Antique Prints Blog

Shaping the Trans-Mississippi West: 1830-39

2011-12-28T15:33:00.029-05:00

As described in the previous blog from this series, by 1830, three relatively small political entities (two states and a territory) had been created in the original Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The remainder of the purchase lands, now called the Missouri Territory, was mostly occupied by Indian tribes. Some of these Native Americans had been located in the trans-Mississippi West for a long time, but many had been pushed west relatively recently by the advance of EuroAmericans from the east coast ever westward. Still, there were significant Indian populations east of the Mississippi, especially in the southeastern part of the United States.

From the beginning of their settlement in the southeast, EuroAmericans saw the five “civilized tribes” (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole) as impediments in the way of their desire for land. Beginning in the second decade of the nineteenth century, military and political pressure was brought by the U.S. government to get those tribes to give up their land in the southeast in exchange for new lands in the Missouri Territory. By the 1820s, much of the Indian land in the southeast was under government control, though few Native Americans had actually moved across the Mississippi.

In 1830, Andrew Jackson pushed the Indian Removal Act through Congress in order to enable to government to "remove" these tribes from the southeast to the trans-Mississippi West. This was supposed to be voluntary, but even more pressure was put on the tribes to accept this removal. Over the next decade, these tribes signed treaties or were forced by military action to move west, and by the end of the decade, most Native Americans from the southeast had moved across the Mississippi.

In order to try to protect the Native Americans in their new lands, and of course also to keep them contained, the Indian Intercourse Act was passed in 1834, setting aside for the Indians "…all that part of the United States west of the Mississippi and not within the states of Missouri and Louisiana, or the territory of Arkansas…". That is, essentially all of the Missouri Territory, encompassing the original Louisiana Purchase excepting the three political entitles which had been created in the previous decade.

Most of the land granted to the “removed” Indians was in the southern region, to the west of Arkansas, though there were many other tribes in the more northern parts of the territory. Replaying the previous history of the relationship between the U.S. government and Native Americans, however, this vast Indian territory was regularly whittled down in size through the rest of the century. For instance, just two years after the Indian Intercourse Act, the Sac & Fox tribes were convinced to give back the lands between the state of Missouri and the Missouri river, moving the northwestern border of the state to the west.

The original “Northwest Territory” comprised those lands west of Pennsylvania, north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi. By the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, this territory was to be broken up into states and smaller territories as the population increased.

In 1818, when Indiana and Illinois were made states, the remainder of the original Northwest Territory became the Michigan Territory (essentially today’s Michigan, Wisconsin and the eastern part of Minnesota).

In 1834, the Michigan Territory was expanded to include those parts of the Louisiana Purchase north of the state of Missouri and east of the Missouri River, that is, including what today are the rest of Minnesota, Iowa and the eastern parts of the Dakota’s.

In 1836, Arkansas was admitted as the twenty-fifth state. As the thirteenth slave state, this gave slavery proponents an advantage in Congress, so it was decided that a new, free state of Michigan would be admitted (which it was in January 1837). The entire Michigan Territory was too large to be admitted as a state, so in the summer of 1836, the western part of the territory (today’s Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and the eastern parts of Dakota) was broken off as the Wisconsin Territory.

Just two years later, the parts of the Wisconsin Territory that were west of the Mississippi were broken off as the Iowa Territory. This new territory, then, encompassed all the lands between the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers from the state of Missouri north to the Canadian border. The Wisconsin Territory was reduced to just those parts east of the Mississippi, that had been part of the original Northwest Territory, a situation which continued until 1848 when Wisconsin was made a state with its current borders.

Thus, in 1840, the trans-Mississippi United States consisted of three states hugging the river—Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri, the territory of Iowa, lying between the Missouri and Mississippi, and a large Indian territory lying between these states and territory and the continental divide. Besides this, a vast area north of Mexico and west of the continental divide, called by the Americans the Oregon Country, was in theory jointly administered by Great Britain and the United States. The story of that region will be the subject of the next blog on shaping the trans-Mississippi west.

Getting an appraisal

2011-12-22T15:26:00.004-05:00

I get a lot of queries about how to get a print or map appraised or whether one is "worth having appraised." The Philadelphia Print Shop's web site does have a page about appraisals, but it seems like it is worth going over some of the issues in this blog.

First, I should explain that while I give "free appraisals" on Antique Roadshow, this is a special circumstance. I do this because it is fun, it gets my shop lots of good publicity, and it helps spread information about and create interest in antiques, including prints and maps. Otherwise, I do not give free appraisals, because I am a professional appraiser. Since I charge clients for appraisals, it isn't fair to turn around and give out the same information for free (except in the case of the Roadshow).

