Beginning on September 17, 2011, a group of activists began occupying a section of lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. The action became known as Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and lasted until November 15, 2011, when the group of forced to leave and their tents removed. The issues raised by the group were diverse and the material they published equally varied. The OWS Screen Printing Guild was organized as an official working group within the OWS General Assembly to manage visual material, with a subgroup known as Occuprint to help with publishing.

According to their literature, “Occuprint emerged when The Occupied Wall Street Journal asked us to guest curate an issue dedicated to the poster art of the global Occupy movement.” http://occuprint.org “Occuprint showcases posters from the worldwide Occupy movement, all of which are part of the creative commons, and available to be downloaded for noncommercial use, though we ask that artists be given attribution for their work. Our Print Lab is collaboration with the Occupy Wall Street Screen Printing Guild.”

In 2012, a portfolio of thirty-one posters was selected under the curatorial eye of Marshall Weber, director of Booklyn, a non-profit artist and bookmakers organization headquartered in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Occuprint organizer, Jesse Goldstein, and various Occuprint editorial committee members including Molly Fair, Josh MacPhee, and John Boy assisted in the organization and distribution of the screen-printed portfolio. Some posters are signed by the artists and the edition limited to 100 copies. The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired one.

Occuprint Portfolio by edited by Marshall Weber,  Jesse Goldstein, Dave Loewenstein, and Alexandra Clotfelter (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Booklyn, 2012). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

John Sartain (1808-1897), after a drawing by James Hamilton (1819-1878) after daguerreotypes taken on the spot by John M. Hewitt (active 1840-1860). Ashland. The Homestead of Henry Clay. Second state. Published Philadelphia: F. Hegan, 1853. Etching, engraving, stipple engraving with hand coloring. Graphic Arts collection GAX 2014- in process

Originally created in 1852, during Clay’s lifetime, the first version of this print was published in Louisville, Kentucky. According to Eric Brooks’ book, Ashland: The Henry Clay Estate (2007), the first version or state showed Henry Clay sitting in a chair on the left side of the lawn. When Clay died, Sartain quickly reworked the plate, removing the figure from the chair, and published a second version in 1853. A third print was completed in 1863 with Clay back in his chair, which was published by Sartain in Philadelphia and R.R. Landon in Chicago. It is the second version with an empty chair that the Graphic Arts collection has acquired.

This enormous print shows Ashland, the 600 acre Lexington, Kentucky, estate of Henry Clay (1777-1852). The family lived on this plantation from 1806 to his death, although Clay was often in Washington D.C.  He ran for president of the United States five times from 1824 to 1848 but never succeeded in being elected.

Below the scene are three additional images. On the left is a figure of the God Hermes holding a shield; in the center is a bust of Henry Clay; and on the right is Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture sitting on a shock of wheat cradling a scythe. The same note as the first state is at the very bottom: “Entered according to Act of Congress by B. Lloyd in the year 1852 in the Clerk’s Office of the Dist. Court of the U.S. for the Dist. of KY.” An advertisement for this print can be found in the Lancaster (Pa.) Examiner and Herald, Wednesday, August 3, 1853.

See also:

James Akin (ca. 1773-1846), The pedlar and his pack or the desperate effort, an over balance, 1828. Etching, Aquatint with hand coloring. GA 2007.02442

Nathaniel Currier (1813-1888), Henry Clay, no date. Lithograph. Inscribed, below: “Henry Clay. Nominated for Eleventh president of the United States”.

Thomas Doney (active 1844-1849), Henry Clay, 1844. Engraving. New York : Anthony Edwards & Co. GA 2007.00395

James Barton Longacre (1794-1869) after design by William James Hubard (1807-1862), Henry Clay, no date. Engraving. GA 2007.00523

Unidentified Artist, Henry Clay, no date. Mezzotint. Boston: L. A. Elliot & Co. GA 2008.00307

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Cover design for book II of Ces peintres nos amis (The Painters Friends), (Cannes: Galerie 65, 1960). Text by Gilberte Duclaud; biographies by Serge Chauby. Lithograph. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process. Gift of the Ruth Ivor Foundation.

Picasso designed this lithograph to be included in the portfolio Dans l’Atelier De Picasso (In Picasso’s Studio), published by the Goldmark Gallery in 1957. The artist later selected the print and embellished it with additional colors, adding a dedication to Gilberte Duclaud and Serge Chauby, his dealers in Cannes at their Galerie 65.

The revised stone was then printed by master lithographer Fernand Mourlot (1895-1988) and used as the cover illustration for the second volume of his friend’s book Ces peintres nos amis (The Painter’s Friends).

The first state of this lithography was printed in six colors but this one is done in seventeen, each one requiring a separate run through the press. Unfortunately, Princeton does not yet own either the first or second books connected with this print.

