Tag Archives: printing

November 8, 2012

Pendleton Prints

By daseger

I have long been fascinated with printing in all its forms, and became acquainted with the work of the Pendleton Brothers of Boston when I was researching a long-lost Derby house here in Salem.  The daughter of the house, Mary Jane Derby, entrusted her beautiful painting of it to William and John Pendleton, and they produced an equally beautiful lithograph with their cutting-edge process. This print led me to other prints, and explorations in the vast collections of the Boston Public Library and Boston Athenaeum.  There is something about the Pendleton’s work, particularly their images of buildings, that I find really captivating:  it’s almost photographic, but not quite; it is both realistic and romantic at the same time.  Here is the Derby House, now the site of the Masonic building on busy Washington Street, along with several other lost Salem houses, preserved forever by the Pendletons.

These prints of famous Salem houses, all from the collection of the Boston Athenaeum and all gone, were produced by the Pendleton shop in the 1830s, early days in the history of lithography.  The Derby house was taken down around 1915, after its Washington Street neighborhood had transitioned from residential to commercial. In the center, the Benjamin Pickman house was built around 1748 and taken down at the beginning of World War II, when it was in a dilapidated state.  The  “Lafayette Coffee House”, built after 1796 as a residence for the famous Salem merchant William “Billy” Gray, lasted until the 1970s, though it was unrecognizable at the end. The perennially-unsuccessful East India Mall/Museum Place/parking garage was built on its site.  This post isn’t really about these houses or their unfortunate destruction, but I can’t resist showing images of their later incarnations, strong contrasts to the Pendletons’ pristine structures.

Two Frank Cousins photographs of the Derby and Gray (Lafayette Coffee House & later the Essex House, a hotel) houses, Duke University Library, and in the  center, a HABS photograph from 1940 of the rear of the Pickman House, Library of Congress.

The Pendleton Studio in Boston was not in operation for very long (1825-1836) but nevertheless it seems to have been quite influential, both in terms of technology and the fostering of a community of artists, most prominently Fitz Hugh Lane.  Their images of Boston–individual buildings, wharves, streetscapes–demand a dedicated post, but I’ve got to sneak this lithograph of the Jonathan Morse house in Boston in here, because it is so charming, beautiful, Bulfinch, and sadly, long gone.

Jonathan Mason House:  Mt. Vernon and Walnut Streets, Boston. House built 1802, razed 1827.  C. Bulfinch, arch. Boston Public Library.

The Pendleton brothers were businessmen, and they didn’t just produce single-commission images of the region’s notable houses. Their oeuvre includes advertisements, song sheets, portraits of the well-known and the well-heeled, and curiosities, for lack of a better word. But they were not job printers, by any means. Two more humanistic examples of their work (well, in a way), and images that they themselves submitted to the Library of Congress are a phrenological chart based on the popular theories of Dr. Johann Spurzheim, founder of the phrenology craze that spread across America in the nineteenth century, and a print of Rembrandt Peale’s portrait of George Washington.

Pendleton’s Lithography prints from the Library of Congress, 1832 and 1827.

10 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Culture, History

October 30, 2012

Weather Witches

By daseger

The witch trials in early modern Europe, which resulted in the execution of between 40,000 and 60,000 people and targeted double that figure, focused on devil worship more than anything else, but maleficia (harmful magic) was often the trigger, and the evidence, for the identification of conspiratorial witchcraft. And of the various types of harm that witches were accused of committing, nothing was more generic, and more harmful, than weather witchcraft. One of the earliest printed depiction of witches makes the connection concrete:  two hag witches are literally whipping up a storm in a cauldron.

Ulrich Molitor, (fl. 1470-1501), De lamiis et phitonicis mulieribus (Cologne, 1500).

Even if we can’t understand the fear of witchcraft in our rational era, we can understand the threat of weather witchcraft to a civilization that depended on the climate for food, and life. Our supposed mastery of nature leaves us a lot less vulnerable–at least we like to think so. But in the premodern past, a storm could bring hunger at best and starvation at worst. The source of evil is always a problem in Christianity, as it is in every culture:  why do bad things happen to good people?  The devil and his witches–the servants of Satan–provided an accessible explanation. And for these reasons, I think that the earliest disseminated images of the witch focused on weather witchery:  certainly those of the greatest printmakers of the day, Albrecht Dürer and his apprentice Hans Baldung (Grien) did: Dürer pictures a goat-riding witch attending by several putti and bringing forth rain, while Baldung’s more shapely weather witches are yielding their apple-capped flask to bring forth a storm with the aid of another demonic putto and of course, the demon-goat. This particular image is obviously a painting, but Baldung created several influential woodblock prints of witches depicted in an overtly sexual manner, intensifying interest in them even more in the early sixteenth century.

