Monday, 15 August 2016, Rare Books and Special Collections begins its move out of the first floor of Firestone Library and into the lower level C floor, see below. Here’s just a peak at our adventure.
Our new home.
Our temporary reading room for the fall semester. Later, a classroom.
Curatorial offices, this is where you will find me.
Technical services are on the move already.
Lovely new workstations.
This site was occupied for sixty years by the class of 1877 Biological Laboratory. Here were nurtured generations of students in biology. The plaque at the left was situated above the entrance to the Laboratory.
Princeton’s biology laboratory, donated by the Class of 1877 at its tenth reunion, was demolished in the summer of 1946. This terra cotta plaque from the second floor was saved and embedded in Firestone Library’s south wall. Harry Osborn is quoted in Fifty Years of Princeton ’77, describing the Greek quote on the plaque:
The motto of our Class was “Panta Kinomen Petron.” We have always laughed at that motto, and it has been paraphrased by such a learned and godless man as Billy Dunning. Some part of our success, the great keynote of movement in this world, is to turn over a stone and see what is under it — what we can do. In other words, education stands for a great many different things, but the keystone of education is construction, is to build up, is to build something new, and that has been the spirit of 1877. Construction is the idea — building up, not tearing down. That is the great secret of human progress. Our Class motto enjoins us to leave no stone unturned, but to build, in everything in which we are engaged — to build for truth, to build for science, to build in politics, to build in literature, to build in philosophy, and to build especially for old Princeton.
αφήνουν καμία πέτρα (leave no stone unturned)
πάντα κινηθεί πέτρες (always moving stones)
For more, see https://etcweb.princeton.edu/Campus/text_1877.html
In 1879, Chicago banker Samuel Mayo Nickerson commissioned a new house from the architectural firm of Burling and Whitehouse of Chicago. Today, the building is the home of the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, offering the public a fascinating view of one of the grandest residential buildings of 19th-century Chicago.
“Philanthropist Richard H. Driehaus founded the museum on April 1, 2003 with a vision to influence today’s built environment by preserving and promoting architecture and design of the past.
To realize his vision, Mr. Driehaus commissioned a five-year restoration effort to preserve the structure and its magnificent interiors.
Today the galleries feature surviving furnishings paired with elegant, historically-appropriate pieces from the Driehaus Collection of Fine and Decorative Arts, including important works by such celebrated designers as Herter Brothers and Louis Comfort Tiffany.”
On the second floor, complementing home’s stunning interiors is the exhibition “With a Wink and a Nod: Cartoonists of the Gilded Age.” Original pen and ink drawings for Puck magazine are shown along with the final print versions of each cartoon. Organized by the Flagler Museum, Palm Beach, Florida, with special thanks to Jean S. and Frederic A. Sharf, the show is on view until January 8, 2017.
Several rooms have Lincrusta wall treatments, an embossed and heavily textured wall covering that imitates tooled leather or papier-mâché but with great beauty and stability.
First patented in 1877, the Nickerson house was one of the first to incorporate this new design material in the United States.
For more information about the wonderful interiors in the Driehaus, see http://www.driehausmuseum.org/visit/interior_highlights
See also David Bagnall, An American palace: Chicago’s Samuel M. Nickerson House (Chicago, Illinois: Richard H. Driehaus Museum: Distributed by University of Chicago Press, 2011). Marquand Library (SA) Oversize NA7511.4.C45 B34 2011q
This morning, the Art Section of IFLA (The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) opened its 2016 conference “The Art Library as Place” in the auditorium of The Art Institute of Chicago. The three day event was organized thanks to the collaboration with IFLA, the University of Notre Dame, and the Midstates and Ohio Valley Chapters of ARLIS/NA (Art Libraries Society of North America). Our focus is on modern and historic art library facilities, with papers, panel discussions, site visits, and tours of Chicago area architecture.
IFLA is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users. It is the global voice of the library and information profession. Founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1927, they now have over 1300 Members in approximately 140 countries around the world.
The Art Section endeavors to represent libraries and organizations concerned with all formats of textual and visual documentation for the visual arts, including fine arts, applied arts, design and architecture. The Section strives to improve access to information about these subjects for users of independent research libraries, museum libraries, art libraries attached to educational institutions art departments within national, college, university and public libraries, government departments and agencies, libraries in cultural centers and other collections of art information.
Speakers include Geert-Jan Koot, Curator of Library Collections and Former Head of the Research Library, Rijksmuseum; Soledad Canovas del Castillo, Head Librarian, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza; Javier Docampo, Director of the Department of Manuscripts, Incunabula and Rare Books, Biblioteca Nacional de España; Jan Simane, Head of the Library, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institute; Lucile Trunel, Conservatrice en chef, Directrice de la Bibliothèque, Bibliothèque Forney; and many others. I am talking about contemporary artists who embed their work into library architecture.
For more information, see http://ifla2016arts.arlisna.org/
Double checking our collection today to make sure we do hold the frontispiece engraving by William Hogarth (1697-1764) often forgotten by print curators. The scene offers many deliberate examples of confused and misplaced perspectives.
“Whoever makes a Design, without the Knowledge of Perspective, will be liable to such Absurdities as are shewn in this Frontispiece.”