The main issue, though, is why get an appraisal? I think in most cases where people are asking for an appraisal, they really just want some idea of what the item is worth. I can understand this, but I feel that even if I am giving only an off-the-cuff dollar value, this is still an appraisal and there should be at least some charge in order to make it fair to all our clients. I do offer general "ballpark valuations," but these are not actual values, but rather a general idea of whether a print is of just "decorative" value, or "moderate" value, or "significant" value, etc. If an actual dollar value is involved, then it is really an appraisal, or at least what we call a "POV" (professional opinion of value), for which the charges are less.

So, when is it appropriate to pay to get a dollar value? Just because you are curious? In most cases this doesn't warrant actually spending money. If you are really curious, maybe a POV is appropriate, but otherwise, you can perhaps satisfy your curiosity by searching on the web to see if you can find your print/map or something similar. There are also books of price records, which some libraries have, so if you put in a bit of work, you might be able to get an idea without having to pay for an appraisal.

Probably the most common reason I get asked for an "appraisal" is because someone wants to sell the print/map and wants to get an idea of what to sell it for. In general it doesn't make sense to pay for an appraisal before you try to sell an item. First, you might not gain enough advantage from the appraisal to recover the cost of the appraisal. Secondly, even if you ask for an appraisal indicating a wholesale price, each dealer figures wholesale prices differently depending on the nature of their business, their needs, cash flow, etc. Thus it is very difficult to come up with a wholesale price that would apply to a general range of dealers. Finally, as a matter of ethics, a dealer should not both give an appraisal and make an offer (as that is a conflict of interest), so if you get an appraisal, you are eliminating one possible purchaser.

One way to get an idea of what to sell something for is to ask a dealer what he would offer for the item, or to ask an auction house what they think it would bring at auction. It is not, in my opinion, fair to do this unless you honestly might sell the item to the dealer or through the auction house, but if the offer/estimate is too low, you certainly do not need to sell the item. If you intend to sell it yourself, then set a minimum price that you are willing to take and let the market decide if that is reasonable. If you are afraid of selling too cheaply, then maybe you ought to deal with a professional dealer or auction house.

Another fairly common reason to ask for an appraisal is to get an idea of how the print should be treated. Really, no matter what a print or map is worth, if you do not treat it well, it will not survive, so if you like it, you should treat it well (museum quality framing, etc.) so it will survive, no matter what it is worth. This is also why I will give out our ballpark valuations, so the owner will have some idea of what they have.

As for estate, tax or insurance reasons, then it is really best to get a real appraisal and pay for it. If there is ever a question, having an appraisal from a professional appraiser will give you a solid foundation to maintain the value you have assigned the object.

Chon-Man-I-Case, portrait of a chief

2011-12-13T15:35:00.009-05:00

In the nineteenth century, Native American names were not written down by the Indians themselves, so the names as documented by Euro-Americans were either phonetic approximations or nicknames used as a matter of convenience. Thus it is that the Oto chief pictured above had his name written as “Chon-Man-I-Case,” in this print from Thomas McKenney’s History of the Indian Tribes of North America, but also as “Shaumonekusse,” which is the spelling that James Hall preferred in his biography. This chief was also called the Prairie Wolf and L’Ietan, the latter name used by the French perhaps because of an exploit he had against the Ietan tribe.

The Oto tribe originally came from what is today Wisconsin, but by the late eighteenth century had settled along the Missouri and Platte Rivers in today’s Nebraska. It was there that Shaumonekusse was born about 1785 and there that the tribe was located on the map which accompanied McKenney’s volume. When Stephen Long’s expedition passed through that area in 1819, Shaumonekusse was one of the warriors who described to the exploring party his martial exploits, which involved taking coup and stealing horses from many other tribes.

Just a couple years later, in 1821-22, a large delegation of plains Indians, from the Pawnee, Sauk, Fox, Sioux, Miami, Menominee, Chippewa and Oto tribes, went to Washington to meet with government officials, including President James Monroe. This was part of the government’s policy of both honoring and impressing Native American leaders so that they would be more malleable in making treaties (and giving up their rights). Shaumonekusse, though only a “half chief” (that is a minor chief) at the time, was part of the delegation along with one of his wives, Hayne Hudjihini, or Eagle of Delight.