Albrecht Dürer, The Witch (1500-02), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Hans Baldung Grien, The Weather Witches  (1523), oil on panel, Städel Museum, Frankfurt.

As I am writing this, I keep checking for updates on Hurricane Sandy, and I just read about the abandonment at sea of the Canadian replica tall ship HMS Bounty (made for the 1962 Marlon Brando film), and the loss of several members of her crew.  This was the particular witchcraft fear in Scandinavian cultures:  witches stirred up storms at sea and sank ships. You can see this fear illustrated in the Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus of Olaus Magnus (1555), a grand compendium of Nordic popular culture and folklore, as well as in King James I and VI’s pamphlet about the famous North Berwick trials:  Newes from Scotland – declaring the damnable life and death of Dr. John Fian (1591). Upon his engagement to Anne of Denmark, James spent time in Scandinavia and became exposed to continental witchcraft beliefs: the stormy voyage he endured on his return trip home combined with his belief that as “God’s lieutenant” he was the target of demonic conspiracies inspired him to be a particularly zealous witch-hunter both in Scotland and England.

Magnus’s Historia and Newes from Scotland woodcuts:  Ferguson Collection, University of Glasgow Library Special Collections.

The contemporary record of one of the largest witch hunts in European history, occurring at Trier in western Germany from 1581 to 1593 and resulting in the death of over 360 people, is illustrated with a composite picture of all the activities of witches, including storm-making with a broomstick. In central Europe, hail seems to have been the most commonly-identified form of magical weather and could definitely provoke accusations. Hail does seem kind of magical, if you think about it.

Title page of Peter Binsfeld, Tractatus de confessionibus maleficorum et sagarum (1592).

You can see from the title page of one of the pamphlets reporting the Lancashire (Pendle) trials of 1612, the largest trials in England, that weather witching was one of the accusations, along with riding the wind. I am not certain if any specific weather charges were leveled at the accused witches here in Salem, although I do know that the intense cold, and the hardship it brought to this community, has been considered among several contributing factors in the background of the 1692 trials. This follows the European historiography, which has been considering the impact of the “Little Ice Age” on witch-hunting for some time.

A goat-riding witch brings down a storm:  from  the Compendium Maleficarum of  Francesco Maria Guazzo (1628).

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in History

September 14, 2012

Another Cartophilic Collection

By daseger

I’ve posted on trade cards several times, and they remain a form of ephemera that I casually collect. It seems to me that these early business cards are among the least ephemeral of ephemera–so many survive.  And most of them are the standardized children/animals/flowers variety.  So I’m pretty picky:  my collection is full of Salem items, cards with unusual shapes, cards that advertise Sarsaparilla (for some reason, a new interest of mine; when sold as a medicinal tonic at the end of the nineteenth century it contained something like 18% alcohol) and apothecaries in general, and those put out by the home furnishings trades. Occasionally odd images catch my fancy, and I don’t care what they are selling. I really prefer the earliest trade cards, issued in western Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but I could never afford them and most of them are in rare book libraries anyway. It’s been a while since I featured any trade cards, so I thought that I’d showcase my most recent finds.

First, some Salem cards. Frank Cousins was an amazing photographer/entrepreneur who did much to capture and sell Salem a century ago:  the cards for his Essex Street shop, the Bee-Hive, were often issued in interesting shapes.  I always go for any view of the wharves and great examples of typography, and I love the font on Mr. Goodwillie’s card. The last card, presenting a western image of Chinese workers, is extremely interesting:  “others”, particularly Chinese, often appear on late nineteenth-century trade cards, and almost always in a stereotypical, racist and/or jingoistic way.  I’m not sure what’s going on with this card, issued by a Salem pharmacist; most likely it is part of a series.

As you can see, A.A. Smith is offering “petroleum remedies”:  even more unusual is the”magnetized food” on sale at a Brooklyn pharmacy.  I’ve included the back of the card so you can see the pitch:  using children to appeal to their mothers, obviously an age-old practice.  And then there are two cards issued by the Charles I. Hood Company of Lowell, Massachusetts, the leading manufacturer of the equally healthy Sarsaparilla.

“Magnetized Food” trade card from the Library Company of Philadelphia Digital Exhibit: Nineteenth-Century Pharmacists’ Trade Cards from the William H. Helfand Collection.

