#specialcollection

In this one-of-a-kind altered book, the artist, Lynn Skordal creates a “found poem” by transforming the 1991 edition of “Gift From the Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh with hand-cutting and heat-transferred images.

The images were created from turn-of-the-century portraits and vintage photographs of unknown women from the 1930's and 1940's. In every image the women are evading the camera's eye, and all their faces are hidden. The book's existing text has been excised, leaving only a few phrases and words on each page, which then become a "found poem" and meditation on the unease and longing of women. (Summarized from 23sandy.com)

It's been a snowy, slushy week here in Philadelphia, so here are some bright #endoftheweekendpapers to usher in the weekend. Huzzah! 

Modern marbled paper

Ramsay, David, 1749-1815. The history of the revolution of South-Carolina.  Trenton : Printed by Isaac Collins, 1785

Happy National Walking Day!

Pedestrianism, a form of competitive walking, became popular in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Britain and Ireland, and spread in the United States.

Racers walked for hundreds of miles around a track in six-day races and the one who walked the furthest distance was the winner. In the United States, watching people walk was the most popular spectator sport in the late 1880s.  

Edward Payson Weston (1839–1929) was an American pedestrian. He became famous when he walked 478 miles from Boston, Massachusetts to Washington, D.C. in 10 days and 10 hours, from February 22 to March 4 in 1861. During the walk, he faced snow, rain, and mud, fell several times, and ate while walking.

This portrait is entitled, “Edward Payson Weston Walking from Portland to Chicago.” It must be from 1867 when he covered over 1,200 miles in 26 days. He won a prize of $10,000, but also received several death threats from gamblers who bet against him. He lived to be 90 years old.

We have many other portraits of pedestrians like Weston in our collection of Portraits of boxers and other athletes!

March is Women’s History Month and National Athletic Training Month.

The Fine Arts Library has a collection of Portraits of boxers and other athletes that include over 350 portrait prints and photographs of American, British, and Irish boxers, along with some promotional broadsides, newspaper clippings, and illustrations of championship boxing matches from the mid-18th to early 20th centuries. Not surprisingly, most of the subjects were men. One of a few female athletes in the collection is Dolly Adams.

According to the University of South Carolina’s Broadway Photographs website, Dolly Adams was born Ellen Callahan (1860?-1888). She was known as "Water Queen," one of the most notable of the theatrical mermaids who appeared on U.S. stages in the in the wake of the Civil War. Adams "for several years appeared before the public in scaly tights and floated in a tank of water while she smoked cigarettes and ate all sorts of things."

How did she train for smoking cigarettes and eating underwater? We want to know!

This set of portfolios entitled “Oriental Ceramic Art, illustrated by Examples from the Collection of W.T. Walters” contains one hundred and sixteen gorgeous chromolithograph plates created by Louis Prang. Prang (1824-1909) was a German immigrant who ran a highly successful printing firm in Boston during the late nineteenth century.

The publication features objects from the collection of successful businessman and art collector William Thompson Walters (1820-1894), which later formed the basis of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, MD.

Each plate in the portfolios is accompanied by guard sheet with descriptive letterpress. In this post, we show you Plate 1 from Volume I with the guard sheet as well as the beautiful illustration of a porcelain vase underneath. Sang-de-boeuf is a deep red colored glaze that first appeared in Chinese porcelain at the start of the 18th century. The term is French, meaning “ox blood.”

Plate 1. Lang Yao Beaker. Beaker-shaped vase (Hua Ku), 16” high, enameled with the crackled glaze of the sang-de-boeuf mottled tints of the celebrated Lang Yao. The interior is coated with the same rich red glaze.