Bookplate collections often include prints that have names embedded in their design, mistaken as bookplates. This is the case with the above engraving found in a box of unsorted bookplates in our collection.

It is the title page for a series of eight plates by the Swiss engraver and entomologist Johann Rudolph Schellenberg (1740-1806). The small volume was called Pour raillerie (For mockery or All in Mockery) and was originally published in Winterthur, Switzerland, in 1772. (available for free download by the Swiss National Library):
https://www.e-helvetica.nb.admin.ch/pages/user/access/frontPageTwo.jsf?callnumber=nbdig-28434&BITfw2Ctx=I7lX2Q7BcpMS1u5t

Schellenberg partnered with Johann Caspar Fuessli (1743-1786) on multiple projects, most notably Archiv der Insectengeschichte / Archives de l’histoire des insects (Winterthour: Chez J. Ziegler, 1794). “The figures, which occupy 37 plates, are designed, etched and coloured by Mr. Schellenberg, of Winterthur, a man of uncommon knowledge in this branch of painting, whether we consider fidelity of character, high finish, or spirit of altitude. They appear chiefly to have been drawn from the insects themselves, a few excepted, in which the figures of Roesel may be traced.” –J. Johnson, Analytical Review: Or History of Literature, Domestic and Foreign, vol. 10 (1791).

We have yet to find the other plates in Pour raillerie, but they may still turn up.

While reorganizing and rehousing our circus poster collection, we can across this drawing for the weekly London newspaper, The Graphic. The drawing is mounted on the board’s recto and the published wood engraving on the verso. A double window mat is being made to house both as they are mounted.

The drawing is by William Small (1843-1929), who was a regular on the staff of The Graphic. Originally from Edinburgh, Small moved to London where he illustrated novels, magazines, and children’s books. Besides The Graphic, his work can be found in The Quiver, Good Words, and the Sunday Magazine, among others.

William Small, The Chariot Race at Barnum and Bailey’s Show, 1898. Graphite, chalk, gouache drawing. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2017- in process. Mounted with published wood engraving on verso.

William Small, The Chariot Race at Barnum and Bailey’s Show. Published in The Graphic, London, February 12, 1898. Wood engraving. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2017- in process

In the same issue of The Graphic is an advertisement for the performance at the Olympia on Hammersmith Road. Two performances were held each day, announced here “in its seventh week.”

Here is the art studio at The Graphic, posted at Spartacus Educational, http://spartacus-educational.com/Jgraphic.htm where they note: “When it was first started, the journal was produced in a rented house. However, by 1882 the company owned three buildings, twenty printing machines and employed over 1,000 people. The Christmas edition, printed in colour and costing a shilling, was particularly popular, selling over 500,000 copies in Britain and the USA.”

A colorful Japanese toy print turned up unexpectedly this week. Publication information at the lower right tells us the artist of the nine vignettes was Nomura Yoshikuni and that it was published by Shichihōdō (or Shippōdō) in Kyoto, a firm that often published materials related to Kabuki theater. Nomura Yoshimitsu (Yoshikuni III) 1855-1903 was the grandson of Utagawa Yoshikuni I, who was a pupil of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861).

The acrobats are called street performers, known for accomplishing these feats out-of-doors and so, Yoshimitsu sets these views in natural landscapes. No other copy of the print has been found in an American collection.

Nomura Yoshimitsu (Yoshikuni III, 1855-1903), Untitled [Japanese circus acrobats].  Kyōto, Japan: Shichihōdō, ca. 1890. Color woodblock print. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process.

Heroes of the Colored Race. Chromolithograph. Philadelphia: Published by J. Hoover, 628 Arch St., 1881. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process. Purchased with funds from the Hurlbut Barnes Cutting Memorial Fund.

Thanks to Steven Knowlton, Librarian for History and African American Studies and funds from the Hurlbut Barnes Cutting Memorial Fund, the Graphic Arts Collection is the fortunate new owner of a rare, 19th-century chromolithograph entitled Heroes of the Colored Race.

The print commemorates men prominent in and representative of the advancement of African American civil rights, including Blanche Kelso Bruce, 1841-1898; Frederick Douglass, 1818-1895; Hiram Rhodes Revels, 1827?-1901; John Roy Lynch, 1847-1939; Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865; James Abram Garfield, 1831-1881; Ulysses Simpson Grant, 1822-1885; Joseph Hayne Rainey, 1832-1887; Robert Smalls, 1839-1915; John Brown, 1800-1859; and Charles Edmund Nash, 1844-1913.

The central vignette highlights portraits of ex-United States Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce of Mississippi, abolitionist, federal administrator, and diplomat Frederick Douglass, and ex-United States Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi.

The four corners are filled with scenes showing the contributions of African Americans to the prosperity of the United States through their labor, studies, and participation in civic life, and the preservation of the Union through service in the United States Colored Troops. Also featured are portraits of African American members of the United States House of Representatives John R. Lynch of Mississippi, Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina, Robert Smalls of South Carolina, and Charles E. Nash of Louisiana.

Bruce, Douglass, Lynch, Rainey, and Smalls were all enslaved for some portions of their lives.

The printer/publisher was Joseph Hoover, born of Swiss-German heritage in Baltimore on December 29, 1830. The Library Company of Philadelphia’s biographical database on local printers states that by 1893, Hoover was noted as “probably the largest publisher of pictures,” distributing internationally 600,000 to 700,000 prints a year with his son, Henry L. Hoover. The listing continues:

“Hoover settled in Philadelphia in 1856. He opened a wood turning and framing establishment on the 1400 block of Hamilton Street, and about 1858, married his first wife Roseanna (b. ca. 1833). …In the spring of 1868 the “chromo and print publisher” advertised his removal to 804 Market Street, from where he oversaw the work of Duval & Hunter and James Queen and issued his well-advertised and acclaimed “The Changed Cross” in 1870. . . . During the 1870s and 1880s, Hoover’s business continued to grow (estimated worth of $30,000-$40,000) and he established printing plants at 450-452 North Thirteenth Street and [numerous other locations]. With this financial success also came professional acknowledgment and Hoover was one of only three chromolithographers to be honored at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876.”

The Conversion of Galen. March 1, 1775 (reworked, reissued state). Published by Robert Sayer (1725–1794) and John Bennett (active 1760, died 1787). Hand-colored mezzotint pasted on glass plate. Graphic arts Collection, Glass.

A mezzotint on glass, entitled The Conversion of Galen, was recently transferred from the Cotsen Collection to the Graphic Arts Collection. Lettered below the image with the title are eight lines of verse in two columns:
Forbear, vain man, to launch with reason’s eye
Through the vast depths of dark immensity,
Nor think thy narrow but presumpt’ous mind
The least idea of thy God can find.

Thought, crowding thought, distracts the lab’ring brain,
For how can finite Infinite explain?
Then God adore, and conscious rest in this,
None but Himself can paint Him as He is.

Galen tho’ an Atheist, was a strict Observer of Nature, till by Accident finding a Skeleton, / he thought it of too curious a Construction to be the Production of Chance. // London, Printed for R. Sayer & I. Bennett No. 53, Fleet Street, // as the Act directs 1st March 1775.

“A mezzotint emerges from darkness into light,” writes Elizabeth Barker. She goes on to talk about the decorative use of prints by collectors or hobbyist in room decoration. “Such ‘furniture’ prints might be close-framed (to reveal only the image); mounted on stretchers, varnished, and framed (without glazing); or pasted directly onto the walls of domestic interiors and public spaces. Hobbyists transferred mezzotint designs onto pieces of glass (attaching them with a waterproof adhesive, then dissolving the paper so that only the ink remained on the glass), which they colored in oils or watercolors to resemble paintings. Some mezzotints, such as the (often crudely) humorous scenes known as “drolls” issued by leading publishers Robert Sayers and Carrington Bowles, were hand-painted and sold in garish colors.”– Elizabeth E. Barker, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2003 http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/mztn/hd_mztn.htm

Princeton University Library conservator Ted Stanley has also looked into mezzotints on glass in this paper: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40026493?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

“Heavily influenced by the 19th century naturalist illustrations of John Audubon, Ford composes dense allegories that simultaneously reference and re-imagine the field-guide aesthetic to blend natural histories, folklore, and political commentary that often offer scathing critiques of industrialism, colonialism, and humanity’s effect on the environment.”–Prospectus

Walton Ford, Infinite Histories. Tiger Superstitions, 1995 (95-335). Eight-color lithograph. Collaborating printer: Bill Lagattuta. Edition of 15. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process

We went to India not only to observe the changes that had occurred since my former visit, 23 years ago, at the conclusion of our Philippine War, but also to visit places of interest, see something of the military air and ground forms, visit some old friends and acquaintances, and then have a good tiger and big game hunt. –“Tiger-Hunting in India” By Brigadier General William Mitchell, Assistant Chief, U.S. Army Air Service in The National Geographic Magazine (F G1 .N385)

See the reference to:

https://art21.org/watch/art-in-the-twenty-first-century/s2/humor/