Category Archives: Medium

mediums

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.

Oxford

Martin Parr. Beating the Bounds. Ascension day.2014.

“The very first photo-documentary of Oxford was created by William Henry Fox Talbot,” reads the announcements. “A century and a half later, Martin Parr’s new project pays tribute to [that] great pioneer of photography.”

Commissioned by the Bodleian Library and Oxford University Press, Parr’s upcoming book is a collection of around 100 photographs documenting the life of the university between 2014 and 2016. The images capture day-to-day life of the school, highlighting the colorful and arcane rituals “that make Oxford so distinctive.”

Last Friday, we were given a preview of the book, entitled simply Oxford, due out on September 7, 2017. An exhibition to accompany the book’s release will be held from September 8 to October 22, 2017 in Blackwell Hall, Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries on Broad Street, Oxford.

In paging through the maquette with Bodley’s Librarian Richard Ovenden, we were introduced to the many bizarre, eccentric, peculiar, and unique activities at Oxford University (including a cat that is really a dog). One of the most memorable was the ancient practice of ‘beating the bounds,’ ceremonially re-enacted every year. The photograph by Parr at the top of this post is one such beating, although not the print that eventually made the cut for the book.

Another view of this ritual from the Graphic Arts Collection is: George Cruikshank (1792-1878), “May – Beating the Bounds,” in The Comic almanack; an ephemeris in jest and earnest, containing merry tales, humorous poetry, quips, and oddities. Text by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863); Albert Smith (1816-1860); Gilbert Abbot À Beckett (1811-1856); Horace Mayhew (1816-1872); and Henry Mayhew (1812-1887) (London: Tilt and Bogue, 1837). Graphic Arts Collection Cruik 1835.81. Published in a run of approximately 20,000.

Beginning in 1835 and continuing for nine years, Cruikshank alone drew the plates for each monthly issue. Thackeray contributed small stories and promoted the series writing that it showed “a great deal of comic power, and Cruikshank’s designs were so admirable, that the ‘Almanack’ at once became a vast favourite with the public and has remained so ever since.”

Common Sense

Today we studied Martin Parr’s photobook Common Sense, which “takes a candid look at our everyday excess and social stereotypes to reveal our connection to global consumer culture.” [https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/society-arts-culture/martin-parr-common-sense/]

Princeton University Library holds 56 of Martin Parr’s 63 photobooks (most found in the art and architecture library), beginning with The Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton, with text by Ian Walker (Wallasy, Merseyside: Promenade Press, 1986) and most recently Real Food (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2016). Many are released with Dewi Lewis Publishing, founded by his friend Dewi Lewis in 1994 and the 2014 recipient of the PHotoEspana’s prize for Outstanding Publishing House of the Year. https://www.dewilewis.com/pages/about-us

**See above right, what does an author do when he is asked to autograph a book filled with images, without writing on his art? Parr answered this with the white bubble added near the beginning of the book.

Common Sense (1999) was published in an unbelievably large edition of 12,000. A problem with glue in the binding left 600 with pages stuck together and unsaleable. The rest of the edition finally sold out this year.

The Martin Parr Foundation is a sponsor of PhotoBook Bristol, scheduled to return in the summer of 2018. In the meantime, the Martin Parr Foundation will open a new hub of activities at Paintworks in Bristol, including a gallery and shop in October 2017. Details at: http://www.martinparrfoundation.org

Martin Parr, Common Sense (Stockport, Eng.: Dewi Lewis, 1999). (SAPH): Photography TR654.P378 1999. The cover image shows a portion of a piggy-bank shaped like a globe.

Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook: a History (London: Phaidon Press, 2004- ) SAPH Photography reference Oversize TR650 .P377 2004q

Rare Book School I-45. The Photographic Book since 1844 http://rarebookschool.org/faculty/illustration/richard-ovenden/

300 Coburn prints destroyed

The Graphic Arts Collection holds two copies of The Door in the Wall by H.G. Wells with photogravures from negatives by Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966). Princeton’s first book has ten mounted prints with letterpress captions while the second has only one.

