Category Archives: Events

Havell’s Copper

The copper plates used by Robert Havell, Jr. (1793-1878) for the 435 hand-colored aquatints in John James Audubon’s four-volume The Birds of America, came from at least three London companies. Plate marks have been found for the Hiam Steel and Copper Plate Makers off City Road, where both William Lizars, of Edinburgh, and Havell began buying their enormous plates. There are also marks for Richard Hughes, a copper plate manufacturer off Fleet Street, while still others were from Pontifex and Stiles in Soho.

The National Portrait Gallery’s British artists’ suppliers, 1650-1950 lists the complex ownership and locations of the three companies: http://www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/directory-of-suppliers/

William Hiam 1819? 1823-1856, Hiam & Sons 1857-1858, William Hiam & Co 1859-1873, William James Hiam 1874, William James Hiam & Son 1875-1916, William James Hiam 1917. At 9 Ratcliffe Row, Bath St, City Road, London 1823-1861, 195 Lever St, Bath St 1862-1891, 162 Lever St 1892-1911, 1 Ironmongers Row, St Lukes, EC 1912-1917. Also 13½ Exmouth St, Euston Square 1849. Steel and copper plate makers.

Richard Hughes 1820-1845, Mrs (Mary) Hughes 1846-1847, Miss Mary Hughes 1848-1850, Hughes & Kimber 1850-1874, Hughes & Kimber Ltd 1875-1909, Hughes & Kimber 1910-1940. At14 Lombard St, Fleet St, London by 1822-1825, 8 Peterborough Court, Fleet St 1826-1838, 107 Shoe Lane, Fleet St 1839-1856, 106 Shoe Lane 1850-1856, 5 Red Lion Passage, Fleet St 1856-1862, West Harding St, Fetter Lane 1863-1909, 3 West Harding St 1910, 9 Gough Square, Fleet St 1911-1940. Works, New Church Road, Mitcham, Surrey from 1880, Britannia Iron Works, Bury, Hunts 1881-1899. Copper and steel plate makers.
Russell Pontifex 1802, William Pontifex, Russell Pontifex & E. Goldwin 1805-1811, William & Russell Pontifex (& Co) 1808-1813, Russell Pontifex 1814-1828, Russell Pontifex & Co 1825-1829, Russell Pontifex & Son 1826-1833, Russell Pontifex 1834 [subsequently Russell Pontifex and/or one of his sons seems to have traded with Stiles at 23 Lisle St and in changing arrangements (see below) at Upper St Martin’s Lane], Pontifex & Stiles 1835-1848, William Stiles 1840-1857. At 126 Bunhill Row 1802, 46-48 Shoe Lane 1805-1813, 5 Lisle St, Soho, London 1814-1816, 23 Lisle St 1813-1857, 22 Lisle St 1818-1819. Initially a watchcase maker, from 1806 copper plate makers and coppersmiths. Russell Pontifex & Co 1827-1829, Russell Pontifex & Son 1830-1834, Russell Pontifex 1834, Russell Pontifex & Co (apparently Pontifex, Farr and Yeowell) 1835-1836, Pontifex & Farr 1837, Russell Pontifex 1839-1841, Pontifex & Mallory 1842-1853, Russell Pontifex 1854-1859, Russell Pontifex & Son 1860-1868, Russell and Alfred Pontifex 1869-1872, Russell Pontifex & Co 1873-1885, Russell Pontifex & Son 1886-1892, Russell Pontifex & Co 1893-1915. At 15-16 Upper St Martin’s Lane 1827-1849, 14 Upper St Martin’s Lane 1851-1915. Copper and engineering works.

This research is part of the upcoming conference: Blocks Plates Stones: Matrices/Printing Surfaces in Research and Collections, Thursday, 21 September 2017, Courtauld Institute of Art. Final program:
https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/sites/default/files/files/events/conferences/BARSEA/BlocksPlatesStones-Programme-Final.pdf

Convened by Dr Elizabeth Savage (Institute of English Studies), “This deeply interdisciplinary conference will survey the state of research into cut woodblocks, intaglio plates, lithographic stones, and other matrices/printing surfaces. It will bring together researchers, curators, librarians, printers, printmakers, cataloguers, conservators, digital humanities practitioners, and others who care for or seek to understand these objects. The discussion will encompass all media and techniques, from the fifteenth century through the present.”

First class of the new year.

