Two Doves Bindings To Drool Over

by Stephen J. Gertz

Two Doves Press books bound at the Doves Bindery recently passed through my hands. In a swoon, I almost passed out.

"In 1893, when T.J. Cobden-Sanderson decided to give up bookbinding after a short career of less than ten years, he was already the most famous binder in England. The beauty and originality of his designs ensured that his bindings were sought after by collectors and and booksellers in both Britain and the United States" (Tidcombe, The Doves Bindery, p. 1).

Bookbindings personally bound by Cobden-Sanderson now fetch up to $50,000.

 

 Cobden-Sanderson did not, however, entirely give up bookbinding. In the same year as his "retirement," he established the Doves Bindery to carry out, under his personal supervision to his exacting standards, the physical binding of his designs.
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They are no less sought after by collectors than those bound by C-S himself. Why?

"From the beginning Cobden-Sanderson questioned every stage and aspect of bookbinding, and sought to improve on whatever he discovered to be shoddy in the way of materials and design, both structural and decorative" (ibid.).

Cobden-Sanderson not only designed all the bindings of The Doves Bindery (a total of 837), he designed the tools used to execute them, each unique and proprietary.

He disdained overly gilt bindings. "Some of the top trade binderies such as Riviere, Zaehnedorf or Fazakerley produced more lavish bindings, with onlays, tooling, and lettering covering not only the back, covers and doublures, but also the flyleaves. Cobden-Sanderson was opposed to such gratuitous excess, calling such bindings 'deplorable miracles of misapplied skill,' because the amazing ability of the finisher was wasted on such poor design" (Tidcombe, p. 84).

In contrast, Doves Bindings are without peer for their handsome sophistication, graceful elegance, stylish restraint, classically clean lines, and deceptive simplicity. It took an enormous amount of effort to make them seem effortless.

"The output of the Doves Bindery cannot be compared to other 'trade' binderies, because there was no other bindery quite like it...No bindery other than the Doves designed its own tools, produced all its own patterns, and worked to such a high standard, while also being so selective in the books it bound" (Tidcombe, p. 84).

 

The books of the Doves Press were routinely case-bound in limp vellum. Clients of the Press, however, were advised that they could have their copies specially bound at the Doves Bindery. Not many Doves Press books were thus bound, however, but those that were were unique; the Doves Press Shelley, for instance, was bound in brick red/terracotta leather for one customer. For another client, the Shelley was later bound in blue morocco with a completely different design.

The leather used for these two Doves bindings was not the usual morocco goatskin or calf. "Cobden-Sanderson ordered sealskins from Richardson's in Newcastles. He apparently liked it, as seal was used s an alternative to goatskin for binding many other Doves Press books. The sealskin used ranges in colour from orange to brick-red or terracotta, and some of the skins were probably specially selected by Cobden Sanderson for their attractive blotchy appearance" (Tidcombe, p. 94)

The Doves Bindery was and remains the finest and most respected bindery of its era, the evolutionary link between the Victorian Age in which it was born and the early Modern Age in which it thrived with the highest possible respect and admiration of collectors then and to this day.

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[DOVES BINDERY]. KEATS. John. Keats. [Poems Selected, Arranged and Printed by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson]. Hammersmith, The Doves Press, 1914.

First Doves Press edition, one of a limited edition of 200 copies on paper. Octavo (9 1/8 x 6 3/8 in; 232 x 162 mm). [11], 12-203, [1, blank] pp.  

Designed by Cobden Sanderson and bound at The Doves Bindery (stamp-signed "Doves Bindery 19 C-S 16") in full brick red sealskin with both sides by master finisher Charles McLeish featuring a three-line panel interlaced with a three-line strapwork lozenge with concave curves at sides, with a central wreath of rose leaves and stars with a sprig of three rose leaves above and below the wreath. Spine compartments with gilt panels. Gilt decorated turn-ins. All edged gilt with dotted fillet gauffering  Printed in black and white, and red.

Tidcombe, Doves Press 36. Tidcombe, Doves Bindery 791.