The text was set by Bertha S. Goudy (1869-1935) at the Village Press, New York, with types and decorations designed by Frederic W. Goudy (1865-1947), under whose supervision it has been printed by Norman T. A. Munder & company, Baltimore, Maryland. Six hundred copies were printed on French hand-made paper in November, 1911.

When Coburn’s photogravures arrived in New York, an assistant mistakenly pounded a nail through the top of one crate destroying half of the prints. 600 photogravures had been prepared in England and only 300 were left for Frederic Goudy to fit into the New York edition.

Some books have 10 and the rest are missing one or more images. Princeton’s second copy is missing all but one. A slip is tipped onto the front board of each incomplete book. Some give the explanation that missing photogravures are replaced with prints made by the aquatone process. The slip in Princeton’s book reads “It was for this volume that Frederic W. Goudy designed his now famous Kennerley Type. Six hundred copies were printed. Unfortunately, only three hundred sets of the illustrations were complete, so that there remain three hundred copies of the book lacking one or more illustrations, of which this is a copy. The text is perfect.”

It was a complete surprise today to find the Rare Book division of the Library of Congress not only holds both complete and incomplete copies of Door in the Wall, but they also have Goudy’s own copy of the book’s maquette, originally placing the photographs on the right instead of the left and without his special type.

The binding and pages are larger in the maquette than the published version. The layout of the cover text is uniformly printed in plain type. Published books used a fancier, pseudo-Gothic face and reduce the size of Coburn’s name, giving his contribution less importance.

Library of Congress, Rare Books, Wells c.4

The maquette also holds additional prints, seen here laying side by side to check for variations.

H. G. Wells (1866-1946), The Door in the Wall and Other Stories by H. G. Wells, Illustrated with photogravures from photographs by Alvin Langdon Coburn (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1911). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2006-0844Q previously owned by Elmer Adler and GAX 2006-0845Q previously owned by Edwin Hooper Denby.

Goudy’s pencil design for the title page layout, at the Library of Congress. He might have anticipated a longer production schedule, assuming the publication date would be 1912 instead of 1911.

See also: Alvin Langdon Coburn and H.G. Wells: the photographer and the novelist: a unique collection of photographs and letters from the University Library’s H.G. Wells collection ([Urbana]: University Library : Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997). Marquand Library (SA) No call number available

James and Coburn

We were looking today at the photogravure frontispieces by Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966) for all but the final two volumes of what is known as Henry James’s New York Edition. The books were published two volumes at a time between December 14, 1907 and July 31, 1909. Above are the copies at the University of Virginia.

James famously called photography the “hideous inexpressiveness of a mechanical medium.” He told his publishers at Scribner’s that he wanted only a single good plate in each volume of the New York edition. “Only one but of thoroughly fine quality.”

George Bernard Shaw called Coburn “the greatest photographer in the world.” Alfred Stieglitz wrote that “Coburn has been a favored child throughout his career… No other photographer has been so extensively exploited nor so generally eulogized,” but that didn’t stop him from giving the young artist two solo exhibitions at 291.

In 1905, sixty-two-year-old Henry James was photographed by the twenty-three-year-old Alvin Coburn for the April 26 issue of Century Magazine. They became friends and collaborators, mutually agreeing on each of the twenty-four photogravures that Coburn created, beginning with a new portrait of the author for volume one.

Coburn cruised the Mediterranean and traveled to Paris, Rome, and Venice searching for the appropriate entrance scenes for each of his friend’s novels. The gravures are printed directly onto the book page with a tissue guard printed with a facsimile of James’ signature. This might be the greatest series of frontispieces ever created.

