The artist of this Asagao mura (collection of morning-glories) has not been identified although the date 1817 has been attached to the book in English.
We hope to have the volume translated soon but if you recognize it, could you let us know?
Thank you.
Arthur William Heintzelman (1891-1965), Albert Schweitzer, no date. Etching and drypoint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2008.00426
In 1947 the Daily Princetonian announced “Undergraduates are invited to view an exhibition of etchings and dry points at the Princeton Print Club at 36 University Place. The show, beginning tomorrow and extending through February 28, will be open from 2-5. To highlight the display, Arthur William Heintzelman, renowned for his work with brush, crayon and needle, will speak February 27 at 8 p.m. at the Print Club on the “Art of Etching.” Mr. Heintzelman, a member of numerous museum associations, has earned many awards for his fine artistic work.” Heintzelman also provided curator Elmer Adler with a number of his own prints for the Print Club’s lending library.
Born in Newark, Heintzelman entered the Rhode Island School of Design at the age of fourteen. After a successful career as a printmaker in his own right, Heintzelman helped to establish a print department at the Boston Public Library, where he became the first Keeper of the Prints of the Albert H. Wiggin Collection and of the Print Department in 1941. For nearly forty years, he hung popular exhibitions in the Wiggin Gallery [seen below] and added important impressions by Picasso, Dürer, Daumier, and many others.
Boston Public Library. Albert H. Wiggin Gallery. Exhibition. Contemporary American Prints [ca. January 5, 1953–January 31, 1953]. Gelatin silver print. Pictured: Paul B. Swenson, assistant (left), Arthur W. Heintzelman, keeper of prints (center), and Muriel C. Robinson, first assistant (right). BPL Accession #: 08_02_004463
Arthur William Heintzelman (1891-1965), Mendient Italien, 1927. Etching and drypoint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2007.01428. Gift of Russell T. Mount, Class of 1902.
The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired 61 proofs dating from 1861-1881, for The Cornhill Magazine. The illustrations were designed by George Du Maurier (1834-1896), Arthur Hopkins (1848-1930), Francis Wilfred Lawson (1842-1935), and Hubert von Herkomer (1849-1914); and wood engraved by Joseph Swain (1820-1909). The excellent provenance is from the collection of George Smith of Smith, Elder & Company (1824-1901), the founder and publisher of The Cornhill.
All of these plates were exhibited in 1986 by the Christopher Mendez Gallery in London and selected ones were lent by Smith to the seminal exhibition Modern Illustration at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1900.
The benefit of having proofs is to see each design clearly and as the artist intended, not always possible once the large editions are printed and bound into the magazine.
The majority of these proofs are by George Du Maurier, a celebrated Victorian cartoonist and novelist, known in particular as the author of Trilby (1894). Du Maurier worked as a social cartoonist for Punch and satirized the fashions and manners of the Victorian social elite. He also famously parodied the Pre-Raphaelites and the aesthetic movement.
However, for Cornhill he produced straight illustrations for its short stories and poems by authors that included the founder George Smith and first editor William Thackerey.
“George du Maurier” by Henry James:
“…He was the man in the world as to whom one could most feel, even as, in some degree, a junior, that not having known him all one’s own did not in the least prevent one’s having known him all his life. Of the so many pleasant things his friendship consisted of none was pleasanter, for a man of imagination in particular, than this constant beguiled admission, through his talk, his habits of remembrance, his genius for recollection and evocation, to the succession of his other days—to the peopled, pictured previous time that was already a little the historic and pathetic past, that one had, at any rate, for one’s self, just somewhat ruefully missed, but that he still held, as it were, in his disengaged hand.
When the wonder at last came of his putting forth Trilby and its companions my own surprise— or that of any intimate — could shade off into the consciousness of having always known him as a story-teller and a master of the special touch that those works were to make triumphant. He had always, in walks and talks, at dinner, at supper, at every easy hour and in every trusted association, been a novelist for his friends, a delightful producer of Trilbys. If there were but one word to be sounded about him, none would in every particular play so well the part of key-note as the word personal; it would so completely cover all the ground of all his sympathies and aptitudes.