[DOVES BINDERY]. SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe, Shelley. [Poems Selected, Arranged, and Printed by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at The Doves Press]. Hammersmith: The Doves Press, 1914.

First Doves Press edition, one of 200 copies on paper of a total edition of 212. Octavo (9 1/8 x 6 3/8 in; 232 x 162 mm). [6], 7-181, [1, blank] pp. Text in back and white, and red.

Designed by Cobden Sanderson and bound at The Doves Bindery (stamp-signed "Doves Bindery 19 C-S 14") in full brick red sealskin elegantly gilt paneled on both sides by master finisher Charles McLeish with a line panel with large open dot at each corner, and a smaller two-line panel extended inwards at the sides to form a lozenge, with a wavy lozenge inside, tooled in the center with a wreath composed of close-set narrow leaves, and a cloverleaf of three hearts on a stem at each corner of the panel and lozenge. Gilt decorated turn-ins. All edges gilt and with dotted fillet gauffering. Spine gilt in compartments.

Tidcombe, Doves Press 35. Tidcombe, Doves Bindery 792.

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Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Of related interest:

A Doves Binding To Die For.
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The Misery of Edwin Drood: Bad Typography in the Movies

by Alastair Johnston

Once at the Monotype Conference in Cambridge I happened to sit at dinner next to the man whose job was to fabricate period typography at the BBC, and I told him how I envied his job. But I also needled him by guessing that he relied heavily on John Lewis’ book Printed Ephemera (W. S. Cowell, 1962) since I frequently saw the same posters on London streets in TV adaptations. He admitted that Lewis’ book was a good source for posters which he could photostat and then print out large and age suitably.

People tend to think of all British drama as originating at the Beeb, but there are also several independent production companies who have brought us the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes (Granada), the Catherine Cookson melodramas (Tyne Tees Television) and many others. In general it can be said of them that their attention to detail is superb -- perfect costumes, hairstyles and locations; when they are outdoors they do tend to gravitate to one or two places such as the Royal Crescent at Bath (The Wrong Box; The Duchess with Keira Knightley; Persuasion), but they manage to remove telephone wires and cover the road with dirt so you don’t see the painted “no parking” lines etc. Then they dress the set by adding structures to hide things they can’t remove, and decorate the walls with antique signs and old posters.

My dinner acquaintance must have retired because the new BBC adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, excellent as it is dramatically, is seriously flawed in its application of typography.

 This year marks the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens, England’s most popular novelist. His serialized works (starting with Pickwick Papers in 1836) were eagerly anticipated all over the world. Dickens, in fact, pioneered a new style of writing with the serial, and nine of his novels appeared this way (in twenty self-contained parts which appeared monthly, each 32 pages long with an illustrated wrapper, sold at 1 shilling; by the end, you’d spent a quid without noticing it, and been involved in the ups and downs of some colorful characters for the better part of two years.) When The Old Curiosity Shop was in full flight fans became so agitated with anticipation that they lined the piers in New York awaiting the boat bringing the latest installment and, before the ship had docked, were yelling to the crew “Did Little Nell die?”

Two centuries later television serials have replaced novels in parts. In 2005, when Bleak House was dramatized for television by the BBC in a striking new version starring Gillian Anderson as Lady Dedlock, American viewers couldn’t wait for the next installment to be shown on PBS’ Masterpiece Theatre. Andrew Davies’ adaptation highlighted the cliff-hanging nature of the original, while the direction and editing added post-modern touches to appeal to viewers who were used to fast cuts. Dickens was 58 and at the height of his fame in 1870 when he died of a stroke while working on The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which he had half completed. Like Jane Austen’s Sanditon (with which many writers dabbled, though not Margaret Drabble), the half-finished work has tempted later writers to try to complete it. (Curiously both works have a mulatta heroine in them.)

The manuscript is now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and can be read on line if you can decipher the great man’s scrawl.

For the bicentenary, Gwyneth Hughes completed Edwin Drood as a screenplay, and it was broadcast this year featuring all the brilliant British character actors we have come to know and love (Alun Armstrong who was Inspector Bucket in Bleak House, Ian McNeice from Oliver Twist, Ron Cook from Little Dorrit) as well as an over-the-top Bollywood ending. Come to think of it Bollywood is the perfect manifestation of the Dickensian plot. Perhaps life in India is closer to the Victorian era with its caste system and splendor amid abject poverty.

