Books: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

In 1865, Boston-based printer Louis Prang (1824-1909), introduced the Christmas Stocking Library, a boxed set of chapbooks full of holiday merriment for the kiddies. This was published nine years before he introduced the first commercial Christmas card to the American public in 1874. Prang, a German immigrant, learned the art of dyeing, printing, and engraving from his father who was a textile printer of calico fabrics. In 1848 Prang was forced to flee Germany because of his political opposition to the Prussian government. Two years later he arrived in Boston and supported himself by making wood engravings for various publications and eventually partnered with Julius Mayer to form Prang and Mayer, Lithographic Printers. They specialized in the printing of business cards, advertisements, and other job printing, and also gained some success with the printing of a series of colored album cards featuring scenic landscapes, animals and flowers which were sold for $3/dozen inside a patented envelope. Just like this boxed set of Christmas chapbooks, the illustrated album cards were printed in four colors, each drawn on stone and folded into accordion structures. The label appearing on the box of the Christmas Stocking Library was printed five solid colors.  

The title page and interior illustrations in each chapbook are early examples of Prang's chromolithography.

As a side story to this lovely little Christmas Stocking Library; it was sold last February at the PBA Galleries auction for $5500. This very rare boxed set belonged to book collector, Pamela Harer, who I last reported on July 3, 2014 when she attended the opening of her Early 20th Century Soviet Children's Books exhibition held at the University of Washington's Allen Library in Seattle. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Pamela was very ill and died the day before I wrote the post. She lived just long enough to receive a private family tour of her remarkable exhibit on July 1st, and quietly died at home on the following day. This exhibit was a dream Pamela had envisioned for many years. It was also her remaining wish that this rare collection of Soviet children's books was to permanently reside at the UW Library. Although much of her research was sadly eclipsed by her illness, Pamela Harer's collection of early 20th century Soviet children's literature remains intact and we can all benefit from her generous gift. At this time her collection has not been entirely digitized, however an earlier endowment of her rare 18th - 20th century children's literature can be seen here. Happily, the gift of books is everlasting. Happy holidays all!

La Typographie

This first volume of La Typographie, on the techniques of book and graphic arts, was published in Paris in 1930 by Henry Babou under the direction of Marcel Valotaire. This cover photo by Jacques Evers is one of 30 photogravure plates of his work. I first discovered this beautiful French journal in the Wolfsonian archive at the University of Florida Digital Collections, however the title page seen just below was sourced here. 

These beautiful photogravure prints seen above of Evers photos are the only images available from the Wolfsonian Archives, however I was delighted to learn the entire book is made available from the International Monotype Memory Project (IMMP.) In their link to a black & white PDF (which appears to be from a reproduction), you can download this entire book complete with text (in French), photos and illustrations on the production of a fine press book;)

A Love Letter to the City

New York artist, Stephen "ESPO" Powers, began his love affair with letters as a young graffiti artist living in Philadelphia. Eventually his graffiti transitioned from writing personal messages to something on a much grander scale, when he combined his community activism with public lettering art. Powers and a team of "sign mechanics" began to collaborate with individual residents of several host communities, before painting murals. After gathering the collective hopes and dreams of individual neighborhood residents, the team would then mirror their comments back on large walls and rooftops for all to see. In effect, these messages and murals became a love letter to the city—lifting spirits and blending art with commerce. The first of these love letters appeared in Coney Island in 2003. Powers then ventured to Dublin and Belfast after receiving a Fulbright award for his work in 2008. Since that time, his work has appeared in the Venice in Liverpool Biennials and on the walls and rooftops of his home town of Philadelphia, Syracuse, São Paulo, Brooklyn and Johannesburg.

Today, Stephen Powers makes his home in New York City and continues to make art and hand lettered signs from his two ICY Signs shops in Brooklyn and in Philadelphia. On March 4th, 2014, Princeton Architectural Press will release a book about Powers' colorful street art titled A Love Letter to the City. A tad late for Valentine's Day, but still a nice treat. Brief sidenote here: Master sign painter and good friend of Letterology, Justin Green, also has a few walk-on parts in this book, which could be summed up nicely as "mentor". 

When this mural first appeared above a Tony's Pizza in Brooklyn, the dots were added to YOU, to give the impression of pepperoni. After Tony's fell victim to the 99 cent pizza trend, the chicken shop moved in. Powers responded by adding a pizza chef to his work. Below is just some of ICY Signs handwork. 

