La manière de se bien préparer à la mort = How to Prepare Oneself Well for Death


Engravings after Romeyn de Hooghe (1645-1708) and commentary by M. de Chertablon, La Manière de se bien préparer à la mort par des considérations sur la Cène, la Passion et la Mort de Jésus-Christ, (How to Prepare Oneself Well for Death by Contemplating the Last Supper, the Passion and the Death of Christ), avec de très belles estampes emblématiques, expliquées par M. de Chertablon (Anvers [probably Amsterdam]: George Gallet, 1700). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process

In 1673, a series of engravings were commissioned from Romeyn de Hooghe for David de la Vigne’s Miroir de la bonne mort. Since then various editions have been published with extended and translated commentaries, and in some cases, new plates re-engraved by unidentified artists. We know the engravings for the 1700 volume, recently acquired by the Graphic Arts Collection, are after de Hooghe and not by him, since they are laterally reversed from the original.

These plates are not as crisp and clear as Hooghe’s originals. Even so, it is the edition that is in most collections and so, known to most readers.

In each scene, a man is dying. An angel appears with a depiction of a biblical passage, encouraging the man to prepare for death in a Christian manner. If you look closely, you might also find a devil in the shadows, tempting the man away from the Christian path.

“In the tradition of ars moriendi that began in the sixteenth century,” writes Yuri Long at the National Gallery of Art, “this book shows the path to a good death through a series of meditations on the Last Supper, the Passion, and the death of Christ. Each print depicts a man contemplating a religious image accompanied by an appropriate verse of scripture and textual commentary. Though de Hooghe was a Protestant, this work is aimed at a Catholic audience and demonstrates his willingness to take commissions regardless of his own political or religious beliefs.” — www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/exhibitions/2014/romeyn-de-hooghe.html


A detailed interpretation of each plate in the 1700 edition can be found at the Melbourne Prints website, where Benita Champion notes,

“Five images depict the angel accompanying the man while a devil tempts him . . . . This motif is common in ars moriendi works dating from the famous fifteenth century ars moriendi block-book, c.1414-1418. . . . The fight for the soul occurs at the moment of death (Ariès, 1981, pp. 206-208). In the above example (p. 44) the devil tempts the person to despair by showing him his sins. The angel’s response is Matthew 9:2 ‘take heart, son: your sins are forgiven.’”

The frontispieces are more programmatic and individual. The first shows a skeleton (death) knocking at a door, holding an hourglass and scythe. Above the door is written ‘statutum est omnibus hominibus semel mori’ (‘it is appointed unto men once to die’) (Hebrews 9:27). Courtly activity fills the middle ground. To the left a man carries a cross up the hill, towards a ‘radiant pyramid’ with a serpent devouring itself (Scherer, 1973, p.8).

Below the skeleton is an entombment, with skeletons. This scene in fictive relief is framed by conventional foliage and ribbons, but also by skulls, crossbones and a decorative border in the form of vertebrae. Signs of decay abound in skulls and snakes. The road is placed behind this inevitable death. Superficially death conquers all, but the courtiers, if they follow Jesus and the cross, will come to the pyramid, signifying the ‘infinite holiness of the triune God’, with death, now rendered powerless, eating itself (Scherer, 1973, p. 8).”


See also:
Ariès, P. The Hour of our Death, trans. H Weaver, New York: Knopf, 1981.

Coppens, C. Een Ars moriendi met etsen van Romeyn de Hooghe: Verhaal van een boekillustratie, Verhandelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België, Klasse der Schone Kunsten. Brussels: AWLSK, 1995.

Landwehr, J. Romeyn De Hooghe (1645-1708) as Book Illustrator; a Bibliography. Amsterdam: Van Gendt, 1970.

Landwehr, J. Romeyn De Hooghe the Etcher; Contemporary Portrayal of Europe 1662-1707. Leiden: A. Swijthoff, 1973.

Reinis, A. “Reforming the Art of Dying: The Ars Moriendi in the German Reformation (1519-1528),” St Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.

Roth, F. “Pater Abraham a Sancta Clara, 1644-1709.” Monatshefte für deutschen Unterricht 36, no. 6 (1944): 288-303.

