The Greatest Invention of Modern Times and More

During the conservation of our circus broadsides, a large group of circus magazines and multi-page advertising were separated from the flat paper. These are now begin catalogued and housed with our other bound material. They announce many thrilling attractions from P.T. Barnum and other entrepreneurs, but one that especially caught our eye was an advertisement for Professor Faber’s “Talking Machine.”


In 1844, several American newspapers mention the first visit of Joseph Faber (ca.1800-1850) to the United States with his contraption named Euphonia:

“The Talking Machine. Having seen in one or two papers an account of this new invention we went with a friend yesterday to see it. –Mr. Faber, the artist, speaks only German, yet he has taught his machine to speak English, and speak it too better than German. And what is still more curious, it gives some of our difficult sounds better than Mr. Faber himself can pronounce them. The ‘th,’ for instance, which is the Rubicon in our language to a German, it gives like a native-born American. Indeed, we do not believe the ‘Native American Party’ itself could tell the difference. On asking Mr. Faber how it came to pass his machine could speak better English than German, he replied: “Why shouldn’t it? –it is American born.” The sounds issue from the lips of a Mask that as they open and shut reveal a tongue that plays like the living member, though no so ‘limberly.’ It is really laughable to see this bust placed upright with a turbaned head and whiskered face slowly enunciating in a whining tone, sounds which we have heretofore considered as belonging exclusively to our species.” –New York Daily Tribune January 26, 1844.

In December 1845, Joseph Faber exhibited his “Wonderful Talking Machine” at the Musical Fund Hall in Philadelphia and Princeton University professor Joseph Henry (1797-1878) was called on to help determine whether or not Faber’s invention was a fraud. Henry soon became one of Faber’s chief supporters.

Barnum saw Faber’s demonstration in 1844 while in London and later arranged for Faber’s nephew to perform with Euphonia at Barnum’s museum in New York City. Prof. Faber had unfortunately committed suicide in 1850.

See more: http://history-computer.com/Dreamers/Faber.html
James Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema: perception, representation, modernity (New York: Columbia University Press, c2000). Firestone Library (F) PN1995.7 .L37 2000

A few other magazines:


The Fabric Group


Thanks to Bonnie Yochelson, speaking at the “Rethinking Pictorialism” symposium, we were introduced to “The Fabric Group” series of advertisements by Anton Bruehl (1900-1982) and Ralph Steiner (1899-1986).

A student of Clarence White, Bruehl opened a photography studio in 1926 partnering first with Steiner and later with his older brother, Martin Bruehl. When the Manhattan men’s haberdashers Weber and Heilbroner hired them to prepare an advertising campaign, they invented three paper dolls wearing Fabric Group suits, who appeared weekly from January 1, 1927 to December 29, 1928 in the pages a sophisticated new magazine called The New Yorker.

Writing for the New York Times, Sarah Boxer noted that “Every week . . . the Fabric Group would go ‘abroad’ in their fedoras to have dangerous adventures like deep-sea diving with fish or spelunking with dinosaurs. They weathered all perils with jaunty good humor, while wishing they were back home wearing their Fabric Group suits.”

As much as the weekly articles and reviews, these advertisements built the young magazine’s circulation and its long term success.

Seen above: Anton Bruehl (1900-1982) and Ralph Steiner (1899-1986), Adventures of the Fabric Group no 2 (in art gallery) 1927; Anton Bruehl (1900-1982), The Fabric Group abroad no 4 (arriving at French customs) 1927; Anton Bruehl (1900-1982), The Fabric Group Abroad no 16 (picnic in Germany) 1927; Anton Bruehl (1900-1982), Adventures of The Fabric Group no 21 (beach umbrella) 1927; Anton Bruehl (1900-1982), The Fabric Group Abroad no 31 (Buddha statue) 1928; and Anton Bruehl (1900-1982), The Fabric Group Abroad no 33 (in Australia with sheep) 1928.

The New Yorker (New York: F.R. Publishing Corp., 1925- ) Annex A, Forrestal (TEMP) AP2 .N4992q

Welcome to Rethinking Pictorialism Symposium Visitors

In conjunction with this weekend’s symposium, “Rethinking “Pictorialism”: American Art and Photography from 1895 to 1925” sponsored by the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, visitors were also introduced to our growing collection of pre-cinema optical devices.

Thank you to those students and scholars who got up extra early to come over to our classroom display.

Organized by Anne McCauley, David Hunter McAlpin Professor of the History of Photography and Modern Art, the two-day conference is being held in conjunction with the exhibition, Clarence H. White and His World: The Art and Craft of Photography, 1895-1925, on display at the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ (October 7, 2017–January 7, 2018).