I thought I was familiar with all the digital databases of works on paper but just recently I found the online collection of the Rothschild family’s Waddesdon Manor, which includes over 700 trade cards from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is an amazing resource for all sorts of things. The Rothschilds were probably the greatest collectors of the nineteenth century, and I was surprised to see so many humble trade cards among their more luxurious acquisitions, but apparently Ferdinand von Rothschild, the builder of Waddesdon, was interested in every aspect of French life and culture in the eighteenth century. Here are three late-seventeenth-century cards from his collection, with which urban outfitters offered their services and wares:  the first one is from a hat-maker, the second from a vestment-maker, and the last one from a furrier. Mere slips of paper that survived all these many years.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in History

August 13, 2012

Tenacious Types

By daseger

I read a really interesting article entitled the “The Typeface of Truth” by Michael Beirut yesterday that set me off on a typographical odyssey.  It was hot (or humid, actually) and I really didn’t want to get off the couch, so I dug a bit deeper into the subject of the article:  the enduring influence of the font invented by John Baskerville (1706-1775).  Actually, Baskerville the man was only briefly mentioned by Beirut, who was summarizing a series of posts in the New York Times Opinionator blog by writer and filmmaker Errol Morris which attempted to ascertain whether there are “certain fonts that compel a belief that the sentences they are written in are true?”  To ascertain an answer to this question, Morris devised a quiz which implicitly compared the Baskerville, Computer Modern, Georgia, Helvetica, Comic Sans,  and Trebuchet fonts as to the credulity of their passages.  Baskerville was the big winner, the “typeface of truth” in Beirut’s words.

Baskerville was a man who loved letters.  He loved to look at them, write with them and engrave them so much that changed his career path in his 40s and became a typefounder and printer.  In the preface to his 1758 edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost, he reflects on this transition:  “Having been a great admirer of the beauty of Letters, I became insensibly desirous of contributing to the perfection of them.”  Not content to be a mere craftsman, he effected innovations in every associated typographical endeavor:  design, casting, paper and ink production, printing.  He respected the dominant typefounder of his day, William Caslon, but clearly thought that there was room for improvement–especially in spacing and layout. Baskerville produced about 60 beautiful books (including several  bibles even though he was a proclaimed atheist), but had little commercial success in his adopted professions and probably would have faded into obscurity if not for the advocacy of Benjamin Franklin in his day and the great American book designer Bruce Rogers in the twentieth century.

Because Baskerville’s type survived, it looks conventional to us today, and obviously credible.

Below:  a Baskerville bible from 1769, a a neat type specimen poster (one of many) from Typography Today, and a close-up of a letterpress Baskerville print from Blush Publishers in Wales.

Chasing down Baskerville led me down many paths, including one that led to a special Salem font! (and a very un-Baskerville design)  Local (Winchester, MA) designers The Walden Font Co. have resurrected and revived many old historical typefaces, including those with very distinct gothic, western, and Shakespearean vibes, and a “magickal” font named Salem 1692.  Here it is, on its own, and superimposed by me on an actual seventeenth-century document, Cotton Mather’s 1693 Wonders of the Invisible World.

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Culture, History, Paper, Salem

July 22, 2012

A Swarm of Bees in July

By daseger

According to the old English nursery rhyme: A swarm in May is worth a load of hay; a swarm in June is worth a silver spoon; but a swarm in July is not worth a fly. Even if we could muster enough bees in these days of ever-dwindling bee populations, apparently it’s too late in the season for a regenerating swarm. Nevertheless, there still seem to be bees around, in my garden, on the streets of Salem, and in my bookmark folder labeled interesting insects. So it’s a good time to showcase most of the above.

For the past few years, the city of Salem has been initiating public art projects, and this year the goal is all about transforming mundane surfaces into works of art.  All the utility boxes around town have been painted, and my favorite is the “bee box” near the intersection of Essex and Summer Streets: here we have a real swarm, or at least a utilitarian representation of one.

I think bees are on everyone’s minds now that their numbers are in decline, but in fact representations of them go way back: the royal associations, their industrious and organizational nature, and the fact that they were the source of Europe’s native sweetener made them very conspicuous insects in western culture.  Sometimes they even seem to transcend insect-hood, or at the very least represent all of insect-hood, as in God made the birds and the bees.

Some medieval bees:  pollinating, confronting a bear, and making honey:

British Library MSS Harley 3244 (after 1236), Harley 3448 (15th century) and Sloane 4016 (c. 1440).

