Dick Balzer 1944-2017

My apologies for not recognizing the death of Richard J. Balzer (1944-2017) earlier. He would have been more on top of it. His website remains: http://www.dickbalzer.com/. I recommend the Balzer “Life Map” http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/balzer_designs/2017/12/richard-j-balzer-life-map.html created by his daughter.

I would say I’m lucky to have visited the collection but honestly, I don’t know anyone who was ever turned down. I accompanied classes from Boston area colleges, visiting photographers from China, Print Council of America, and The Magic Lantern Society several times, in addition to sending Princeton students individually. His door was always open and the megalethoscope loaded with a slide.

We all know Dick Balzer from his seminal volume Peepshows: a Visual History (Abrams, 1998) but by my count, he was involved in over 35 books. Those of us who only know his anamorphic slides, transformation prints, and peep eggs forget his day job. Harvard’s Kennedy School notes:

Richard J. Balzer has worked globally as an organizational consultant focused on leadership, strategy, and organizational change for over thirty years. He has served as a coach and advisor to chief executives and board chairmen. His clients have included British Petroleum, Standard Chartered Bank, Goldman Sachs, NBC, and the NBA. Balzer has also worked with a number of unions including the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers, the International Machinist Union, and the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers promoting joint labor-management efforts. A writer and photographer, he is the author of five books including Clockwork: Life In and Outside An American Factory, Next Door Down the Road and Around the Corner, and China Day By Day. He currently serves as the chairman of the Petra Foundation, an independent organization that identifies and awards grants to community-based leaders who work to address human rights and social justice issues throughout the United States. He is a graduate of Cornell University and Yale Law School.

They forgot the privately printed: The Print Council of America annual meeting, Boston, May 2, 2015, exhibition at the Richard Balzer Collection (2015). I’d post it but it is only for those members who made the trip, as per Balzer’s specification.

I’m sorry to have missed the service at the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, would have made the trip. Bryan Marquard of the Boston Globe has an obituary, “Dick Balzer, 73; expressed curiosity, passion in pursuits” from January 10, 2018: http://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/article_popover.aspx?guid=bd94fa67-2ef0-4089-83a3-c6308d86e988. Larry Rakow wrote a terrific remembrance in the current newsletter for the Magic Lantern Society of USA. Here’s small screen shot but you should join the organization if you like reading it.

The History of Printing in Eight Hours

Many of you will remember the wonderful exhibition, The Printed Picture at The Museum of Modern Art in 2008–2009, co-curated by Peter Galassi, Chief Curator of Photography, and Richard Benson, Dean of the Yale University School of Art. Some of you might have been in the gallery over the two days in May and June 2008 for Benson’s 8 hour lecture on the entire history of printing.

If not, this website posted by the Yale Art Gallery allows you to see the entire series of talks explaining ink, photographic, and digital printing processes, augmented with information from the book, The Printed Picture, authored by Richard Benson. http://printedpicture.artgallery.yale.edu/

He begins with hand prints on caves walls and ends with a digital print after Paul Strand along with a lesson on the intrinsic value of a print. Here is just a tiny clip:

The New York Times obituary for Richard Benson, June 27, 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/arts/design/richard-benson-dead-photographer-and-photo-printer.html

Classes in book arts

A surprising number of international classes, workshops, lectures, and conferences in the book arts are being announced in the new issue of the online Book Arts Newsletter. Everything from gilding to binding; photo-polymer and digital printing; textual poetics and ur-text. Here’s the link: http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/pdf/newspdfs/116.pdf

This list is assembled and published each month thanks to Sarah Bodman of the University of the West of England, Bristol, where she is Senior Research Fellow for Artists’ Books. Here’s a little more about her work:

“Sarah is Senior Research Fellow for Artists’ Books at the Centre for Fine Print Research (CFPR), where she runs projects investigating and promoting contemporary book arts. She is also Programme Leader for MA Multi-disciplinary Printmaking at the Bower Ashton Campus. Sarah is the editor of the Artist’s Book Yearbook a biennial reference publication on contemporary book arts, published here by Impact Press (next issue 2016-2017). She is also the editor of the Book Arts Newsletter and The Blue Notebook journal for artists’ books. Sarah writes a regular news column on artists’ books for the ARLIS UK and Ireland News-Sheet, and an artists’ books column for the journal Printmaking Today.

Edward Steichen: The Early Years 1900-1927

Thrilling news. The Graphic Arts Collection acquired one of the remaining 1981 portfolios, Edward Steichen: The Early Years 1900-1927, published by Aperture in the United States and simultaneously at Saint-Prex, Switzerland by the Atelier de Taille Douce.

Here is a small taste but honestly, there is no digital image that reproduces the true beauty of these hand-inked and hand-pulled aquatinted and chrome-faced copper plates. The complete colophon information is reproduced below.

I asked the master printer Jon Goodman to say a few words about the project. Exerts are posted here and the complete statement can be read here: Jon Goodman steichen

 

Edward Steichen (1879-1973), Edward Steichen: The Early Years, 1900-1927 ([New York]: Aperture, Inc., 1981). Texts by Mary Steichen Calderone and Beaumont Newhall. Portfolio of twelve hand-pulled dust-grain photogravures printed by the master printer Jon Goodman. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process.

“Edward Steichen: The Early Years 1900-1927 contains twelve photographic images made by means of the Talbot-Klic photogravure process. The chrome-faced copper plates were made by Jon Goodman and Richard Benson in Newport, Rhode Island. Eleven plates were made using the dust-grain technique and one plate (Three Pears and an Apple) using a specially prepared screen. The plates were hand pulled on the presses of the Atelier de Taille Douce of Saint-Prex, Switzerland. The texts by Beaumont Newhall and Mary Calderone have been set in Monotype Bembo and printed by The Stinehour Press, Lunenburg, Vermont, and are signed by the authors. The design is by Wendy Byrne. The edition is limited to one thousand examples and one hundred artist proofs. …This is number 984.” –Colophon

 

“The Steichen Portfolio was my first big project in photogravure,” writes Jon Goodman. “I started work on it in 1979 (I was 25). But it was a project that predated me. I was told that it was a project that Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz had discussed while both were alive. In 1967 when Paul Strand’s “Mexican Portfolio” was re-editioned by Da Capo press in conjunction with a nascent Aperture (printed by Andersen Lamb Printing Co. of Brooklyn from plates made in 1939 by the Photogravure and Color Co.) Edward Steichen approached Michael Hoffman of Aperture about doing his project. . .”

Goodman continues, “I met with Michael Hoffman in New York in June of 1978 and showed him the work that I had been doing on my research which had primarily been done in Switzerland, first at the Centre Genevoise de Gravure Contemporaine and later at the Atelier de Taille Douce et Lithographie of St. Prex. He was quite interested and spoke to me about a couple of projects but primarily about the Steichen Portfolio which had been languishing for a few years.

Michael Hoffman called Richard Benson in Newport and arranged for me to go and meet with him at his home and studio. Benson had most of the equipment and facility needed to work in photogravure in his shop in Newport. He had an intaglio press that had been purchased with funds provided by Georgia O’Keeffe to make photogravures of Stieglitz’s work. I met with Benson and we arranged that I could come and work in his shop in the fall of 1978 on some of Aperture’s potential photogravure projects.”

“I returned to Newport in September of 1978 with the purpose of making some initial plates of Paul Strand’s work. I had access to Strand’s negatives through his association with Aperture and Benson had been Strand’s printer at the end of Strand’s life and knew what the images should look like. There was no funding for this work initially. It was thought that I would come to Newport for a few weeks but that turned into 3 years.

The initial Strand plates (“Gaspe’ Fisherman” and “Iris, Maine”) were a struggle. It was one thing for me to take one of my own negatives and make a photogravure plate and print but it was a whole other order of magnitude to take a negative of Paul Strand’s and make a photogravure plate and subsequent print that had a visual equivalency to Strand’s own print from that negative. The Gaspe’ Fisherman was made and editioned for the end of 1978 early 1979. Once it was established that I was a viable worker and able to try to make photogravures worthy of Paul Strand’s work and comparable to the photogravures from the Mexican Portfolio it was decided that we could proceed with the making of the Steichen Portfolio.”

“In the winter of 1979 I was sent to Munich to retrieve the material that had been provided to the printers there (Steichen’s printer had passed away by then). I had with me the “Iris” plate that I had made that fall in collaboration with Richard Benson. I asked the printers in Munich to make some proofs of that plate to take back to New York. I then went on to St. Prex Switzerland where I shared the work that I had been doing with my friends at the Atelier de Taille Douce and asked them to also proof the “Iris” plate in their manner of working.

I then took both sets of proofs of the “Iris” back to New York to show to Michael Hoffman. The difference in quality between the proofs made at the Atelier de Taille Douce and those from Munich was quite striking. There is a smoothness and a freshness to the photographic tones in the Atelier proofs while the Munich proofs were cottony and muddy. It was decided that the Atelier should edition the “Iris” plate while I went on to the making of the plates for the Steichen Portfolio.”

“It took me a full 12 months to make the 12 plates that are in the Steichen Portfolio. I learned a great deal in that time, multiple plates were made for each image before a satisfactory plate was accomplished. Then multiple proofs were made for each image, in different inks, varying both the transparency and the ink color for each. In the end after a great deal of deliberation we established the “bon a tirer” for each plate, which I then took back to the Atelier de Taille Douce in St. Prex.” Continue reading Goodman’s account here: Jon Goodman steichen
 

 

 

The Wars Occasioned by the French Revolution

“Britannia crowned by Victory, trampling upon the chains of France, holds in her right hand the Trident of Neptune, as Mistress of the Ocean, in her left hand Magna [Carta], whilst Fame is proclaiming to the World the Glory of her Arms, by pointing to some of her principle Battles inscribed on her Shield, which is supported by the Genius of Commerce; beneath are the Emblems of ancient and modern Warfare. London published by Rich. Evans…”

 


William Nicholson, The History of the Wars Occasioned by The French Revolution. Including A Sketch of the Early History of France, and the Circumstances which Led to the Revolution in that Country; Together with a Complete History of the Revolution in France, The War in Spain and Portugal, Russia, Prussia, &c. &c. Exhibiting a Correct Account of the General Congress at Vienna, the Escape of Bonaparte from the Isle of Elba, the Flight of Louis XVIII. from his Capital, the Defeat of Bonaparte at the Ever Memorable Battle of Waterloo, his Surrender to the British, and his Exile to the Island of St. Helena, with the Result of the Return and Re-establishment of Louis XVIII. on the Throne of France (London: Richard Evans Whites Row Spitalfields, 1816). 22 stencil colored wood engravings. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2018- in process.

This history of the Napoleonic Wars from a British point of view is noted by some for the first account of a “diving boat” or submarine. Because the author is listed on the title page as L.L.D. [Doctor of Law], it can be assumed he is not the British portrait painter William Nicholson (1781-1844) or the British scientist William Nicholson (1753-1815) who wrote the multi-volume The British Encyclopedia, Or Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. The repetitive equestrian portraits of contemporary world leaders are so far unattributed (list below).





22 stencil colored plates:

1. Britannia, Crowned by Victory… [frontispiece].
2. Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France. May 31, 1815.
3. Alexander 1st. Emperor of all the Russias… May 18, 1815. [Charles] Canton, del et sculp.
4. His Royal Highness, The Prince Regent of Great Britain. June 16, 1815.
5. Count Platoff, Hetman of the Cossacks. August 11, 1815.
6. Wm. Fred. King of Prussia. May 18, 1815. [Charles] Canton, del et sculp.
7. Field Marshall Von Blucher, Prince of Wagstadt. June 30, 1815.
8. The Duke of Wellington. June 29, 1815.
9. Lieut. General Sir Thos. Picton. Octr. 1815.
10. Lieut. General Lord Hill, K.B. Octr. 10, 1815. Meyron, del., [John] Romney, sculp.
11. Francis 2d Emperor of Austria. May 18, 1815.
12. His Royal Highness The Duke Of York. May 18, 1815. [Charles] Canton, del et sculp.
13. Lieut. General The Marquis Of Anglesea. Nov. 1815.
14. Lieut. General Sir John Moore, K.B. Dec. 1, 1815.
15. Field Marshall Prince Swartzenburgh. 1816. Meyron, del, [John] Romney, sculp.
16. Lieut. Genl. Sir Ralph Abercrombie. 1816,
17. The Battle of Waterloo. 1816. Engravd by [John] Romney, from a Painting by Heath.
18. Lieut. Genl. Sir Eire Coote K.B.K.C.&M.P. 1816.
19. Lieut. Genl. Lord Linedock. 1816.
20. Bernadotte Crown Prince of Sweden. 1816.
21. The Prince Of Saxe Cobourg. 1816.
22. The Prince of Orange. 1816.

 

Tuckenhay Paper Mill

Peter Thomas, The Tuckenhay Mill: People and Paper (Santa Cruz: Peter and Donna Thomas, 2016). Housed in clamshell box. Graphic Arts Collection GAX in process.

All copies have: Introductory pamphlet, letterpress printed, 1.They Made the Paper in Tuckenhay Mill, interviews with retired hand paper makers, a 100-page digitally printed book with the text of the interviews; 2.Flash drive with audio files, transcriptions and videos from original interviews; 3.Vintage handmade paper samples and printed ephemera from Tuckenhay Mill. Princeton’s copy has an additional pamphlet titled Handmade Paper in Tuckenhay Devon, pamphlet titled Three Hundred Years of Paper Making, and 22 paper samples with additional booklets.

In the 1830s, Richard Turner started manufacturing paper by hand in the Tuckenhay Mill, and paper was continuously made by hand there until 1962. From then until 1970, the Mill produced pulp (half-stuff) until the business went bankrupt. The equipment was scrapped and the building was sold and converted into vacation cottages, remaining so today.

A self-taught hand papermaker, Peter Thomas became interested in knowing how apprentice-trained hand papermakers working in production hand papermills made paper. He especially wanted to learn the “vatman’s shake,” the series of motions that papermakers used to form their sheets of paper. This desire circuitously led him and Donna to Tuckenhay, near Totnes, Devon, in England, where beginning in 1988, they recorded several hand papermakers, returning to make others in 1990 and 1994.

—  http://www.thelegacypress.com/tuckenhay-mill.html

 

 

Brochure for “all colored cast” silent film

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired a rare promotional brochure for the Norman Film Company’s 1919 silent movie, The Green Eyed Monster, its first production with an all Black cast. Billed as a “Stupendous All-Star Negro Motion Picture,” audiences found it long and so, Norman had the film cut from eight-reels to five-reels. A second release in 1920 led to great success. Although no portion of the film survives, reviews list the actors as Jack Austin, Louise Dunbar, Steve Reynolds, and Robert A. Stuart.

“The first film company devoted to the production of race movies was the Chicago-based Ebony Film Company, which began operation in 1915. The first black-owned film company was The Lincoln Motion Picture Company, founded by the famous Missourian actor Noble Johnson in 1916.

However, the biggest name in race movies was and remains Oscar Micheaux, an Illinois-born director who started The Micheaux Book & Film Company in 1919 and went on to direct at least forty films with predominantly black casts for black audiences.

Also in 1919, seeing how lucrative the growing race movie market was, Jacksonville, Florida’s Norman Film Manufacturing Company switched tracks and began making race films, starting with an all black remake of one of their earlier films.”–The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 18 (2011)

“In large cities as well as in small towns, the picture broke attendance records, especially when one of the stars appeared in person to advertise it. M. Wax, of the Royal and Keystone Theaters in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, happily reported that The Green-Eyed Monster had proven to be a wonderful attraction that did excellent business and pleased all of his patrons.

W. C. Kennedy of Knoxville, Tennessee, affirmed that ‘it broke house records in our 1,200-seat Gem Theater.’ … E. Silberman of the Douglas Theater in New York City found the Green-Eyed Monster to be such a ‘knock-out…that we turned them away daily’ throughout the week-long run.” –Barbara Tepa Lupack, Richard E. Norman and Race Filmmaking (2013)

Extended description: http://normanstudios.org/films-stars/norman-films/the-green-eyed-monster/

Exaggerated comic scenes were cut from The Green-Eyed Monster, to focus on the drama and romance. When the new print was released, it was billed together with Norman’s second film The Love Bug, which was strictly caricature and broad comedy.

 

 

Pedro de Oraá

Pedro de Oraá (born 1931), Acertijos de los indeseables (La Habana: Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba, 1991). Unbound poetry portfolio. Edition: 500. Graphic Arts Collection 2018- in process

Eleven books by the Cuban poet and visual artist Pedro de Oraá (born 1931) have already been collected by the Princeton University Library and so, this will make an even dozen. In 1958, De Oraá and Loló Soldevilla (1901–1971) founded Galería de Arte Color-Luz in Havana and there, organized a group of painters and printmakers known as Diez Pintores Concretos (Ten Concrete Painters).

Among his many honors, De Oraá received the National Designer Award from the Cuban Book Institute in 2011 and the Cuban National Visual Arts Award in 2015.
Pedro de Oraá with Wifredo Lam and Loló Soldevilla at their gallery, Posted: http://www.cubanartnews.org/news/pedro-de-oraa-concrete-thinking-on-cuban-abstract-art

De Oraá was part of the 21st International Poetry Festival of Havana (FIPH), the First “Our America” Traveling Festival and Cuban Poetry Readings dedicated to poetry convened by the Association of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) and the Organizing Committee of the Poetry Festival.

Plans are already in the making for the 22nd International Poetry Festival, to be held in Havana from 27 May to 3 June 2018, dedicated to Spoken Poetry and Popular Poetry. Everyone should attend. For more information: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/media-services/single-view/news/una_semana_para_celebrar_la_poesia_en_la_habana/

See a brief biography: https://www.widewalls.ch/artist/pedro-de-oraa/

New York covers

 

 

 

 

 

Last October 2017, New York magazine launched their 50th anniversary (founded April 1968) slightly early, with a commemorative issue and book: Christopher Bonanos, Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant, Despicable: 50 Years of New York ([New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2017]). Dixon Books Oversize PN4900.N34 B66 2017q.

Thankfully, our dust jacket is still in place, which folds out into a poster documenting highlights from the last 50 years: https://www.instagram.com/p/BbMtr-0gTZX/?tagged=nymag50.

This week a new project appeared around the New York City area to mark their celebration. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/01/new-yorks-50th-anniversary-public-art-project-debuts.html The editors write, “In honor of New York Magazine’s 50th anniversary, the publication is launching a year-long exhibit showcasing specially-designed New York covers by 50 renowned artists, called simply ‘A Public Art Project.’ Today [January 22, 2018], the first eight covers—created by Yoko Ono, Barbara Kruger, Rob Pruitt, Alex Katz, Hank Willis Thomas, Mel Bochner, John Giorno and Marilyn Minter—were unveiled and rolled out at 25 locations across the five boroughs.

The covers are displayed in various sizes and formats, including ‘wild postings,’ on street lamp banners, and giant versions; they’ll continue being rolled out through the fall when, come October, an exhibit of all 50 will debut.”

The first of them, by Alex Katz [seen at the top], appeared on their cover last November and “is a drawing he did on the subway, an echo of those he made underground in the 1940s. The others also, in their own ways, celebrate the spirit of life in New York City, a place of solidarity — whether on packed trains or in political marches.”

**Most important, in a few locations that will be announced on Twitter (at @NYMag), there will be ten copies stacked like a pad of paper, so (if you’re one of the lucky people to get there first) you can tear off a poster and take it home. Donations to our collection are always welcome.Dust jacket for Christopher Bonanos, Highbrow, Lowbrow, Brilliant, Despicable: 50 Years of New York ([New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2017]). Graphic Arts Collection GAX in process.

The 100th Edition of The Compleat Angler

We live in an age of editions de luxe, and so bewildering nowadays is the succession of costly and elegant volumes issuing under this title from the contemporary press that it might seem a task of insuperable difficulty to assign the prize for supreme beauty to any one of them. If, however, we were bound to pronounce a judgment of Paris between the various competitors, our award would go with little hesitation in favour of the two Splendid volumes published by Messrs. Sampson Low & Co., . . .

The “Lea and Dove Edition” (the 100th) of “The Compleat Angler” is a work by which the English printing industry and publishing enterprise of the later nineteenth century might well consent to be represented before the severest aesthetic tribunal of posterity, for clear-cut beauty of typography, for sober richness of binding and decoration, for lavish wealth and artistic excellence of illustration, it is a veritable triumph of the arts which have co-operated in its production.—The Daily Telegraph 1888

In 1888 I brought out the “Lea and Dove” edition, being the hundredth edition of “The Compleat Angler,” in two volumes, small quarto, and a limited large-paper edition. My idea was to make illustrations of scenes on the rivers Lea and Dove the leading feature of this issue, and to give the text of the old classic in a style worthy, if possible, of its hundredth edition, and entirely unencumbered with notes. The text was printed from new type by Messrs. William Clowes & Sons, Limited, who took the greatest interest in the work.

The illustrations consist of about one hundred small woodcuts and fifty full-page photoengraved plates of views on the Lea and Dove—those on the Lea by Mr. P. H. Emerson, B.A., and those on the Dove by Mr. George Bankart. Possessors of this edition may at any rate rest satisfied that it will not be reprinted, as the copperplates I had transformed into boxes for keeping fly-books free from moth, and the type has been distributed. Of the reception of this edition both by the Press and the public I will only say that I was more than satisfied.

–Robert Bright Marston, Walton and Some Earlier Writers on Fish and Fishing (Firestone Z5971 .M377 1894)

Dodd, Mead & Co. have made arrangements with Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivinglon, and purchased the right in America for a limited number of a limited edition of “The Compleat Angler,” to be published this autumn.

. . . It will be known as the Lea and Dove edition. The ninety and nine editions already in the field do not deter Mr. R. B. Marston, the editor, from the idea that his firm can turn out a hundredth edition that shall have a worthy place among its predecessors. He has himself edited the ever-popular work which Charles Lamb said “might sweeten a man’s temper at any time,” and prepared biographies of Walton and Cotton for it.

The illustrations have been prepared especially for it, and depict charming scenes on Walton’s favorite rivers, which, with few exceptions, have never before appeared in the editions of Walton. There will be upwards of fifty full page photogravures, printed from copper-plates, on fine plate paper.

The quiet pastoral scenery of the river Lea is shown in a series of pictures taken by Mr. P. H. Emerson, whose fine photogravures in his works, “Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads” and “Peasant Life in East Anglia,” have been so much admired. The views on the rivers Dove, Wye, etc., are by Mr. George Bankart, President of the Leicester Photographic Society and one of the most successful living amateur photographers..—Publisher’s Weekly October 13, 1888.

 

 

The Publishers’ Circular and General Record of British and Foreign Literature, 51 (1888)

Izaak Walton (1593-1683), The Compleat Angler, or, The Contemplative Man’s Recreation: being a discourse of rivers fish-ponds fish and fishing written by Izaak Walton; and instructions how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear stream by Charles Cotton; edited and arranged by R. B. Marston; with fifty-four photogravures and about 100 woodcuts; and containing a reprint of The Chronicle of the Compleat Angler, a [biblio]graphical record of its various editions and imitations by T.Westwood and T.Satchell (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1888). Copy 165 of 250. Royal Quarto Edition De Luxe. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2006-0967Q