Category Archives: Acquisitions

new acquisitions

Procter Hall, Princeton University

Procter Hall, Graduate College, Princeton University, ca.1913. Glass lantern slide. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. A. Perry Morgan. Graphic Arts Collection 2013- in process

2013 is the centenary of Princeton University’s Graduate College. An exhibition at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library highlights the College’s history: http://blogs.princeton.edu/mudd/2013/09/building-the-house-of-knowledge-the-graduate-college-centennial/

Back in Graphic Arts, Elizabeth and Perry Morgan, Class of 1946, generously donated a large, glass lantern slide of the Seven Liberal Arts window in Procter Hall, the College dining hall. Designed by William and Annie Lee Willet of Philadelphia, the stained glass window rises forty feet in height. The center row of images depicts the Seven Liberal Arts. The first four, the quadrivium, are arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. The other three, the trivium, being grammar, rhetoric, and logic.

At the bottom is an inscription: Nec vocemini magistri quia magister vester unus est christus,” or “And be ye not called master, for one is your master, even Christ.”

William Willet (1869-1921) and Anne Lee Willet (1867-1943) collaborated on mural and stained glass designs from their studio in Pittsburgh and then, Philadelphia. The Willets incorporated in 1909, only a few years before their work at Procter Hall. At William’s death, Anne Lee took over the business, which still continues today.

Island Hay

Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), Island Hay, 1945. Lithograph. Signed edition of 250, published by Associated American Artists, New York, Gift of Henry Martin, Class of 1948. Graphic Arts collection 2013- in process

The Graphic Arts Collection is the fortunate recipient of a lithograph entitled Island Hay by the Missouri-born artist Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), given by Henry Martin, Class of 1948. It is one of the last of over 80 lithographs the artist drew between 1929 and 1945, working summers at the family house on Martha’s Vineyard.

In a 1964 oral history with Milton Perry for the Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri, Benton commented, “Yes. I did want them to get the sense that America was made, built up into the powerful country it has become, very largely by the actions of the common people spreading out over the frontiers–on their own and without any kind of official prompting. … But as I said just now about the values of a work of art being finally determined by its spectators so also will its meanings be finally determined. And that is all right. It’s not what’s in the artist’s mind that is important, but what his art raises in the spectator’s mind–that’s what counts in the long run.”

Martin remembered paying the high price of $25 for this not long after he left Princeton. For that amount he not only received the Benton but four other prints issued by the Associated American artists in the 1940s.

Elucidations on a Collection of Sample Prints on Strasbourg Special Papers

Theodore Goebel (1829-1916), Musterdrucke auf Strassburger Special-Papieren. Sammlung hervorragender Kunstblätter hergestellt unter Anwendung der wichtigsten graphischen Verfahren [Sample Prints on Strasbourg Special Papers. An Excellent Collection of Works on Paper Prepared Using the Most Important Printing Techniques] (Strassburg-Ruprechtsau: Neue Papier-Manufactur, 1900). Graphic Arts Collection GA 2013- in process.

In celebrating the bibliophile and historian Theodor Goebel’s 70^th year as a printer, The Inland Printer referred to him as the Nestor of typography in Germany. Bigmore and Wyman, vol. 1, describes Goebel as “one of the most earnest and accomplished among German students of the history and antiquities of printing. In addition to this, he is a sound practical printer”

The author of several distinguished volumes, Goebel angered traditionalists when he brought printing history up-to-date with Die graphischen Künste der Gegenwart [The Graphic Arts of the Present Time] in 1895. Five years later, Goebel lent his essay Erlauterungen zur Sammlung von Musterdrucken auf Strassburger Specialpapieren [Elucidation on a Collection of Sample Prints on Strasbourg Special Papers] to a wonderful specimen book prepared by the Strasbourg Neue Papier Manufactur.

For the first time, a copy of this extraordinary volume has reach the United States and can be found in the Graphic Arts Collection at Firestone Library.

The book is a “state of the art” survey of printing techniques to the turn of the last century, including etching, engraving, photogravure, heliogravure, phototypies, lichtdruck or collotype, autotype, lithography, chromolithography, and much more. There are examples of paper for playing cards in color (spielkarten), maps in color (landkartendruck) and other special papers.

Near the end is an astonishing progressive series of lithographic proofs showing a bird’s eye view of the actual Neue Papier factory.

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.

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.