Famously Dickens showed the seamy underbelly of English society at a time when Britain ruled half the world through military might and its powerful navy that reached from the Caribbean to Africa to India. And the vast English-speaking world responded with adoration of his rich descriptions and wild character studies. Reportedly Dickens would give a guinea to anyone who gave him a good name for a character, surprising one host who offered him a glass of gin and asked “Olive, or twist?”

However, there is a fly in the martini, as I will explain.

The titles are in Copperplate Gothic (designed in 1901 by Fred Goudy). OK, we will let that slide as “allusive” use, but we will not silently sit by when the OMNIBUS rolls into town and on its side are foot-high gold letters in ghastly Goudy Oldstyle (created in 1915).

 

The ludicrous memorial plaque to Mrs Sapsea, "admired" by the young clerk Datchery in the crypt, appears to be in Bookman which, technically speaking, could have been seen in Dickens’ time. But it is clearly machine-set and bears no resemblance to a hand-chiseled inscription. The histories of text typefaces and inscriptional lettering do not run in parallel.

The Drood family vault sign is routered in Copperplate Gothic and dated 1744. This is evidently wrong. While sans serif was initially reintroduced as an antiquarian style, it was not until the end of the eighteenth century. (Yes, I know Copperplate has tiny serifs but they are too small and silly to be taken seriously.)

Mr Grewgious’ signboard is in Times Roman (1931), which even lay people could spot as anachronistic at ten paces. This is appalling. Furthermore such boards would have been hand-painted & any self-respecting sign-painter would have used an ffi ligature in "Offices."

Captain Drood’s own memorial plaque is in a weird hybrid Garamond with what appear to be Bastard Baskerville figures. What the Dickens?

Mark Simonson, a graphic artist & type designer, has a segment of his website devoted to anachronistic typography in films. He writes, “it’s just sad to see such sloppy props. At least they weren’t in Arial and Comic Sans. It would be so cool if for once someone did a little bit of research and made props that looked authentic.”

Spotting typographic anachronisms is fun or irritating, depending on your mood. If those who tried to “out” George W. Bush as delinquent in his duty with fake documents from the Air National Guard had consulted an expert they might have proved their point a little more convincingly.
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The First American Sex Manual

by Stephen J. Gertz

First American edition, London [Boston]: 1766.

It's not a Kama Sutra for the Colonies;  coital postures are nowhere to be found nor Vedic wisdom on "sucking a mango fruit."  Nor is it The Joy of Early American Sex by Proctor Alex Comfort, though the joy of connubial relations within the conjugal bed is not ignored. And, for the record, an ancient Greek philosopher had nothing to do with it.

Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece was, nonetheless, the first guide to sexual relations, pregnancy, and childbirth published in America - in Boston, yet, that hotbed of Colonial steam and agitation - in 1766 by Zechariah Feeling, i,e. Zechariah Fowle, with whom famed early American printer Isaiah Thomas apprenticed and, later, partnered. Three years after The Seven Years War ended, Americans were ready and anxious to read about the facts of life. But, beyond basic  (if somewhat inaccurate) sexual anatomy, there weren't many facts. Folklore, superstition, and old wive's tales form the basis of instruction.

Part I, Chapter 1: A particular description of the parts or instruments of generation, both in men and women.

"The organ of generation in man, nature has placed obvious to the sight, and it is called the Yard, and because hanging without the belly, is called the Penis a Pendendo...

"The next thing is the Clytoris, which is a sinewy and hard part of the womb, replete with spongy and black matter wihin, in the same manner as the side ligaments of the yard: and indeed resembles it in form, suffers erection and falling in the same manner, and it both stirs up lust, and gives delight in copulation: for without this, the fair sex neither desire mutual embraces, nor have pleasure in them. nor conceive by them: and according to the greatness or smallness of this part, they are more or less fond of men's embraces; so that it may properly be stiled the seat of lust."