Bees were big in the early modern era, as their role in pollination was universally known and expensive imported sugar could not fulfill the demand for sweet treats. They also became, very notably, the subjects of the first publication of empirical observations made with one of the revolutionary instruments of the era, the microscope, in Federico Cesi’s and Francesco Stelluti’s Apiarium (1625; detail below).  In England, all of the practical gardening manuals from the sixteenth and seventeenth century contain sections on bee-keeping; it seems to be a natural component of cultivation, not a specialization by any means. Sometimes women are the designated bee-keepers, sometimes men.  There were also books focused particularly on bee cultivation and bee culture, like John Levett’s classic Ordering of Bees (1634, below) as well as satirical allegories like John Day’s Parliament of Bees (perhaps 1607, but not printed until 1641). Given that bees live in a matriarchy as well as their general nature and attributes, I’ve always wondered why Elizabeth never made more iconographical use of them; perhaps it was too patently obvious.

Centuries later, Napoleon had no such subtlety: he used bee motifs to project legitimacy for his very new regime.  The bee enabled him to project royalty–as it was associated with France’s very first royal dynasty, the Merovingians, and with France’s early medieval emperor, Charlemagne–while disassociating himself with the fleur-de-lys-bearing Bourbons whom he displaced.

Bonaparte among the Bees:  portraits of Napoleon by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson  (after 1804) and Jacques-Louis David (1812; National Gallery of Art, Washington).

Bees were too universal and essential to be stigmatized by their association with Napoleon, and after his fall they became an important decorative motif in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, appearing on textiles, ceramics, and jewelry, and in many illustrations and lithographs. At the same time, this very industrious era produced several key innovations in bee-keeping, most notably Langstroth’s movable frame hive, bringing about a revolution in the management of bees. Art, science, and industry were inextricably connected when it came to bees, and I haven’t even touched on advertising.

Wedgwood Sugar Caster, early 19th century, and French bonnet veil, c. 1860, Victoria & Albert Museum, London; illustration from Brockhaus Konversations-Lexicon : allgemeine deutsche Real-Encyklopädie. (Leipzig : F.A. Brockhaus, 1883-1887), New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Of course bees continue to be inspirational for artists, designers, and crafters.  Given that the bee population is declining at an alarming rate (30%!!!), I hope that their ongoing popularity is not merely a sentimental urge.  There are too many items emblazoned with bees to showcase here, but I am drawn to British ceramicist Fenella Smith‘s bee mugs and jugs, which you don’t see everywhere (yet).

3 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Culture, History, Nature

June 11, 2012

Unnatural History

By daseger

I have no idea what I was searching for, but somehow I came upon some images from Henry Louis Stephens’ Comic Natural History of the Human Race this past weekend and was immediately captivated: anything anthropomorphic always has that effect on me. This book represents both actual people (mostly from the Philadelphia area where Stephens lived and worked) and stereotypes in the guises of those birds, insects, animals and fish that match up with their natures. I imagine that Stephens got away with his particularly unflattering caricatures by using general types (a sanctimonious religious moralist, for example, is depicted as a blood-sucking vampire; there are several rats) rather than specific people. Published in 1851 by Samuel Robinson of Philadelphia, the book is also an early example of color lithography, with plates by Louis Rosenthal and Peter Kraemer.

Here are some of the images, beginning with the only name in the book that I recognized:  P.T. Barnum, portrayed by Stephens as a “Hum-Bug”. The “Stool Pigeon”, the “Woodpecker” (William P. Gihon, an engraver), the “Bird of Paradise”, and the “Taylor Bird” (Mary Cecilia Taylor, an opera singer) follow. On the title page, Stephens presents himself as the hen that hatched this egg, thus mitigating any hurt feelings that might have ensued.

Henry Louis Stephens, The Comic Natural History of the Human Race (Philadelphia: Samuel Robinson, 1851), accessed via Internet Archive.

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Culture, History

March 28, 2012

The Folly Cove Designers

By daseger

This past weekend I made a major score when I encountered a long-sought item:  a placemat depicting Chestnut Street  in Salem made by Louise Kenyon of the Folly Cove Designers in the 1950s or early 1960s.  Though it is in rather shabby condition, I snapped it right up, as I have long wanted a piece of Folly Cove and now I have one depicting my own street!