Henry James (1843-1916), The Novels and Tales of Henry James. New York edition ([New York: C. Scribner’s sons, 1907-17]). 26 volumes with 24 photogravure frontispieces by Alvin Langdon Coburn. (Ex) 3799.7.1907

The Graphic Arts Collection also has a single portrait of Henry James attributed to Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1866): https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2014/01/18/henry-james/

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.

Giacomo Lauro

Last fall, Victor Plahte Tschudi, Director of the Oslo Centre for Critical Architectural Studies, published Baroque Antiquity: Archaeological Imagination in Early Modern Europe (Classics DG82 .T78 2017). This led to Anthony Grafton’s review “Invented Antiquities,” in the July issue of London Review of Books.

This led to a search for Giacomo Lauro, “a printmaker, whose albums of prints of Rome, the Antiquae Urbis splendor, command the lion’s share of Baroque Antiquity.” It is much more pleasant reading about old master prints while looking at them.

The earliest dated prints by this engraver, printer, and print publisher are from 1585 and carry the address of C. Duchetti. From 1590 he tried to establish himself as a publisher of his own work by acquiring old copper plates, restoring them, and publishing reprints. According to the British Museum, his Antiquae Urbis Splendor was published in parts from 1612. In the volumes issued in 1614 and 1615 Lauro refers to having worked on it for 28 years which would mean that he began it about 1586.

Grafton writes,

“At a cursory glance, Lauro’s slick, neatly engraved images give an impression of erudition and professionalism. . . But Tschudi’s close and tenacious examination reveals that Lauro was neither a professional antiquarian nor even a skilled draughtsman. His images were adapted from a vast range of existing sources: the drawings and prints of Pirro Ligorio and others, which the enterprising publisher Antoine Lafréry had gathered in albums in the 1570s. Lauro not only copied these, he used them to represent buildings for which no ruins or records survived.”

“…Lauro and [Athanasius] Kircher, in other words, were not making and commissioning these sometimes highly imaginative prints at random. They had a precise notion of the market at which they were aiming. Their work didn’t involve creating images anew, after long weeks camped out at the ancient sites, but reusing existing prints. . . They used the work of others as soon as the privileges that protected them ran out, while invoking privileges of their own to protect the value—and price—of their own work. They were not explorers of ancient sites but aficionados of modern prints.”

Giacomo Lauro (active 1583-ca. 1645), Splendore dell’antica e moderna Roma (Roma: Nella Stamparia d’Andrea Fei, 1641). Pt. 1: Antiquae urbis splendor hoc est præcipua eiusdem templa … Romæ, 1612; pt. 2: Antiquitatum urbis liber secundus … Romæ, 1613; pt. 3: … Antiquæ urbis splendoris complementv̄, … Romæ, 1615; pt. 4: Antiquæ urbis uestigia quæ nunc extant … Romæ, 1628. Marquand Library (SAX) Oversize N6920.L37q

See also: Giacomo Lauro (active 1583-ca. 1645), [Engraved views of Italian gardens, showing the Quirinal, Monte Celio, Vatican, Tivoli, Pincio and Barco di Barnaia (Rome?: 1616?]). Marquand Library (SAX) NA9500 .L37

Giovanni Battista de Rossi (active 1630-1660), Palazzi diversi nel’alma cita di Roma et alter ([Rome]: Ad instanza di Giombattista de Rossi, 1638). Prints by Giacomo Lauro. Marquand Library (SAX) in process

John Brown, 1800-1859

Attributed to John Adams Whipple (1822–1891), John Brown, 1800-1859, ca. December 1856. Oval salt paper print portrait. 3 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process.

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a rare salt print portrait of the abolitionist John Brown (1800-1859). There are two other known prints from the paper negative: one at the Library of Virginia and the other at the Kansas Historical Foundation. There are four known daguerreotype portraits of John Brown (with a very similar pose): one at the National Portrait Gallery, one at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and two at the Boston Athenæum.