William Hogarth, frontispiece for John Joshua Kirby (1716-1774), Dr. Brook Taylor’s method of perspective made easy, both in theory and practice … Being an attempt to make the art of perspective easy and familiar; to adapt it intirely [sic] to the arts of design; and to make it an entertaining study to any gentleman who shall chuse [sic] so polite an amusement (Ipswich: printed by W. Craighton, for the author, 1754). Rare Books (Ex) NA2710 .K5 1754
2001
Thanks to Rubén Gallo, Walter S. Carpenter, Jr., Professor in Language, Literature, and Civilization of Spain. Professor of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures, and Director, Program in Latin American Studies, who was traveling in France this summer, Princeton University Library acquired a back run of the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
Thanks also to our colleagues John Logan, Literature Bibliographer, and Fernando Acosta-Rodriguez, Librarian for Latin American Studies, Latino Studies, and Iberian Peninsular Studies for their assistance with this acquisition.
2013
It is surprising and instructive to see what we were laughing at ten or twenty years ago. Note the 9/11 issue at the top. These newspapers will be boxed by our conservation department and stored in Rare Books and Special Collections’ recap, making them available to all researchers.
2010
2006
2005
1997
1995
January 2003.
The next time I vote [Lionel] Jospin [Prime Minister of France from 1997 to 2002].
For many years, the model of the McCormick “Umbrella Plane,” ca. 1910, lived in the tower at Firestone library under difficult physical and environmental conditions. Recently, it was transported to a secure location but remained unique among our object holdings. https://blogs.princeton.edu/graphicarts/2012/05/umbrella_plane.html
It has never been fully studied, conserved, or appreciated, until now…
The model of the McCormick umbrella plane has been accepted into The National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. Their collection holds in trust over 60,000 artifacts and more than 20,000 cubic feet of archival materials. Historic aircraft and space artifacts, such as the 1903 Wright Flyer and the Apollo 11 Command Module Columbia, highlight the National Collection. Thousands of additional artifacts—including engines, rockets, uniforms, spacesuits, balloons, artwork, documents, manuscripts, and photographs—document the richness of the history of flight.
The National Air and Space Museum is perhaps best known for their collection of rare and historically significant aircraft and spacecraft. The object collection also includes engines, medals, trophies, instruments, and equipment, models, artwork, spacesuits, uniforms, and much more. Altogether, the collection includes more than 30,000 aviation and 9,000 space objects.
Under their care, the Umbrella Plane model will receive the conservation, research, and interpretation it deserves, ultimately making it available to an international public within the whole context of world aviation.
In this engraving, one man is already face down in the guillotine and a second, being tied to a board, will be next. Neither is Louis XVI.
Massacre of the French King! View of La Guillotine; or the Modern Beheading Machine, at Paris. By which the unfortunate Louis XVI (late King of France) suffered on the Scaffold, January 21st, 1793. Engraving and letterpress broadside. London: printed at the Minerva Office, for William Lane, and retail by E[Lizabeth] Harlow, Pall-Mall; Edwards, Bond-Street; Shepherd and Reynolds, Oxford-Street; . . . and all other Booksellers. Where may be had an exact and authenticated copy of his Will, Prince One-Pence, 1793. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2016- in process
“In London, the charismatic William Lane (ca. 1745-1814)) founded the Minerva Press in 1790, issuing remarkable numbers of sensational novels until he was succeeded upon his death by his partner A. K. Newman, who continued the business (although he gradually dropped the ‘Minerva Press’ name) through the 1820s. During the 1790s Minerva published fully a third of all the novels produced in London.” –Stuart Curran, The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
“By 1791 Lane employed a workforce of thirty and had four printing presses . . . Most were formulaic Gothic ‘German’ romances, produced in editions of 500 or 750 and never reprinted. ‘Minerva press’ novel became a common term to describe a particular type of light society romance or thriller, much condemned in conduct literature.” –William St. Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
“When William Lane . . . published his broadside account of the execution on January 29, he priced it at sixpence, with a discount for bulk purchases of one hundred; a few days later he halved the original price, and offered a still more generous discount to those willing to act as agents to distribute the sheet, expressing the hope that it would be circulated ‘in every village throughout the three kingdoms.’
In a long advertisement announcing these reductions, Lane described his wish that ‘this horrid and unjust sacrifice . . . should be known to all classes of people, and in particular to the honest and industrious Artisan and manufacturer, who might be deluded by the false and specious pretences of artful and designing persons.’” –Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker, Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution (University of California Press, 1998)
My thanks to a colleague who sent this February 1950* broadside by Lew Ney (Luther Emanuel Widen, 1886-1963), Greenwich Village printer and celebrated bohemian. The New Yorker took up hiking in the 1940s, briefly publishing Camp and Trail magazine with Writers’ Union founder Robert Whitcomb (Ex LM Little Magazine).
At 65 years old, Lew Ney is still working on his autobiography Mad Man, as well as other memoirs including Nuts I Have Known; It Had to Happen to Me; and I Married the Niece of Gertrude Stein. Unfortunately, none of these were published.
It is interesting that Lew Ney (pronounced looney) has finished downsizing, sending his personal collection of over 100 books and magazines to Princeton University Library between 1947 and 1949. Now, he is heading out of hike the Appalachian Trail, not expecting to return for one year.
*counting the day he was born
The Graphic Arts Collection is moving (again). We are almost packed, the computers will be turned off on August 15, and the entire move will be done around September 9, 2016. Please note the reading room will be closed to researchers on Thursday and Friday, August 18 and 19, so they can move also.
Hope you will find us on the C floor in the fall. Numbers and email addresses remain the same. Wish us luck.
https://airandspace.si.edu/