NO, IT IS

NO, IT IS, 2012. Triptych of three flipbook films; HD video shown on 3 flat screens. (c) William Kentridge

The South African artist William Kentridge prepared and delivered the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard University in 2012. They can be seen here: http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/norton-lectures His exploration of various ongoing multimedia projects evolved into an exhibition, which just opened at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York City.
http://vimeo.com/56083100

One segment of the show involves the translation of Kentridge’s 2012 flip book NO, IT IS, into a triptych of flip-book films shown on three flat screens, including Workshop Receipts, The Anatomy of Melancholy, and Practical Enquiries.

The Graphic Arts collection is fortunate to hold one of the sold out copies of NO, IT IS, published by Fourthwall Books, Johannesburg. The Refusal of Time, a documentation of the creative process for the work of the same title, shown at Documenta (13), 2012 and published by Xavier Barral, Paris, is available at Marquand Library (Oversize N7396.K46 A4 2012q).

William Kentridge: No, It Is (Johannesburg: Fourthwall Books, 2012). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2012- in process

Goethe mixes poetry with visual art

Graphic Arts recently acquired this fragile booklet with six poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) along with six etching after drawings he had made a number of years earlier and chose specifically for this publication. The plates were etched by the theatrical painter Carl Wilhelm Holdermann (active 1820-1840) and by Carl Lieber (active 1820s), a protégé of Goethe and instructor at the Weimar drawing school. The text was printed by Caesar Mazzucchi in Magdeburg, and the portfolio published by Goethe’s friend, Carl August Schwerdgeburth (1784-1878).

The project was described by Goethe himself (translated and printed by Antony Griffiths in German Printmaking in the Age of Goethe 1994):

The undertaking of several worthy artists to edit etched plates after my drawings must be welcome to me in more than one sense. As music is welcome to the poet, whereby the musician brings alive his poem for himself and others, so it is a pleasure to see here old long-faded sheets rescued from the stream of Lethe. On the other hand, I have long thought that in the information and account that I have given of my life, drawing is often mentioned, whereby one might not unreasonably ask why, after repeated effort and continuous enthusiasm, nothing that gives any artistic satisfaction has emerged . . . The finest benefit that an art-lover can get from his unachieved strivings is that the society of the artist remains dear and valuable, supportive and useful to him. And he who is not in a position to create himself, will, if he only knows and judges himself wisely, profit from intercourse with creative men, and, if not on this side, at least from another side form and educate himself.

Radirte Blätter nach Handzeichnungen von Goethe herausgegeben von C.A.Schwerdgeburth (Weimar: Schwerdgeburth, 1821). 6 etchings after drawings by Goethe . Graphic Arts Collection 2013- in process

With the feeling that these sketches that are now laid before the public cannot entirely overcome their inadequacies themselves, I have added a small poem to each, so that their inner meaning can be perceived, and the viewer might be laudibly deceived, as if he saw with his eyes what he feels and thinks, that is a closeness to the state in which the draughtsman found himself when he committed his few lines to paper (Über Kunst und Alterthum, III, part 3, 1822, pp.142-50).

Although Goethe liked to sketch, he noted, “… I was intelligent enough to recognise that I had no talent for the visual arts and that my efforts in this direction were misplaced. In my drawing I lacked sufficient feeling for substantiality. I had a certain fear of letting the objects make their full impact on me; on the contrary, it was the insubstantial and unemphatic elements that appealed to me . . . Nor without constant practice did I ever make any progress; and I always had to start again from the beginning if I had ever dropped my drawing for a while.”

Emil Rudolf Weiss

Gerald Cinamon, E R Weiss: the Typography of an Artist: Emil Rudolf Weiss: a Monograph (Oldham [England]: Incline Press, 2012. One of 250 copies. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2013- in process

Graham Moss of Incline Press issued a wonderful survey of work of the German type designer Emil Rudolf Weiß (1875–1942) with a text by Gerald Cinamon. According to the prospectus, when Cinamon was approached to write about Weiss, he was provided with two suitcases full of research material and examples of Weiss’s work, all in German. The folio volume includes numerous tipped in facsimiles along with two small supplements: The Anagnostakis Pocket Guide to Austrian German and Swiss Antiquarian Bookdealers Terminology and E.R. Weiss In Memorium.

Weiss created Art Nouveau designs for books, textiles and furniture, theater sets and costumes, stained glass, and much more. His work came to prominence in 1895 when it was included in Pan magazine (SAX Oversize N3 .P25q) when he also began publishing small editions of his poetry, such as Die blassen Cantilenen (Recap 3496.23.396).