Chapter II: Of the restriction laid upon men in the use of carnal copulation, by the institution of marriage; with the advantage it brings to mankind; and the proper time for it.

"...the holy Jesus has told us, That in the beginning it was so; the marriage of one man to one woman: so that as these conjugal delights cannot be enjoyed but in a married state...And it is in the breaking of this order that has filled the world wiith confusion and debauchery, has brought diseases on the body, consumptions on estates, and eternal ruin to the soul, if not repented of. Let therefore either sex, that have a desire to enjoy the delights of mutual embraces, take care that they do it in a married state with their own wives or husbands, or else it will become a curse to them instead of a blessing...

"The inclinations of virgins to marriage, is to be known by divers symtoms; for when they arrive to ripe-age, which is about fourteen of fifteen, their natural purgations begin to flow, and then the blood...does, by its abundance, stir up their minds to venery; to which external causes may excite them; for their spirits are brisk and inflamed when they arrive at this age, and their bodies are often more heated by their eating sharp and salt things, and by spices, by which their desire of venereal embraces becomes very great, at some critical junctures almost insuperable. And the use of those so much desired enjoyments being denied to virgins, it is often followed by very dangerous, and sometimes dismal consequences, precipitating them into those follies that may bring an indelible stain upon their families, or else it brings upon them the greensickness or other diseases. But when they are married, and those desires satisfied by their husbands, thise distempers vanish...And this strong inclination of theirs may be known by their eager gazing at men, and affecting their company, which sufficiently demonstrates that nature prompts them to desire coition. Nor is this the case of virgins only, but the same may be observed in young brisk widows, who cannot be satisfied without due benevolence paid them."

Chapter III: Of virginity, what it is, how it may be known, by what means it may be lost, and how a person may know that it is so.

"Virginity untouched and taintless, is the boast and pride of the fair sex, but they generally commend  to put it off; for as good as it is, they care not how soon they are honestly rid of it. And I think they are right; for if they keep it too long, it grows useless, or at least loses much of its value, a stale virgin (if such a thing there be) being looked upon like an old almanack out of date."

Part II, Chapter I:  What conception is; what is pre-requisite thereto; how a woman may know whether she has conceived, and whether a boy or girl.

Here Aristotle describes how, in order to conceive, the minds of of men and women should be free of care and business and bad thoughts: "All such things are enemies of Venus. And let their animal and vital spirits be powerfully exhilirated by some brisk  and generous restoratives; and let them to invigorate their fancies, survey the lovely beauties of each other, and bear the bright ideas of them in their minds: and if it happens, that instead of beauty, there is any thing that looks like imperfection or deformity (for nature is not alike bountiful to all) let them be covered over with a veil of oblivion."

The consequences of bearing bad thoughts or gazing upon anything less than pleasing to the eye during coitus are dire: this is how children are conceived as physical monsters and born grossly deformed, as illustrated by the woodcuts of such and the stories of these misbegotten children.

Men are advised not to abruptly end the festivities. "When the bridegroom has done what nature has promted him to do he ought to take heed of withdrawing too suddenly out of the field of love lest he should, by so doing, make way for cold to strike into the womb."

As far as determining the sex of the unborn, if a woman feels the child on the right side, it is a boy; on the left, a girl.

Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece is an old warhorse. Published in various versions in England and America, with roots dating back to 1507, it was so popular that the last recorded edition appeared as late as 1883.

"The 'medical' work most frequently reprinted in America during the eighteenth and and early nineteenth centuries, Aristotle's work was also the first popular sex manual in the English language and for advice relied upon occult and folk traditions. Austin records twenty-seven editions published in this country before 1821" (American Antiquarian Society, A Society's Chief Joy [1969]).

Though openly published, Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece was not openly sold nor were its publishers anxious to be transparently associated with it.

