Category Archives: Medium

mediums

Craig’s Book of Actors

Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966), A Book of Actors, 1911. Unique album with 19 mounted engravings. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

In 1911, while Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966) was living in Florence with Elena Fortuna Meo (1879–1957), he gave his son Edward (Teddy) Carrick (1905–1998) a scrapbook of engravings depicting classical actors, several from the Comédie-Française. Meo is responsible for the lovely green binding.

It appears that Craig had been working on this for some time, as it is inscribed “Papa fecit 1902” in red ink at foot and “PAPA” in black ink below. Mounted on the front pastedown is a plate with the illustrated initial “A” by J.Oliver (EGC), with the title “Book of Actors for Teddy – 1911, Florence, January – Papa. -Bound by Mama-.” In addition, Teddy Craig later wrote “and now, in 1968, passed on by that same TEDDY to his friend Lee Freeson who also loved EGC. ‘Papa’ being, of course, Edward Gordon Craig.”

The actor and bookdealer Lee Freeson (1902-98) helped to compile many theatre libraries in America. He corresponded with Craig, assisting him in his later years by selling some of his significant items to American collections. Freeson also became a close friend of Teddy Craig.

There is another note in Craig’s hand that reads: “The Actors whose pictures are in this book were better actors than those known so well to us as Kean – David Garrick – Kemble – Talma – Le Kain -.”

Post Thanksgiving Theatrical Fun Dinner

The Graphic Arts Collection holds a number of drawings by George Cruikshank (1792-1878), including several for plates in the Comic Almanack. As is often the case, his original sketches are more fun than the final published etching. Here’s one for the March 1841 issue, entitled Theatrical Fun Dinner, with all the characters from Shakespeare’s plays (named in the margin in Cruikshank’s own hand).

The verse that accompanies this plate is long. Here is a section of Theatrical Fun Dinner:

The Bard of Avon summon’d his ghosts
Around his own bright shade, in hosts,
And the characters came, to the Poet of Fame,
To hear his mighty say.
“Well, now,” he cried, “bright spirits all,
Hither to-day you have my call,
To quit the volume in which you are bound,
And make, together, a holiday round,
And go in a group to the play.”
So the principal characters, giving a look
Of delight, jumped out of the Shakspere book;
Daylight was on the wane.
Out they skipped, ready equipped,
And started for Drury-lane.

George Cruikshank (1792-1878), The Comic Almanack, 1841: March – Theatrical Fun Dinner, 1841. Watercolor sketch. Graphic Arts collection GC022 Cruikshank Collection.

The Comic Almanac (London: David Bogue [etc.], 1835-1850). 15 v. Illustrators: 1835-48, 1850, George Cruikshank. 1849, H.G. Hine. Editor: 1835-37, 1848-50, Horace Mayhew. Graphic Arts Collection (GA). Cruik 1835.81

A Season in Hell

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) and Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989), A Season in Hell (New York: Limited Edition’s Club, 1986). Edition: 1000. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

Arthur Rimbaud was eighteen years old when he wrote A Season in Hell (Un saison en enfer) in 1873. Mapplethorpe was forty years old when he accepted the commission to make photographs in response to the prose poem. It was also the year that Mapplethorpe learned he was H.I.V. positive, which led to his death in 1989.

Seven of Mapplethorpe’s Hasselblad negatives were selected for this project and printed on handmade etching paper by Jon Goodman, in his studio in Florence, Massachusetts, a few miles from Dan Keleher’s Wild Carrot Letterpress in Hadley, where the text was printed.

The translation is by librettist, poet, and actor Paul Schmidt (1934-1999) who published translations of Rimbaud’s complete works in 1975 (PQ2387.R5 A28 1975). Schmidt also wrote an introduction, commenting “It is a work of adolescent passion—not the passion of exuberance, but passion as suffering. It is the record of a failed attempt to create a new identity by creating a new world. Passion is universal, yet some particular facts may help to explain Rimbaud’s feelings, to illuminate the smokey density, the nerve-edge screams, the sulfurous flicker of this little book.”

Design for Hamlet

Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966), Stage scene design for Hamlet, ca. 1910 from A Second Portfolio of Etchings. Etching on Japan paper, signed with initials. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2014- in process.

Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966) worked with the Moscow Art Theater beginning in 1908, collaborating with Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938) on a production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which finally opened in 1912. During this period, he released two portfolios of etched designed, one in 1908 and one in 1910, for various theater productions including his Hamlet. An advertisement for the first portfolio was published in The Mask.