After Princeton, the show travels to the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA (February 7, 2018–June 3, 2018); the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME (June 22, 2018–September 16, 2018); and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (October 21, 2018–January 21, 2019).

For more information about the exhibition and catalogue, see:

http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/story/clarence-h-white-and-his-world-art-and-craft-photography-1895%E2%80%931925

A few more magic lantern slides

Leaver slide of two cats confronting each other. Their backs go up.

Slipping slide, pulling a tooth.

Slipping slides, only the eyes move.

Thanks to a generous donation from David S. Brooke, director emeritus of the Clark Art Institute, the Graphic Arts Collection and the Cotsen Children’s Library have acquired a new group of chiefly English, hand-painted magic lantern slides. Here are a few more examples from this wonderful collection.

Seven of a twenty-five-slide temperance set titled “The Last Shilling,” in which a husband is about to spend his last shilling on drink but remembers his poor wife and instead, returns home to give the shilling to her.
Various chromatrope slides.

The Last Judgment in Twelve Plates

Detail

Detail

Detail

 

[above] Pieter de Jode I (1570–1634) after the painting by Jean Cousin the Younger (ca. 1522–1594). Iudicÿ uniuersalis paradigma Sacrae Scripturae testimonijs confirmatum = Pourtraict du Iugement Vniuersel confirmé des tesmoignaiges de l’Escripture Saincte. Engraved in 12 plates. Published in Paris by P. Drevet aux Galleries, [First issued in 1615; this impression between 1726 and 1738]. Hollstein IX.204.83. Graphic Arts Collection 2017- in process

[below] Jean Cousin the Younger, Last Judgment, ca.1585. Oil on canvas, 145 x 142 cm. Musée duLouvre, Paris

Born in Antwerp, Jode studied with Hendrick Goltzius and matriculated into the Guild of St Luke. His 12 engraved sheets (9 image and 3 text) after Cousin’s Last Judgment (Louvre), were first issued in 1615, dedicated by Guilielmus Wittenbroot to King Louis XIII of France, and approved by the canon and censor Lawrence Beyerlinck of Antwerp.

The framed set of prints recently acquired by the Graphic Arts Collection was printed later from the original plates, acquired by the print publisher and graveur du Roi Pierre Drevet (1663-1738). Between 1703 and 1726 Drevet’s shop was located on the rue Saint-Jacques, after which he was granted lodgings in the Palais du Louvre. Our impression is inscribed “A Paris Chez Drevet rue St. Iacques a la Nonciation Avec Privilege du Roy” in the lower center of image and dates from after 1726.

 

 

See also: Recueil des oeuvres choises de Jean Cousin, peinture, sculpture, vitraux, miniatures, gravures à l’eau-forte et sur bois, reprodutes en fac-similé par MM. Adam et St. Pilinksi, Aug. Racinet, Lemaire, Durand et Dujardin (quarante-et-une planches, dont quatre en couleurs) et publiées avec un introduction par Ambroise Firmin-Didot (Paris: Firmin Didot, Frères, fils et ct cie, 1873). Marquand Library (SA) Oversize ND553.C825 D48f

Also engraved by Pieter de Jode I: Antonio Tempesta (1555-1630), Metamorphoseon, siue, Transformationum Ouidianarum libri quindecim, æeneis formis ab Antonio Tempesta Florentino incisi, et in pictorum, antiquitatisque studiosorum gratiam nunc primum exquisitissimis sumptibus a Petro de Iode Antuerpiano in lucem editi (Amsterodami, Wilhelmus Ianssonius excudit [1606?]). Rare Books (Ex) NE662.T45 O94 1606


Text in French and in Latin.

A previous owner of the set now at Princeton framed the 9 image plates reproducing The Last Judgment, leaving the 3 text plates in a separate mat. Other sets, such as the one in the Bibliothèque nationale de France [below] are framed with the text included.

 

 

Aquatints by Alexandre Alexeïeff

Léon-Paul Fargue (1876-1947), Poëmes. Eaux-fortes en coleurs par Alexeieff ([Paris]: Librairie Gallimard, [1943]). Copy 61 of 136. Graphic Arts GAX 2017- in process

 


The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired another volume with aquatints by Alexandre Alexeïeff (1901-1982).

The Russian artist emigrated to France after the Russian Revolution and went on to animate films, design sets, and beginning in 1926, illustrate books by Poe, Baudelaire, Andersen, Hoffman, Tolstoy, Pasternak and Malraux, among others.