In 1913, Bauersche Giesserei commissioned a font that became Weiss-Fraktur, which was published in a luxurious specimen book (GA Oversize 2006-0820Q). Two other fonts were designed and cast in metal type.

In the 1920s, Weiss was one of the designers selected by Stanley Morison for the binding and endpaper design of The Fleuron: a Journal of Typography (Weiss: no. 5; GAX Oversize Z119 .F62q).

“How the White Man Trades in the Congo”

Frederic de Haenen (1853-1928), How the White Man Trades in the Congo, Bringing in Rubber and Hostages, 1906. Gouache and ink wash. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2013-

Frederic de Haenen (1853-1928), The Chicotte (The Whipping), January 1906. Gouache and ink wash. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2013-

In the January 1906 supplement to The Graphic: An Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, a special series of illustrations was published documenting the treatment of Africans by European traders. The article was entitled “Dark Deeds in Darkest Africa: Scenes and Tales of Cruelty in the Congo Free State” by the Rev. J.H. Harris, of the “Regions Beyond” Missionary Union.

“As our readers are well aware,” writes the editor, “The Graphic is not given in the publication of sensational illustrations. In view, however, of the great and historic importance of the terrible events which have taken place in the Congo Free State, the conductors of this journal have thought it only right to depart from their usual rule, and publish the sketches and photographs contained in this supplement—the accuracy of which are absolutely vouched for by Mr. Harris, who was present at the committee of inquiry.”

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired two original drawing for The Graphic. One of them depicts a brutal flogging of a slave with a chicotte, a heavy whip made of animal hide used in this region. The image was made after a photograph and drawn in high contrast to aid in reproduction. The artist, Frederic de Haenen, was one of many illustrators who worked for The Graphic and The Illustrated London News.

A second drawing, titled “How a White man trades in the Congo,” is believed to also be from a 1906 issue of The Graphic. It comes with a caption glued to the bottom, which reads in part, “The natives are required to bring in their toll of rubber every fortnight or twenty days, according to the wish of the individual agent. The sentries are sent out to bring in the rubber workers. In the event of the rubber being either short or not good enough in quality, these sentries also bring in a number of “hostages” which the white man holds and forces to work on his “factorie” [sic] until the relatives bring in extra quantity to redeem them.”

The Sword of William of Orange, Prince of Nassau

The sword is mounted against a mirror so you can see both sides of the blade.

Thanks to the generous gift of Carl Otto Kretzschmar von Kienbusch, Class of 1906 (1884-1976) Princeton University is the proud owner of the hunting sword owned and used by William of Orange, Prince of Nassau, after whom Nassau Hall was named. The blade bears on each side the initials P.V.O. (Prince of Orange), the Prince’s Arms, the Motto of the Order of the Garter, and his personal motto. We recently moved the sword out of Nassau Hall and into the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.

William III of England (1650-1702), also known as William III of Orange, was King of England and King of Ireland from February 13, 1689, and King of Scotland from April 11, 1689, until his death in 1702. To watch a series of videos about his life, see the BBC site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/people/william_iii_of_orange#p00vp2kx

The rest of the Von Kienbusch collection of Arms and Armor found its way to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Their records note the following: “Born in 1884, Carl Otto Kretzschmar von Kienbusch lived his entire 91 years at 12 East 74th Street in New York City. By the early 1970s, von Kienbusch devoted the entire second floor of his residence to house his collection of medieval arms and armor, which was comprised of more than 1100 objects, including 35 full suits of armor, and more than 135 swords and 80 helmets.”

“Von Kienbusch graduated from Princeton University in 1906 and spent most of his life working in the tobacco industry. His family made their fortune in leaf tobacco. One of his earliest jobs, however, was with Bashford Dean, who at the time he hired von Kienbusch in 1912 was the curator of armor for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Von Kienbusch represented Dean at armor auctions since the latter’s presence at such events often caused prices to rise.”

“Although von Kienbusch was completely blind the last 12 years of his life, he continued to add to his collection with the assistance of Harvey Murton, one of the last armorers, who also worked in that capacity for 43 years in the Metropolitan Museum’s Arms and Armor Department. Prior to his death in 1976, von Kienbusch bequeathed his collection to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as his related library. Princeton University received his collection of rare books on angling and certain paintings, manuscripts and objects, as well as funding for men’s and women’s athletics, student aid, the library, and art museum.”

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