Brown had his portrait made at a Boston studio, either that of Josiah J. Hawes (1808-1901) or John Adams Whipple (1822-1891), in December 1856 or January 1857. Most sources attribute this pose to Whipple. Here is an attempt at a chronology of life portraits: http://www.alliesforfreedom.org/files/exhibit_legends_for_SUPPL.pdf

This clipping is attached to the portrait photograph:

Sally Pierce, formerly of the Boston Athenaeum, quotes a letter from donor James Redpath, “The daguerreotype of John Brown which I gave you some time since was taken in January 1857 or in December of the year before. I think that this was his first visit to Boston after he had become a man of note in connection with Kansas affairs. At least, he was personally known to very few of the friends of Kansas in Boston; and as I happened at the time to be brought into daily intercourse with numbers of them, I availed myself of the opportunity to testify my admiration of the old man by introducing him, whenever I could, to this class of people. …In January he [Brown] had three daguerreotypes of himself taken – one, he gave to Dr. Webb, one to Amos A. Lawrence, one to me. I had asked him for one; he expressed a reluctance to sit; but on leaving, he handed it to me, saying that he gave it because I had ‘been very kind’ to him.” https://www.bostonathenaeum.org/about/publications/selections-acquired-tastes/john-brown-two-daguerreotypes

Brown spent the years 1856-1857 in Boston to promote his cause and raise funds for what would become his famous raid on Harper’s Ferry. Early in 1859, he rented a farm near Harper’s Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) and on October 16, 1859, together with 21 followers attacked and occupied the federal arsenal in Harper’s Ferry. Brown was captured and executed on December 2, 1859.

See also: Boston Courier report of the union meeting in Faneuil hall, Thursday, Dec. 8th, 1859. Speeches … Resolutions adopted by the meeting. Letters … Names of signers to the call. [Phonographic report] (Boston: Clark, Fellows & company [1859]). Firestone E451 .B74 1859

New York. Citizens. Official report of the great Union meeting, held at the Academy of Music, New York, December 19th, 1859 (New York; Davies & Kent, printers, 1859). Rare Books: John Shaw Pierson Civil War Collection (W) Oversize W26.673q in rehoused pamphlets, box 22

Self-Portrait by Guy Davenport, age 19

Guy Davenport (1927-2005), Self-Portrait, 1946. Oil on board. Graphic Arts Collection. Gift of Jacqueline Brown, given in honor of Clarence Brown. Reproduced with permission from the Davenport estate.

Thanks to the generous donation of Jacqueline Brown, we have acquired of a wonderful 1946 self-portrait by the American essayist, fiction writer, poet, translator, and painter Guy Davenport (1927-2005). The painting had been a gift by the artist to Clarence Brown (1929-2015), professor of comparative literature at Princeton University, who was a classmate of Davenport’s at the Anderson Boys’ High School in South Carolina and his life-long friend.

The recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius award,” also named a Distinguished Professor at the University of Kentucky, Davenport is remembered more for than his fifty published books than his visual art. Happily, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt titled his obituary for the New York Times, “Prolific Author and Illustrator.”

In his remembrance, Roy Behrens, University of Iowa, wrote, “Guy had drawn and painted since childhood (at age eleven, he had started an amateur newspaper in his hometown of Anderson, South Carolina, for which he wrote and also drew the pictures for all of the stories). As an adult, he used a crow quill pen to create the accompanying images for his own and the writings of others (I think the first of these I saw were in Hugh Kenner’s The Counterfeiters), in which he nearly always used a tedious method called “stippling” (still used today in scientific illustration), which is the “line art” equivalent of Georges Seurat’s pointillism.”

Davenport drew illustrations for Hugh Kenner’s The Stoic Comedians (1962) and The Counterfeiters (1968), as well as his own publications, Tatlin!: Six Stories (1974); Da Vinci’s Bicycle: Ten Stories (1979); Apples and Pears and Other Stories (1984); The Lark (1993); and Flowers and Leaves (1961). A prolific author, if we have missed some, please let us know.