It is, however, a nice complement to our portrait of the artist by Harry Sternberg (1904-2001), Picasso, 1944. Screen print. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2008.00578

Nikodimos, The Stamp of the Monastery of Saint Catherine, 1696. Woodcut with hand coloring. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process. Acquired with matching funds provided by the Program in Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund.matching funds provided by the Program in Hellenic Studies, and the Valerie Brackett and Nikolaos Monoyios Charitable Fund, in memory of Dimitrios and Kalliopi Monoyios.

“Greek scholars agree in emphasizing the role played by engravers active in [Lwow] in the late seventeenth century,” writes Waldemar Deluga. “Their work had a tremendous impact on changes in the Orthodox religious iconography of later centuries. It was in one of the biggest towns of the old Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth that engravings were being made for the Greek market.”

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“The artists working on commissions from the stauropegion brethren and from Hatzikyriakis Vourliotis [Chatzēkyriakēs], envoy of the St Catherine monastery in the Sinai, included Nikodém Zubrzycki and Dionizy Sinkiewicz. Their views of the monasteries and images of St Catherine of Alexandria, Moses and Aaron were copied frequently by Greek printmakers. In 1706, the hieromonk Matthaios from Sinai executed a woodcut copy of a view of the Sinai, presumably in a workshop in Crete.” –Waldemar Deluga and Iwona Zych, “Greek Church Prints,” Print Quarterly 19, no. 2 (June 2002): 123-35.

Detail from General View of Mount Sinai, 1727-36. Engraving. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process. Acquired with matching funds provided by the Program in Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund.

Thanks to the hard work of Dimitri H. Gondicas, Director, Stanley. J. Seeger ’52  Center for Hellenic Studies, and to matching funds provided by the Program in Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund, and the Valerie Brackett and Nikolaos Monoyios Charitable Fund, in memory of Dimitrios and Kalliopi Monoyios, the graphic arts collection has acquired sixteen early religious woodcuts and engravings made for the Monastery of Saint Catherine, Sinai. The prints, which have been dated from 1688 to the early 18th century, are among the earliest known religious prints produced for circulation in the Orthodox East.

The woodcuts were printed mainly in Lwow, Poland, under the patronage and at the expense of the Greek trader Hatzikyriakis Vourliotis. This collection is unique in many ways, not the least of which is the very presence of such early prints from wood, a technique abandoned in the early 18th century and replaced by copper engraving.  As Deluga notes, “Few have survived to our day, and they are generally considered a rarity; many are known in a unique impression.”

Unidentified artist, General View of Mount Sinai, 1727-36. Engraving. Graphic Arts collection 2014- in process. Acquired with matching funds provided by the Program in Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund.

“The Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai is one of the best-known early monastic establishments. Situated in the barren wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula, the monastery is dominated by the mighty massif of Mt. Sinai (Jebel Musa) where, according to the Biblical tradition, Moses received the Tablets of the Law from God.”

This text was written in the spring of 2006, for an exhibition conceived in conjunction with a graduate seminar entitled “Juncture of Heaven and Earth: The Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai” taught by Slobodan Ćurčić. To see more: http://web.princeton.edu/sites/Archaeology/rp/sinaiexhibit/

The exhibition commemorated Kurt Weitzmann (1904-93) and the Princeton-Michigan expedition to Mt. Sinai. Weitzmann, professor of art and archaeology at Princeton (1945-72) and his colleague George Forsyth, then professor at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), organized a series of expeditions (1956-65) to Mount Sinai, with the aim of studying the Monastery of St. Catherine and its treasures.

Nikodimos, Saint Catherine, 1698. Woodcut with hand coloring. Graphic Arts Collection gax 2014- in process. Acquired with matching funds provided by the Program in Hellenic Studies with the support of the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund.
This is the earliest known ‘paper icon’ of Saint Catherine.

Beside the article in Print Quarterly, one of the best sources of information on these prints, and topic in general, is: Dore Papastratou, Paper Icons: Greek Orthodox Religious Engravings, 1665-1899 (Athens: Papastratos; Recklinghausen: A. Bongers, 1990). Marquand Library (SA) Oversize NE655.2 .P3713 1990q

Mount Sinai and the Monastery of St. Catherine; an exhibition based on the expedition sponsored by the University of Michigan, Princeton University, and the University of Alexandria (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Library, 1960). Marquand Library (SA) BX387 .M68

Please note that since this post was written, we have made a correction. We had attributed some works to a certain monk Nikodimos Rokou. This is a mistake, due to a misunderstanding of an inscription that interpreted the polish word Rokou or better Roku as the painter’s last name, whereas in fact the word “roku” in Polish language stands for “during” and usually accompanies a date. Thus the inscription reads: IER[O]DIAKON NIKODIM / ROKU 1688 etc. which means “[made by] priest Nikodim, during the year 1688”. In light of this evidence, the catalogue entry has be updated and the painter’s name be changed from Nikodimos Rokou to plain Nikodimos (ιεροδιάκονος Νικόδημος). Thanks to Dr. Margarita Voulgaropoulou for her help in this attribution.