In her thesis (Universiteit Utrecht 2012), Bregje Hofstede lists 50 books with prints by Alexeïeff (file:///C:/Users/JULIEM~1/AppData/Local/Temp/Alexander%20Alexeieff%20and%20the%20Art%20of%20Illustration-1.pdf)

The chronological list below may not be complete. Titles with an asterisk have only been illustrated with a frontispiece.

 

Soupault, Philippe, Guillaume Apollinaire (Marseille: Éditions Les Cahiers du Sud, 1926).* – Giraudoux, Jean, La Pharmacienne (Paris: Éditions des Cahiers Libres, 1926). – Giraudoux, Jean, Siegfried et le Limousin (Paris: Aux Aldes, 1927). – Gogol, Nicolai, Le journal d’un fou (Paris: Schiffrin / Éditions de la Pléiade, 1927). Second edition: London, Cress Press Limited, 1929. – Hémon, Louis, Maria Chapdelaine. Récit du Canada Francais (Paris: Éditions du Polygone, 1927. – Maurois, André, Les Anglais (Paris: Cahiers Libres, 1927).* – Maurois, André, Voyage au pays des Articoles (Paris: Schiffrin / Éditions de la Pléiade, 1927). – Genbach, Jean, L’Abbé de l’abbaye, poèmes supernaturalistes. (Paris: Tour d’ivoire, 1927). – Soupault, Philippe, Guillaume Apollinaire, ou Reflets de l’incendie (Marseille: Les Cahiers du Sud, 1927).* – Morand, Paul, Bouddha Vivant (Paris: Aux Aldes / Grasset, 1928). – Pouchkine, Alexandre, La dame de pique (Paris: J. E. Pouterman Éditeur, 1928). Second edition: London, the Blackmore Press, 1928. – Kessel, Joseph, Les Nuits de Sibérie (Paris: Flammarion 1928). – Perrault, Charles, Contes (Paris: Hilsum 1928).* – Green, Julien, Mont Cinère (Paris: Plon, 1928).* – Apollianaire, Guillaume, Les épingles (Paris: Cahiers Libres, 1928).* – Soupault, Philippe, Le roi de la vie (Paris: Cahiers Libres, 1928).* – Bove, Emmanuel, Une Fugue (Paris: Éditions de la belle Page, 1928).* – Green, Julien, Adrienne Mesurat (Paris: Les Exemplaires, 1929). – Perrault, C., Les Contes de Perrault. Édition du Tricentenaire. Illustrés par 33 graveurs (Paris: Éditions Au Sans Pareil, 1928). – Giraudoux, Jean, Marche vers Clermont (Paris: Cahiers Libres, 1928).* – Poe, Edgar Allan, Fall of the House of Usher (Paris: Éditions Orion, 1929). Second edition: Maastricht, Stols, 1930. – Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Les frères Karamazov (Paris: la Pléiade / Schiffrin, 1929). – Kessel, Joseph, Dames de Californie (Paris : NRF, 1929).* – Poe, Edgar Allan, translated by Baudelaire, Colloque entre Monos et Una (Paris: Orion, 1929). – Delteil, Joseph, On the River Amour (New York: Covici, 1929). – Pushkin, Aleksandr Sergeevich, Les recites de feu Ivan Pétrovitch Bielkine (Maastricht/Bruxelles: Stols 1930). – Fargue, L.-P., Poèmes (Paris: NRF Gallimard, 1931). – Fournier, Alain, Le Grand Meaulnes (Paris: Éditions de Cluny, 1931).* – [?] Louys, Pierre, Les Chansons de Bilitis (Paris: Cluny, 1933). – Baudelaire, Charles, Petits poèmes en Prose (Paris: Société du Livre d’Art, 1934). – Cervantès, Don Quichote, 1936. Published without text by ArtExEast, Geneva, 2011. – Andersen, Hans Christian: Images de la Lune (Paris: Maximilien Vox, 1942). – Afanas’ev, Aleksandr, Russian Fairy Tales (New York: Pantheon Books, 1945). – Soupault, Philippe: Journal d’un Fantôme (Paris: Éditions du Point du Jour, 1946).* – Tolstoy, Leo, What Men Live by: Russian stories and Legends (York: Pantheon Books, 1943). – Soupault, Philippe, Message de l’île déserte (Den Haag: Stols, 1947).* – Blake, William, Chants d’innocence et d’expérience (Paris: Cahiers Libres, 1947).* – Soupault, Philippe (transl.), Chant du Prince Igor (Rolle: Eynard, 1950). – Chekov, Anton, Une Banale Histore, suivie de: La Steppe – Goûssev – Vollôdia (Paris Imprimerie Nationale / André Sauret, 1955).* – Flaubert, Gustave, Premières Lettres à L.C. (Paris: Les Impénitents, 1957).* – Pasternak, Boris, Dr Zhivago (Paris: Gallimard, 1959). Second edition by Pantheon Books. – Hoffmann, Ernst Theodore Amadeus, Contes (Paris: Club du Livre, 1960). – Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Gambler & Notes from the Underground (New York: Heritage Press / Limited Editions Club / Sign of the Stone Book, 1967). – Malraux, André, Oeuvres (Paris: Rombaldi, 1979). – Malraux, André, La Tentation de l’Occident (Paris: Ateliers Rigal, 1991). – Malraux, André, La Condition Humain, (Paris: Ateliers Rigal, 1991). – Malraux, André, La Voie Royale (Paris: Ateliers Rigal, 1991). – Malraux, André, Les Noyés de l’Altenbourg (Paris: Ateliers Rigal, 1991). – Tolstoy, Leo, Anna Karenina (Paris: Rigal, 1995 / Librairie Nicaise, 1997). – Alexeïeff, Alexandre, Album de 120 eaux-fortes et Aquatintes de A. Alexeïeff (Paris: Ateliers Rigal-Bertansetti, 1997).

