Category Archives: Medium

mediums

A Complete Stranger’s Guide through London

 

Thanks to a deposit by Bruce C. Willsie ’86, the Graphic Arts Collection now holds 51 of the 88 separate engravings covering 74 London streets published by John Tallis (1818-1876) from 1838 to 1840. Exceptionally rare, these unbound prints were originally published in parts and only later as a bound set. Tallis promised that his directory to the buildings and businesses on each street would be corrected and updated every month. The elaborate title explains it all:

Tallis’s London Street Views, Upwards of One Hundred Buildings in Each Number, Elegantly Engraved on Steel; with a Commercial Directory Corrected Every Month, The Whole Forming a Complete Stranger’s Guide Through London, and by Reference, from the Directory to the Engraving, Will Be Seen All The Public Buildings, Places of Amusement, Tradesmen’s Shops, Name and Trade of Every Occupant, &c. &c. To Which Is Added an Index Map of the Streets, From a New Actual Survey, Now Making, At a Cost of Upwards of One Thousand Pounds; and a Faithful History and Description of Every Object Worthy of Notice, Intended To Assist Strangers Visiting the Metropolis, Through All the Mazes Without a Guide. London: published by John Tallis, 15, St. John’s Lane, St. John’s Gate; and regularity kept by al booksellers and toy shops, in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. Each street may be had separately.

The narrow format made each sheet easy to fold and carry in your pocket for onsite reference, but may also explain their scarcity today. The guides were used so frequently, they eventually fell apart and were discarded.

Each view on two attached sheets, offers both sides of a street, along with one fully engraved and aquatinted building and a map of the area at either end. One typically sold for 1½d. Owners paid extra to have the name of their business engraved over the building or featured at the end of the sheet.

 

Read more: Alison O’Byrne & Jon Stobart (2017) “Introduction: Roundtable on John Tallis’s London Street Views (1838–1840),” Journal of Victorian Culture, 22:3, 287-296, DOI: 10.1080/13555502.2017.1327196

For a digital view of Tallis’s Streets, see: https://www.romanticlondon.org/tallis-street-views/#14/51.5151/-0.1169. The map here shows the locations of the Street Views depicted; each marker is placed at the center of the appropriate plate. For more on the Street Views, see the Museum of London’s project or the London Topographical Society’s publications on the subject.

 

Remarks on the Jacobiniad, 1795

“Say who for Larning, ever equalled I?” Slightly photoshopped

Remarks on the Jacobiniad was a ten-part series published in the Boston Federal Orrery between Dec. 8, 1794 and Jan. 22, 1795, satirizing the Democratic-Republican societies in Boston. Disguised as a serious literary review of a fictitious poem, “The Jacobiniad,” the parts were later published in pamphlet form and attributed to John Sylvester John Gardiner (1765–1830), an Episcopal priest and rector at Trinity Church, Boston (DAB).

While not the earliest American political caricatures, the six engraved plates in Remarks on the Jacobiniad are rare examples of 18th-century colonial American satire. Various almanacs of the period also contain plates making fun of political figures, such as “Washington with Federal Constitution and Benjamin Franklin in chariot pulled by thirteen freemen, representing the original thirteen states,” from Bickerstaff’s Boston Almanack, or Federal calendar for 1788. Graphic Arts Collection Oversize Hamilton 44.

John Sylvester John Gardiner (1765-1830).] Remarks on the Jacobiniad: Revised and corrected by the author; and embellished with Carricatures [sic]. Part First. Boston: E. W. Weld and W. Greenough, 1795. 6 engraved plates. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

“Inspired by the political clubs of revolutionary France (the Jacobins being the most famous), American Democratic clubs formed in the early 1790s in most major cities, often boasting among their members some of the most prominent political names of the period (Sam Adams in Boston, the Livingston family in New York). Their increasingly vocal reaction to the Federalist administration prompted a series of mock-epic responses in 1794 and 1795, including Lemuel Hopkins’s The Democratiad, Boston poet John Sylvester John Gardiner’s Remarks on the Jacobiniad, and Democracy: An Epic Poem (Franklin 1970, vi).