…His sense of things had always been, and had essentially to be, some lively emotion about them— just this love or just this hate; and he was full of accumulated, inspiring experience because he was full of feelings, admirations, affections, repulsions. The world was, very simply, divided for him into what was beautiful and what was ugly, and especially into what looked so, and so far as these divisions were—with everything they opened out to—a complete account of the matter, nothing could be more vivid than his view, or more interesting.” –Henry James, “George Du Maurier,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine (September 1897): 594–609.
The Cornhill Magazine (London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1860- . 181 volumes (v. 48-74 called new series). Founded by George Smith (1824-1901) with William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) as first editor. Rare Books: Robert Metzdorf Collection (ExMe) 0901.267 and Rare Books: Morris L. Parrish Collection (ExParrish) 2015-0050F.
Johann Amos Comenius (1592-1670). Joh. Amos Comenii Orbis sensualium pictus quadrilinguis, hoc est, Omnium fundamentalium in mundo rerum … ([Nuremberg]: Sumtibus Michaelis & Joh. Friderici Endterorum, 1679). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) 2004-3340N
Princeton University library holds over 40 copies of various editions of the children’s picture book by Johann Comenius, The Visible World, A Nomenclature and Pictures of all the chief things that are in the world, and of men’s employments.
This one from the Graphic Arts Collection includes 156 woodcuts repeated from the 1658 edition, designed by Paul Kreutzberger (active 1647, died ca. 1660) and printed by Michael Endter.
The author’s preface offers: “See here then a new help for schools . . . Which, that you, good Masters, may not be loath to run over with your scholars, I will tell you, in short, what good you may expect from it.”
“It is a little Book, as you see, of no great bulk, yet a brief of the whole world, and a whole language: full of Pictures, Nomenclatures, and Descriptions of things.
I. The Pictures are the representation of all visible things, (to which also things invisible are reduced after their fashion) of the whole world. And that in that very order of things, in which they are described in the Janua Latinæ Linguæ; and with that fulness, that nothing very necessary or of great concernment is omitted.
II. The Nomenclatures are the Inscriptions, or Titles set every one over their own Pictures, expressing the whole thing by its own general term.
III. The Descriptions are the explications of the parts of the Picture, so expressed by their own proper terms, as that same figure which is added to every piece of the picture, and the term of it, always sheweth what things belongeth one to another.” –The Author’s Preface to the Reader.
Chapter 39 features a representation of Shakespeare’s The Seven Ages of Man: A man is first an Infant; then a child; then a Boy; then a Youth; Adolescent; a young Man; then a Man; an elderly Man; and, at last, a decrepit old Man.
Chapter 120 describes Married Persons, (by the blessing of God) have Issue and become Parents. The Father, 1. Begetteth, and the Mother, 2. Beareth Sons, 3. and Daughters, 4, (sometimes Twins). It is interesting that the father is depicted as a painter.
Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991), written by Issac-Louis Lemaistre De Sacy (1612-1684), Apocalypse de Saint Jean (Monaco: Club international de bibliophile: Jaspard, Polus & cie, 1959). Printed by Jean Paul Vibert, Grosrouvre, and Lucien Détruit, Paris. “Le texte de la présente édition reproduit integralement la version de Lemaistre de Sacy, publiée pour la première fois à Paris, en 1672”–Title page verso. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015-in process
When the Mexican artist Rufino Tamayo died in 1991 at the age of 91, Michael Brenson wrote an extended obituary for the New York Times. He called Tamayo “a force in Mexican art for more than 60 years and one of the leaders of the Mexican Renaissance.” He continued “Mr. Tamayo was prolific. Although he is best known for his painting, he was an influential printmaker who liked being involved in every step of the process, including making his paper by hand.”
The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired the most beautiful livre d’artiste by Tamayo, Apocalypse of St. John (Apocalypse de Saint Jean), which he completed in 1959. The cardboard clamshell box with Tamayo’s design across the front and back, is in surprisingly good condition after almost 60 years. The color of his lithographs is fresh and pure. It is Tamayo’s color that many of us loved the best.
“If I could express with a single word what it is that distinguishes Tamayo from other painters of our age,” commented Octavio Paz, the Mexican poet and Nobel laureate, “I would say, without a moment’s hesitation: sun. For the sun is in all his pictures, whether we see it or not; night itself is for Tamayo simply the sun carbonized.”