The Fixed Income of France in 1789


What was the state of France’s finances at the beginning of the French Revolution? What was the annual revenue for goods produced in France and sold internationally? How much was spent by the Royal family on their china, silverware, or clothing? How much was loaned to the United States to pay for their revolution?

1789 was a pivotal year in the history of France. The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired two enormous broadsides itemizing the finances of the country that year. Detailed in gold with capitals rubricated in red and gold, the handwritten sheets are said to have been displayed publicly yet few copies survive (the only other recorded copies outside France are at Harvard). The sheets appear to be a pair, meant to be studied together:

Tableau des Finances de la France à l’Époque de la Tenue des États-Générau[x]: Ensemble, le Résumé de l’Étendue de la Population et des Contributions de chaque Généralité du Royaume = Table of the Finances of France at the Time of the Holding of the States-General: Together, a Summary of the Extent of the Population and the Contributions of Each Generality of the Kingdom.
and
Apperçu de la Balance du Commerce de la France Année – 1789: Ensemble le Relevé de la Population des Finances et Forces Militaires des Principales Puissances de l’Europe = Overview of the Balance of Trade of France for the Year 1789: Together the Survey of the Population of Finance and Military Forces of the Main Powers of Europe.

Itemized lists detail the fixed income and expenses for the year, with the resulting deficit in the bottom corner. There is a list of goods imported from Holland, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, England and the United States, as well as trade with India and China. Here are a few details:

Note on the right: Various objects of national industry include paintings, prints, books, leather, and fans, gloves, etc.

Digitization of Hamilton Smalls

“1767 / Heartman #27 / This is the / [George Parker] Winship copy. / The only one / known.”  The New-England Primer Improved for the More Easy Attaining the True Reading of English To Which Is Added, The Assembly of Divines, and Mr. Cotton’s Catechism (1767). 10 cm.

In preparation for the digitization of the Sinclair Hamilton Collection, each volume is being examined by Roel Munoz, Library Digital Imaging Manager, and  Mick LeTourneaux, Rare Books Conservator. We are working in order by size, not date, beginning with the smallest American imprints that include woodcuts or wood engravings.

Some conservation will be done now and some will wait until after the volume is photographed, making it easier for the technicians to open and shoot the pages. Missing volumes are being located and Gail Smith, Senior Bibliographic Specialist, is revising the cataloguing to reflect the location in our new vaults.

[Above] An early conservator repaired the spine with new sewing and then, continued stitching across the title page.

[Below] This book was probably repaired by a 19th-century reader using a straight pin, which still holds three pages together.

 

Every binding will be photographed, front and back, as well as all blank pages, although there are very few.  If a special box was constructed for the volumes, it will be photographed also. Wish us luck.

Princeton University. Library. Early American book illustrators and wood engravers, 1670-1870; a catalogue of a collection of American books, illustrated for the most part with woodcuts and wood engravings in the Princeton University Library. With an introductory sketch of the development of early American book illustration by Sinclair Hamilton. With a foreword by Frank Weitenkampf (Princeton, N.J., 1958). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Hamilton

Extra Extra George Cruikshank

Thanks to the help of the Friends of the Princeton University Library, the Graphic Arts Collection has acquired an enlarged and extra-illustrated copy of Blanchard Jerrold (1826-1884), The Life of George Cruikshank (London: Chatto and Windus, 1880 (1882)). These four folio volumes are packed with 1,052 additional hand-colored etchings, engravings, portraits, map, letters, drawings, watercolors, and other significant works highlighting and elaborating on the original text.

