Who is the Mystery Pre-Cosway Binding Binder?

by Stephen J. Gertz

[COSWAY-STYLE BINDING]. Etrennes historiques,
 ou mélange curieux d'anecdotes Instructives & nécessaires
 sur les differens pays de l'univers...
Paris: Cailleau, 1775.

A binding of historical significance to the art & craft, in Cosway-style 130 years prior to J.H. Stonehouse, a director of the bookselling firm of Henry Sotheran, introducing Cosway bindings (in collaboration with binders Riviere & Son and artist "Miss Currie" and named after eighteenth century miniaturist Richard Cosway), has come to market.

It is bound in blond morocco with smooth spine decorated with small golden fleur de lis, with colored metal inlays surrounding a central engraved medallion composed of several landscape scenes in miniature and finely colored with gouache, all framed  in black morocco  adorned with carved and gilded iron with a thin transparent sheet of mica.

The binder is, alas, unknown but this anonymous visionary appears to have actually developed the Cosway-binding concept. I am aware are of only three other similar examples of these extremely scarce bindings, one of which is seen below:

[COSWAY-STYLE BINDING]. Exercice du Chrétien...

Saumur: De l'Imprimerie de Francois-Paschal-Jean-Marie de Gouy, 1774.

The above is in full contemporary vellum with elaborately gilt decorated red morocco to boards  and spine, inlaid with 20 colored metal disks within pierced roundels, and with the upper and lower boards each possessing three hand colored miniatures in gouache under original mica.

Both of these extravagant bindings, contemporaneous with the books' publication  and obviously for owners of means, appear to  have been wrought by the same unknown hand; the miniature paintings certainly were. The combination of  metal work and mica-covered miniatures is so unusual for late eighteenth century French (or any other nationality) binding that it is not unreasonable to conclude that each was produced in the same atelier. But whose?

Fast forward to the early twentieth century: It may be that J.H. Stonehouse came across one of these scarce bindings from the last quarter of the eighteenth century and, thus inspired, initiated the Cosway binding project.

Anyone with any further knowledge of these pre-Cosway-style bindings is encouraged to provide whatever information they possess. We thank you in advance.

__________

Image of Etrennes historiques... courtesy of Librairie Ancienne Denis, with our thanks.

Image of Exercice du Chrétien... courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
__________
__________

Hooking-Up Through the London Review of Books

by Stephen J. Gertz

Volume 33 No. 2. 20 January 2011.

It's been awhile since we last visited the London Review of Books to further our cross-cultural anthropological studies on the mating behavior of book lovers.

While the weather has been hell this month it's comforting to know that the climate for the literary love-lorn has remained comically and pleasantly tropical with delightfully bent isobars manifesting themselves on the map.

As usual, we have removed all identifying and/or contact info to protect both guilty and innocent.

From January's issue:

Not an esoteric advert, just a sincere request. New York Jewish writer/lecturer (61) living in NW London, with beauty, style, wit and wisdom, a great smile, an exuberant spirit and an understanding heart – plus lots of faults too numerous to mention – seeks an honest kind London-based man for laughter, intimacy, adventure and mutual shelter from the storm. Enjoying the storm also works. The package you come in is less important than the soul shining through and the laughter in your eyes. Whaddya say?

[We like the smooth, clichéd personal-ad prose followed by the throw-away vernacular New Yorkism at its close. It's as if Eliza Doolittle tossed-off an 'Ow's that, G'vnr! after demonstrating perfect locution in the Queen's English to Professor Higgins].

My therapist has given me such a good rate I can afford to indulge my bouts of infidelity and still deal elegantly with my guilt. Attached but unfaithful London male 60 seeks female counterpart. I promise an intensity of sexual joy unexpected in the LRB.

Female, 34. All own limbs. Seeks man with low priorities.


So ouroboros has finally caught up with these ads. Not so me, M, 37, whom you’ll still find chewing through vegetarian nacho combos and nothing else at retail park restaurants across the North West long after this column has devoured its own head. I’ll be the one beneath the ‘Le Chat Noir’ poster refusing to pronounce ‘sangiovese’ correctly and challenging the waiter to fisticuffs.