Letterforensics 101

In my last post about the mid-19th century alphabet, I gave acknowledgement to the printer/publisher, Charles Joseph Hullmandel and the likely British artist of these rustic landscape letters, who is known simply as "L.E.M. Jones". I even asserted that this Jones character was a man, which in retrospect, was rather presumptuous of me. It maddens me somewhat when artists of this caliber and standard can fall into relative obscurity, yet their work has survived in at least two of the world's leading art museums. My curiosity of L.E.M. Jones lead me to do some further sleuthing, and I located another similar work to those I posted yesterday. This single "graphite" drawing of the C&K is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Jones is listed as "active" from 1800-1870, and the image is described as "Alphabet Book Design (Letters C and K)". The only distinguishing mark on the sheet is a blind stamp appearing on the lower right corner with the word "Bate" above a crown. 

Can you spot the differences?

Pardon my redundancy to repeat the last two images from yesterday's post again, but I wanted to draw a comparison between the two versions. On closer examination, it appears this C and the K from the British Museums' archives is just slightly different than the "graphite" CK drawing from the Met Museum seen at the top of this post. In addition to the ever-so-subtle differences, the CK version is drawn in two or more colors of grey it appears, and I am wondering now if this had anything to do with Hullmandel's invented method of adding "tone" to his lithographic prints, as I mentioned yesterday. This largely depends upon what his method was, but maybe the Jones CK drawing was a master guide to indicate where to add the 2nd color for the final print. If someone has further insight to add or correct me, I would love to hear it. I am not a lithographer or printer by any measure, but just have a curiosity about printing processes. All of this brings me no closer to identifying Jones, but I like to think that I am connecting a few of the dots here. Below, are two macro images of the graphite CK drawing for a much closer view. 

Update: Mystery Solved

Friend of Letterology, and face behind the scholarly Circuitous Root, Dr. David M. MacMillan has helped to solve the mystery behind the artist and the printing of Hullmandel's Landscape Alphabets. He sent me a text image from Michael Twyman's recently published book, A History of Chromolithography: Printed Colour for All, which explains much about the story. According to Tywman, Hullmandel found himself in a public spat with an associate of printer, Charles Engelmann, who was said to be the inventor of chromolithography in 1837. This rivalry between the two printing firms lead to some fierce competition. Engelmann published "an inventive little alphabet book with the title The Landscape Alphabet (Paris, 1830), each letter being drawn in a more-or-less contrived way within a landscape setting." Using the very same title, Hullmandel then published his own, more elaborate version of a landscape alphabet the very next year. It was for a charity publication using the beautiful crayon-drawn letters by a Miss L.E.M. Jones. (She was indeed a woman artist, as I second-guessed.) It would make sense then to believe that this 1831 edition, with the grey tone letters doubled up on each page, was Hullmandel's first printing. His second edition with just one letter per page printed black only, came later. I am grateful to Dr. MacMillan for bringing Michael Twymans' findings to light, and connecting all the dots.

A Mid-19th C Landscape Alphabet

Experimentation with letterform design is hardly a 21st century novelty. Letters have long been a form of expression and connotation for us, just as words themselves form meaning. These 26 rustic examples of representational letterforms, were published in the book, The Landscape Alphabet, nearly 200 years ago. Many of the illustrated letters are signed, L.E.M. Jones, but little else is known of him. His stone lithographs are a bit sensationalized, as most things were in that era, but they are further evidence of our long devotion to the alphabet and desire to manipulate letterforms. The entire landscape alphabet was printed and published by Charles Joseph Hullmandel (1789-1850), a remarkable painter and printer in his own right, and one of the most prominent figures in the development of lithography in 19th century England. He helped to popularize romantic landscape painting after developing a method of reproducing gradations in tone—lending a soft watercolor effect to his lithographic prints—and was also instrumental in the technical development of color printing. After meeting Alois Senefelder, the inventor of stone lithography, in 1817, Hullmandel began his own press a year later in London. In 1824, he published his first edition of The Art of Drawing on Stone, a complete and comprehensive manual to the success and failures of lithographic printing. He later partnered with Joseph Fowell Walton in 1843, and continued to print under the firm name of Hullmandel & Walton until his death in 1850.

I am grateful to the good people at the British Museum for displaying the entire 26 letters of this landscape alphabet on their online gallery. Below are a few of my own favorite leading characters. One puzzle still remains in my mind, and that is just who was this L.E.M. Jones character who worked in near total obscurity? Was this perhaps a pen name for Hullmandel, or was he so fascinated by the studied hand of Mr. Jones and his landscape alphabets, he chose to publish his elegant work? 

Update: For more information regarding L.E.M. Jones and The Landscape Alphabet, please read my updated post, Letterforensics 101.