Scherer, W. F. “Through the Looking Glass of Abraham à Sancta Clara.” MLN 85, no. 3 (1970): 374-80.

Portrait of Niépce in Heliogravure 1856

For the seminal publication, Traité pratique de gravure héliographique sur acier et sur verre (A Practical Treatise on Photogravure Engraving on Steel and on Glass) by Niépce de Saint-Victor (1805-1870), either he or his publisher commissioned a portrait for the frontispiece.

To further celebrate Niépce’s important discoveries in photographic printing, they made the portrait using his own process: “Gravure héliographique d’après une photographie sur acier selon les procédés de Niépce de Ste Victor” (Photogravure engraving after a photograph on steel, according to the methods of Niépce de Ste Victor).

 

Claude-Félix-Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor (1805-1870), Traité pratique de gravure héliographique sur acier et sur verre / par M. Niépce de Saint-Victor (Paris: Librairie de V. Masson, 1856). Provenance: C. F. Chandler. Graphic Arts Collection 2006-3213N

 


Note the photograph was taken by Victor Plumier (1821-1878) and a great deal was made about the fact that he did not retouch his negative. The engraving plate was made by Madame [is it Pauline?] Riffaut and the portrait finished by Adolphe-Pierre Riffaut (1821-1859).

If you use a microscope, you will see the hand engraving on top of the aquatint done, in particular, in the beard. In addition, there are gouache highlights delicately added to the paper print in the hair and the beard.

 

 

 


It Seems Ridiculous

Endpapers front and back

I.N. Veroy and G. Ryklin, Kazhetsi︠a︡ smeshno: posvi︠a︡shchaetsi︠a︡ desi︠a︡tiletii︠u︡ Moskovskogo teatra satiry = Кажется смешно: посвящается десятилетию Московского театра сатиры [It Seems Ridiculous: Dedicated to the Tenth Anniversary of the Moscow Theater of Satire] (Moskva: Izd. Moskovskogo teatra satiry, 1935). Graphic Arts Collection GA 2018- in process

Several volumes on Russian film and theater history recently entered the Graphic Arts Collection, including the first and only edition of this photoessay on the Moscow Satire Theatre. Although 5000 copies are said to be published, the volume is rare. The photomontages, including wonderful endpapers, are by Chekryzov; the lettering on the title and the binding by L. Brodaty; and the graphics and illustrations by Brodaty, Ganf, Eliseev, Kukryniksy and Williams.

 

“On Triumphalnaya Square, between the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall and the “Aquarium” garden the Satire Theater is located. The building, which is over a hundred years old, got a modern look in 1960 upon the project of the architect V. Stepanov. The blind screen facade on the right was decorated with an illuminated square panel with the inscription “The Satire Theater”, on the left side of the façade planted theatrical masks were placed. The huge dome of the building testifies its age – it recalls the former famous circus of brothers Nikitin, built in 1910s by architect B. Nilus together with A. Gurzhienko.

Circus was located in the most popular amusement garden of Moscow – “Aquarium”, which thundered in different years throughout the capital for its theatrical programs. “Aquarium” was attended by thousands of Muscovites to watch the performances of the big-city and touring troupes of actors, acrobats, jugglers, trained animals, to have a dinner in the restaurant with live music in the shade of old trees and gurgling fountains.

Guests could also rise over Moscow on an air-balloon, make a keepsake photograph and admire the fireworks in the evening. “Aquarium” had a reputation of a “theatrical oasis”. The garden became famous for operettas of M. Lentovsky theater, ballet by Lydia Geiten, Frenchman Charles Aumont enterprise (he was the one who built the “Buff” and “Olympia” theaters), opera of Zimin theater and gypsy romances of the Blumenthal-Tamarin theatre.

In 1924 brothers Nikitin circus arena has been adapted for the first Soviet music hall, and in 1930 the building housed the Operetta Theater. In 1965 under the old dome a new hall was opened – the Satire Theater at last got a permanent residence after long process of moves.”