In each case, the object of satire is not merely the political views of the Democrats but their preferred mode of discourse, the open “town-meeting”-style forum. Recasting such debates as travesties of the grand debates found in serious epics like The Iliad and Paradise Lost, the Federalist Wits portrayed their Democratic opponents as disorderly buffoons, wholly incapable of governing even their own meetings, much less the nation as a whole.”

–Colin Wells, “Revolutionary Verse,” The Oxford Handbook of Early American Literature Edited by Kevin J. Hayes Mar 2008. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195187274.013.0023

“[George] Washington, disturbed by the strong political disagreements of his era and eager to retire to his home, Mount Vernon, eliminated himself as a candidate in 1796. A vigorous campaign between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson ensued, resulting in the election of Adams. These cartoons are caricatures of Democratic-Republicans from a pamphlet containing the satirical poem Remarks on the Jacobiniad. The Republicans were nicknamed Jacobins after the Parisian radicals, reflecting the Republicans’ general support of the French Revolution. Federalists, on the other hand, upheld Washington’s strict course of neutrality and feared the spread of Jacobinism in the country.”

— Laurel Grunat, Mitchel Grunat, and Robert Goehlert, Presidential Campaigns, a Cartoon history, Indiana University Libraries Bloomington, 1976

Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828), John Sylvester John Gardiner (1765-1830), c. 1810-1820. Oil on panel. Boston Athenaeum.

John Gardiner was born in Wales but spent much of his youth in the West Indies, where his father served for the British government as attorney-general. He was sent to Boston for his education, returning to Britain only at the outbreak of the American Revolution. In 1783, however, he moved permanently to Boston and was eventually named rector of Trinity Church. He was a published author and a founder of the Boston Athenaeum.

 

 

 

 

 

His lean left hand he stretched, as if to smite / And, mansir l, groped his breeches with his right.

 

 

 

Feminist Cartooning: Winnie Winkle, the Breadwinner

 

Before Working Girl, 9 to 5, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or even Our Miss Brooks, which each featured single females in the mostly male world of business, there was the groundbreaking Winnie Winkle. She was the iconic working girl of the 20th century, who first appeared on September 20, 1920, in the comic strip Winnie Winkle, the Breadwinner, written and drawn by cartoonist Martin Branner. The 19th amendment granting women the right to vote in the United States had only been ratified a month earlier on August 18.

The comic strip was such a success in Chicago and New York City that the character continued to appear for more than seventy years, with the final strip published July 28, 1996. Needless to say, Winnie changed a great deal over the years, married, had children, lost husbands, ran her own company, and so on. For some, she was at her best in the original 1920s stories, when she worked as a secretary/stenographer for Mr. Bibbs.


 

At home, Winnie’s mother worked equally hard while her father did all he could to avoid getting a job. He never tired of living off his daughter, just as her many bosses found ways to slack off while at the office. Surprisingly, Winnie was based on Branner’s own wife, “who worked with her husband in the production of the cartoon strip”:

“Winnie Winkle sprang from the pen of Connecticut’s Martin Branner, who drew his inspiration for the comic-strip beauty from his long-time wife Edith Fabbrini. The couple met when Martin was 18 and Edith 15. They married and for 15 years were headliners on the vaudeville circuit as the dance team Martin and Fabbrini. Martin left the theater to serve in World War I in the Chemical Warfare Service. Exhausted by tapping out two and three shows a day on the Keith Orpheum and Pantages vaudeville circuits, Martin (called Mike by his friends) began developing his talent for drawing. The couple hailed from New York, but settled in Waterford, Conn. One of their lasting legacies can be seen in the town’s seal, which the couple designed.”– https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/girl-power-born-1920-form-winnie-winkle-breadwinner/

 
San Francisco Enquirer 1917

 


 


 


 

 

From 1926 to 1928, ten Winnie Winkle the Breadwinner movies were produced, written by Branner and starring Ethelyn Gibson as Winnie, with Billy West as director: Working Winnie (1926); Happy Days (1926); Winnie’s Birthday (1926); Oh! Winnie Behave (1926); Winnie’s Vacation (1927); Winnie Wakes Up (1927); Winnie Steps Out (1927); Winnie Be Good (1927); Winning Winnie (1927); and Winnie’s Winning Ways (1928). Here is a bit from Winnie’s Vacation:

Théâtre des voyages

Théâtre des voyages. Le Tour du monde par un petit français. Grand spectacle en 24 tableaux (Paris: M.-D. [i.e. Mauclair-Dacier] Editeur and J.J.F. [i.e Jeux et Jouets Français]. [1905]. Series: Théâtre des voyages et des actualities. Cotsen Collection (CTSN) Toys 46025


A recent search through our collections of paper theaters led to one particularly rare item in the Cotsen Children’s Library https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/. A multi-media Théâtre des voyages, this home theater comes with a music box for sound to accompany a scrolling 17 foot vertical panorama with 24 lithographic scenes and titles on either end. The narrative takes a young French boy on a world tour from France to New York City, the Rocky Mountains, mining for gold in the Klondike, hunting with indigenous people in the mid-West and Alaska, attending a marriage in Peking, getting arrested in Bangkok, feasting in Benares, crossing the Siberian steppe and on to Moscow, being enslaved and sold by Tuaregs, escaping to ride the rapids of the Oubangi to Brazzaville, traveling through Africa to Algiers, Marseilles, and finally home.

The toy theater was produced and sold by Mauclair-Dacier, who established his own business in 1887, which ran successfully through 1904 when he was taken over by JJF (Jeux et Jouets Français).

While many of the scenes are politically incorrect as might be expected of a 1905 toy, others are surprisingly egalitarian, such as the multi-racial orchestra playing below the proscenium arch throughout the entire show.

The rolling narrative is interrupted by sliding ‘tableaux lumineux’ (hold to light slides) mounted on wooden frames that slide through the top of the box and cover the scroll while it changes scene. Here are a few examples:.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For other Cotsen treasures, see: https://blogs.princeton.edu/cotsen/.

Life Post Quarantine

For those of us who came back to a physical office or work place last year, it can be hard to now share the streets with the rest of the world. New drivers are crazy and even the sidewalks can be dangerous. Be careful out there.


George Cruikshank (1792-1878) after George Moutard Woodward (approximately 1760-1809), The Art of Walking the Streets of London, Plate 1 and 2. January 1, 1818. Etching with hand-coloring. Graphic Arts collection GC022 Cruikshank prints. Gift of Richard W. Meirs, Class of 1888.

The British Museum notes: The title is from Gay’s ‘Trivia’. Woodward died in 1809; the costume of the principal figures has been brought up-to-date. Both plates are said to be from the ‘Caricature Magazine’. Reid, No. 764. Cohn, No. 898.

Mapping Greenwich Village Saturday Night

This aerial photograph of Washington Square Park gives a view of “The Row,” the townhouses of wealthy New Yorkers living along Washington Square Park North (Waverly Place). Below are the names of the residents in 1924/25.

“…the most charming square in all New York: De Forest, Rhinelander, Delano, Stewart, De Rham, Gould, Wynkoop, Tailer, Guinness, Claflin, Booth, Darlington, Gregory, Hoyt, Schell, Shattuck, Weekes,—these, and others are still the names of the residents of Washington Square North. Father Knickerbocker, coming to smoke his pipe here, will be in good company, you perceive!”–Anna Alice Chapin, Greenwich Village. Illustrated by Alan Gilbert Cram (2005)

Map annotated by Lew Ney 1925, given to Princeton University Library.

 

 

Lew Ney (born Luther Emanuel Widen, 1886-1963), The Greenwich Village Saturday Night (New York: [Lew New, 1924-1926]. Little Magazines LM GVSN Princeton holdings: Vol.2, no.1 (Nov. 21, 1925); 2 copies- Vol.2, no.3 (April 10, 1926). Gift of Lew Ney.

 

Beginning with September 20, 1924, the Greenwich Village bohemian Lew Ney (pronounced Looney) distributed his neighborhood newsletter entitled The Greenwich Village Saturday Night, written and hand-printed in his cold water studio at 246 West 14th Street (check the map!). Each issue (except v.2, no. 2) included a large, two-page map of the area below 14th street with his commentary on New York history and current residents. Princeton was given four issues by Lew Ney himself and one of the maps is annotated by him [see above], a later copy including these notes in a cleaner version.