The Folly Cove Designers were a collective of textile artisans working in the Lanesville section of Gloucester, Massachusetts from the 1940s through the 1960s.  Inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement and founded by illustrator Virginia Burton Demetrios, the designers carved their own linoleum blocks and produced linens, clothing, and upholstery fabric for their own houses and also for sale.  There was a strong educational mission connected to what essentially became a guild:  aspiring Folly Cove Designers completed coursework (designed by Demetrios, apparently as innovative an educator as she was an illustrator and designer) as well as a “masterpiece” (a term that originated in the medieval craft guilds), which, if it met with the approval of a jury made up of revolving members of Folly Cove, was produced and offered for sale under the trademark of the Designers.

After Virginia Burton Demetrios’s death in 1969, the guild dissolved, but one of the earliest Folly Cove designers, Sara Elizabeth (Halloran) continued the block printing tradition in Lanesville until her death in 2009.  The Sara Elizabeth Shop is still open for business, selling old and new Folly Cove designs on fabric and paper at both their shop and their website, which is also a good source for Folly Cove history and the block printing process.

The printing process:  as demonstrated in a 1945 Life article (“Yankee printers get National Recognition”), as well as by the still-working Acorn press at the Sara Elizabeth Shop.  Below, Virginia Burton Demetrios and her students/designers from the Life article.  The piece in the center (by Demetrios) is called Diploma, because it was given to a new designer, framed, after they had sold their first block print. Note the foot–stomping (or stamping) phase of the production process.

My Chestnut Street print is not really representative of a Folly Cove design, though the guild was indeed made up of individual designers with individual visions.  Still, there are a lot of floral and naturalistic themes, and some very whimsical images, particularly of animals.  The concentrated Finnish population in mid-twentieth century Lanesville might have asserted a Scandinavian influence on the prints (though they are far from Marimekko!), as several members of this community became Folly Cove designers.  On the other hand, some of the patterns look positively Elizabethan to me.  The Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester has a very strong Folly Cove collection, including sample books and archival materials as well as textiles (in fact, the Museum recently purchased the block which produced my print).  You do run across Folly Cove products in antique shops and at auctions in our area as well:  Blackwood/March Auctioneers in Essex always seem to have lots.  Essex antiques dealer Andrew Spindler currently has several Folly Cove patterns available in his 1stdibs shop, including one of my favorites, Gossips, and some pillows covered in a perennial favorite, Lazy Daisies.

A few more of my favorite Folly Cove prints:  two designs by Zoe Eleftherio and Elizabeth Jarrabind’s Turtles, and (to set the scene) a Maurice Prendergast painting of Folly Cove from 1910-15.

11 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Design

February 10, 2012

Letterpress Love

By daseger

The revival of traditional letterpress printing in this past digital decade is a very interesting trend to me; or perhaps my impression is incorrect and letterpress never went away.  It does seem like small letterpress printers are popping up everywhere, hopeful signs that craftsmanship is still valued–even pursued–in an age of mass and massive production. I wanted to feature some local letterpress printers for this pre-Valentine’s Day post and I found quite a few, but very few of them were really offering valentines, which makes perfect sense:  their business is a bespoke one, and custom-ordered Valentine’s Day Cards are probably pretty unusual (and unprofitable).  I did find a few, and I broadened my search a bit to include letterpress offerings on the neat (and new-to-me) site Felt & Wire Shop and Etsy.

I’m looking for rather streamlined Valentine’s Day cards this year:  no cutesy animals, only minimalist hearts, typographical motifs, and beautiful printing, although a quirky card always catches my eye.  The cards below particularly appealed to me, beginning with one from a local printer: B.IMPRESSED.  Just click on the image to get to the source.

I had to put one animal-themed card in here, plus this is beautifully printed.

A bit overtly romantic for me but again, beautifully printed.  The bleeding hearts look like BLEEDING HEARTS.

Not a valentine, but a great photograph (by Maggie Holzberg) of an example of some very nice printing and the “bite” of type into paper, from the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Folk Art & Heritage Apprenticeship Program.

7 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Paper

December 28, 2011

Bits of Holly History

By daseger

It occurred to me that holly–the traditional symbol of Christmas and Winter–is often paired with something and seldom presented on its own.  The “holly and the ivy” is the best example, but there are many others, like this stylized little image of holly and a lyre on the cover of a Christmas concert program from 1898.  I found the program in a dusty box of sheet music at a yard sale a couple of years ago, and opened it just the other day.

That same day I also checked in with the blog of the Met’s Cloisters Museum, The Medieval Garden Enclosed, to find the “holly girls” decorating the museum’s arches with holly.  So beautiful!  I have both interior and exterior arched doorways and several flourishing holly bushes–I wonder if I could do this next year?  Probably not, but at least I can think about it.