Sexually I’m not like Switzerland at all, even although I live there. Monolingual M (53), Lausanne based, seeks F for the usual shenanigans.


Alas, my “Why Mahler?” advert lacked clarity: responses from women, lovely women, but women nevertheless. And I am a woman seeking a 60ish man, as described in the advert. Male responses welcomed.


American, M, early 70s though most don't believe it. Credit goes to the Canadian Air Force drills that have started my days for 35 years. A creature of habit, and so hope to continue to take my women in olive tones.


Fantasy made real? Strictly sexual woman will push your boundaries.
 

[Considering the publication it's not clear whether she means evolving the reading habits of a date from the Bible to the works of the Marquis de Sade, or same sans the reading].

And so ends another episode of Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. Roll theme music:

__________

We've mined this mother lode before. Why? Because the vein of gold in them thar hills runs deep:

"Have Books Destroyed Your Life, Too?"
London Review Of Books Personal Ads, Redux.
Miss Lonelybooks, Revisited.
Love In Bloomsbury.
Bibliophiliac Bleeds Books, Seeks Same For Mutual Bloodletting.
Are Americans Ruining the London Review of Books Personal Ads?
__________
__________

Extremely Rare Turkey Mill Ream Wrapper Surfaces

by Stephen J. Gertz

A scarce ream wrapper, c. 1830s, from the historic English Turkey Mill, a major British papermaker with roots dating to the seventeenth century, has come to market.

Beginning as a cloth fuller, by the early eighteenth century the Turkey Mill had  wholly converted to making paper. In 1740 James Whatman assumed tenancy of the mill, enlarged it, and, assisted by famed British printer, John Baskerville, developed a new form of fine quality paper suitable for a greatly expanded range of printing and art work; the paper became the sought-after choice of artists such as J.M.W. Turner and Thomas Gainsborough.

The development of this wove paper, produced on mesh material pioneered by Whatman, resulted in a product having a much less irregular surface than laid paper, which dramatically improved the quality of printed work and the range of possible printing techniques. Traditional laid paper caused ink and pigments to puddle on the page but wove paper's smooth surface prevented that from occurring and in addition was soaked in a gelatin bath to make it extremely strong and less absorbent. Paint moved easily over its surface and multiple layers could be applied and then wiped, scratched, or scraped away without damaging the paper.

By its introduction of wove  paper (aka velin), in concert with the cessation of imports of fine note paper imports from Europe during the war between France and Spain, the Turkey Mill's success was assured; by 1759 it had assumed the major role in British papermaking and had become the largest paper mill in the country.

The Turkey Mill continued to innovate, producing the famed "Antiquarian" paper, 51 x 31 inches,  at the time the largest paper size ever manufactured, requiring eleven men to operate the contrivance  necessary to make a sheet.

The Hollingworth brothers acquired the mill from James Whatman II in 1805 yet the Whatman name, so associated with fine art paper, continued to be used. Rare booksellers, collectors and librarians will have no doubt seen the dated watermark "J. Whatman" on paper used to produce engravings for color-plate books published by Ackermann and many others during the nineteenth century.

All vintage ream wrappers are rare; those from the Turkey Mill are  seldom seen. Alastor Rare Books in the U.K. is offering this wrapper; inquiries may be made here.

__________

[Ream Wrapper]. Mill Number 300. One Ream of Paper. Warranted Full Weight. 19lbs. Hollingworth & Co., Turkey Mil, Maidstone, c. 183?.
__________

 The three volume James Whatman the Elder and The Whatmans and Wove Paper (West Farleigh: J.N. Balston, 1992-1998) by John Balston is the key reference to its subject.
__________

Of related interest: The Art of Old Ream Wrappers, Unwrapped.
__________
__________

Swine at War: 16th Century Poem or Pork-Barrel Congress?

