GraphicArtsCollection

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Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827), Quarter day, or clearing the premisses without consulting your landlord, January 30, 1814. Hand colored etching. Gift of Dickson Q. Brown, Princeton University Class of 1895. Graphic Arts Collection Rowlandson 1785E vol.7   Just a quick note to everyone who has so kindly followed this blog over the years. I will be leaving Princeton at the end of August and so,…

Joseph Low, word and image

Corresponding with artists can often mean translating decorative words and images into simple sentences. Beginning in 1952, Graphic Arts curator Gillett Griffin (1928-2016) wrote to the American artist Joseph Low (1911-2007), inviting him to Princeton University to give a demonstration in linoleum block and stencil printing. The two became good friends and a lively correspondence followed, many…

Perry’s “Narrative” and the battle between its printers

Scene showing Wilhelm Heine (1827-1885), official artist for Matthew Perry’s Narrative of the Expedition, sketching top center.   Matthew Calbraith Perry (1794-1858). Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan, performed in the years 1852, 1853, and 1854, under the command of Commodore M. C. Perry, United States Navy, by order of the government of the United…

“All the adults were writing books…” “Life at Benfolly” by Janice Biala documents the summer of 1937 when Biala and her partner Ford Madox Ford spent two months at Benfolly, Allen Tate’s farm on the Cumberland River outside Clarksville, Tennessee. Biala also brought her sister-in-law, known as Wally, who had agreed to serve as secretary. All the grown-ups were busy writing books, when the young…

Color separation for Scribner’s Magazine 1905

The beautiful color illustrations in Scribner’s Magazine were of course thanks in part to the artist of the original painting or drawing but much credit also goes to the artist who did the color separations for each tone or section of the picture. Did them by eye, not photoshop or even a camera. Without these precise zinc or stone plates and the right mixture of colored inks, the true beauty of…

Copperplate laterally reversed above, as engraved below With sincere thanks to W. Allen Scheuch II, Princeton Class of 1976, the Graphic Arts Collection has an early 19th-century engraved copper plate from the Highland Jeans company. There is no information on this manufacturer other than a series of 1839 dry-goods advertisements by Samuel Seay in Tennessee. In searching historic cotton and…

The Second Wave and more

The Graphic Arts Collection continues to collect folk and tribal art from South Asia as it relates to the pandemic. In Mithila artist Nisha Jha’s “Second Wave”, she focuses on wearing masks, sanitizing, and vaccination as critical to stemming the spread of the virus. The border depicts the coronavirus being injected with the vaccine and “making this world corona-virus free.” In another section,…

Claud Lovat Fraser by Marion Neilson, gelatin silver print, 1913. National Portrait Gallery NPG P966 From 1911, when Claud Lovat Fraser left a law clerkship to devote himself to art, until 1921 when he died at the young age of 31, this prolific artist was responsible for dozens of poetry broadsheets, magazine and book designs, theatrical set and costume designs, and much more. Princeton…

Drawn to be printed

Charles R. Macauley (1880-1934), A Yankee in Czar Nicolas’ Court, no date. Pen and ink on board. Graphic Arts Collection GA 2006.01949 The Graphic Arts Collection holds many drawings, paintings, and sketches prepared to be photographed and wood engraved for magazine illustrations. Most artists did not create finished work to be framed, but linear work that reproduced well for large runs on steam…

21st-century mutoscope or giphoscope

Like the 18th-century metamorphosis books, or the 19th-century Mutoscopes, or Thomas Edison’s 19/20th-century Kinetoscopes, the newly acquired “Ornithology L” by J.C. Fontanive is a sequence of images viewed in rapid succession. It will join our Zoetropes and Phenakistoscopes and other optical devices bringing our history of moving images delightfully into the 21st century. Ornithology P from J.…

Grant Strudwick’s Black Power ABC’s and much more

The Graphic Arts Collection has acquired a small selection from Tia Blassingame’s collection of modern prints, artist’s books, and zines by Black artists. As the director of Primrose Press (and a member of Princeton Class of 1993), Blassingame is intimately acquainted with many of the Black artists, printers, writers, and authors producing work in the United States. Through her assistance and…

Vivicolor inserts for college yearbooks 1930

Berté Water Colour Printing. Vivicolor Inserts (Buffalo: Vivicolor Company, 1930). Also acquired 1929 edition and Jean Berté Water Colour Inks (Belleville, NJ: Wallace & Tiernan Products, ca. 1929). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2021- in process Pochoir (stencil) printing makes beautiful color images but is expensive and difficult to master. To get the same look in less time Jean Berté (1883-1981)…

Engravings by Suor Isabella Piccini (1644–1734)

For several years, the Graphic Arts Collection has been adding Venetian books with engravings by Isabella Puccini. Adding them one at a…

The Forgotten John Gast

John Gast, “A New Jersey Landscape,” Photo-Stigmograph in The Philadelphia Photographer August 6, 1887. Graphic Arts Collection   John Gast (1842–1896) was brought to the United States from Berlin at the age of six and went on to forged a substantial career as a painter, lithographer, and photomechanical printer. He is primarily remembered for one oil painting, “American Progress” (1872) but…

Reminder: Don’t miss Dante 21

“2021 marks the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, author of the Divine Comedy and universally considered the father of the Italian language, who passed away on the night between the 13th and the 14th of September 1321″ = Dante 21. Don’t miss the opportunity to view Bronzino’s Allegorical Portrait of Dante at the Metropolitan Museum through October 11, 2021.…

Why Miriam changed her name to Frank

Mrs. Frank Leslie top center Henry Carter (1821-1880) worked occasionally as an artist for the Illustrated London News under the pen name Frank Leslie before moving to New York City, where he began publishing his own paper, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. In 1857, he had his name legally changed to Frank Leslie. Miriam Florence Folline (1836-1914) married four times and had many names, with…

My Rolodex, no password needed

  The Wheeldex (also called the Simplawheel), with its one central hole, did not hold the cards securely and so, Danish engineer Hildaur Neilson revised and improved it, rebranding his device the Rolodex (rolling index). First marketed in 1958 by his boss Arnold Neustadter (1910-1996) through their company Zephyr American, it was just one of many inventions Neustadter sold, along with the Autodex…