The First Ferris Wheel

A Brief History of the Invention and Construction of the Ferris Wheel together with a short biography of George W.G. Ferris, Esq. (Chicago: The Ferris Wheel Company, 1893). Graphic Arts collection GA 2019- in process.

A rare little pamphlet has come into the Graphic Arts collection depicting the world’s first modern Ferris Wheel. Seven pages of letterpress open to a center fold birds eye view entitled: Birdseye view of Exposition Building from the summit of the Wheel.” The booklet includes technical details about the construction of the Wheel, ending “Each revolution took twenty minutes, passengers remaining on board during two revolutions.”

See also:
CONDERMAN v. CLEMENTS.
(Circuit Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit. July 14, 1906.)
No. 5S0.
1. PATENTs–-INVENTION.—PLEASURE WHEEL. The Conderman patent, No. 669,621, for a pleasure wheel similar to the Ferris wheel, except that it is lighter and the parts are detachable, so that it may be taken apart to facilitate its transportation from place to place, is void for lack of invention; the only changes over prior portable structures of the kind being such as required only mechanical skill to make.

Dore’s Folies Gauloises

Gustave Doré (1832-1883), Folies gauloises depuis les Romains jusqu’à nos jours : album de mœurs et de costumes (Paris: Au Bureau du Journal Amusant, [between 1852 and 1859]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

At the age of seventeen Dore composed a very amusing book, called “The Unpleasantnesses of a Pleasure Trip” (” Desagrements d’un voyage d’Agrement”), illustrated with twenty-four lithographs and one hundred and seventy-four drawings. This was brought out at Arnould de Vresse’s, and attained immense popularity….

His next little work was for the Journal Amusant called “Folies Gauloises depuis les Romains jusqu’a’ nos jours. Album des mceurs et des costumes.” This book was no less successful than the preceding ones. Dore worked so quickly that he amazed even his publishers. It sufficed to suggest a notion to him; he forthwith gave it artistic being upon the wood; and while Paris was devouring his latest production, another was already in process of preparation. He seemed possessed by a demon of work, and was the despair of all his contemporaries, who had only one hope, viz., that he would tire of such excessive labour. But they hoped in vain.

He worked for the pleasure of working, never for mere gain. His drawings were only fairly paid for at that time; indeed he produced them with such marvellous facility that he was oftener under-paid than not. Publishers readily saw how little effort production was to the gifted lad, and were not slow to make capital out of his very quickness. He absolutely flooded the market with his work. Perhaps this was unwise. “But one paramount idea beset him,” said M. Lacroix, “to be constantly at work and constantly before the public. When his sketches were not accepted and paid for, he often gave them away, in order to be able to say, ‘So-and-so is my publisher.’ For a time he literally depreciated the value of his own labour by the enormous prodigality of his pencil.”
–Blanche Roosevelt, The Life and Reminiscences of Gustave Doré (1885). Marquand Library ND553.D7 M2

A Fox Shimmy (Foxtrot)


The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired this illustrated sheet music for a Spanish foxtrot titled Ku-Klux-Klan fox-shimmy, with music by W. Keppler Lais (pseudonym for Patricio Muñoz Aceña, 1894-1940) and lyrics by Dowler-Sam (Madrid Unión Musical Española, 1923).

Published in Madrid, the two verses end with a similar but contradictory chorus:
Ku-Klux-Klan… a mi me das horror… Yo pensaba ir… mas ya no voy a Nueva-York.
Ku-Klux-Klan… Ya no me das horror… no pensaba it… Mas ya me voy a Nueva-York

Ku-Klux-Klan … you give me horror … I thought to go … but I’m not going to New York anymore.
Ku-Klux-Klan … You don’t give me horror anymore … I didn’t think about it … But I’m going to New York!

[poor translation] In the catacombs of New York City the white sect of terror have their lair. They have sworn to exterminate all Negros and the Ku-Klux-Klan is feared throughout Atlanta. They travel disguised with hoods and robes as Nazarenes in mysterious processions. And at midnight, in the shadows of the night, the Ku-Kux-Klan burns Negros at the stake.

 

Patricio Muñoz Aceña wrote a second foxtrot the same year:

See more: Danny O. Crew, Ku Klux Klan Sheet Music: An Illustrated Catalogue of Published Music, 1867-2002 (2015).

#Gettyfire

People heading to work drive through the Sepulveda pass on the 405 freeway as the hills burn from wind driven wildfire near the Getty Center Monday. Brentwood CA. Oct 28, 2019. Photo by Gene Blevins/Contributing Photographer.

The “Gettyfire” has effected over 10,000 structures (both residential and commercial) in the Mandatory Evacuation Zone. Eight homes have been destroyed and others damaged. The Getty Museum has been closed to the public today and will be closed tomorrow (Tuesday) while it being used by fire fighters as a lookout.

MANDATORY EVACUATION: The official Evacuation Map indicates Mandatory Evacuation Zones in RED. You can search for an address in the upper right corner of the map.

https://twitter.com/hashtag/GettyFire

“The southbound 405 Freeway was completely shut down between the 101 Freeway and Sunset Boulevard. Drivers were advised to completely avoid the freeway if possible. The northbound lanes were open. Part of the reason that the incident commanders are shutting down the southbound freeway…is because of the potential of bringing in the large fixed-wing aircraft that also will drop that retardant. We don’t that to spread over to people’s vehicles as they’re driving, The Getty Center itself was not threatened at this time, Scott said. However, both the Getty Center and the Getty Villa would be closed Monday.”

 

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-28/fire-along-interstate-405-near-getty-center
Note, The LA Times has dropped its pay wall and is providing information on the fire to everyone free of charge.

Hiroshima to Fukushima, the Road to Self-Destruction


[left] A kind visitor offered to show how big this book really is.

 

Sam Kerson, Hiroshima to Fukushima: the road to self-destruction, lino-cuts by Sam Kerson; concept and design by Sam and Katah; hand-pulled prints, book binding by Katah (Trois-Rivières, Québec: Produced by Dragon Dance Theatre at our print making workshop, 2018). 33 unnumbered leaves; 61 x 46 cm, on sheets 87 x 67 cm. Edition of 30. Graphic Arts Collection 2019- in process.

 

 

ARTIST STATEMENT –Looking more closely at the experience of the nuclear era is daunting, to say the least. The accidents don’t end, the fall-out from the bombs doesn’t go away. The waste from the plutonium factories, the nuclear reactors, is saved and isolated in concrete and stainless steel cylindrical casks. These specialized storage units might contain the radioactive waste for a few hundred years, while critics talk of the radiological hazard lasting for hundreds of thousands of years. The bomb continues to haunt us!

Technology often threatens, “improvement”, a “better” bomb, they say, a more “intelligent” bomb. These radioactive mountains of waste are our inheritance from a war drunk, old uncle who made a terrible mistake, which he called, “science”, decades ago. They have not been able to admit it to this day. Quite the contrary our scientist, and his scientific method have gone into full denial, a sort of extreme denial, which denies that which is obvious to anyone who dares to look. They deny the effect of the accident at Three Mile Island. They deny the mortal consequences of the disaster at Chernobyl. They deny the extreme fragility of this technology, even after the three reactors melted down at Fukushima. We must see for ourselves; see with our own eyes what is obvious and self-evident.

In this book we have selected a number of incidents which we believe will let the historian see that, we of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, were aware of the consequences of this technology. Our book might also support the protesters by recalling some of those protests that have been occurring since the invention of the bomb. We hope our book will be helpful to students of this end of the world technology and phenomenon. Our intention is to encourage resistance, even though it is late; the environment is compromised with dangerous radiation, our genes have been impacted, our offspring are mutating, therefore we must stop as soon as possible. Stop the bombing, testing and production. Shut off the nuclear reactors. –Sam Kerson, January, 2019

 

Membership Cards to Fascist Trade Unions

A collection of tessera di riconoscimento (membership cards) from 1920s and 1930s fascist trade unions was recently acquired, including several with photographic portraits of the owners. Many have colorful designs and logos, representing the various professions including farmers, postal workers or taxi drivers. The Fascists organized these trade unions or syndicates to “replace Socialist or Catholic organizations, to provide mass membership, and to control labor.”


“The trade unions were also brought under the authoritarian control of the state. The law of April 3 1926 on labour relations made strikes illegal and created a ‘magistracy of labour’ to resolve all disputes between labour and employers. Eleven trade unions received legal recognition, and these were all Fascist organizations. The Confederation of Fascist Trade Unions that had been set up in 1922 had become a powerful organization and was led by Edmondo Rossoni. Rossoni was committed to the ambitious plan of implementing an integralist from of syndicalism that would have brought all workers and employers under the control of his federation. But in 1928 Mussolini destroyed this project when he insisted that the federation should be broken up into smaller organizations.

The abandonment of the programme of Fascist syndicalism was to the advantage of the employers, and for the workers was only partially compensated by the social and welfare policies of the regime, consisting in the establishment of collective contracts, of measures to reduce unemployment, and the organization of workers’ free time through the activities of the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro.

The regime hailed its law on the trade unions as the first step towards the realization of a new corporate order that would lead to what the Charter of Labour (21 April 1927) called the ‘united organization of all forces of production’. A ministry of Corporations was established in 1926 and the National Council of Corporations created in 1930 was designed to be the central constitutional body of the new state, although the corporations themselves did not come into being until 1934.” –Roger Griffin and Matthew Feldman, Fascism: The ‘fascist epoch’ (2004). Firestone JC481 .G694 2018

We hope to set up an excel sheet with all the information on the cards and attach it to the online record in the near future.


Confederazione nazionale dei sindacati fascisti and Confederazione delle Corporazioni Fasciste


 

Propositiones metaphysicae

Vincenzo Pozzi, O.P. (praes.) [Vincenzo Palazzoli, O.P. (resp.)], Propositiones metaphysicae, quas ad mentem D. Thomae Aquinatis v. ecclesiae doctoris publico exponit certamini Fr. Vincentius Pallazzoli de Bergomo Ord. Praed. philosophiae auditor […] Disputabuntur in Templo S. Dominici Cremonar Anno 1762 mense Majo Die [blank] Hora [blank] Praeside Vincentio Pozzi de Brixia ejusdem ordinis philosophiae institutore. Cremonae, apud Petrum Ricchini [1762].Broadside, 71.7 x 79 cms. (63.5 x 64 cms. within engraved area). Graphic Arts Collection

 

Adding to the collection of European thesis prints, the Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired this engraving advertising a metaphysics disputation undertaken by a Dominican monk, with another presiding. The engraving at the top is complete, while the text of the thesis has been removed leaving the bottom title information reattached to the top (slightly crooked).

The subject of the print, engraved by the relatively unknown Carlo Jos[eph] Cerutti, may be the heroic 4th century B.C.E. Roman General Marcus Furius Camillus receiving news that the Gauls have entered Rome (see Plutarch’s Lives, multiple editions, Firestone 2550.5971 v.2). How this relates to the three propositions to be argued is uncertain.

Some of the other thesis prints in our collections:

https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2015/03/07/print-your-thesis-on-satin/

https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2018/03/14/quaestio-theologica/

https://blogs.princeton.edu/rarebooks/2009/04/jesuit-thesis-print-douay-1753/comment-page-1/

You might also enjoy reading more about thesis prints in Susanna Berger, The Art of Philosophy: Visual Thinking in Europe from the Late Renaissance to the Early Enlightenment (2017). Firestone BH39 .B47 2017

 

 

Touarick alphabet and drawings

James Richardson, Touarick Alphabet, with the Corresponding Arabic and English Letters. First edition (London: T.R. Harrison, 1847). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2019- in process

Dealer’s note: “This rare pamphlet is prefaced with a note from Richardson to John Bidwell at the Foreign Office. “I think I may say without hesitation, that the enclosed Alphabet is the most remarkable, as well as the most interesting contribution to the Science of Philology which has been brought into Europe during the present year.”

It commences with the Toureg alphabet in column form alongside that of English and Arabic. Richardson states that this alphabet, and how it corresponds to the other two languages, was dictated to him by a Toureg. This is accompanied by Richardson’s observations on the pronunciation of the language and some of its irregularities, and completed with lithographed “Specimens of Touarick Character.”

Richardson was born in Lincolnshire. He trained as a missionary and set out for North Africa in 1845. He travelled “openly as a European and a Christian, and headed southwest to Ghadames, where he remained for three months. He then went on to Ghat, where he concentrated on establishing friendly relations with the inhabitants.

He styled himself ‘Consul for the English’, met Sheikh Hatita who had helped Lyon, Clapperton and Laing, and was given presents to take back to Queen Victoria. He also collected much valuable information about Timbuktu, but was warned against undertaking the journey himself. Richardson returned to Tripoli with a caravan of slaves, having spent nearly nine months in the interior, then took a ship for London, arriving in 1846. (Howgego).

Ultra Luxury Supreme edition missed

If you don’t already have a confirmed order for the “Ultra Luxury Supreme edition” of Rihanna you are out of luck. The edition of 10 copies priced at $75,000 each is sold out. (Donations welcome.)

Rihanna and Phaidon hosted a pre-publication ticketed book party at the Guggenheim Museum on Friday, October 11, 2019, and all those who attended the event were given a copy of the regular 509 page, 19 pound “visual biography” to carry home.

In addition to the large-format trade edition of Rihanna, Phaidon and the singer have collaborated with The Haas Brothers on three limited editions:

“This Sh*t is Heavy,” the Fenty x Phaidon edition (released October 10, 2019), includes a copy of the book that features a cover with two black and white photographs, a cloth binding, and a custom-designed tabletop bookstand inspired by Rihanna’s hands. $175.00

The Luxury Supreme edition (to be released November 20, 2019) is signed and numbered by Rihanna and The Haas Brothers. The book for this edition is bound in a custom-made black fabric with an inset, matte black, laser-cut steel grille, completed with the “Drippy + The Brain” stand, a gold toned, cast-resin tabletop bookstand covered with a bespoke black vermiculated fabric. The book and stand together weigh 126 pounds. These editions are exclusively available at TheRihannaBook.com. $5500.00

The three artists also collaborated on an Ultra Luxury Supreme edition (sold out), entitled “Stoner,” a custom-sculpted marble pedestal to showcase the Luxury Supreme book. Each pedestal, in the edition of ten, is exclusively designed to cradle the book and is hand carved in Nazaré, Portugal from a unique piece of solid Pele de Tigre marble, with a soft eggshell finish. “Stoner” measures 42 inches high x 40 inches wide | 1,067 x 1,016 mm. Book and stand with packaging weighs approximately 2,000 lbs (907 kg). $75,000.00

 

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – OCTOBER 11: Attendees look through the book during the launch of Rihanna’s first Visual Autobiography, Rihanna, at Guggenheim Museum on October 11, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Rihanna)

As noted on her website, Rihanna (born 1988, Barbados) is a nine-time Grammy Award–winning recording artist, songwriter, actress, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. She has sold 60 million albums and 215 million digital tracks worldwide, making her the top-selling digital artist of all time. Rihanna launched her beauty line Fenty Beauty in 2017, her lingerie line Savage X Fenty in 2018, and most recently her luxury fashion line FENTY in 2019.

 

Rihanns’s first biography is available at the Mendel music library: Rihanna: Barbados world-gurl in global popular culture edited by Hilary McD. Beckles and Heather D. Russell (Kingston, Jamaica : University of the West Indies Press, 2015). ML3930 .R44 R45 2015

Havana and Venice

The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired two volumes from Leslie Gerry Editions. The contemporary artist works with 21st century technology informed by modern fine press traditions.

With a stylus on a Wacom tablet, I paint on the computer in Illustrator. Working only with flat areas of colour and no tone, I “cut out” the shapes with the stylus, arranging them on different layers, creating a collage. In fact, I first started working this way years ago by cutting out sheets of coloured paper with scissors, similar to the way Matisse created his paper collages. Starting by sketching a composition in blocks of colour as I would have done painting in oils and using the reference photos as guidance only, I gradually build up the painting with darker areas first and then lighter shades. The paintings end up as digital files; vector images which can be reduced or enlarged to any size and are then printed with a flat bed UV ink jet printer on a hand or mould-made paper.

Leslie Gerry, Havana, paintings by Leslie Gerry; extracts from Cuba by Irene A. Wright, 1912 (Dowdeswell, Gloucestershire: Leslie Gerry Editions, December 2016). Copy 39 of 70. Graphic Arts Collection GAX E-000092

Leslie Gerry, Venice reflections, paintings by Leslie Gerry; extracts from Venice by Jan Morris (Dowdeswell, Gloucestershire, UK : Published by Leslie Gerry Editions, The Eight Gabled House, 2019). Copy 15 of 120. Graphic Arts Collection E-000093