"It is not at all surprising that our first popular treatise on gynecology and obstetrics should have led a shy and furtive existence, In spite of the fact that such topics were as interesting then as now, the eighteenth and early nineteenth century Americans frowned on the popular dissemination of information regarding the facts of life...There was, however, one group of treatises which had considerable popularity for a century and a quarter but which little is known and seldom met with today...Almost none of its early publishers had the hardihood to print their names on the title pages and some of them used an entirely fictitious imprint...The most popular of these early tracts was 'Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece'...illustrated with crude woodcuts, informative but with little anatomical accuracy.. The text is an amusing mixture of sensible advice, pious admonition, ribald verse, popular superstition and very little medical knowledge. That they were both interesting and useful in their day, we cannot doubt, that they played an important part in the development of our growing country, we may be sure" (Vail, What a Young Puritan Ought To Know, American Antiquarian Society Librarian's Report, 1939, pp. 22-29).

Major variations in text, content, and arrangement exist amongst the many English and American editions (OCLC records 176); publishers appear to have added material, edited, or rewritten text at their whim. An early London edition, for instance, includes a section titled, A Private Looking-Glass for the Female Sex. This part was excised in later editions and replaced with A Treasure of Health or The Family Physician. I suspect the reason being that by mating the sex manual with an instructional on home health and remedies for common maladies the book would be considered more a medical text and thus  acceptable.

Who wrote it? It appears that William Salmon (1644-1713), the English quack and self-styled "Professor of Physik" is responsible for the seventeenth century editions upon which all subsequent ones were based.

This, the [Boston] 1766 edition is extremely scarce, with only three extant copies recorded: at the American Antiquarian Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and one that recently blew into the marketplace offered by Howard S. Mott Inc of Sheffield, Massachusetts - and immediately flew out. It sold for $12,500.

Yet the first American edition of Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece is priceless, if not in commercial value, then certainly as the  earliest book on sexuality published in pre-Revolutionary America, for its insight into contemporary attitudes, and as the most popular tract on the subject in America for 100 years afterward.

"The Effigies of a Maid all Hairy, and an Infant that was Black,
by the Imagination of their Parents."

The book was, in its way, hot stuff, "sold under the counter or by peddlers...the illustrations were prurient, and in fact demonstrate how images cause abnormal sexual arousal. They show monsters conceived while their parents were looking at pictures - in the case of the hairy woman...By the same token the sight of a naked woman inspires Aristotle to write, and since this was the only illustration of a naked woman printed in colonial America [see above], grotesque as it is, it surely aroused many a young man" (Green and Wilson, From the Bottom Up: Popular Reading and Writing in the Michael Zinman Collection of Early American Imprints. Library Company of Philadelphia, 2004, p. 18).

Here, then, is evidence of the first  nude centerfold in an American publication, 187 years before Hugh Hefner presented Marilyn Monroe as Miss December, 1953, in Playboy #1:

Likes: Natural Philosophy, Botany, Politiks, Musik, good Bookes.
Favorite Pastimes: Long walks on the beach at sunset with my companion, Fanny, and drives up the Pacific Coast Highway by coach with my father.
Education: I'm studying sewing, cooking, and domestic management at Miss Fowlmouth's Finishing School for Young Ladies.
Favorite Quote: "The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still" (Mr. Pope). 
Heart's Desire: A good manse with stately yard.

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[SALMON, William, et al]. Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece, in three parts; displaying the secrets of nature in the generation of Man. Regularly digested into chapters and sections...To which is added, A Treasure of Heath, of  the Family Physician: being choice and approved Remedies for all the several Distempers incident to Human Bodies. The Thirteenth edition. London [i.e. Boston]: Printed and Sold for Zechariah Feeling [Zechariah Fowle], 1766. Octavo. viii, [9]-140 pp.

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All images reproduced by license from the American Antiquarian Society, with our thanks.A special thank you to the AAS staff for their assistance.

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Napoleon Rides Bareback On Erotic Steed (May Be NSFW)

by Stephen J. Gertz

This  astonishing and keenly amusing original watercolor of a bare-bottomed Napoleon with membre viril exposed riding a horse composed of nude women is being offered at Christie's-Paris during their Collection d'un Amateur Bibliophile sale, Tuesday, October 30, 2012.

What's the estimate for this unique erotic caricature of Napoleon? $21,000 - $27,000. Nappy in flagrante delicto ain't cheap to collecto.

