Conservation and care of arms and armaments

For many years, the care and housing of Princeton University Library’s collection of swords, rifles, spears, knives, and other armaments has been at the bottom of the “to do” list. Today it rose to the top and a survey of all the weapons was done.

 

Pieces and parts were returned to their original positions. Notes were made on sizes, shapes, and weights so the proper housing could be purchased or constructed. Care and handling was discussed. Special thanks to Lindsey Hobbs, Collections Conservator; Michael Siravo, Special Collections Assistant III; and Ashley Baker, Conservation Technician I for their ongoing work with our collections.

One of the longest carved staffs has been identified as a preist’s staff from the Toba Batak people of northern Sumatra. The local name would be Tunggal panaluan. Many similar staffs were carved to be sold to travelers. Unfortunately, it has not been dated.

 

 

More information on individual items can be found at these links:

https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2014/02/26/audubons-rifle/

https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2016/12/09/do-you-have-general-mercers-sword/

https://graphicarts.princeton.edu/2013/09/13/the-sword-of-william-of-orange-prince-of-nassau/

https://www.princeton.edu/~graphicarts/2012/08/post_36.html

“La Sainte Bible” wants to have it all

James Tissot (1836-1902), La Sainte Bible (Ancien Testament) (Paris: M. de Brunoff, 1904). 2 v.: 400 illus.  “… deux états de tous les sujets horstexte, dont l’un en héliogravure … l’autre en couleur.” Rare Books: William H. Scheide Library (WHS) 199.2. Copy 374 of 560.

Late in 1882, James Tissot had a vision while praying in the church of St-Sulpice. “This prompted him to renounce formally all things secular and to devote his time to illustrating episodes drawn from Holy Scripture. In order to gather material he travelled to Palestine in 1886 and again in 1889.” (Benezit, Dictionary of Artists).

The resultant volume, The Life of Our Lord Jesus Christ (commonly known as Tissot’s Bible) includes reproductions of 250 watercolors and was so successful, Tissot joined Samuel Sidney McClure to form a publishing house to market the bible exclusively.

 

James Tissot (1836-1902), The Life of Our Saviour Jesus Christ; three hundred and sixty-five compositions from the four Gospels (New York: McClure-Tissot Co., 1899). Firestone Oversize ND553.T52 A3 1899q

Tissot worked from 1896 to 1902 on a companion volume of Old Testament stories. Hundreds of watercolors were planned but only a few were completed before Tissot died. His assistants painted and printed most of the scenes under the direction of his French publisher Maurice de Brunhoff (1861-1937).

Two years after Tissot’s death, La Sainte Bible was published with 400 reproductions in two ostentatious volumes. The images are heavy-handed and dull, 360 of them crowded into elaborate text pages and the other 40 printed as separate full-page plates. What’s more, each plate was printed twice: once in photogravure and once in color halftone.

Twenty copies of the “Imperial Memorial Edition” sold for $5,000 and 560 others sold for much less. Discount offers began appearing, with one 1907 sale offering both volumes for $16. Jacob Schiff (1847-1920) purchased the watercolors and donated them to the New York Public Library.


 


Actor Mezzotints

The Princeton theater collection holds many 18th-century British mezzotints of actors and actresses in some of their most popular roles. Below is a portrait of Frances Kemble (1759-1822), the younger sister of Sarah Siddons, who married Shakespearean scholar Francis Twiss. It is an early proof before the engraved lettering was added.

 

John Jones (ca. 1745-1797) after Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), Miss Kemble, 1784. Mezzotint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013.00395

 

 

Edward Fisher (1722-1785) after John Berridge (1740-active 1804), Miss Rose in the Character of Tom Thumb. Act II. Scene II, August 30, 1770. Mezzotint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013.00396.  Inscribed “Ha! Dogs, Arrest my Friend before my Face!… Tom Thumb shall shew his Anger by his Sword / Kills the Bailliff and his Followers…”.

Andrew Miller (active 1739-1763) after Thomas Blisse (active 1740), Mr. Turbutt in the Character of Sosia in Amphitryon, ca. 1740. Mezzotint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013.00401.