For more history on this Moscow institution, which is still in operation, see: https://um.mos.ru/en/houses/theatre-of-satire/


Clinker Press

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a selection of fine press editions from Clinker Press in Pasadena, California. Andre Chaves runs this a private letterpress studio, with an emphasis on material relating to the Arts and Crafts Movement. He writes, “Within this focus I print subjects relating to art and literature. Although I do not do job printing, some special projects would be considered upon their own merits, as long as it falls within these parameters.” For a complete list of books still in print, see: https://www.clinkerpress.com/

“Clinker Press was started in 1996,” Chaves continues, “urged by Peter Hay, Carl Heinz and Helen Driscoll. Peter owned Book Alley, an antiquarian bookstore, and is an Oxford graduate who allowed me to use a small Kelsey press. Helen owned a paper store and now runs a very successful company called Invitesite. Carl teaches the History of design. We printed together and I provided the “garage” in a Greene and Greene house surrounded by ‘clinker bricks’. I first invested in a Chandler and Price platen and we started printing. Peter was the first to drop off, followed by Helen and then by Carl, although Carl continues to print on his own and Helen’s business is also about printing.”

Here are a few examples.

Autogravures from the Autotype Company

On Tuesday February 25, 1919, Virginia Wolff wrote in her diary:

Of no 23 Cromwell Houses . . . I will only say that it is furnished on the great South Kensington principle of being on the safe side & doing the thing handsomely. Good Mrs. Samuel Bruce went to the Autotype Company & ordered the entire Dutch school to be sent round framed in fumed oak. And so they were; & just covered the staircase walls, leaving an inch or two’s margin in between. –Anne Oliver Bell, The Diary of Virginia Woolf (1980).

Founded in 1868 as the Autotype Printing and Publishing Company, several shops merged and expanded over the next few years before settling as The Autotype Company at 74 New Oxford Street, London. This fashionable address became the place to go in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to buy reproductions of fine art to hang in your home. The managing partners of this enormous operation were John Alexander Spencer (182?-1884), John Robert Mather Sawyer (1828-1881), and Walter Strickland Bird (1828-1912).

Initially, the company purchased Joseph Swan’s copyright on carbon printing and an Autotype, in general, means a carbon print. Eventually the firm added collotypes and photogravure (called Autogravure) to their roster, selling framed prints, portfolios, and bound volumes to the social elite, including some of the most beautiful books of the period.

 

As the quality of their prints rose to challenge the superiority of the French Goupil Company, the Autotype company advertised their ability to ‘bring Paris to London’ and to prove it, published a portfolio of ten photogravures reproducing etchings by the preeminent French printmaker Charles Meryon (1821-1868).

 

Charles Méryon (1821-1868), Old Paris. Ten etchings by C. Meryon. Reproduced on copper by the autogravure process and accompanied with preface and illustrative notes by Stopford A. Brooke … ([London: Autotype Co., 1887]). Rare Books and Special Collections Oversize 1514.636e

Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936) worked with the Autotype company that same year to publish his Idyls of the Norfolk Broads (1887) but was only partially satisfied.

The following year, he was introduced Charles L. Colls at the rival Typographic Etching Company, who printed his negatives for a special edition of The Compleat Angler.

Possibly to compare the talents of the two companies, Emerson had half his negatives for Pictures of East Anglian Life (1888) printed by the Autotype Company and the other half by Type-Etching Company.

Still unsatisfied, Colls taught the photographer to make his own copper plate photogravures and from that time on, Emerson did his own printing.


The History of Printing in Eight Hours

Many of you will remember the wonderful exhibition, The Printed Picture at The Museum of Modern Art in 2008–2009, co-curated by Peter Galassi, Chief Curator of Photography, and Richard Benson, Dean of the Yale University School of Art. Some of you might have been in the gallery over the two days in May and June 2008 for Benson’s 8 hour lecture on the entire history of printing.

If not, this website posted by the Yale Art Gallery allows you to see the entire series of talks explaining ink, photographic, and digital printing processes, augmented with information from the book, The Printed Picture, authored by Richard Benson. http://printedpicture.artgallery.yale.edu/

He begins with hand prints on caves walls and ends with a digital print after Paul Strand along with a lesson on the intrinsic value of a print. Here is just a tiny clip:

The New York Times obituary for Richard Benson, June 27, 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/arts/design/richard-benson-dead-photographer-and-photo-printer.html