Holly is often pictured in the margins of medieval manuscripts (usually with ivy, its companion plant) and seems to have had many associations and virtues, all positive.  With its bright red berries blooming in December, it represents light, warmth and hope, joy and goodwill.  It has always been a protective plant:  against poisons and demons, even lightning.  With the coming of Christianity, it came to be associated both with the Virgin Mary and the blood (berries) of Christ.  In the early modern era, the holly tree was prominently linked with the ars nova of printing, notably on the title age of Leonhart Fuchs’ De historia stirpium commentarii insignes (“New Herbal”, 1542-43).  The title-page device of Basel printer Michael Isengrin features a holly tree with a printing-house platen amongst its branches,representing its increasing secular symbolism.

And here are two more holly herbal images from Elizabeth Blackwell’s Curious Herbal  (1739) and Francois Andre Michaux’s North American Sylva (1819).  Blackwell illustrated her own book, while Michaux called upon one of the most famous botanical illustrators of his day, Pierre Redoute.

In the nineteenth century, the holly becomes the stereotypical holiday plant through advances in lithography and the emergence of the dynamic greeting-card industry, which produced millions of holly-embellished holiday cards.  But there were other images of the plant out there too:  elaborate theatrical costumes, ceramics, cigarette cards.  The collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum encompasses a large collection of costumes from the London theater, including these two creations by “Wilhelm” (William Charles Pitcher) for productions in the 1890s:  Holly personified, with Mistletoe and alone.  From the same era and collection is the Minton “Four Season” tile, with holly representing winter.

And then there were so many cards: cigarette cards for advertising, Christmas and New Year’s cards for “greeting”.  The first card below, issued by the Duke’s cigarette company in the 1890s, is part of a “Language of Flowers” series, which associated holly with “foresight”.  The second and third are British and from the 1920s, illustrating the uses of the (hard) holly wood (chess sets and teapot handles, apparently) and the boy scout “holly patrol” badge.  How the holly has “evolved”:  from the blood of Christ to the boy scouts!

And finally two greeting cards, both from the vast collection at the New York Public Library Digital Gallery like the cigarette cards above:  a simple New Year’s Day card from the turn of the last century and a birthday card of similar vintage on which holly is paired with something I’ve never seen before:  turquoise?

7 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in History

December 3, 2011

Prang of Boston

By daseger

Last month, the Peabody Essex Museum here in Salem opened a year-long exhibition of seldom-seen treasures from its Phillips Library entitled Unbound, Treasures from the Phillips Library at PEM.  Even though the exhibit includes a leaf from the Gutenberg Bible and original transcripts from the Salem Witch Trials (which, pardon my rant, are public records and should be more generally accessible), the most compelling visual images in the exhibition are the progressive proofs for a lithographic portrait of Ludwig von Beethoven produced by Louis Prang  & Company of Boston in 1870.  The collective image is very modern in its repetition and perspective, and also illustrates the intensity of the chromolithographic process.

Progressive Proofs from the Phillips Library, PEM, and the finished portrait from the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Prang & Company was the color printer for most of the second half of the nineteenth century.  Louis Prang learned the art of color lithography in Germany and perfected it in Boston, where he produced reproductions of great works in the spirit of “the democracy of art”.  He was a also a practical printer who produced thousands of cards, calendars, and advertisements for his always expanding market. Prang’s “views”, whether artistic, historical, or scenic, seem to have a strong American  theme; he had fled Europe right after the tumultuous revolutions of 1848 and clearly valued American democracy as well as cultural democracy.  Here are some of my favorite Prang prints from the Library of Congress and New York Public Library; given the business locale, the Boston Public Library also has a large collection of Prang prints.

A very diverse assortment from the Library of Congress:  the popular bird’s eye view of Boston (1877), a kitchen view  from Prang’s Aids for Object Teaching (1874), a baseball game(1887), and an undated still-life.

I find Prang’s advertising posters even more appealing than the products they are peddling, especially as we get closer to the turn of the century and art nouveau imagery.  Here are a few advertisements from the New York Public Library Digital Gallery, both from the 1890s.

Prang is also an important figure in the history of ephemera, quite apart from chromolithography, because of his pioneering role in the emerging greeting card industry.  I’ve seen him referred to as the “father” of the Christmas card (and the Valentine’s Day card, and the Easter card, etc…) more than once.  I’ll post some Prang cards a bit later in the season, but for now, just a preview.

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Design, History