The watercolor, created c. 1810 by an unknown artist in the manner of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, is 232 x 180 mm in size. The draftsmanship is excellent, the arrangement of the women to form a horse with mane and tail is artful and clever, the composition is a sight to delight. It's a minor masterwork.

Napoleon was no stranger to political caricature and this eye-opener, while singular, reflects the contemporary German and English sport of casting Napoleon in the worst possible light.

I'm not sure what the underlying message is in this particular lampoon  - Napoleon, imperial scepter exposed, riding on the backs of women as a commentary on his staying power; Napoleon as a sex-addled emperor; what? - but it is, as they say in Brooklyn, cherce.

This is just one of many fine items of erotica, etc, offered by Christie's. We'll feature more from this sale as it draws close.

In the meantime, Booktryst provides, as a public service, the following advice for horseback riders engaged in l'amour fou à cheval.

Equestrian Safety Tip #1: Men who hold on to their pommel when riding without saddle may feel warm and secure but it will do absolutely no good if the horse rears and/or bolts into a wild gallop. You may hold your own during the ordeal but that won't hold the prospect of flying over the high side at bay.

Equestrian Safety Tip #2: French emperors who bare their buttocks while riding may justifiably be confused with a horse's ass.

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Image courtesy of Christies, with our thanks.
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A-Bombs In the Kitchen (Emeril Says, "Bam!")

by Stephen J. Gertz

"I am become Death, the destroyer of appetites" 

(J. Robert Oppenheimer, Krishna in the Kitchen, p. 48).

Wondering what to serve for that special dinner with family and friends? Bored by Martha Stewart? Rachel Ray outré? Jacque Pépin and Julia Child too mild? Don't want to nuke in the microwave but want to dazzle with a meal that's the bomb?

Look no further than How To Make An Atomic Bomb in Your Own Kitchen, 1951's salute to nuclear physics, the Cold War, and Betty Crocker.

"Written in an interesting, lucid style, this is an essential book for the millions who want to know the basics of atomics."

It's an introduction to molecular gastronomy and culinary physics writ large and long before Ferran Adrià began serving foamed neutrinos at El Bulli or Nathan Myhrvold began publishing Modernist Cuisine.

Everything you need to know about building a nuclear bomb in the privacy of the pantry is here. All that's lacking are centrifuges, so tough to find on the open market without clearance from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or a clandestine connection in North Korea.

Here's an apocryphal recipe, contributed by an anonymous insider at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Fission Fish ala Fermi:

Holy mackerel
Sprig of rosemary
Soupçon of enriched uranium
Dash of plutonium
Split pea atoms 
Cloud of mushrooms
Salt to taste

Wearing lead apron and density 4.2 goggles, add ingredients to well-oiled saucepan. Heat to 1,000,000 Kelvins. Duck and cover for thirty minutes until vaporized. Serve shadow of fish on platter with a spray of cilantro, al fresco.

Fusion cuisine at its finest. Enjoy!

Post-priandal fallout will undoubtedly be a dense shower of post-mortem praise, with memories lasting the half-life of your average radioactive isotope.

"Dinner's ready!"

It pains me to admit that How To Make An Atomic Bomb In Your Own Kitchen is light to non-existent on cooking, heavy on education for the 'Fifties justifiably freaked-out set but presented in a peaceful manner because atomic energy is, after all, our fiend friend.
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BALE, Bob. How To Make an Atomic Bomb in Your Own Kitchen (Well, Practically). New York: Frederick Fell Inc,. 1951. First edition. Octavo. 191, [1]  pp. Cloth. Dust jacket.

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Image courtesy of Coconut Rose Rare Books and Autographs, currently offering this volume, with our thanks.
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An Automaton ala Lothar Meggendorfer

by Stephen J. Gertz

An exceedingly scarce Schoenhut automaton, c. 1890-1900, in full working, unrestored and fine condition - with its original key, yet - featuring illustrated figures in a comic situation typical of movable book master Lothar Meggendorfer has come onto the market.