 

John Sloan (1871-1951), Sixth Avenue, Greenwich Village, 1923. Etching.

 

1924

1925

1926

A few details:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cara a Cara. Visiones de lo cotidiano.


Cara a Cara: Visiones de lo cotidiano = Face to Face: Views of the Everyday (Oaxaca, Mexico: Irving Herrera/Bautistaivan, 2013). Edition of 35. Graphic Arts Collection GA2021- in process

The artists “facing off” between the DF and OAX printshops include Edgar Allan, Javier Arjona, Ivan Bautista, Raul Cadena, Gilberto Delgado, Maria Luisa Estrada, Oscar de las Flores, Irving Herrera, Vicente Jurado Manuel Solis, Baltazar Melo, Jorge Noguez, Pavel Scarubi, Sergio Vargas, Albert Vargas, and Yescka.

Oaxaca is one of the 31 states which make up the 32 federative entities of Mexico. Located in the southwest of the country, Oaxaca is celebrated for its indigenous artists working in dozens of printshops and collectives, specializing in stencil and relief printing. Their voices are as diverse as the 16 spoken languages in Oaxaca.

https://oaxacaculture.com/ The Oaxaca cultural navigator is one of several sites that help to identify these many cultural resources.

The saint of all flower growers

José de Nava (1735-1815), [Vida de Santa Rosa de Viterbo] ([Puebla de Zaragoza: s.n., 1763-1807?]). 33 engraved plates (one facsimile). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process

 

According to the Catholic calendar, September 4 is the feast day of Saint Rose of Viterbo (1235-1252), who was canonized by Pope Innocent IV. She is the patron saint of florists and all flower growers.

Born in Viterbo (present day Italy), Rose joined the Third Order of St. Francis (T.O.S.F.) at the age of 10 but never officially joined a convent (lacking the dowry). According to the legend, “on December 5, 1250, she foretold the death of the emperor which was fulfilled 8 days later on December 13. Rose went to the city of Vitorchiano, which was possessed by a sorceress and secured the conversion of all, even of the sorceress, reportedly by standing unscathed for three hours in the flames of a burning pyre.”


The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a rare volume of engravings based on Rose’s life story, drawn and printed by the Mexican artist José de Nava (1743-1807). Although there isn’t much information on Nava, Dorothy Tanck de Estrada’s article “Imágenes infantiles en los años de la insurgencia. El grabado popular, la educación y la cultura política de los niños,” from: Historia Mexicana 59, no. 1 (July/September 2009) https://www.jstor.org/stable/40285231 is a good source. This is a poor translation of a section:

“José de Nava, active since 1748, is considered “the best known and most famous of the Puebla engravers.” He was possibly born around 1728 and died in 1817 at 89 years of age. Both he and [Miguel Jerónimo] Zendejas made works of art in the same year of his death. However, some of Nava’s creations were printed until after his death. According to Manuel Romero de Terreros, [Nava] devoted his entire life to his art and produced excellent prints, most of them dealing with religious matters. He worked with such rapidity that after the viceroy Marqués de las Amarillas entered Mexico on November 10, 1755, the following December Nava had already recorded and dedicated his excellent plan of New Spain to the viceroy.”

Francisco Perez Salazar noted that “Nava had the custom of signing almost all of his engravings and of stating the date of his work on many plates, in such a way that we can know with certainty when they were made. It was extremely fruitful.”

Nava lived in a two-story house on Calle de Chito Cohetero (now Calle 6 norte 400) in the city of Puebla. He produced almost all of his engravings in that city … at the printers of the College of San Ignacio de los Jesuitas and, after the expulsion of the Comparila de Jesus, in the same printing house then called the Palafoxian Seminary and in the printing house of Pedro de la Rosa. It should be noted that the most outstanding work of Nava was a set of 33 plates of the life of Santa Rosa de Viterbo.”

 


Macy’s Sells “Birds of America”

 

In 1902 R.H. Macy’ & Co. already known simply as Macy’s, moved their flagship store to Broadway and 34th street where they hoped to become the largest department store in the world. Ten years later an art gallery was added on the 6th floor, advertising in the New York Times “Choice Paintings” for half price.

