“Alois Senefelder, the inventor of lithography, made for his own use pens from steel watch-springs. In 1816, he sold his invention to J. Alexander of Birmingham, who started the manufacture of steel pens. At first they were a luxury but about 1830 they came into extensive universal use.” —Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association, v. 6 (1917). Here is an early advertisement for Alexander’s firm. Today, Birmingham is home to the Pen Museum: http://www.penroom.co.uk/

Belgian trade card for J. Alexander, ca. 1830. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of W. Allen Scheuch II, Class of 1976.

Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966), Belle da Costa Greene’s bookplate, 1911. Etching. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process. Two copies: copy one hand colored; copy two uncolored and inscribed by Teddy Craig to Lee Freeson, a dealer in rare books about theater.

Belle da Costa Greene (1883-1950) was a librarian at the Princeton University Library from 1901 or 1902 until 1906, when J. P. Morgan hired her to manage his library in New York City. When the Morgan collection was incorporated, Greene became the first director of the Pierpont Morgan Library, where she remained until 1948. For additional information see:
http://blogs.princeton.edu/rarebooks/2010/08/a_look_at_belle_decosta_greene.html

Her father was Richard Theodore Greener, an attorney who served as dean of the Howard University School of Law and was the first black student and first black graduate of Harvard (class of 1870).

Like many bibliophiles, Greene had a bookplate designed and printed for her personal collection. Hers was designed by Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966) in 1911, who also designed bookplates for his mother, Ellen Terry; for the dancer and his lover, Isadora Duncan; and many others. The graphic arts collection recently acquired two copies of Greene’s bookplate, one hand colored and the other a rare uncolored example. It is unusual also because it is etched, while most of Craig’s other plates were carved in wood.

See also: Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966), Bookplates designed & cut on wood (Hackbridge, Surrey: The Sign of the Rose, 1900). Rare Books: Theatre Collection (ThX) 0298.272.

Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966), Nothing, or, The bookplate (London: Chatto & Windus, 1924). Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage RCPXG-5896211

John Blatchly, The bookplates of Edward Gordon Craig (London: Bookplate Society and The Apsley House Press, 1997). Rare Books (Ex) item 6815531

 

Artist and collector W. Allen Scheuch II, Class of 1976, spent many years tracking and acquiring cartes porcelaine or trade cards made in Belgium between 1840 and 1860. The collection numbers in the thousands and is divided into professions; genres such as menus or holiday cards; inking and coloring variants; and many other categories useful for researchers. These cards are now available in the graphic arts collection at Princeton, in honor of Ben Primer. I am posting a few the Belgian chromolithographic printers made to publicize themselves.

“Most surviving trade cards produced by chromolithographers in the years leading up to the middle of the nineteenth century are Belgian,” writes Michael Twyman. “They belong to a broader category of lithographed product generally referred to in Belgium and France as ‘cartes porcelaine’ (enameled cards). Their common feature is that they were printed on card that had been coated with white lead (otherwise known as ceruse or carbonate of lead); the substance was similar to the lead paint used by artists and was often referred to in France as Clichy white. Card with this white lead coating was subject to pressure from steel cylinders at the final stage of manufacture, which gave it a sheen and also ensured a perfectly smooth printing surface. This provided lithographic printers with an opportunity to produce extremely intricate work, which they did by turning to the process of engraving on stone.”
A History of Chromolithography, p. 422. GARF NE2500.T8 2013

“The Curwen wallpapers were my earliest designs to be printed from linocuts,” writes Edward Bawden (1903-1989) in his introduction to David McKitterick’s Wallpapers.

“In 1924 a friend told me about cutting and printing from lino at a time when such prints were generally unknown, though a few by Claude Flight had appeared in the Print Room galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum.”

“I bought a piece of lino, the common sort universally used for covering floors, and with a tube of artist’s oil paint, a brush and a roll of white wallpaper, I went off home to experiment.”

“I had on me a penknife sharp enough for cutting soft lino. There was not much room between the end of the double bed and the gas fire, only enough for a chair, in the cramped space typical of a student’s bed-sit of the period, and it was here on a drawing board with a piece of plain wallpaper pinned to it, that gently I put down my foot on a small cut of a cow stippled red and gave the cut gentle foot pressure. The print was better than expected so naturally the cows multiplied and were a small herd by the end of the evening.”

Between 1927 and 1933 the Curwen Press (founded at Plaistow on the north-east outskirts of London) produced a series of wallpapers that challenged an industry dominated by a few manufacturers, and a public often anxious for change but uncertain where it wished to be led. Nearly all of these papers were the work of Edward Bawden.

McKitterick’s book not only provides a history of Bawden’s work but actual sample sheets printed directly from his blocks. Here are a few images.

David McKitterick, Wallpapers by Edward Bawden printed at the Curwen Press (Andoversford, Gloucestershire: Whittington Press, 1988). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process