The scene depicts a tailor sitting at his table with his legs crossed, drowsily stitching a garment while nodding off. To the left, a rascal apprentice also sits at the table with his legs crossed stitching a garment. All of a sudden he sneezes and pricks his dozing master with a sewing needle while his companion apprentice looks on and stops ironing in anticipation of the stab. The tailor jerks awake at the pinprick, but soon dozes off again and the cycle begins anew.

Schoenhut automata have become insanely difficult to find;  I'm aware of only one other coming into the marketplace within the last ten years. As might be easily imagined, automata for children did not endure their enthusiastic play any more than movable books easily survived the eager little hands that mauled them.

Albert Schoenhut (1848-1912) was born into a toy-making from Wurtenberg, Germany; his father and grandfather made dolls, rocking horses, and wagons. As a boy Albert was a toy-making prodigy. His toy pianos were more than just, well, toys. They stayed in tune.

In 1866, a buyer for Wanamaker’s, the famous Philadelphia department store, heard about the wunderkind of Wurtenberg and hired the seventeen year old as a repairman of glass sounding pieces in German toy pianos that had been damaged in shipping en route to Philly.

In 1872, Schoenhut left Wanamaker's to establish the Schoenhut Piano Company on Frankford Avenue in Philadelphia. As his toy piano business prospered, Shoenhut added other toy instruments to his line and expanded it to include dolls, circus figures, toys, and, as here, automata. By 1901, the firm had 125 employees making novelty toys.

By the time of Albert's death, Schoenhut Piano Company was the largest toy company in the United States and the first in the U. S. to export toys to Germany; up until then it was the other way around. 140 years after its founding it is still active as a maker of toy pianos, though, after multiple changes in ownership since Schoenhut's death in 1912, its archives have been scattered and all records of their vintage automata are, alas, lost.

As a result, it is unknown whether Schoenhut copied existing Lothar Meggendorfer designs or had an employee finely imitate the great Meggendorfer's style.

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[AUTOMATON]. [“The Tailor and His Two Apprentices”]. [Philadelphia: Schoenhut, n.d. c. 1890-1900]. Boxed automaton. Image size: 11 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches; 293 x 395 mm. Box size: 13 5/8 x 17 5/8 x 5 1/8 inches; 345 x 447 x 130 mm. Schoenhut blue trademark label to rear.

Three cardboard figures in original paper-covered wooden box, with glass cover and gold-painted metal frame. A sliding panel on the back of the box reveals cardboard parts moved by clockwork mechanisms, which can be wound up with the original metal key.

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Videography by Dustin Jack and courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

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Of Related Interest:

Lothar Meggendorfer Mania at Auction.

Lother Meggendorfer Animates the Inanimate.

A Movable Book Feast.

Waldo Hunt and Pop-Up Books: A Brief Overview.
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Typographical Dingbats Explored: Raising a Glass to the Sixteenth Century

by Alastair Johnston
 
Hendrik D. L. Vervliet, Vine Leaf Ornaments in Renaissance Typography. A Survey. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press and Houten, NL: Hes & De Graaf, 2012. 416 pp., hardback.

In my capacity as a typographer, I am often asked, "What are those little doohickeys called?"

 - Dingbats!

 "Hey, who are you calling dingbats?!"

While it may sound like a Yiddish word for a simpleton, dingbat is the technical term for non-linguistic parts of a fount of type, Edith. The great German type designer Hermann Zapf made a whole load of them that, combined, can be used to create wild borders or bring humor or punctuation to typesetting. Of course inventing glyphs yourself with the keyboard is more fun. My best effort at creating an emoticon is the grinning baboon: 8=}

In the manuscript era scribes would add pointing fists for emphasis, pilcrows to indicate a new paragraph, and sometimes fill out a line of their manuscript with curlicues or doodles. They had horror vacui, but vellum was at a premium so they didn't like to leave blank space. Decoration could also be used to mask errors: you could cover your mistake with squiggles and then write the correct text afresh on the next line. In the early days of typewriter some bright spark realized that not everyone could spell accurately so came up with a key that was neither an "a" nor an "e" that you hit for an indistinct character. Progress!