All the world's a sty and all the men and women merely oinkers...

by Stephen J. Gertz

In Ausberg 1530, Heinrich Stayner printed a curious work of neo-Latin poetry. Written under the pseudonym, Publius Porcius, and 253 hexameters in length, it is titled Pugna Pocorum (The Battle of the Swine), a narrative allegory of human behavior, and though tempting to do so it should not be conflated to an overview of contemporary American politics - but go ahead, anyway.

It is also one of two priceless examples of a tautogram, an alliterative form of poetry wherein every single word begins with the same letter, here "P." The other tautogram of note is one  discussed not too long ago by Booktryst, De laude calvorum ad Carolum Calvum Imperatorem by Hucbald of St. Amand, each word in that appreciation of alopecia beginning with the letter "C."

This bizarre poem is the only claim to fame of its author, John Leo Placentius or John the Pleasing, of whom we know little beyond that he was born c. 1500 in St. Truiden, near Liege, and educated at Bois-le-Duc, in the School of Hieronomytes. He entered the Dominican order and was sent to Louvain for his theological studies.  He also wrote a history of the bishops and dioceses of Tongres (Tongeren), Maastricht and Liège until 1506. He died c. 1548.

John Leo Placentius
aka Publius Porcius
Portrait woodcut from edition of 1831.
A learned pig.

The poem has been reprinted on a few occasions (1586; 1642; 1648), typically as part of small collections of other satirically licentious and/or anti-clerical neo-Latin poetry. It was, for example, reprinted without date, publisher, or location (somewhere in Germany) in 1690 as part of a collection titled, I. Papa Pariens! [The Pope in Labor!] II. Porcus Pugnans! [Fighting Pigs!] III. Priapus Periclitans! [Priapus Threatened!] IV. Papasinus [The Pope's Lap].

The 1690 edition is quite rare with OCLC locating only two copies in institutional holdings wolrdwide, and COPAC recording only one copy, at Cambridge.

A copy of the 1690 edition, however,  has recently come to market, offered by Alastor Rare Books in the U.K. which, in its recent Catalogue Eighteen, presents the volume with the deadpan headline, "Rhapsody in Pee," assuring that readers will be all wet if presuming a  pissior-inspired work to follow rather than the "P-nuttiest" poem ever written.

"It's the P-nuttiest thing I've ever read!"

Inquiries to Alastor Rare Books may be made here.
__________

[PLACENTIUS, Jean-Leo]. I. Papa Pariens! II. Porcus Pugnans! III. Priapus Periclitans! IV. Papasinus. N.p. [Germany]: n.p., 1690. First edition thus, with separate title pages. Quarto. 32 ff [A1-B4; A1-B4; 4 ff.; A1-B4].

Ref.: BL German, 1601-1700, P81.
__________
__________

For All The World To See: Images of The Fight For Civil Rights

By Nancy Mattoon

Emmett Till At Age 13,
One Year Before His Murder.
Photographer Unknown, 1954.
(All Images Courtesy of Center For Art, Design,
And Visual Culture-UMBC.)

"I couldn’t bear the thought of people being horrified by the sight of my son. But on the other hand, I felt the alternative was even worse. After all, we had averted our eyes for far too long, turning away from the ugly reality facing us as a nation. Let the world see what I’ve seen."

-Mamie Till Bradley, September 1955

Emmett Till In His Casket,
Photographer Unknown.
The Chicago Defender, 1955

In what must have been an excruciatingly painful decision, Mamie Till Bradley chose to distribute an unspeakably gruesome photograph of her son's corpse to newspapers and magazines for all the world to see in late 1955. Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till had been beaten, disfigured, shot in the head, bound with barbed wire attached to a 70-pound fan, and thrown in Mississippi's Tallahatchie River by white supremacists. That single image, published only in Jet, The Chicago Defender, and other black periodicals, is considered by many to be the spark that ignited the Civil Rights Movement; the Montgomery Bus Boycott started three months later.

Lorraine Hansberry (author)
Danny Lyon (photographer)
The Movement:
Documentary of a Struggle for Equality, 1964.
Simon & Schuster, New York

Built around that incredibly powerful image, a new traveling exhibition jointly sponsored by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (CADVC-UMBC) and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, is the "first comprehensive museum exhibition to explore the historical role played by visual images in shaping, influencing, and transforming the fight for civil rights in the United States." For All The World To See: Visual Culture And The Struggle for Civil Rights is comprised of over 250 objects, including posters, photographs, graphic art, magazines, newspapers, books, pamphlets, political buttons, comic books, toys, postcards, and clips from film, newsreels, and television.