Portrait of Robert Turbutt (died 1746) as Sosia.

 

 

William Lawrenson (active 1765-1780), Mr. Smith in the Character of Iachimo, in Cymbaline. Act II. Scene III, November 10, 1772. Mezzotint. 1st state. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013.00400.

Portrait of William Smith (1730-1819) playing the role of Iachimo in Cymbaline by William Shakespeare (1564-1616).

 

 

Giuseppe Marchi (ca.1735-1808) after Johan Joseph Zoffany (1733-1810), Mr. Moody in the Character of Foiguard, ca. 1769-1771. Mezzotint. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013.00399.

This is a portrait of John Moody (born John Cochran, 1727-1812) as the Irish priest Foigard in George Farquhar’s The Beaux Stratagem.

Princeton Party at Twin Lakes, 1877

Detail: Francis Speir Jr., and William Berryman Scott second row left

 

William Berryman Scott (1858-1947) was 15 years old when he passed the oral entrance examination to enter Princeton as a member of the Class of 1877. “It was at Princeton that Scott began a life-long friendship with Henry Fairfield Osborn and Francis Speir; the 3 were inseparable and were given the nickname “The Triumvirate” by their classmates. In their junior year, they were inspired by a Harper’s Magazine article describing O.C. Marsh’s Yale College Scientific Expeditions and decided to undertake their own expedition to the West in search of fossil vertebrates. Planning continued throughout their senior year, and in the summer of 1877 the first Princeton Scientific Expedition set out for Colorado and Wyoming.” — Peabody Museum of Natural History


“In 1876 the Nassau Scientific Association was formed. It was organized by members of the class of ’77, and was An Association to undertake the work of Western Exploration. Under the leadership of Professors Brackett and Karge the first party started in the early part of the summer of 1877. The party was divided into two sections, the geologists, botanists and mineralogists working in Colorado, while the palaeontologists and typographers worked in Utah and Wyoming.” —Alumni Princetonian 1, No. 32 (20 March 1895)

“The University Library has recently received from Miss E. Leßaron Schanck, of Princeton, daughter of the late Professor Schanck, a full set of fifty large photographs of the Princeton Scientific Expedition to Colorado, in 1877. The expedition was composed of twenty members and was led by Professor C. F. Brackett and the late Professor Karge, whose military experience in the west was of great service.”–Daily Princetonian 26, No. 120 (11 November 1901)

The Players

In May 1888, Edwin Booth (1833-1893) paid $75,000 to purchase a townhouse at 16 Gramercy Park South to give The Players Club a permanent home in New York City. According to Club history, the name, The Players, was suggested by author and friend Thomas Bailey Aldrich, after one of the lines from Jacques’ speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Booth with fifteen colleagues and friends were the incorporators of The Players.

On January 28, 1903, Richard Hoe Lawrence (1858-1936) arranged a dinner at the Club for the ten members of the Society of Iconophiles and commissioned an engraving by Joseph Winfred Spenceley (1865-1908) to mark the occasion. Spenceley’s work goes unrecorded within the sets of Society’s member prints and may not have been editioned in time. Lawrence’s copy, with correspondence between the two men, is held in the Graphic Arts Collection.



Society of Iconophiles. History of the Society of Iconophiles of the City of New York: MDCCCXCV: MCMXXX, and catalogue of its publications, with historical and biographical notes, etc. Compiled under the direction of Richard Hoe Lawrence, president, assisted by Harris D. Colt and I.N. Phelps Stokes (New York, 1930). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2010-0138Q

Society of Iconophiles. Catalogue of the engravings issued by the Society of Iconophiles of the city of New York, MDCCCXCIV – MCMVIII / Compiled by Richard Hoe Lawrence with an introduction by William Loring Andrews (New York: The Society, 1908). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2009-0518Q

Thank you books

GBW Tacoma 2017. Book #1
Reposted from Laura Russell, 23 Sandy
“No 1 in a new series of ‘Thank You Books’, celebrating the first 10 years of 23 Sandy. A goal of a book a month, all free, open-edition books, perhaps one-sheet wonders, perhaps not. But, all aimed at thanking the oh so many artists, librarians, visitors and supporters of the gallery.