At this time, Thomas McKenney was head of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. McKenney was a champion of American Indians and fought throughout his tenure to preserve something of their culture, which he recognized as an integral part of the history of America. Towards this end he started a collection of Indian memorabilia for the government and took advantage of the visit of this large delegation to have a number of the visitor's portraits painted.

McKenney convinced some of the members of the delegation, including both Shaumonekusse and Hayne Hudjihini, to go to the studio of the leading Washington portrait painter Charles Bird King, to sit for their portraits. This was the beginning of the government's Indian portrait gallery, which grew considerably in size during McKenney’s tenure. After McKenney was dismissed from his position, he borrowed the original paintings in order to produce illustrations for his planned History.

After many ups and downs, lasting over a decade, this monumental work was completed containing 120 prints (all but three portraits) and biographies, written by James Hall, of many of the individuals pictured. Lithographic copies of both Shaumonekusse's and Hayne Hudjihini’s portraits were included. It turned out to be a good thing that McKenney undertook this project and produced these copies, for in 1865, a fire at the Smithsonian destroyed almost all the original paintings.

Shaumonekusse’s biography in the History, says of him that he “was distinguished early in life as a daring, active and successful warrior.” And according to Hall, he rose to his position as chief, not through heredity, but “gradually by his own merits.”

An interesting story, of which there are a number of versions, tells how Shaumonekusse and his brother, Blue Eyes, fought each other over ownership of some ponies, during which Blue Eyes bit off the end of his brother’s nose! Shaumonekusse retreated to his lodging to recover and try to cool off, but in the morning he was still furious, telling his brother that he was going to kill him, an act which he shortly thereafter carried out. Though Shaumonekusse was said to be distraught by this, according to Hall it was this act of revenge, which was widely approved by his tribe, which led to Shaumonekusse’s rise to being a full chief.

The portrait of Shaumonekusse shows a proud warrior, wearing an impressive bear-claw necklace and headdress with bison horns, both indicating his great prowess. He also hears a presidential medal, with Monroe’s likeness on it, given to him when he visited the president.

The portrait of Shaumonekusse was one of the first prints produced for the McKenney History, some time around 1830. As the production of the History ran its convoluted way towards completion in 1844, a number of portraits, including this one, were redrawn on stone and reissued. Usually the later images were a bit more “polished” or Europeanized, as can be seen by comparing the image above the previous paragraph, published in 1836 by E.C. Biddle, with the one just above, published in 1838 by F.W. Greenough.

Library Company of Philadelphia Print Department

2011-11-10T18:36:00.002-05:00

The last few months have been very busy, with a number of antique shows and other travel (I am off on Sunday for the Theta Show in Houston), so my blog postings have fallen off. I just got an email that announced a new on-line exhibit which I thought I should take the time to pass on...

One of my first blogs was about the wonderful Library Company of Philadelphia. I love it here in Denver, but I do miss some things from the East Coast. Its wonderful institutions being one of the main things I miss and the Library Company is at the head of the list of these institutions.

The Library Company always had prints, but it wasn't until 1971 that they appointed Stephanie Munsing as the first Curator of Prints and Photographs. The new on-line exhibition celebrates the 40 years of this department. It demonstrates better than any remarks I can make what a great department this is. Take a look!

Breaking books

2011-10-21T16:01:00.003-04:00

We get questions almost every day about values (and please note that this blog is not the place for questions about value of specific items!). Today I got two questions related to the same topic: viz. whether a book with prints in it was more valuable as a whole or with the plates taken out and sold individually.

I thought I would address this issue in this blog, partly because the economics of it are somewhat interesting, but also because it is part of a larger topic which I find very interesting: breaking books. I have thought much about this general topic and do plan to write a blog on my thoughts at some time (I have a general inclination against breaking books, though I am not against it in all cases), but today I'll just consider the economics of the situation.

The value of a book (and I include portfolios in the category for this discussion) does have a lot to do with the value of its prints. Any book with valuable prints is going to be valuable itself. Obviously if the prints can be sold for a lot individually, there is a value for the book itself to anyone who might take it apart to sell the prints.

This is often called the "break up" value of the book, and basically it is a factor of the value of each print multiplied by how many prints there are. Now this is predicated on the notion that the prints would be sold for a profit, so obviously the factor used is less than one (so a book with 10 prints worth $100 each is worth less than $1,000 in break up value).

This isn't just that whoever is breaking the book for the prints has to make a profit on each print, but there is the question of the costs of selling the prints. In most books there is a range of how desirable the various prints are, which means that the prints are often priced a different points, but also that some prints are easy to sell (even at a higher price) and some very difficult to sell (even at a lower price).