Throughout the 1920s monthly art exhibitions were mounted and advertised alongside the prestigious Madison Avenue galleries, including lithographs by Henri Matisse, woodcuts by Rockwell Kent and Wanda Gag, and Bartolozzi engravings after Hans Holbein.

Beginning on May 18, 1931, Macy’s staged an advertising campaign that would last over ten years. The store would sell all 435 hand colored, aquatinted and engraved plates from a copy of John James Audubon’s four-volume double-elephant Birds of America, which they cut apart for this event. According to the New York Herald Tribune, “The New Macy Galleries Announce a unique and spectacular purchase—The Birds of America from original drawings (1827-1838) by John James Audubon.” Although some sources report that the store broke up three copies of the Havell/Audubon volumes, it may have only seemed that way because it took so long to sell the plates.

The rarity of these enormous volumes was used to promoted the sale: “Once, every four or five years, a complete set of Audubon’s Elephant folio volumes reaches the public. We are able to present this rare collection of 435 copper plate engravings in complete form. This folio was published by Audubon in four volumes; it was engraved by Robert Havell Jr., colored by hand from Audubon’s drawings. Audubon’s son, according to one statement declared that only 175 sets of the folio were ever printed. The prints will be sold individually—they range in price from $4.96 to $224.00. Some of the most famous plates are Canvasback Duck with view of the city of Baltimore $174.00. Mallard Duck $112.00. American Hen and Young $104.00”

 

Eighteen months later, on December 17, 1933 the Tribune advertised a special Christmas sale of “all original copper-plate engravings of great brilliance and connoisseurs will appreciate this—the first ten plats are engravings by Lizars; and many of the first plates are colored by Robert Havell, Sr. There are very few like these in existence.” But so important was the physical exhibition of the plates that Macy’s asked “our customers to let us exhibit these plates for two days after sale that others may have the opportunity of seeing them. No mail or phone orders.” Now 104 plates were priced under $10; 199 plates $12.89 to $24.39; 120 plates $29.75 to $99.75; and 12 plates from $124 to $594 (the most expensive being the “Wild Turkey”).

On April 26, 1935, in commemoration of the 150th birthday of Audubon, a lecture on “Birds” was delivered by Warren F. Eaton, President of the Montclair Bird Club. This accompanied the continuing “Unique Exhibition and Sale of The Birds of America published from original drawings 1827-1838. Once in a great, great while a complete set of Audubon’s Elephant folio turns up. We deem it a rare event to be able to offer the 435 copper plate engravings in complete form on this occasion and at these low individual prices. …On sale today! $4.96 to $394.00. No mail, telephone, or telegraph orders!”

The “rare event” of the Audubon print sale was advertised again on October 2, 1938 in both the Tribune and the New York Times, followed by more announcements until finally on March 16, 1941, the Times informed its readers that only 106 Audubon prints were still for sale at Macy’s, beginning at $13.97 (usually $18.74).

A “Picture Clearance” sale was held at Macy’s on April 18, 1943, in which Audubon prints are sold at $4.97, while sporting prints by Robert Havell Jr. are going for almost $20.

Happily, no such stunt has been tried lately.

Picturing the Press that Printed the Picture

Gustave Baumann (1881-1971), The Print Shop, from In the Hills o’ Brown, 1910. One of 12 color woodcuts on ivory Japanese paper. Edition: 100. Graphic Arts Collection GC024 Baumann

Gustave Baumann spent much of his childhood in Chicago but in 1909 he and other members of the Palette and Chisel Club discovered Brown County, Indiana. “[By] saving up $100.00 he could spend three months in Brown County, sketching and painting. In 1910 he produced a portfolio of small format color woodcuts entitled In the Hills of Brown and then produced some of the largest woodcuts of the time. His color woodcuts were selected for inclusion in the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition where he won the Gold Medal for Prints and an Honorable Mention for his Exhibit of Color Woodcuts. In the summer and fall of 1917, Baumann visited Wyoming, New York; Manhattan; and Provincetown, Massachusetts.” https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/140/Baumann/Gustave

Although the plan was to only stay a short time, Baumann loved Brown County, its people, the hilly scenery, and isolated location. He lived there six and a half years, often using the location as his primary subject matter. Thanks to Baumann’s friend, Elmer Adler,  the Graphic Arts Collection has an original 1910 edition of this rare portfolio, rather than the later 1914 reprinting.