The first book: GBW Tacoma 2017. Book #1 in this series of thank you books was made as a keepsake for the Guild of Bookworkers Standards Conference held in late October in Tacoma, Washington. I have been a member of the Guild of Bookworkers for nearly 20 years and it was great fun to hand out the books to my many guild friends and say thank you for the inspiration, education and support.

The photos in the book are vintage “Roadside Americana” in Tacoma. The book is a four-sided, one-sheet carousel book adapted from Ed Hutchins’ Book Dynamics. You can download a free PDF of the Tacoma book here: http://23sandy.com/works/blog-postings/thank-you-book-1-to-celebrate-the-first-10-years-of-23-sandy Print out, then follow the step-by-stop instructions to cut and fold into the miniature carousel book. http://23sandy.com”

Cadet Theatricals

Boston’s 1st Corps of Cadets, also known as the Company of Gentlemen Cadets, was chartered in 1741 (history: http://www.afcc1741.org/). In the 1890s, William Gibbons Preston (1842-1910) was commissioned to build them an armory at the corner of Arlington Street and Columbus Avenue, financed through the Cadet Theatricals, musical performances with all-male casts.

The 1897 production at the Tremont Theater was called Simple Simon, with a score by George Lowell Tracy (1855-1921) and Alfred Baldwin Sloane (1872-1926). The Boston Globe noted on January 19, 1897 that high premiums were paid for tickets.

“Society itself . . . was out in force at the Tremont theater yesterday afternoon at 1.30, when the auction sale of seats for “Simple Simon,” this year’s Cadet theatricals, opened for the first two performances . . . . There were fully 300 people in attendance, including many of the best-known professional and business men of Boston, together with a goodly sprinkling of the cadets themselves, a dozen or more speculators and quite a number of “proxies.” …The sale lasted from 1.30 o’clock to 5, when, according to the figures of manager Seymour and his associates, a total of nearly $4000 was represented for the opening night alone.”

 

This photograph was taken by Nathaniel Livermore Stebbins (1847-1922), a member of the Boston Yacht Club and author of several books on sailing, including American and English Yachts. Illustrated by the photogravure process, plates from the Press of Lithotype Printing and Publishing Company, Gardner, Mass. (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1887).

“Norman White, who had been active in the Pi Eta shows while at Harvard, played the lead role, making his entrance on a bicycle in a costume so loud that the orchestra cannot be heard when he has it on, and so bright that the electric lights can be turned off and no one notice it.”– Anne Alison Barnet, Extravaganza King: Robert Barnet and Boston Musical Theatre (2004).

 

Nathaniel Livermore Stebbins (1847-1922), Simple Simon, 1897. Gelatin silver print. GA 2013.00503.Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

 

Testament

 

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired copy 42 of Testament, with text by Colm Tóibín and images by Rachel Whiteread, one of a limited edition of 75 published by Galleria Lorcan O’Neill in Rome. They note: “Testament is the only printed reproduction of Tóibín’s original one-woman play written for Marie Mullen and the 2011 Dublin Theatre Festival. The book’s ten unique photographs by Whiteread were made by the artist expressly for this project.”

 

Writing for The New York Times 11/2012, Mary Gordon called Tóibín’s play “a beautiful and daring work. Originally performed as a one-woman show in Dublin, it takes its power from the surprises of its language, its almost shocking characterization, its austere refusal of consolation. The source of this mother’s grief is as much the nature of humankind as the cruel fate of her own son. Her prayers are directed not to Yahweh but to Artemis, Greek not Jewish, chaste goddess of the hunt and of fertility, but no one’s mother. Mary’s final word on her son’s life and death is the bleak declaration: ‘It was not worth it.’”

 

 

 

From 2009 to 2011 Tóibín taught at Princeton University as the Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Visiting Lecturer in English and Creative Writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts. He is currently Mellon Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Chancellor of Liverpool University.