Emerson Graphics.
I Am a Man, 1968.
Offset lithograph on paper

Maurice Berger, cultural historian and Research Professor at the CADVC-UMBC is the curator of the exhibition. He is also the author of eleven books on the subjects of American art, culture, and the politics of race. The exhibit he has created is far more than a collection of historic artifacts. Spend time exploring it, in person, or online, and the images are guaranteed to provoke a number of intense emotional reactions: horror, sadness, pride, admiration, and revulsion, to name only a few.

Martin Luther King at Communist Training School,
c. 1964.
Postcard Published By An Anonymous
White Supremacist Group

Race remains one of the most touchy, volatile, and avoided topics in American society. In light of his superb memoir of his own racially-charged childhood, White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness (1999), it becomes clear that Maurice Berger had a uniquely personal reason for curating For All The World To See, and for making the study of racism his life's work. Below is an excerpt from his book, detailing the polar-opposite reactions of his parents upon learning of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968:

Moments after a television news bulletin announced that Martin Luther King, Jr., was dead, my mother said he deserved to die... He was a troublemaker. He was selfish and self-serving. He was poisoning the country. He was ungrateful to those brave and foolish white people who stood by his side in the civil rights movement. He was giving all the bigots in the South a reason to hate the good schwartzes, and the Jews, and anyone else who was not like them.

Confused and frightened by her tirade that night, I excused myself. As I walked down the hall to the bedroom I shared with my sister, I heard my father sobbing... He was crying so hard he was unable to speak. His behavior frightened me even more than my mother's. I was nearly twelve years old, and I had never seen my father cry. Tears rolled down his face as his finger pointed to the radio, which blared updates on the assassination. "What a nightmare," he finally muttered. I lay down next to him, put my head on his chest, and remained there for the rest of the evening.

Fan, Evans Memorial Chapel,
Saginaw, Michigan, c. 1968.
Offset lithograph on paper

Although I cannot explain the alchemy of it, somehow the attempt of that boy to make sense of his own racially conflicted past infuses For All The World To See. There is nothing personally connected to Berger in the show, but perhaps because American society remains so deeply damaged by racism, his documentation of the struggle against it seems both heartfelt and shockingly intimate. Because we have become so used to tiptoeing around matters of race, reminders of its profound impact on our culture have regained their shock value. We prefer to pretend America today is a colorblind society, but how could that be so given our completely separate and unequal segregated culture only a few short decades ago? The influence of that injustice cannot be erased and forgotten about, nor should it be. We all know what happens to those who cannot remember the past...

People's Press (publisher)
Frank Cieciorka (artist)
All Power To The People:
The Story Of The Black Panther Party.
Pamphlet, 1970

For All The World To See is disturbing, unsettling, and profoundly sad, yet somehow inspiring and hopeful, too. The exhibit shows the worst of America, and the best of America, side by side. Only by exploring and acknowledging both can the United States hope to heal the deep wounds caused by over two centuries of racism. The scars always will remain, as they should. We must be forced to look at them from time to time, to remind us never to inflict such unbearable pain on our nation again.

A Very Sweet 1001 Nights

by Stephen J. Gertz

ASSOURD, René (binder). Le Livre des Mille Nuits et Une Nuit.
12 books in 12 volumes, each extravagantly gilt decorated
in arabesques and other traditional Islamic design motifs.

Pupil of his uncle, the great art nouveau bookbinder Charles Meunier (1865 - 1940), and former first gilder at Chambolle-Duru, Rene Aussourd started his own business in 1912.

Léon Georges Jean-Baptiste Carré (1878 - 1942 ) was an Orientalist painter and French illustrator. He studied in Paris with Leon Bonnat and Luc-Olivier Merson. 

One of 144 color llustrations by Léon Carré.

He was a double winner of the Chenavard prize.  He exhibited at the Salon of French artists in 1900, at the Salon des Independents, and made his first trip to Algeria in 1905.

He won the Villa Abd-el-Tif award in 1909, and permanently settled in Algiers. From 1911, he showed at the Salon de la Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and the Salon d'Automne.  He worked primarily in oil, gouache and pastel.

__________

The Thousand and One Nights. Traduction littérale et complète du texte arabe par le Dr. J.-C. Mardrus. Illustrations de Léon Carré. Décoration et ornements de Racim Mohammed. Paris: L’Edition d’Art H. Piazza, 1926-1932. 12 parts in 12 volumes large 4to [298 x 228 mm]. 144 hors-texte illustrations in color and gold, some covered with silky papers, and 85 ornaments. 

Bound in full red morocco, sides richly adorned with a beautiful gilt-stamped panel with oriental design different for each volume, spines ribbed decorated with gilt fleurons, date on foot of spines, top edge gilt, triple gilt fillet and blind-stamped filet on the inside, corner pieces with gilt rose-like ornaments, red watered silk endleaves, wrappers illustrated in color heightened with gold and spines preserved. Cases. Binding signed and numbered by René Assourd.

Carteret, Le trésor du bibliophile: livres illustrés modernes, 1875 à 1945, IV, p. 281.

“Beautiful publication much sought-after and highly rated.” (Carteret).
__________

Images courtesy of Camille Sourget Livres Anciens, with our thanks.
__________

I highly recommend to Booktryst readers Ellen Mazur Thomson's Aesthetic Issues in Book Cover Design 1890-1910 in the Journal of Design History, Volume 23, Issue 3, pp. 229-245 for an excellent discussion of binders Charles Meuniere, Marius Michel, Cobden-Sanderson, etc.
__________
__________

Comics Get Stripped At The Museum Of Sex

By Nancy Mattoon

A History Of Dirty Drawings By Craig Yoe,
Curator of the Comics Stripped Exhibit.

One of the greatest things about art, whether it consists of words or images, is that it can create fantasy worlds that have never existed, and never could. Mention the literary genre of fantasy, and the first images that come to mind might be unicorns, fairies, swords and sorcerers, or other stock elements of children's books. But another kind of fantasy, the adult, sexual kind, has also inspired a genre of art with its own instantly recognizable icons: voluptuous women and muscle-bound men; fetish clothing featuring six-inch stilettos, leather, lace, and latex; bondage gear including handcuffs, masks, and corsets; and sadomasochistic props like whips, chains, and ropes.

Craig Yoe's Arf Forum,
"Celebrating The Unholy Marriage
of Art & Comics."

Call it erotica or pornography, the art that sexual fantasies inspire is as transcendent, and as impossibly unrealistic, as anything found in the worlds of Harry Potter or The Wizard of Oz. New York City's Museum of Sex has just mounted (pun intended) a new exhibition of the erotic art of comic strips and comic books in the 20th and 21st centuries, to "reveal how the comic book medium has been used over time to depict sexual fantasy, poke fun at taboo topics and lampoon icons of popular culture." Comics Stripped, a show made up of over 150 artifacts, including original drawings, illustrated books, comic books, magazines and videos, chronicles the history of "dirty drawings" from the Great Depression to the present day.

A Selection Of Tijuana Bibles.
(Image Courtesy of The Museum of Sex.)

The exhibit begins with 18 examples of the rare, underground comic books known as "Tijuana Bibles." These cheaply-produced pulp paperbacks, clandestinely published in the 1930's, often featured well known mainstream comic strip characters, such as Blondie and Dagwood, or Popeye and Olive Oyl, engaged in graphic sexual activity. In what may well be the most shocking statement in the exhibit's press release, the Museum of Sex staff maintains these crude little comics were frequently used by teenagers as sexual "instruction books." (A reminder that responsible sex education in the home is always the smart move...) Despite their lowbrow pedigree, the Museum points out that some notable comic book artists moonlighted by producing "bibles," including Wesley Morse, who created the Bazooka Joe and Gang characters featured inside the wrappers of Topps' bubble gum.

Cartoonist Wally Wood's
Erotic Take On Superman.

(Image Courtesy of The Museum of Sex.)

Tijuana Bibles also took on the most sacred cows of wholesome cartoon characters, those created under the auspices of Walt Disney. Featured in the Museum of Sex exhibit are two rare (and Disney wishes rarer) "bibles" featuring Donald Duck and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in compromising positions. Another artifact lampooning the squeaky-clean Disney characters is a centerpiece of the show. The Disneyland Memorial Orgy, a tableau drawn by Wally Wood, and published by Paul Krassner in his counterculture magazine, The Realist, hit the newsstands in 1967. Surprisingly, the ever litigious Magic Kingdom chose not to sue the orgy's creators, in order to avoid bringing any more attention to the blasphemy. (For those of you can't wait to see Goofy having his way with Minnie Mouse, a link is thoughtfully provided here.)

Joe Shuster's Cover Illustration
For The First Issue of Nights Of Horror.
(Image Courtesy of The Museum of Sex.)

But Goofy and Minnie Mouse were far from the only comic icons to be eroticized by the sexual comics, or comix, movement. Artist Joe Shuster, co-creator of DC Comics world-famous Superman, drew sadomasochistic scenarios featuring Lois Lane and Clark Kent for his Nights of Horror, a fetish comic book series. And Eric Stanton's Blunder Broad series starred a less-than-wonderful version of Wonder Woman, forever enduring sexual humiliations due to her own ineptitude. Five original issues of issues of Nights of Horror will be on display during the exhibition as well as six original illustrations from Blunder Broad.

Cover Image Of A Collection Of
Playboy Cartoons By Eldon Dedini.

The exhibit also features the erotic cartoon art of risque "men's magazines" from Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, through Ballyhoo, and on to Playboy. Of the Playboy cartoonists, the Museum's press release notes, "Visitors to Comics Stripped will enjoy original art, on loan from the Playboy Enterprises, Inc., of iconic Playboy artists Jack Cole (1914-1958) and Eldon Dedini (1921-2006). Cole may be best known for creating the superhero Plastic Man. His cartoons for Playboy became the gold standard for creating cartoons published in the popular men's magazine. Dedini's watercolor depictions of horny satyrs chasing voluptuous nymphs were an iconic Playboy feature."

A Candy Bar Wrapper Featuring R. Crumb's "Devil Girl."

(Image Courtesy of The Museum of Sex.)

Comics Stripped also examines the ongoing censorship of erotic comics in the United States, culminating in the creation of Comics Code Authority in 1954. The repressive legislation of the red-baiting McCarthy Era ironically led to the proliferation of underground publications, containing outrageous, shockingly graphic images, deliberately unsuitable for publication in even the raciest mass market men's magazine. The most famous artist who got his start in those publications was R.Crumb, the creator of such characters as Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural and Devil Girl. Comics Stripped includes many of Crumb's original drawings, which have recently been on display at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. Homoerotic comic art from gay underground publications is also on show at the Museum of Sex, including the iconic work of Tom of Finland, who proudly proclaimed: "If I don't have an erection when I'm doing a drawing, I know it's no good."

Craig Yoe's Well Reviewed Book On
The Fetish Art Of Joe Shuster.

Comics Stripped was created by Museum of Sex Curator Sarah Forbes, and Guest Curator Craig Yoe. Yoe has been called "Indiana Jones of comics historians," the "archivist of the ridiculous and sublime," and "a fine cartoonist and a comic book historian of the first water." He is the author of the definitive work on Superman's co-creator, Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Joe Shuster (Abrams ComicArts, 2009). Yoe himself modestly says of his curatorial duties for Comics Stripped, "Many artists of 'dirty drawings' had full time gigs in mainstream entertainment. I consider myself to be following in a fine tradition of men who knew what they wanted and how to put it on paper." Knowing what you want, and knowing how to put it down on paper--a perfect description of the art of sexual fantasy.

Comics Stripped opened at the Museum of Sex on January 13, 2010, and continues indefinitely.
__________