Within the series of four color woodblock prints, is a depiction of the shop where Baumann did his printing, the commercial press of Alonzo Allison (1851-1926). Allison was the editor and publisher of the Brown County Democrat and this print shows him and his staff (which included his daughters) at work getting out the newspaper. Allison was a local celebrity and the subject of this profile in The Inland Printer, 56 (1916), “Alonzo Allison, Editor And Publisher Brown County Democrat by Albert G. Brenton.

In Nashville, the county-seat of Brown County, Indiana, lives a figure unique in newspaperdom of the State. The man is Alonzo Allison, editor and publisher of the Brown County Democrat, an eight-page weekly with a healthy circulation of 1,800. His claim to fame is fourfold: First, his publication is the only county-seat paper in the State still printed on a Washington hand press. Second, he is believed to be the youngest veteran of the Civil War and the oldest printer in point of service in Indiana. Third, his father was a printer before him and he has an uncle, four brothers, three sisters, four cousins, five sons and two granddaughters who are working at the case. Fourth, he is said to hold the state record for fast composition, setting 2,250 ems, eight-point, in an hour on a sheriff’s bill.

Surely a character of some distinction in printerdom! Little wonder that beaten paths are made to his door or that his quaint print-shop should be made the subject of an appropriate wood-block picture in three tones by Gustave Baumann, a noted young German artists. Baumann’s engraving entitled “Press Day,” is shown herewith. It gives the artist’s impression of the Democrat office in the midst of edition-day activities. Alonzo Allison is shown performing the functions of the mailing force, while his sons, T.H. and C.A. Allison, are operating the “muscle developer.”

Considering Mr. Allison’s claim to fame, it would seem that a reproduction of his print-shop in any other medium than that chosen by Baumann would grate on artistic sensibilities. The whole atmosphere of the subject is rare with a spirit of antiquity that indeed is refreshing in contrast to linotypes, offset presses, modern high-speed efficiency, and the like.

Probably no duplication of Allison or his print-shop could exist in another part of Indiana, and it would be disappointing to one who knows Brown County or Nashville to have a printery of any other sort there. Brown County is Indiana’s Switzerland. Only a few years ago the first railroad crossed its boundaries. As late as the past autumn, steps were taken to establish the first electric light plant within its confines.

… Allison is sixty-four years of age and has been in the printing business for fifty-seven years, having set his first type when seven years old. He has been in active newspaper work continuously since his beginning, with the exception of eighteen months spent in the Union army in the Civil War. His printing-office is the only one in Brown County, although his father at one time successfully operated a Republican paper in competition. At the age of twelve, Allison and his mother went to Nashville, Tennessee, to visit his father, who was quartermaster of the Seventeenth Indiana regiment, then in camp at Nashville. Allison, though only twelve years old, begged so hard to remain with the regiment that his father and mother consented, and the lad donned a soldier’s uniform, the legs of the trousers being cut off and the coat made to fit him.

He spent eighteen months in the army, much of the time being under heavy fire and in the thick of important battles. At the close of the war he went with his father to Columbus, Indiana, where they published the Dollar Weekly Union. In the fall of 1870 the Allisons went to Nashville, Brown County and established the Jacksonian.

In December, 1884, Alonzo Allison purchased the Brown County Democrat. For lack of means he was compelled to do all the work himself, and for several years he got the copy, set the type, made up the paper, rolled the forms and pulled the lever on a Washington hand press, which he uses in printing the Democrat to-day. Allison calls his press his “muscle developer.” Although he is near the three-score-and ten limit, Allison is still “some speed artist” at the case, sticking up 1,500 ems an hour. He holds a record of setting 2,250 ems, eight-point, in an hour on a sheriff’s bill. When he was employed in an office at Columbus at one time his employer wanted to pay him by the thousand ems. The first week Allison made $39.50. The next week the arrangement was changed.”

As an added bonus, here is a Ground Hog day card to Adler: