Adding a gold stamp

Simplex Gold Stamping Press Company, New York, 1929. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2013- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired this salesman’s sample catalog with six mounted examples of leather stamping, 19 linen backed photographs of stamping machinery, 34 photographs of endorsements and 27 leaves of tipped in brochures for the company’s products. A number of images show hatboxes, suitcases, hats, books and other objects being stamped in gold leaf.
“A major development of the mid-nineteenth century was the widespread adoption by publishers of cloth-case bindings and gold stamping for the vast majority of trade books,” writes Scott Casper in The Industrial Book, (2007). “The implications of this development are difficult to overstate: for the first time, the publisher was responsible not only for the typography and appearance of the printed sheets but also for the design and production of the binding in which they were sold to the public, bindings that in most cases were treated as permanent.”

Some of the photographs are stamped on the verso Edwin Levick (1868-1929), the Stadler Photographic Co., or Diem studios. This was one of the last projects completed by Levick before he died at the age of 61 and the peek of his career. The Mariners’ Museum (Newport News, Virginia) offers the following biography:

Edwin Levick came to America in 1899 from London to work as a translator of Arabic for the Guaranty Trust Company in New York City. He soon turned his attention to photography and was supplying his photographic services to the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and the New York Herald Tribune as well as Rudder and Motorboat Magazine. He began to write for newspapers and photograph for magazines of the day; he eventually decided to specialize in maritime photography.

Marvin Friedman’s Boy Mechanic

It was a lucky break for painter/illustrator Marvin Friedman (1930-2012) when the Boy Scouts of America moved their national office from New York City to North Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1954. Friedman, who lived outside Princeton in West Trenton, happened to meet the assistant director of their magazine Boy’s Life and, according to Leif Peng, they “took a liking to each other. ‘He gave me little spots at the back [wrote Friedman] and the work just grew and grew and grew. They would send me all over the goddamn world, pay me $1,500, $2,000 a spread… it was like a ‘wish thing’ – a dream job.’” (http://todaysinspiration.blogspot.com/2009/02/marvin-friedman-illustration-became-my_04.html)

Our painting (detail above) by Friedman was given to his friend and Princeton neighbor Henry Martin, Class of 1948, who in turn, recently donated it to the Graphic Arts Collection. Martin remembered that the work “was published by the magazine “Boys Life” …and pictured a boy who, with his parents lived on a boat in, I think, Holland, which transported freight.” [We would love to find the exact issue, if anyone recognizes it.]

Marvin Friedman lost his battle with Parkinson’s disease on May 12, 2012, at the age of 81. He also worked for Cosmopolitan magazine in the 1960s but it was for Boy’s Life that Friedman found steady employment as an illustrator. He is also known for the many childrens books he illustrated, including Molly Cone, You Can’t Make Me If I Don’t Want To (1971); Bianca Bradbury, Those Traver Kids (1972); Molly Cone, Dance around the Fire (1974); Barbara Brooks Wallace, Can do, Missy Charlie (1974); Larry Callen, Pinch (1975); Norma E. Lee, Chewing Gum (1976); Larry Callen, Sorrow’s Song (1979); Bert Metter, Bar Mitzvah, Bat Mitzvah: How Jewish Boys and Girls Come of Age (1984), to name just a few.

Martin Friedman (1930-2012), Untitled [Boy mechanic kneeling with dog], 1970s. Illustration for “Boy on a Barge,” written and drawn by Friedman for Boy’s Life magazine, September 1971. Oil pastel on board. 60 x 60 cm. Gift of Henry Martin, Class of 1948. GC029 Henry Martin Cartoon Collection

Lew Ney (aka Luther Widen)

This is not, as previously thought, a cut created for Ruth’s book but a stock print taken from “American Specimen Book of Type Styles : Complete Catalogue of Printing Machinery and Printing Supplies” by the American Type Founders Company, 1912.

The printer/publisher Lew Ney (pseudonym for Luther Emanuel Widen, 1886-1963) was born in Iowa of Swedish parents and grew up in Austin, Texas. He left school to run the Southwest Book and Publishing Company and in 1908 became the southwestern representative for publications at Charities and the Commons, a National Journal of Philanthropic, Civic, Industrial and Social Advance (Jacob Riis was the New York representative). Eventually, Widen made his way to New York, where he settled on West 4^th Street in Greenwich Village.

Beginning on August 23, 1920, Widen typed and distributed a newspaper called The Vagabond. For six months and 48 issues, he circulated his writing throughout the neighborhood until, one day Widen was arrested, directed to stop publishing his paper, and banned from Greenwich Village. As reported in the New-York Tribune, Widen was arrested because a detective investigating a robbery next door, at the Studio of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, became suspicious when Widen tried to help by announcing the name of the thief, which he said he discovered psychologically.

Ruth Widen, In Praise of Pain (New York: Parnassus Press, 1928). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2013- in process

Although he agreed to the ban rather than be committed to Bellevue Hospital, Widen merely moved the office a few block north, took the pseudonym Lew Ney, and established a new Type Shop on 12th Street. In 1928, he was married (a second time) to writer Ruth Willis Thompson, who joined the shop and served as editor for many of their Parnassus Press books. As a wedding present for their friends (who took up a collection to pay for the marriage license), Widen hand-set and printed Ruth’s In Praise of Pain. He also reprinted the stock image above as an illustration.

I am working on a complete biography of Ney and welcome any information on his life.

Dale Roylance Memorial

Nancy Finlay, Dale Roylance, Richard Ludwig

On Saturday, October 12, 2013, a memorial service will held in tribute to the life and work of Dale R. Roylance. The celebration begins at 2:00 p.m. in the Princeton University Chapel and all family, friends, and co-workers are invited to attend. No RSVP necessary.

Richard Ludwig and Dale Roylance at the opening of one of Dale’s many exhibitions.

The Sun of Anti-Jacobinism

gillray phaeton4

James Gillray (1756-1815), Phaeton alarm’d! Hand colored etching. March 22d 1808. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown (1873-1939), Class of 1895. Graphic Arts Collection 2013- in process

After the title:

Now all the horrors of the heav’ns he spies, / And monstrous shadows of prodigious size, / That, deck’d with stars, lie scatter’d o’er the skies. – / Th’ astonish’d youth, where-e’er his eyes could turn, / Beheld the universe around him bum: / The world was in a blaze! – See, Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

The British politician George Canning (1770-1827) was appointed Foreign Secretary in the new government of the Duke of Portland in 1807 and served until 1809. Here, Gillray portrays him as the Greek god Phaethon, driving a celestial chariot across the political constellations of the sky. Below Pitt is seen as his father, Apollo, and Fox as Pluto. The countries of the world are in flames while Napoleon rides a Russian bear.

We are fortunate to have this print back in our collection. For many years, it was crushed behind a built-in wood cabinet and only reemerged last week when the cabinet, and the room it was in, were demolished.

Voyages au Soudan oriental et dans l’Afrique septentrionale

Pierre Trémaux, Voyages au Soudan oriental et dans l’Afrique septentrionale, exécutés de 1847 à 1854: comprenant une exploration dans l’Algérie, les régences de Tunis et de Tripoli, l’Égypte, la Nubie, les déserts, l’île de Méroé, le Sennar, le Fa-Zoglo, et dans les contrées inconnues de la Nigritie (Paris: Borrani, [1852-1858]). Purchased with funds provided by the Friends of the Princeton University Library, Rare Book Collection, and Graphic Arts Collection. GAX 2013- in process

Pierre Trémaux is not well known but holds a place in the history of illustrated books for publishing one of the first photographically illustrated travelogues. North Africa, Egypt in particular, was one of the earliest destinations for European photographers and one of most frequently represented subjects. By autumn 1839 the daguerreotypist Frédéric Goupil-Fesquet was in Egypt, together with the painter Horace Vernet, gathering material for their travelogue Voyage d’Horace Vernet en Orient (1843). The first extensive survey was completed by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey in 1842-43 covering Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, and Greece. None of the early publications of these trips included actual photographs.

As an architect interested in urban planning, Pierre Trémaux traveled to Algeria, Tunisia, Upper Egypt, Eastern Sudan and Ethiopia beginning in 1847 (preceding Maxime Du Camp by two years and Félix Teynard by four years). At first, he made drawings and daguerreotypes as the basis for lithographic illustrations but wished to publish a more authentic record of the African culture. On the second expedition, he brought a camera and chemistry to create calotypes of the people, buildings, and landscape of in Libya, Egypt, Asia Minor, Tunisia, Syria, and Greece. A third and final expedition included both photographs and sketches. Trémaux published an account of his travels in parts from 1852 to 1858.

It is with the publication of Voyage au Soudan oriental et dans l’Afrique septentrionale exécutés en 1847 à 1854 that the photographically illustrated travel book begins. In this folio, Trémaux made paper photographs and then, for each one also had lithographs created. The two are bound together so the reader has the authenticity of the photograph–thought to be a truthful document–along with the more robust image of the drawn lithograph. This took a tremendous amount to time and money but demonstrations the importance given to the publication at that time.

The book is included in the catalogue for the Grolier exhibition The Truthful Lens, where it is noted that the artist signed his plates, “Trémaux lithophot. Precédé Poitevin,” referring to Alphonse-Louis Poitevin, a French engineer who is credited with developing photomechanical processes such as photolithography in the 1850s. The entry goes on to mention that copies vary greatly, such as the one at The Avery Library, Columbia University, which has 58 photolithographs, but no calotypes.

Special thanks to the Friend of the Princeton University Library and Steve Ferguson, Rare Book Division, for making this acquisition possible.

Wessobrunn prayer

Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. [Handschrift des Wessobrunner Gebets]. [Munich, Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1922]. Graphic Arts Collection (GA) 2006-3082N

The Wessobrunn Prayer, sometimes called the Wessobrunn Creation Poem (Wessobrunner Gebet), believed to date from around 790, is among the earliest known poetic works in Old High German. Princeton University Library holds three copies of this 1922 facsimile edition of the manuscript. The one in graphic arts comes to us from the collection of Elmer Adler.

clm 22053e

Written in a Bavarian dialect, the poem is named after Wessobrunn Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in Bavaria. For centuries it was the repository of the manuscript, which is now in the Bavarian State Library in Munich.

Bound in a facsimile leather binding, the volume is blind-stamped with brass bosses & wooden peg in leather clasp. Ours comes with Die handschrift des Wessobrunner Gebets; Geleitwort zu der faksimile-ausgabe von A. von Eskardt, von Carl von Kraus (Munich: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1922). The 1923 edition at Marquand Library includes an English language translation.

Livres du poètes

Beginning with Voir Nicolas de Stael in 1953, the French poet Pierre Lecuire (born 1922) created and published over 30 books in collaboration with visual artists. Number six was the spectacular Cortège (Procession), with 25 designs from papiers collés (paper cutouts) by Andre Lanskoy (1902-1976) and pochoir color by Maurice Beaufumé (Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2003-0040F).

Lecuire insisted that he was not creating livres d’artistes (artist’s books) or livres de peintres (painter’s books) but livres du poètes or poet’s books. He said, “I make poets’ books with painters.”

He took control over all aspects of the production of his books, including paper, font, and the medium of the images. It was Lecuire, for instance, who suggested to the Russian-born artist Andre Lanskoy that he work in papiers collés or cut paper, similar to what Henri Matisse (1869-1954) used when creating is 1947 masterpiece Jazz. While Matisse worked with the pochoir studio of Edmond Variel to be sure the color was exact, Lecuire work with the studio of Beaufumé to do the same.

Beaufumé’s studio began in the 1930s when he colored, among other things, a number of books for Francis Meynell and the Limited Editions Club, including several volumes of The Comedies, Histories & Tragedies of William Shakespeare (1939-1940). But in 1940, the artist was drafted and the printing and coloring of the series was moved to New York.

Printed in a huge font by Marthe Fequet and Pierre Baudier, the text of Cortège begins: [rough translation] “This book is a procession. It has its colors, action and animation. It blazes, it proclaims one knows not which passion, which justice; it flows like the course of a navigation….”

See also: Henry Bouillier and Astrid Ivask, “Pierre Lecuire or the Poem in Majesty,” World Literature Today 62, no. 1 (Winter 1988): 14-22.

See also: Pierre Lecuire (born 1922), Livres de Pierre Lecuire. [Catalogue] Édité … à l’occasion de l’exposition Livres de Pierre Lecuire au Centre national d’art contemporain … du 26 janvier au 12 mars 1973 ([Paris: Centre national d’art contemporain, 1973]). Graphic Arts Collection (GA) NC980 .L37

Preserving the Past for Future Generations

After a long week of moving, and with much thanks to the help of dozens of staff members, the Graphic Arts Collection is finally back together in a new, temporary space on the first floor of Firestone Library. It is thrilling to have our material back in one place. The doorbell is working and we are open for business. Have a good weekend.

Specimens of Paper with Different Water Marks, 1377-1840

1593 unicorn watermark

1377 griffin watermark

During the 1952-53 fiscal year, a unique collection of nearly 400 specimens of European papers with different watermarks (1377-1840) was acquired for the Graphic Arts Collection, at the suggestion of Elmer Adler (1884-1962) with a fund turned over to the Library by the Friends of the Princeton University Library (FPUL). Adler must have been a good negotiator, talking rare book dealer Philip Duschnes down from $350 to $300.

The album was elaborately created with sheets of many shapes and sizes bound in various layers, with a brief description written at the top of each sheet. I have included the front matter pinned to the endpapers.

Originally in the collection of Dawson Turner (1775–1858), the auction catalogue description reads: ’Watermarks on Paper. A very curious collection of upwards of three hundred and seventy specimens of paper with various Watermarks, for A.D. 1377 to A. D. 1842, collected with a view to assist in ascertaining the age of undated manuscripts, and of verifying that of dated ones, by Dawson Turner, Esq. and bound in 1 vol. half calf.’

See also: Catalogue of the Remaining Portion of the Library of Dawson Turner, Esq., M.A., F.R.S., F.S.A., F.L.S., etc., etc. formerly of Yarmouth: which will be sold by auction by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson … Leicester Square … on Monday, May 16th, 1859, and seven following days (Sunday excepted). [London, 1859], item 1523.

Specimens of Paper with Different Water Marks, 1377-1840. 1 v. (unpaged); 40 cm. 371 specimens of watermarked paper, together with brief descriptions of each in a mid-nineteenth century ms. hand. The specimens are mainly blank leaves, though some leaves feature writing and letterpress. Specimen 334 is stamped sheet addressed to Dawson Turner (1775-1858), Yarmouth. Purchased with funds from the Friends of the Princeton University Library. Graphic Arts: Reference Collection (GARF) Oversize Z237 .S632f

Dawson Turner may have seen a goat, but this is a definitely a Unicorn, specifically a “bearded unicorn”, with its horn removed by Victorian scissors. The date c.1440 is almost certainly wrong; a much more plausible date is mid-1470s.
Thanks very much to Paul Needham for the correction.

For comparison, here is an image of a Unicorn precisely of this type used by Caxton, in Bruges, c. 1475.

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