Rachel Whiteread: see Tate review

Colm Tóibín and Rachel Whiteread, Testament (Rome: Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, 2015). 45 pages, including 10 leaves of plates. Plates printed on double leaves. The accompanying untitled print (“an edition for Testament“), dated 2014, has been signed and numbered in pencil by Rachel Whiteread and inserted into printed folded leaf. “Designed by Peter Willberg, London; photography by Mike Bruce, London; coordinated by Laura Chiari, Susanna Greeves and Lorcan O’Neill. Images printed by Pureprint, Uckfield; binding and letterpress printing by BookWorks, London; set in Plan Grotesque and printed on Naturalis Absolute Matt”–Colophon. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2017- in process

 

 

Photogravure of Monotype

Houses on Battery Park, 1905.

Monotypes are almost never seen in books since each individual print is unique, painted and printed directly from one wet plate. A way of getting around that is to take a photograph of the monotype and transfer it to another copperplate, which is etched and printed as a photogravure. This is what Charles Mielatz chose to do when the Society of Iconophiles requested a series of downtown Manhattan buildings for their October 1908 portfolio.

St. John’s Chapel, Varick Street, 1904.

Richard H. Lawrence, Iconophiles treasurer wrote to subscribers:

“Our process of reproduction of the monotypes is the photogravure process, but we have made plates for each separate color, some of the subjects requiring five plates, and then printed by the superimposed method. The difficulty of getting a perfect register by this method (we are obliged to wet the paper before each printing) has been so great as to make it almost impossible heretofore even with two plates, but we have succeeded with five plates and the plate mark, which really makes six separate printings for some of the subjects.

Color printing from photogravures is usually done from one plate, and the printer fills in the color on the plate, using colored inks, and then pulling one impression. But prints generally require retouching with water color, and are not, strictly speaking, entire prints, as is the work we have done for you. It seemed to us that this method would make the most perfect reproductions of your subjects, and enable us to use paper similar in character to that used in your monotypes, and we are happy to say we have met with success.”

Oyster market on West Street, 1903.

Van Cortland Manor House, 1901.

 

 

Society of Iconophiles, Picturesque New York: twelve photogravures from monotypes by C.F.W. Mielatz (New York: Society of Iconophiles, 1908). “Edition limited to one hundred sets. Published in October, 1908.” Graphic Arts RECAP-91157352

Paul Dujardin (1843-1913)

Princeton University students and researchers are fortunate to have Bernard Picart’s celebrated engravings for the nine-volume set, Ceremonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde, published between 1728 and 1739, freely available for study and pleasure (Ex Oversize 5017.247.11F).

Not everyone is so lucky and so in 1884, the French publisher Alfred Durlacher commissioned Paul Dujardin (1843-1913), one of the leading photomechanical printers in Paris, to make facsimile reprints of sixteen Picart engraving and released the limited edition portfolio as Scènes de la vie juive or Scenes of Jewish Life.

Dujardin used his own secret variation of heliogravure (French for photogravure) to transfer each paper print to a new copper printing plate, which was then etched and printed. Usually we think of photogravure with rich, continuous tone images and so, it is surprising to see how often it was used to reproduce line engravings.

The plates depict the life of the Portuguese and Spanish Jewish community in Amsterdam during Picart’s lifetime. The subjects are listed as: 1, Cérémonie du Schofar; 2. Office de Yom-Kippour; 3. Fête de Souccoth; 4. Procession des Palmes; 5. Office de Simhat Torah; 6. On reconduit le hatan-torah et le hatan-bereschit; 7. La recherche du levain; 8. Le Séder; 9. Cérémonie nuptiale, rite allemand; 10. Cérémonie nuptiale; 11. La circoncision; 12. Le rachat du premier né; 13. Les Iltkafoth autour du cercueil; 14. La dernière pelletée de terre; 15. Exposition de la loi; 16. Bénédiction des Cohanim.


Bernard Picart (1673-1733). Scènes de la vie juive. Dessinés d’après nature par Bernard Picart, 1663 [i.e. 1673]-1733 [Scenes of Jewish Life Drawn from Nature, by Bernard Picart, 1673-1733] (Paris: A. Durlacher, 1884). 1 portfolio ([16] plates). Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize 2007-0013E.