However an individual figures this all out, this determines the "break up" value of a book. This is often the value at which a book will minimally sell at auction, for there usually are at least some buyers who would be interested in a plate book for its potential as a "breaker."

There are naturally other factors involved in the value of a book besides its plates. These can include scarcity, collectibility , quality of binding, and many other things. While the "break up" value of a book is often the minimal amount it will sell for, a book will often sell for more than that. For instance, the recent sale of a complete first edition of John James Audubon's Birds of America for about $11.5 million is fairly clearly well above any "break up" value.

Still, in many cases, there is a lot more money to be made by selling all the prints individually than from the sale of a book as a whole. So, how should I respond to the people asking whether they should sell their book as a whole or break it and sell the prints? The answer is not that clear even just on a financial basis, ignoring the other questions such as whether it is ok ever to break a complete book.

There are many costs involved in selling prints. A book can usually be sold just as is, but a print often needs to be "prepared" before selling (such as matting it or framing it). And it generally takes more effort to find buyers for multiple items than for one item. A book is a single sale; it can be put on ebay or put at a regular auction or sold to a dealer and the money received right away.

Selling a lot of prints takes much more time. If you put them all up for sale at once, say at an auction, they can saturate the market and thus drive their value down. Of if you put them out for sale at a gallery or flea market or whatever, some are likely to sell fairly quickly, but others can take a lot of time. This means that it takes more effort and the money comes in over a longer period of time. $10 today vs. $50 in two years is not such a clear cut choice.

And some of the prints might not even sell at all. The Alexander Wilson bird prints are mostly very attractive, but it isn't easy to sell the vulture print with the dead sheep in it! Or atlases, where the maps of American can sell quickly, but one might be looking for a buyer for the map of the lower Rhine for a long time.

I guess if you like the idea of setting up a gallery or going to flea markets to sell the prints, then it can make more sense, but it more often makes financial sense for a non-professional to sell a book complete (not to mention all the non-financial reasons to keep books together!).

Botanical prints by William Curtis

2011-10-05T15:36:00.018-04:00

Early botanical prints are generally quite desirable both for collectors and those wishing to use them as decoration. They can be found uncolored, colored by hand, or printed in color, and in many different sizes, not to mention price ranges.

The prints found on the market generally range in date the sixteenth through the nineteenth century, with each period have its own typical style. Many love the boldness of the late nineteenth-century chromolithographs or the texture of the early nineteenth-century stipple prints, but my favorite botanicals are the engravings of the late eighteenth-century, especially those that are hand colored. Some of these can be fairly expensive, but the majority remain quite affordable. Some of the most reasonably priced, attractive and historically important of these prints are those done by William Curtis.

William Curtis (1746-1799) moved to London as a young man to become an apprentice to an apothecary, but his true love was botany and other natural history. He soon gave up his apprenticeship and took to a career as a natural scientist. His first work, which he produced at age 25, was Instructions for collecting and preserving insects; particularly moths and butterflies. In 1772, Curtis was appointed as Demonstrator of Botany to the Society of Apothecaries at the Chelsea Physic Garden and in 1779 Curtis established his own London Botanic Garden, where he cultivated about six thousand species of plants.

One of Curtis' particular interest were those plants growing within London. That interest led him, beginning in 1777, to work on a huge, multi-volume work, Flora Londinensis; or Plates and Descriptions of such Plants as Grow Wild in the Environs of London, intended to describe and illustrate every plant growing in London. This publication, which was completed in 1799 in six volumes, contained text and a folio engraving of each plant.

The Flora Londinensis was of high quality and very informative, and received excellent reviews. However, it was expensive for Curtis to produce, which meant it had a high price. Also, as it was a heavily scientific work focused on mostly humble plants growing along streets and in the fields of London, it had a somewhat limited market. Sales were not good, Curtis' costs were high, and after two volumes, he was debt-ridden.

In order to make some money, Curtis came up with the idea of a magazine to illustrate and describe the many attractive and exotic plants becoming available to gardeners in England. Thus was born, in 1787, his The Botanical Magazine; or Flower-Garden Displayed, a monthly publication with each issue containing a description and a hand-colored engraving of three plants.

As Curtis explained in the first issue, “The Botanical Magazine’ owes its commencement to the repeated solicitations of several ladies and gentlemen subscribers to the author’s botanic garden, who were frequently lamenting the want to work, which might enable them not to enquire a systematic knowledge of foreign plants growing in their gardens, but which might at the same time afford them the best information respecting their culture."

The Botanical Magazine, unlike the Flora Londinensis, was a huge commercial success. Its small size, bright flowers, and the fact that payments for each issue were quite modest, made it very popular. Curtis sold thousands of copies of each issue, the money helping him to continue work on his folio work: he is said to have remarked that each of his publications brought either “pudding or praise.”

Such was its success that Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, as it became known, became the longest running botanical magazine ever; despite a few hiatuses, it is still in publication by the Royal Botanic Gardens. The first thirty volumes used copper engravings, with later images being done by lithography and then later by photomechanical processes. Until the mid-twentieth century the prints were all hand colored.

All of the Botanical Magazine prints have a charm and attractiveness (not to mention accurate detail), but the earliest ones, those that are the engravings from the eighteenth century, are the most appealing. These prints are generally available at reasonable prices and make for great gifts and decoration, with their visual appeal and fascinating history. One of the interesting things about these prints is that they are numbered in sequence from the first print on and each is labeled with the month and year it was produced.

The larger prints from the Flora Londinensis generally do not have quite as much “petal power,” but they too are very attractive, historically interesting, and modestly priced. Curtis’ prints are a nice place to start for the beginning collector or anyone wanting some historical art for their walls.

Shaping the Trans-Mississippi West: 1820-29

2011-08-19T17:40:00.009-04:00

As described in the previous blog about shaping the Trans-Mississippi West, at the beginning of 1820, the American West consisted of the state of Louisiana, the territory of Arkansas, and a vast Missouri Territory. That year, however, saw the beginning of an important change with the passage of one of the seminal acts of Congress in the nineteenth century, the Missouri Compromise. This compromise was precipitated primarily by the issues arising out of the nascent development of the American lands west of the Mississippi.

In the early nineteenth century, other than in the well-established state of Louisiana, most early settlement west of the Mississippi was centered on St. Louis. As the major center for trade and supplies for the lands to the west, St. Louis had grown to a city of over 10,000 citizens, with the region around steadily increasing in population as emigrants created new farms and towns.

In 1818, a petition was put forward to create a state of Missouri out of the southeastern part of the vast Missouri Territory. Slavery had been legal since the founding of the Missouri Territory, so the proposal was for the state of Missouri to come into the Union as a slave state. However, by this time the issue of slavery, and the expansion of slavery into newly formed states in the American West, had become a very controversial subject.

In 1818, there was a balance in Congress between the slave and free states and neither side was willing to give the other the advantage of a new state in their camp. Thus Northerners would not consider allowing Missouri to come in as a slave state without the simultaneous admittance of a free state. At this time, however, those in the District of Maine, then part of Massachusetts, were clamoring to be let in as a state, so in 1820 the compromise was reached that Maine would be admitted as a free state at the same time Missouri would come in as a slave state.

The Missouri Comprise also had another element which was important in the development of the American West, the prohibition of new slave states (other than Missouri) north of the 36.30 degree parallel line. This line was the northern border of North Carolina and Tennessee and it was considered something of a dividing line between the North and South. Northern Congressmen would allow Missouri, located above the line, to come in as a slave state, but were not interested in allowing any more slave states above that line.

So it was that in 1821, the southeastern part of the Missouri Territory was admitted as the state of Missouri. The western border was on a line run due north-south from the junction of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, with the northern border coming off of this line 100 miles above the rivers' junction. If you look at a map of Missouri today, the north western part of the state is not a straight north-south line, for the Platte Purchase of 1835 added to the state what in 1821 was still Indian territory.

In 1821, the rest of the old Missouri Territory became officially unorganized U.S. Territory and it was essentially territory claimed by various Indian tribes. Meanwhile, the U.S. Government was busy trying to move eastern Indian tribes to west of the Mississippi, including the Choctaw, who by the 1820 Treaty of Doak’s Stand, were given land in what was then the western part of Arkansas Territory.

In 1824, in order to separate the Choctaw and other tribes’ lands from the Euro-American settlements in eastern Arkansas, the Arkansas Territory was essentially cut in half, with the new western border starting at a point 40 miles west of the southwest corner of Missouri, and then running due south to the Red River. However, this meant that much of the Choctaw lands was still within the Arkansas Territory and the Choctaw were not ready to give up this territory.