Type slug for: Princeton University Library Classed List (laterally reversed)
“By 1894 [Ernest Cushing] Richardson had a small linotype machine established in the Chancellor Green Library at Princeton, and he soon began experimenting with printing book lists, subject lists and finally a catalog based on the shelf list of the entire Princeton collection.
Out of such experience, over a period of years, grew his firm conviction that the printing of bibliographic entries, restricted without exception to one line each, was the cheapest possible method.
In 1904 he stated, ‘the greatest administrative mistake of modern libraries in America is the failure to provide the comparatively inexpensive brief title printed catalog.’ For less than fifteen dollars he printed a list of thirty-five hundred titles in mathematics.
In 1916 he estimated the entire Princeton Library catalog could be printed from three hundred thousand bars, the sheets to be contained in six loose-leaf binders. For fifteen hundred dollars, twenty thousand titles of accessions at Princeton could be printed and interfiled each year. Such printed catalos would be a great boon to libraries, especially for interlibrary loans, and might even supersede the official card catalog.”–Lewis Capers Branscomb, Ernest Cushing Richardson: Research Librarian, Scholar, Theologian, 1860-1939 (Scarecrow Press, 1993). Firestone Z720.R53 B73 1993
Branscomb continues, “Actually [Richardson] did print the official shelf list in six binders by the title-a-bar method. …It was a great disappointment to Richardson when Gerould, his successor, discontinued in 1920 the printed catalog in favor of bolstering the card catalog.”
Ernest Cushing Richardson (1860-1939) was an American librarian and bibliographer who made significant contributions to the field of American librarianship. From 1890 till 1925, he was director of Princeton University Library and professor of bibliography. In 1925, Richardson became consultant to the Library of Congress. He was named one of the “100 Most Important Leaders [Librarians] had in the 20th Century” by American Libraries in 1999.
Although we do not have the six binders, the linotype for Richardson’s “Classed List” is still in our collection and available for study.
Princeton University. Library. Classed list. Princeton: University Library, 1920. 6 v. Contents: v.l. 0000-0999, General works, book sciences, government documents, periodicals and encyclopedias; 1000-1999, History and geography.–v. 2. 2000-2999, Language and literature.–v. 3. 3000-3999, Modern languages and literature.–v. 4. 4000-4999, Arts; 5000-5999, Theology; 6000-6999, Philosophy and education.–v. 5. 7000-7999, Social sciences, 8000-8999, Natural sciences; 9000-9999, Technology.–v. 6. Special collections. Firestone Library (F) Z881 .P94 1920
一本菊 [Hitomotogiku = A Single or Lonely Chrysanthemum] ([Kyoto]: Nishida Katsubē, 1660). 3 volumes with woodblock print illustrations. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015- in process
“Hitomotogiku (A Single Chrysanthemum) a tale of the nobility in the form of a Nara picture book, recounts (like many otogi-zoshi about the nobility) the cruelties of a wicked stepmother; but it is unusual in that there are two victims, a brother and a sister, rather than a single Cinderella in the tradition of the stepmother stories of the Heian and Kamakura periods.
The boy (like Genji) is exiled, and the girl (like Ochikubo) is shut up in a wretched house, but despite these Heian touches, the work betrays its Muromachi origins in such passages as the account of a pilgrimage to Kiyomizu-dera, another temple sacred to Kannon.
Worship of Kannon was certainly not new, but during the Muromachi period pilgrimages to the thirty-three temples sacred to Kannon became a craze.” –Donald Keene, Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from earliest times to the late sixteenth century (New York: Holt & Co., 1993): 1096.
江戶雀 : 12卷 [Edo suzume: 12-kan]. Authors include Entsu Chikayuki, among many others. Woodblock prints painted by Hishikawa Moronobu (ca. 1620-1694) (Edo: Tsuruya Kiemon, 1677). 12 volumes, 35 woodblock prints. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2015- in process.
A reminder: this is printed from a hand cut woodblock.