Surprisingly, in the early days of type, before sextiles, octothorps, interrobangs, shnik-signs, lb-signs or other commercial symbols were invented, type-cutters felt a need for and created a purely decorative small heart-shaped device with a stem, called a vine leaf (sometimes erroneously known as an Aldine leaf).

Hendrik Vervliet, Librarian emeritus at the University of Antwerp and former Director of the Plantin-Moretus Museum, has created a visual index to over 200 of these ornamental vine leaves found in Renaissance books. He has also identified most of the cutters and given information as to where they first appeared. It's a staggering task, though perhaps in scholarly terms, just a by-product of his decades of research on the types of the same period.

In the last couple of years Dr Vervliet has published a Conspectus of French Renaissance Printing Types (2010) and two volumes on the Paleotypography of the French Renaissance (2011) which complement his earlier works, including Sixteenth-century Printing Types of the Low Countries (1968). These two recent books finally click into place the whole jigsaw of the spread of roman type after it left Italy in the 1530s and started to move out from Lyons and Paris to Antwerp, Orleans and Geneva, and finally peripheral locations like London and Stockholm.

De Recta Latini & Dialogues of Erasmus, published by Simon de Colines, 1528, and showing his vine leaf on paragon body of 1522 (ex: Bibliothèque André-Desguine, Paris)

In these works, Vervliet identified the roles and work of the major players, Claude Garamont and Robert Granjon, and lesser-known type-cutters Simon de Colines, Pierre Haultin, Guillaume Le Bé, Antoine Augereau and Maître Constantin. Haultin was first to cut small types that were large on the body, therefore more legible in tiny sizes. These were needed for printing the Calvinist Bibles which had to be small enough to be hidden. Well in advance of the Gideons, their promoters would go through Geneva at night and throw their Bibles through open windows! De Colines was a great artist, both as a type-cutter and as a book designer; Le Bé was the go-to guy for Hebrew type; while Constantin and Augereau perfected the Venetian model of Aldus and produced the first families, or graduated series of type sizes that matched.

While Garamont (whose name is still known in its modern form of Garamond) was the technical perfectionist and supreme type-cutter of the Baroque period, Granjon got to play in the margins, cutting lovely types based on his own handwriting (called civilité: also the subject of a major study by Vervliet with Harry Carter in 1966), he refined and realigned italic, putting it into the shape we know today, he cut many non-roman types (Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Armenian, etc), cursive music (thus, it could be argued, paving the way for music to swing and eventually ... to jazz!), and a series of interchangeable abstract designs on type bodies called "arabesques" that could be built up to make patterns and borders. These could be cast fresh and combined to fit any space, unlike woodcuts which wore out or had to be cut down to suit new occasions. These printers' ornaments are distinct from vine leaves though (and were the subject of a 1955 essay by Stanley Morison, called "Venice and the Arabesque Ornament").

Vine leaves had been used as word dividers in the ancient world (seen in Greek and Roman inscriptions of the first century) and continued to be used like this or as a period, new paragraph indicator or line filler in the manuscript era. Vervliet believes the first printer to employ a typographic vine leaf was the great Erhard Ratdolt (1447–1528) who gave us the structural apparatus (title page, page numbers, chapter divisions, and so on) that we still rely on today. The leaf soon evolved into a purely decorative motif.

The vine leaves are surprisingly varied in style. I had always thought that there were only one or two forms, but in the end their diversity strikes me like the Bechers' photo documentation of German gasometers, water towers, and half-timbered houses that magnify little differences by juxtaposition.

These symbols form part of a complex vocabulary, encompassing the shapes of the roman alphabet and the ancillary glyphs that we encounter every day. These forms were in flux in the early era of printed books but left the hands of the French cutters in a form still recognized today. In many ways they are the substructure of our written and printed culture for we have never improved on the models of Garamont and Granjon. To see them afresh, five hundred years after they were created, is what Vervliet has done. Though it is a minor part of our culture it is still an important one and these masters need to be celebrated, both for their work and their play.

Last year's harvest was big in France and this has been a bumper year for California's grapes, so let's raise a glass to the punch-cutters of yore who decided to give us the typographic vine leaf.
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