Category Archives: Ephemera

The Track of Youth to the Land of Knowledge

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Allegorical Map of the Track of Youth, to the Land of Knowledge (London: John Wallis, no. 16 Ludgate Street, June 25, 1796). Engraved by Vincent Woodthorpe (ca.1764-1822) with hand coloring, wood ribs, brass pin and ivory washer. Purchased with funds from the Historic Map Collection and Graphic Arts Collection.

fan map3http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/globes-objects/hmc05.html

fan map2Thanks to the shrewd collecting of John Delaney, Curator of The Historic Maps Collection, our two collections have partnered to acquire this allegorical map on a fan.

The map takes the viewer from youth, where they are in a state of darkness, to the final lights of Reason and Religion where Content[ment] and Happiness can be found. The voyage may take you through such places as the Great Ocean of Experience, the Rocks of Obstinacy and Idleness, the Coast of Ignorance or the Coast of Hardship. Along the way, you can check the compass for directions to Folly, Misery, Wisdom, and Reason.

The link above will lead you to this and other cartographic treasures including globes, scientific instruments, and much more.

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The map was engraved by Vincent Woodthorpe (c.1764-1822) of Fetter Lane, London, who engraved maps for Faden and Laurie & Whittle as well as Wallis. Woodthorpe also engraved Robert Woolsey’s Celestial Companion: Projections, in Plano of the Starry Heavens (1802).

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Mexican postcards. Disembodied images and physical artifacts.

mexican ephemera

Mexican Postcards Collection, 1890-2000. Graphic Arts Off-Site Storage, RCPXG-5830371

After years of researching, tracking and collecting, the antiquarian book/print dealers David Margolis and Jean Moss filled twenty-five boxes with a fascinating collection of Mexican postcards. Dating from 1890 to 2000, the material is now at the Princeton University Library and available to all researchers through the RBSC reading room. Included are prints, photographs, collotypes, maps, tourist souvenirs, landscapes, and traditional postcard views, each organized under either the cities or the genres represented.

This fall, images from our Mexican postcard collection will play a small part in the Princeton University Art Museum’s exhibition: The Itinerant Languages of Photography, on view Saturday, September 7, 2013 to Sunday, January 19, 2014. The show and catalogue examine the movement of photographs, as disembodied images and as physical artifacts, across time and space as well as across the boundaries of media and genres, including visual art, literature, and cinema.

The culmination of a three-year interdisciplinary project sponsored by the Princeton Council for International Teaching and Research, the exhibition traces historical continuities from the 19th century to the present by juxtaposing materials from archival collections in Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico and works by modern and contemporary photographers from museum and private collections including Joan Fontcuberta, Marc Ferrez, Rosâgela Renno and Joan Colom. A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, in the shop or by mail.

In particular, mark your calendar now for the related symposium that will be held at Princeton November 20-22 (the keynote will be artist Joan Fontcuberta). For more information about the exhibition, see: http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/exhibitions/1550

Hoe’s Eight Cylinder Printing Press

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The New Year’s Address by the Carriers of the Public Ledger, January 1, 1852 ([Philadelphia: Public Ledger, 1851]). Broadside. Graphic Arts Collection GA2013- in process. Gift of Garrett Scott, in honor of Dale Roylance, with special thanks to Donald Farren, Class of 1958, for his assistance.

After leaving school at the age of fifteen, Richard March Hoe (1812-1886) joined his father’s New York printing business and went on to transform the entire printing industry.

Henry Lewis Bullen wrote a history of Richard Hoe for The Inland Printer:  “In 1834 the firm of R. Hoe & Co. consisted of Richard March Hoe and Matthew Smith, cousins, both twenty-two years of age, and Sereno Newton. The business was carried on in Gold Street, between Fulton and John streets, and in Ryder’s alley, leading off Gold Street, eastward. They were then the only makers of cylinder presses in America, and, in addition to making four kinds of cylinder presses, they made cases, chases and almost everything then used in printing except types and inks.” public ledger 3

“…The first record we have of the inventive genius of Richard March Hoe is the patent issued in 1843 for the first application of air springs to cylinder presses. …In 1844 he was the first to place type-high adjustable bearers on each side of the beds of cylinder presses. In 1845 he patented the first automatic sheet flier. Prior to this invention the sheets were taken from the cylinders by hand. In the same year the galley proof press was first put on the market by R. Hoe & Co., the idea coming to them from a printer in Boston. All these inventions are in common use today.”

“In 1846 Richard March Hoe patented a “steam inking apparatus” for automatically inking forms on Washington hand presses, and a number were sold. This apparatus displaced one operator on a hand press. It had two rollers. Notwithstanding the gradual increase of cylinder presses and their improvement, in 1846 the bulk of the printing was still done on hand presses.”

“The year 1847 saw the advent of fast cylinder presses. In that year, on July 24, Richard March Hoe patented his type revolving newspaper press, of which in its largest development we present a picture. The English patent was issued on May 4 of the same year. The first of these presses had four impression cylinders, and was installed in the plant of the Philadelphia Public Ledger in 1847. This press made 10,000 impressions an hour. It worked so satisfactorily that the proprietor of the Ledger accepted it immediately and ordered a second press. From that time until the present America has held the foremost place in the development of printing presses.”

In 1851, to celebrate the end of a successful year, the Public Ledger printed this New Year’s broadside featuring a large wood engraving by Illman & sons of the paper’s eight cylinder press.