“The Edo Suzume (Sparrows) was the first periodical published in the Edo period. It was compiled from practical guides to famous places in Edo and in the final section it lists up all the Daimyō residences, shrines and temples, neighborhoods and bridges with the explanation that it intended to summarize the area covering approximately 12km in every direction. It forms together with the guides of Kyoto and Osaka (Namba), the Three Suzume.” –Tokyo Metropolitan Library http://www.library.metro.tokyo.jp/portals/0/edo/tokyo_library/english/modal/index.html?d=59
“This is considered to be the earliest Edo periodical and was authored and published by Edo residents and it is also highly rated as a picture book containing illustrations by Moronobu Hishikawa who is considered to be the founder of Ukiyo-e paintings. At the introduction, it says that practical guides to famous local places, historic sites, temples and shrines were provided for the benefit of those who came to Edo from their home regions. The city center is divided by direction and each one is depicted in great detail from Daimyō residences, shrines and temples and famous historic sites all the way to streets and houses allowing us to know how to reach there.”
Jack Hillier, The Art of the Japanese Book (London, 1987). (GARF) Oversize NC991 .H55q
Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933), Poiēmata / K.P. Kavaphē; kallitechnikē ergasia Takē Kalmouchou ; philologikē epimeleia Rikas Senkopoulou (Alexandrie: Ekdosis “Alexandrinēs Technēs”, [1935]). Copy 510 of 1800. As issued with original printed tan wrappers preserved; bound in tan cloth. Stamped in script on rear cover: Vivliophilike Gonia. Graphic Arts Collection (GA) PA5610.K2 A17 1935
“The first commercial edition of Cavafy’s work was published in 1935, two years after his death, and was edited by Rika Sengopoulou, wife of the poet’s heir. This rather luxurious . . . volume, illustrated with woodblocks by Takis Kalmouchos, ordered the poems more or less chronologically.
Since then, the “standard” edition has become George Savidis’ two-volume 1963 edition, which sought to maintain some degree of fidelity to the odd folders and booklets the poet himself had been making during the latter part of his life. Savidis is also the person who undertook to edit and publish many of the poems that were still not in circulation in 1933 when Cavafy died. In fact, he’s the one who divided the poems into the categories mentioned above.”–No Two Snowflakes, or Cavafy Canons, are Alike by Karen Emmerich
Things Ended
Possessed by fear and suspicion,
mind agitated, eyes alarmed,
we desperately invent ways out,
plan how to avoid the inevitable
danger that threatens us so terribly.
Yet we’re mistaken, that’s not the danger ahead:
the information was false
(or we didn’t hear it, or didn’t get it right).
Another disaster, one we never imagined,
suddenly, violently, descends upon us,
and finding us unprepared—there’s no time left—
sweeps us away.
Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard (C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Princeton University Press, 1992)
Louis Alexis Chamerovzow (1816-1875), Chronicles of the Bastile. First series, Bertaudière: an historical romance (London: T.C. Newby, 1845). 20 parts in 19; 40 steel engravings by Robert Cruikshank (1789-1856). Original parts in the original blue printed wrappers, enclosed in a blue levant case; very rare in this state. Issued from January 1844 to July 1845 the front cover of each wrapper being dated. Graphic Arts Collection (GA) Oversize Cruik 1845 Robert
During our recent move, a number of items were found that had been recorded as missing for many years, this copy of the Chronicles of the Bastile among them.
According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Louis Alexis Chamerovzow was an anti-slavery campaigner and author. He studied at the Sorbonne and for some time was employed as an English tutor at the Collège Henri Quatre in Paris . . . . “Chamerovzow tried to make a living from writing, and the first volume of a historical romance he had begun while in Paris was published anonymously early in 1844. Part an intended series, Chronicles of the Bastile, The Bertaudière purported to share the secrets imparted to the author by an old Parisian just before he died.
Chamerovzow’s agreement with the publisher T. C. Newby gave him initially little by way of royalties, and in October 1845 he made an application for assistance from the Royal Literary Fund, which awarded him £30 to tide him over until he could obtain a secretaryship, which he had been promised. The Bastille series, illustrated by Robert Cruikshank, was continued in The Embassy, or, The Key to a Mystery (1845) and concluded with Philip of Lutetia, or, The Revolution of 1789 (1848). The latter book appeared opportunely as a new revolution unfolded in France, and Napoleon III’s rise to power that year gave him the topic of his final published romance, The Man of Destiny (1860).” http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/101107?docPos=1