Romano Hanni, Werner Pfeiffer, Enrique Chagoya

 

We are beginning the new 2017/2018 academic year with a visit from VIS 214, Graphic Design with Francesca Grassi. The students were shown wonderful book arts, old and new, high and low, rare and well-known.

“This studio course will introduce students to the essential aspects and skills of graphic design, and will analyze and discuss the increasingly vital role that non-verbal, graphic information plays in all areas of professional life, from fine art and book design to social networking and the Internet.

Students in the course will explore visual organization through a series of focused, interrelated assignments dealing with composition, page layout, type design, and image. Hands on production will include an array of do-it-yourself printing and distribution technologies, from letterpress and mimeograph to photocopying and websites.”

Sign painter’s sample album, Alfred Jarry

 

Olafur Eliasson, Bruno Munari, Henry Wessells, Kenneth Josephson, Sol Lewitt

 

Warja Honegger-Lavater, Yoji Kuri, German baptismal certificate

 

Francesca Grassi, Lecturer in Visual Arts, is a New York-based independent graphic designer and creative director. After graduating in 2007 with an MFA in graphic design and typography from the Werkplaats Typografie, in The Netherlands, she worked as a freelance book designer collaborating on books with contemporary artists and fine art publishers.

From 2009–2012 Grassi worked as a designer at the Whitney Museum of American Art, where she was responsible for the overall institutional identity as well as art directing, developing and executing all Museum graphic design needs for print, online and environmental applications.

Enrique Chagoya, Bruce Nauman, Richard Misrach, Ed Ruscha

Conversation on NYPL



Beginning this week, Frederick Wiseman’s newest documentary Ex Libris: The New York Public Library will be screened in New York City. If you can’t get to the city in person, NYPL will host the filmmaker at 7:05 p.m. on Thursday, September 14, 2017, along with Errol Morris, as part of their “LIVE From The NYPL” series.

You can find it at https://livestream.com/nypl/events/7643977. They promise conversation along with segments of the film and the series is usually archived, so it can also be watched at a later date.

Advertised as “behind the scenes of one of the world’s greatest institutions of learning, capturing the vast programmatic scope of NYC’s library system. The NYPL is blessed with uniformly passionate staff and deeply devoted, appreciative bibliophiles and beneficiaries across its 92 branches. The film reveals a venerable place of welcome, cultural exchange, and intellectual creativity.”

We might see Anthony W. Marx, President of The New York Public Library. Marx has a B.A. from Yale; an M.P.A. from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University; and a Ph.D., also from Princeton.

Here is an earlier video history.


To see an elephant folio of the early [Floor plans of the New York Public Library], try: RECAP HG2613.N494 W5554 1929e

Frank Weitenkampf (1866-1962), Chiaroscuro prints (New York, 1916). “List of chiaroscuro prints in the Library’s Print Room”: p. 6-7. Graphic Arts: Reference Collection (GARF) NE1048 .W4

They were handsome, gregarious troublemakers: the story of James Beresford, Thomas Rowlandson, and Dickson Queen Brown.

Save the date for an afternoon talk on Sunday, September 17, 2:00 p.m. in 101 McCormick Hall: “That’s So Annoying! Thomas Rowlandson and The Miseries of Human Life”

Graphic Arts Curator Julie Mellby will discuss Princeton University Library’s collection of satirical drawings by Thomas Rowlandson given by Dickson Queen Brown, Class of 1895, and their relationship with James Beresford’s 1806 comic bestseller The Miseries of Human Life. A reception in the Museum will follow.

http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/in-the-galleries

Merton College Fellow James Beresford addressed his book “To the miserable,” and began:

“Children of misfortune, wheresoever found, and whatsoever enduring, –ye who maintain a kind of sovereignty in suffering, believing that all the throbs of torture, all the pungency of sorrow, all the bitterness of desperation, are your own…! Take courage and renounce your sad monopoly.

Dispassionately ponder all your worst of woes, in turn with these; then hasten to distil from the comparison an opiate for your fiercest pangs; and learn to recognize the lenity of your Destinies.”

Please join us in September.


Next week: Typecon

Next week brings the opening of TypeCon 2017, the annual conference of the Society of Typographic Aficionados (SOTA), an international organization dedicated to the promotion, study, and support of typography and related arts.

Each year, the SOTA Typography Award is presented to an outstanding member of the type community. Recipients have included Hermann Zapf (2003), Ed Benguiat (2004), Matthew Carter (2005), Adrian Frutiger (2006), David Berlow (2007), Gerrit Noordzij (2008), Gerard Unger (2009), Doyald Young (2010), Erik Spiekermann (2011), Mike Parker (2012), Zuzana Ličko (2013), Fiona Ross (2014), Robert Slimbach (2015), and Fred Smeijers (2016). This year the award will be presented on Saturday, August 26.

Martina Flor will be this year’s keynote speaker. Based in Berlin, Flor runs a leading studio specializing in lettering and custom typography for clients around the globe, including: The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Harper Collins, and Cosmopolitan, among others.

Here are some of the many talks and events:
Friday, August 25th
8:50 a.m. Bruce Kennett: W. A. Dwiggins, Hermann Püterschein, and the Fictional Society of Calligraphers
9:35 a.m. Tucker McLachlan: Typography Ghost Stories
9:55 a.m. Jennifer McKnight: Victorian Grande Dames and German Engravers: How Type Design Taught a City to Dream
10:35 a.m. Peter Bella & Caleb Fairres: Making the Machine Human: Embracing Printing Technologies in Crafting a Present-day Moveable Typeface
10:55 a.m. Petra Dočekalová: New Lettering Forms
11:20 a.m. Catherine Leigh Schmidt: Yatra: A Journey in Painted Signs
11:40 a.m. Linh O’Briant: Playing by the Rules—Type & Origami Design Rules
2:00 p.m. Bobby Martin: The Meeting Point of Type, Design, and Brand
2:45 p.m. David Jonathan Ross: EXTRA! EXTRA!
3:05 p.m. Judy Safran-Aasen & Mike LaJoie: Deconstructing the Construction of the Microsoft Emoji Font
3:25 p.m. Scott Boms: Imperfection Machines: Low Res in a High Res World
4:05 p.m. Geri McCormick & James Grieshaber: Dr. Strangefont or: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Make Chromatic Type
4:25 p.m. Meaghan Dee: The Slow Death of Handwriting
4:45 p.m. Rachel Elnar: Cultivating Creative Communities

Saturday, August 26th
8:35 a.m. Lucas Czarnecki: An Ethnography of Garbage (Fonts)
8:55 a.m. Hrant Papazian: protoType: The Book (?)
9:15 a.m. Mary Catherine Pflug: Results of the Second Font Purchasing Habits Survey
10:00 a.m. Christopher Rouleau: Brush Lettering Demo
10:25 a.m. Qiu Yin & Ming Wei: Thinking and Practicing Chinese Type Design on Screen
10:45 a.m. Mark Jamra & Neil Patel: Lessons Learned in Designing Type for Africa
11:10 a.m. Richard Kahwagi: Arabic Typography and Popular Culture
11:50 a.m. Masataka Hattori: Fundamentals of Japanese Metrics Editing
1:30 p.m. Geri McCormick & James Grieshaber: Chromatic Wood Type Printing Demo
2:00 p.m. Elizabeth Carey Smith: Type in Couture
2:45 p.m. Ana Monroe: The Typography of Bling
3:05 p.m. Jess Meoni: Liner Notes & Ligatures: A Reflection on Typography in the Age of Vinyl
3:45 p.m. Amelia Hugill-Fontanel: Typographic Realia: Cataloging and Connecting Wood and Metal Resources
4:05 p.m. Spencer Charles & Frances MacLeod: The Left Handed Path: A Twisting Journey Through Left-Handed Lettermaking

Sunday, August 27th
8:35 a.m. Yves Peters: Type With Character(s)—Reclaiming Control Over OpenType Fonts
9:20 a.m. Jason Pamental: Variable Fonts & The Future of Web Design
9:45 a.m. John Roshell: ZAP! POW! BAM! Comic Book Lettering, From Pens to Pixels
10:10 a.m. Radek Sidun: Typefaces for Television
10:30 a.m. David Shields: Muster Hundreds! Towards a People’s History of American Wood Type
11:10 a.m. Ina Saltz: The Rise of Typographic Tattoos
11:30 a.m. Douglas Wilson: A Multimedia Extravaganza Through the World of Printing Films
11:55 a.m. Jason Campbell: Mojo’s Workin’: Blues Typography & Album Art
12:15 p.m. James Walker: Type Hike: A Typographic Exploration of America’s National Parks

Blocks Plates Stones

In case you have not seen the announcement, registration is open for the Blocks Plates Stones conference, which has now been moved to the Courtauld Institute, London. https://www.ies.sas.ac.uk/events/event/12642

Organized by Elizabeth Savage (IES), with help from her committee Giles Bergel (Oxford) and Caroline Duroselle-Melish (Folger), this event is part of a 12-month British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award, ‘The Matrix Reloaded: Establishing Cataloguing and Research Guidelines for Artefacts of Printing Images.’

A draft of the program is now available at: https://symphony-live.s3.amazonaws.com/UhZMp2iSbp7hKGrlphQwBW9X16Bi6li2kFtjXskSC3dcQUA2tbkSRremffd8PtWV/BPS%20Programme-v1.pdf
The keynote roundtable includes Richard S Field (Yale), Maria Goldoni (Galleria Estense), James Mosley (IES), Ad Stijnman (Leiden), Michael Twyman (Reading).

Speakers include Laura Aldovini (Università Cattolica; Cini), Rob Banham (Reading), Jean-Gérald Castex (Louvre), Rosalba Dinoia (independent), Neil Harris (Udine), Konstantina Lemaloglou (Technological Educational Institute of Athens), Huigen Leeflang (Rijksmuseum), Giorgio Marini (Uffizi), Julie Mellby (Princeton), Andreas Sampatakos (Technological Educational Institute of Athens), Linda Stiber Morenus (Library of Congress), Arie Pappot (Rijksmuseum), Elizabeth Savage (IES), Jane Rodgers Siegel (Columbia), Femke Speelberg (Met), and Amy Worthen (Des Moines Art Centre).

Object sessions and posters by: Constança Arouca (Orient Museum), Teun Baar (Apple), Cathleen A. Baker (Michigan), Rob Banham (Reading), Maarten Bassens (Royal Library of Belgium; KU Leuven), Giles Bergel (Oxford), Annemarie Bilclough (V&A), Chris Daunt (Society of Wood Engravers), Gigliola Gentile (Sapienza), Jasleen Kandhari (Leeds), Nicholas Knowles (Independent), Peter Lawrence (Society of Wood Engravers), Marc Lindeijer SJ (Société des Bollandistes), Anna Manicka (National Museum, Warsaw), Peter McCallion (West of England), Melissa Olen (West of England), Maria V. Ortiz-Segovia (Océ Print Logic Technologies), Carinna Parraman (West of England), Marc Proesmans (KU Leuven), Rose Roberto (Reading; National Museums Scotland), Fulvio Simoni (Bologna), Francesca Tancini (Bologna), Joris Van Grieken (Royal Library of Belgium), Bruno Vandermeulen (KU Leuven), Genevieve Verdigel (Warburg), Lieve Watteeuw (Illuminare), Christina Weyl (independent), and Hazel Wilkinson (Birmingham).

Hope to see everyone there.

Rare Book School goes dark


Terry Belanger’s students engrave copper plates, James Mosley’s students cast metal type, and so it should come as no surprise when Richard Ovenden’s students disappeared early into a nearby darkroom to develop a photograph. Although many had tried this at some time in the past, waiting long minutes between the dozens of separate steps to see what went right or wrong gave us a new appreciation for the medium. Back in the library, it is amazing to find so many prints that actually worked.

Large format, medium format, and tiny cell phone cameras.

Before (above) and after (below). Can you pick out the mistake?

And  the biggest mystery of all: the silver recovery system. This was not in Gernsheim.

 

Making History at AEPM

For those of us who didn’t make it last May to the Museum of Typography in Chania (Crete, Greece) for this year’s annual Association of European Printing Museums conference, we will soon have the chance to catch up by reading the papers online.

This year’s theme was “Making History: Collections, Collectors, and the Cultural Role of Printing Museums.” Here is the program:  http://www.typography-museum.gr/full-programm-of-aepm-annual-conference-2017-11-14-may-2017/

The first two papers are already available, but more will be posted:

Yannis A. Phillis: Printing museums–records of civilization

Alan Marshall: How print became heritage: 150 years of printing museums

Little Sparta

If you are in Europe in July, you should find your way to Pentland Hills near Edinburgh and the garden of visual poetry known as Little Sparta created by Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006). On July 13 and 14, 2017, there will be a symposium entitled “Ian Hamilton Finlay: Little Fields, Long Horizons,” exploring new critical and interdisciplinary perspectives on the Scottish poet, artist and avant-gardener. http://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/conferences/ian-hamilton-finlay-little-fields-long-horizons

The keynote address, “Between Spoils and Gifts,” will be delivered by Susan Stewart, Avalon Foundation University Professor of the Humanities, Princeton University. http://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/events/events-archive/between-spoils-and-gifts


Stewart writes, “This talk looks closely at Ian Hamilton Finlay’s place in the art history of his time by considering his most fundamental departure from prevailing avant-garde practice: that is, his immersion in history. Focusing upon his ‘Roman’ practices of epigraphy and spoliation and his larger transformation of the bounds of the gesamtkunstwerk, we can glimpse the many ways he pursued an art that could evade the novelty of the present. Hamilton Finlay took a long, difficult, and revisionary journey through the past in an effort to reach into the future.”

Born in Bermuda, Finlay and his wife Sue purchased the five-acre plot in 1966—originally named Stonypath—and immediately began redeveloping the physical space. They constructed ponds, rivers, paths, and unexpected visual moments, eventually renaming the area Little Sparta in the 1980s, in part “a reference to its relationship with Edinburgh, known as the Athens of the North.” Today, the land is part of a national trust: http://www.littlesparta.org.uk/home.htm

“Little Sparta is not just a garden but an entire art work,” says Derek Brown, a production designer and Gardenista reader, and our guide on this visit. Brown’s connection to Little Sparta began when he was a boy, living nearby as the creation of the garden got underway. Recently Brown returned for a visit and found Ian Hamilton Finlay’s garden to be “deeply personal and engaging, a total immersion into his world.” http://www.littlesparta.org.uk/home.htm

 

See also:
John Dixon Hunt, Nature over again: the garden art of Ian Hamilton Finlay (London: Reaktion, 2008). Marquand Library (SA) SB457.6 .H866 2008

Ian Hamilton Finlay archive: parts 1-7 (printed items), 1960-2015. Rare Books (Ex) oversize Item 7308232q

Susan Stewart, “Garden Agon,” Representations No. 62 (Spring, 1998), pp. 111-143. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2902941

Frits Lugt’s collection

In 1947, Frits Lugt (1884-1970) established the Fondation Custodia in the historic hôtel Lévis-Mirepoix at 121 rue de Lille and endowed it with his entire of collection of paintings, drawings, prints, rare books, artists’ letters, and much more.

In 2015, the Terra Foundation for America Art opened a Center & Library upstairs from the Fondation, including a joint exhibition space and reading room. It appears to be a good collaboration. We were very fortunate to be allowed to tour both, including the Lugt art collection, housed in adjoining rooms in the eighteenth-century Hôtel Turgot.

Lugt, who began collecting in 1915, was a self-taught art historian and author whose books remain standard works to this day. The famous ‘L’ followed by the number Lugt assigned to sale catalogues and collector’s marks is recognized by all art historians.

Princeton University faculty and students have online access to Lugt’s Répertoire des catalogues de ventes publiques http://library.princeton.edu/resource/3932, which lists more than 100,000 art sales catalogues of the period 1600 to 1925 from libraries in Europe and the USA, both in French and in English. It can be searched on Lugt number, date, place, provenance, auction house and existing copies.


At the front door, you are greeted by a terra-cotta bust of Jacques Turgot, Baron de l’Aulne (1727-1781), which may have been sculpted by Jean-Antoine Houdon. All along the 18th-century staircase, the walls are filled with Lugt’s collection of painted landscapes.



One of the treasures pulled for us was a 1596 copy of Ludolf van Ceulen (1539-1610), Van den circkel: daer in gheleert werdt te vinden de naeste proportie des circkels-diameter tegen synen omloop, with a portrait of the author on the title page, engraved by Jacques de Gheyn II (1565-1629). Lugt also acquired a proof without lettering and a rare variant. See all three below.

“In the late sixteenth century, especially in the Netherlands, there was a revival of interest in the works of Archimedes. Van Ceulen was a part of this Archimedean renaissance, and early in his career, he read a translation of Archimedes’ treatise, Measuring the Circle. In this work, Archimedes estimated the value of pi by calculating the circumferences of polygons that just fit inside and outside the circle, reasoning (correctly) that the circumference of the circle must lie between those two values. Using polygons of up to 128 sides, Archimedes found that pi must lie between (using modern notation) 3.141 and 3.142. Van Ceulen found a way to increase the number of sides of the inscribed polygons from 128 to well into the millions, and he initially found a value of pi accurate to 20 decimal places. This number was engraved just below his portrait on the title page of his first book, Van den Circkel (1596).”