For more, see Erik Anderson Reece, A Balance of Quinces (1996), Rare Books: Leonard Milberg Coll. of American Poetry (ExRML) PS3554.A86 B34 1996; the only book so far about Guy as a visual artist.

Also The Guy Davenport reader; edited and with an afterword by Erik Reece (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, [2013]). Firestone Library (F) PS3554.A86 A6 2013

For more author’s portraits in the Graphic Arts Collection, see https://blogs.princeton.edu/graphicarts/2009/12/the_authors_portrait.html

Let Us All Be Unhappy Together

“Let Us All Be Unhappy Together,” part 9, p.96 in The Universal Songster, or, Museum of Mirth: forming the most complete, extensive, and valuable collection of ancient and modern songs in the English language… embellished with a humorous characteristic frontispiece and twenty-nine wood-cuts [per vol.] designed by George and Robert Cruikshank, and engraved by J.R. Marshall (London: Printed for John Fairburn …, 1825-1826). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Cruik 1825.5

In 1790, Charles Dibdin (1745-1814) composed and performed a musical entertainment called The Wags, or, The Camp of Pleasure at the Lyceum Theatre in London. One of its hit tunes titled “Sound Argument” became better known for the chorus, “Let us all be unhappy together.”

This may well have been the primary inspiration to James Beresford, who later wrote The Miseries of Human Life, which in turn inspired the one act farce by Dibdin’s son Thomas, “The Miseries of Human Life; or, Let Us All Be Unhappy Together,” performed at the Covent Garden Theatre in 1807.

The Miseries of Human Life and Other Entertainments: Drawings by Thomas Rowlandson is on view at the Princeton University Art Museum: http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/object-package/miseries-human-life-and-other-amusements-drawings-thomas-rowlandson/112600

There were a number of caricatures, broadsides, and illustrated scores inspired by “Unhappy Together.” Here are a few more:

Above:

Let us all be unhappy together, 1794. Mezzotint on wove paper. Published by Laurie & Whittle. (c) British Museum.

Isaac Cruikshank, Let us all be unhappy together. London, April 30, 1791. Etching on laid paper. Illustration to ballad Let Us All Be Unhappy Together, written and composed by Dibdin for his entertainment called The Wags. (c) Lewis Walpole Library

Unidentified artist, Let us all be unhappy together, 1812-17. Hand colored etching. Published by William Davison of Alnwick. (c) British Museum

On Princeton computers only, listen to a performance from The Jane Austen Songbooks: http://princeton.naxosmusiclibrary.com/catalogue/item.asp?cid=VOX-7537

LET US ALL BE UNHAPPY TOGETHER.

E bipeds, made up of frail clay,
Alas! are the children of sorrow;
And, though brisk and merry to-day,
We may all be unhappy to-morrow.
For sunshine’s succeeded by rain;
Then, fearful of life’s stormy weather,
Lest pleasure should only bring pain,
Let us all be unhappy together.

I grant the best blessing we know
Is a friend, for true friendship’s a treasure;
And yet, lest your friend prove a foe,
Oh! taste not the dangerous pleasure.
Thus friendship’s a flimsy affair, .
Thus riches and health are a bubble;
Thus there’s nothing delightful but care,
Nor anything pleasing but trouble.

If a mortal could point out that life
Which on earth could be nearest to heaven,
Let him, thanking his stars, choose a wife
To whom truth and honor are given.
But honor and truth are so rare,
And horns, when they’re cutting, so tingle,
That, with all my respect to the fair,
I’d advise him to sigh, and live single.

It appears from these premises plain,
That wisdom is nothing but folly;
That pleasure’s a term that means pain,
And that joy is your true melancholy;
That all those who laugh ought to cry,
That’t is fine frisk and fun to be grieving;
And that, since we must all of us die,
We should taste no enjoyment while living.

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