These etchings are strikingly different from the Hamlet he designed in woodcuts for Count Harry Graf Kessler’s Cranach Press in 1928 (English edition in 1930). With the acquisition of Craig etching above, our students can now compare the two projects.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616), The Tragedie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke. Edited by J. Dover Wilson…from the text of the second qvarto printed in 1604-5…with which are also printed the Hamlet stories from Saxo Grammaticus and Belleforest and English translations therefrom. Illustrated by Edward Gordon Craig (Weimar: Printed by Count Harry Kessler at the Cranach Press, 1930). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2007-0315Q

Edward Gordon Craig

Director and stage designer Edward Gordon Craig (1872-1966) is the subject of a group of photographs recently acquired by the Graphic Arts Collection. In particular is the print seen above, showing Craig with his lover, the violinist Elena Fortuna Meo (1879–1957) and their two children, Nelly (1904–1975) and Edward (called Teddy) Carrick (1905–1998), from around 1910 when they were living in Florence. Craig’s mother was the actress Ellen Alice Terry (1847–1928) who was married for a time to the Pre-Raphealite painter George Frederick Watts (1817-1904). Meo’s father, Gaetano Meo (1850-1925), was also a painter and frequent model for the Pre-Raphealites.

The photograph below of Craig at a bookcase comes from the collection of the Irish stage designer Anne Butler Yeats (1919-2001), daughter of W.B. Yeats. Several others, showing Craig at age 89, were taken by Craig’s biographer and collector, Arnold Rood, while they were together in Venice in 1961. The last photograph posted here–Craig is seen writing–was taken by David Lees (1916–2004), his son by the poet Dorothy Nevile Lees, and is inscribed by Craig in ink at the top, “Another aged affair but good, 1950 Camassade” and at bottom “For d[Daphne] from Partie.”

Ipse

Thomas Frye (ca. 1710-1762), Ipse (Self-Portrait), 1760. Mezzotint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2005.01296

During the 1740s and 1750s, the Irish artist Thomas Frye (1710-1762) spent considerable time producing porcelain at the Bow Factory, London, inventing and patenting several new processes. However, Frye’s health apparently suffered from work among the furnaces and he retired in 1759. Frye’s last years were spent creating a series of powerful mezzotints, for which he is now chiefly remembered.

“[Frye] used this process to sell “Twelve Mezzotinto Prints . . . drawn from Nature and as large as life” (The Public Advertiser, 28 April 1760, p. 4). The result was a novel series of varied character studies not based on preexisting paintings and unidentified except for a single self-portrait [seen here]. The striking poses, and Frye’s successful use of the dramatic light effects that mezzotint could supply, made an immediate impact. One critic praised them in The British Magazine in June 1760 (vol. 1, no. 5, p. 135), and Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–1797) included one of the heads—the seated young man on the far left—in his painting Experiment on the Air Pump of 1768, which was released as a mezzotint the following year.”-—T. Barton Thurber, “Production, Distribution, and Marketing of English Mezzotints in the Eighteenth Century” (2010).

Belle da Costa Greene’s bookplate

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

John Heartfield’s Photomontage

Karl August Wittfogel (1896-1988), Das erwachende China: ein Abriß der Geschichte und der gegenwärtigen Probleme Chinas [The Awakening of China, An Outline of the History and Current Problems of China] (Wien: Agis, 1926). Original book jacket designed by John Heartfield (1891-1968). Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process

Ilʹi︠a︡ Ehrenburg (1891-1967), 13 Pfeifen [13 Pipes; translation of Trinadtsat trubok, first published 1923] (Berlin: Malik-Verlag, 1930). Original book jacket designed by John Heartfield (1891-1968). Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process

In 1917, Wieland Herzfelde (1896-1988) and his brother Helmut Herzfelde (later known as John Heartfield, 1891-1968) founded the Malik publishing house in Berlin. In the 1920s, they added a branch in Vienna.

As members of the newly founded German Communist Party (KPD), the brothers published an international list of authors, translated into German. Heartfield created dust jackets for most of the books with highly creative designs in photomontage. He also designed jackets for other activist publishers, such as Agis-Verlag (Antirassistische Gruppe Internationale Solidarität = Anti-racist group International Solidarity).

The Graphic Arts Collection has been acquiring Heartfield’s original jackets whenever possible. This fall, we added a volume of short stories by Ilya Ehrenburg, a Soviet writer, journalist, translator, and cultural figure. We also acquired a history of Chinese culture by the German American playwright Karl August Wittfogel. Both members of KPD, Heartfield and Wittfogel also worked together on several theatrical productions, with Heartfield painting the backdrops and Wittfogel writing the scripts.

Belgian Trade Cards or Cartes porcelaine

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

After Parmigianino

Francesco Rosaspina (1762-1841) after Parmigianino (1503-1540), Album of proofs after Parmigianino [77 plates], no date. Etchings, engravings, woodcuts. Graphic Arts Collection GC094 Italian Prints, box 7.

According to the British Museum, Cesare Massimiliano Gini (1739-1821) was a Bolognese collector of noble family, who acquired a group of drawings by Parmigianino in 1787 from the Zanetti heirs. As an amateur etcher of old master drawings, he collected, copied, and published reproductive prints. He also hired a number of professional engravers including Francesco Rosaspina, who worked on this series of plates after Parmigianino (see Weigel 63,64) and the Raccolta di disegni di Mauro Tesi in 1787 (facsimile: Marquand (SA) Oversize ND623.T4 G5q).

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