The Life of George Cruikshank is not an uncommon book, Princeton has several. The text was prepared four years after Cruikshank’s death in 1878 as an homage to the artist. Extra-illustrated versions are also included in our collection but they do not compare to our new acquisition.

Previously, the largest volume in Princeton’s collection was comprised of two octavo books (as published) with 78 additional plates. Our new acquisition is three times the size with extra material from the whole of Cruikshank’s oeuvre, beginning with his earliest caricatures to his book illustrations (especially Dickens) to his obsession with Temperance, including such series as Monstrosities (Fashion), Oliver Twist, Hunting Stories, The Bottle, Drunkard’s Children and many others. Several prints are signed by Cruikshank in pencil and there are frequent notes concerning their rarity.


There are many plates of London views and haunts; portraits of the Royal family and leading celebrities; playbills and posters for theater productions; along with many prints by Cruikshank’s family and colleagues, such as Thomas Rowlandson, Isaac Cruikshank, James Gillray, Robert Cruikshank and others.

There are seventeen manuscripts and signed items including autograph letters by George Cruikshank, Ruskin, Jerrold, Crowquil, and others. One letter has been attributed to Guy Fawkes.

Note the added borders on the lower print.

 


Extra-illustrated books are receiving attention from a new generation of scholars. A major conference is planned for next spring at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany along with a special issue of the journal Wolfenbütteler Notizen zur Buchgeschichte on the subject.

In his study of the history, symptoms, and cure of a fatal disease caused by the unrestrained desire to possess printed works, Thomas Frognall Dibdin observes that “[a] passion for a book which has any peculiarity about it,” as a result of grangerising by means of collected prints, transcriptions, or various cutouts, “or which is remarkable for its size, beauty, and condition—is indicative of a rage for unique copies, and is unquestionably a strong prevailing symptom of the Bibliomania.”

Holywell Street

These volumes join Princeton University Library’s collection of over 1000 of Cruikshank’s caricatures and over 100 of his drawings, collected by Richard Waln Miers, Class of 1888. Thanks to our Friends, these new materials enhance an already great collection, bringing added rewards to our students and to scholars worldwide.

Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur

James Sayers (1748-1823), Illustrious Heads designed for a new History of Republicanism, in French and English, dedicated to the Opposition.1794. London: Hannah Humphrey. Lettered with both titles and “JS / Published 12th May 1794 by H.Humphrey No.18 Old Bond Street.” 9 etchings on wove paper. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process

An example of a print with and without a liberty cap

On May 12, 1794, Hannah Humphry’s Old Bond Street print shop released a set of satirical prints by James Sayers (1748-1823) titled “Illustrious Heads.” The eight portraits and a cover sheet were “dedicated to the Opposition,” transforming eight prominent British politicians into French patriots, with new names and the “bonnet rouge” (liberty cap). “Mutato nomine de te Fabula Narratur,” = “Change the name and the joke’s on you [or the story is about you].”

The title sheet features a satyr sitting on a pile of books, who warns, “If the cap fit put it on,” and then adds, “The work will not be compleat till all the heads are taken off.”

Collectors took the set home and cut out the hat (making that sheet extremely rare), so that it could be put on each of the illustrious heads. Princeton’s newly acquired set is complete except for the cap, which is a facsimile.

The Sayers entry in the Dictionary of National Biography notes,

“From 1783 onwards, for several years, he drew a series of caricatures, . . . mainly upon Fox, but subsequently upon Burke and other opponents of Pitt. These caricatures . . . were so powerful and direct in their purpose that Fox is said to have declared that Sayers’s caricatures did him more harm than all the attacks made on him in parliament or the press.”

The set includes these British figures, renamed after their French counterpart:

Charles James Fox (1749-1806) = Maximilien de Robespierre (1758-1794)

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) = Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac (1755-1841)

Charles Stanhope, third Earl of Stanhope (1753-1816) = Anacharsis Cloots (1755-1794)

James Maitland, 8th Earl of Lauderdale (1759-1839) = Jacques Pierre Brissot de Warville (1754-1793)

John Courtenay (1738-1816) = Camille Desmoulins (1760-1794)

Sir Philip Francis (1740-1818) = Pierre Philippeaux (1754-1794)

William Petty, 1st Marquis of Lansdowne (1737-1805) = Bernard-François, Marquis de Chauvelin (1766-1832)

Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 4th Duke of Grafton (1735-1811) = Louis Philippe Joseph, duc d’Orléans (1747-1793)