After considerable negotiation (some of it likely more intimidation), the Choctaw agreed to move a bit further west. The United States wanted the new western border to run straight south from the southwest corner of Missouri, but the Choctaw insisted on their land extending to within 100 paces west of the Fort Smith, so the final border ran slightly southeast from the corner of Missouri to just west of Fort Smith and from thence due south.

The boundary changes in the decade from 1820 to 1829 where not many—the creation of the state of Missouri and the truncating of the Arkansas Territory—but the Missouri Compromise would continue to reverberate in the history of the American West in the decades to come.

Early Denver Prints & Photographs

2011-08-13T16:47:00.009-04:00

I continue to work on my research of early views of Denver and one of the issues I find interesting is the role of photography. The first settlement in what would eventually become Denver was in late 1858. This was just about the time when photography was becoming a more practical medium for recording images. Photographers were beginning to travel around the world to take photographs of major events, for instance the Crimean War, and of distant places, of which the American West would become a favorite.

In the mid-19th century, photography had practical limits in terms of what it could capture. Motion was a problem, so rarely were action “events” portrayed; rather early photographs tended to be of posed portraits, buildings, or landscapes. Also, photographs had a difficulty in showing distant detail, so panoramic images were rarely successful and most photographs focused on a narrow scene, for instance of a building or a street scene.

The Pike’s Peak gold rush, as it was called, began as a trickle in late 1858, but was in full flood by the spring of 1859. In early 1859, a saloon, hotel, sawmill, and newspaper had all appeared in Denver, which had a population of about 1,000. Also, by that summer at least one photographer was in the city recording its rude beginnings. We know this because in the June 11, 1859 issue of the Denver Rocky Mountain News, this report appeared,

“Pike’s Peak.—We observed the other day Mr. Welch, the artist, taking views with the apparatus [a camera] in and around the cities of Denver and Auraria to illustrate Frank Leslie’s Pictorial. Mr. W., we understand, is going into the mountain mines for the same purpose. We doubt not but the views taken from the summit of the Rocky Mountains will grace the pages of the pictorial with delicate sublimity.”

No Mr. Welch is listed as being a resident of Denver and though there are various Welch’s listed as photographers in this period in other cities, it is not clear which of these, if any, was the Mr. Welch in Denver in 1859. It seems that Mr. Welch was part of a group sent by Frank Leslie to chronicle the Pike’s Peak gold rush for his Illustrated Newspaper (an earlier article with images on the gold rush appeared in the April 30 issue) and his photographs were used as the basis of prints in the paper, for in the August 20, 1859 issue was an article, and three pages with eight illustrations entitled “Scenes and Sketches at Pike’s Peak.—From Photographs by our own Correspondent.”

One of the images was a scene of a party of miners, two showed camps of the Leslie’s party and the other five images were scenes of Denver. These are, in fact, the very first printed images of Denver. Perhaps all, but certainly some of these wood engraved views are based on Welch's photographs. The images of the Rocky Mountain News office and of the Leavenworth and Pike’s Peak Co.’s office are very photographic in nature and their source gives them a solid historic authenticity.

These images are a good example of the intelligent use of the different strengths of the two processes of photography and print making. Photography could provide a precisely accurate image of a place, but it was impossible to widely disseminate the image through photography. Newspaper prints, on the other hand, were printed in huge numbers, so transferring the photographic image to a wood engraving allowed the accurate photographic image to be distributed in the tens of thousands.

In the case of these first prints of Denver, none of the original photographs are known to exist, but there is another example of an early Denver wood engraving where the photograph is known. It is interesting to look at these two images.

The wood engraving is from a French magazine entitled Le Tour Du Monde issued in 1868. This included various accounts of travel around the world and one of the accounts was that of Louis L. Simonin, a mining engineer who visited Colorado and Wyoming in 1867. This account was accompanied by a number of interesting prints, some based on original sketches and others based on photographs. One of the latter is entitled “Vue de la ville de Denver.”

This is an interesting and unusual ‘view of Denver.’ It looks out over the back yards of a number of buildings, which allows only a fairly limited view of the streets beyond. Not what one usually would expect from someone trying to give an idea of the appearance of a city.

This makes sense if one realizes that it is based on a photograph of Denver which may have been the only image the publisher had access to. The photograph in question was copyrighted in 1864 by one of the photographers from Denver in the 1860’s, G.D. Wakely. The reason that this strangely composed photograph was taken was not to show the backyards and streets of Denver, but rather to show the devastating flood of Cherry Creek, which can be seen in the background of the photograph.

If you look closely at the wood engraving, you can see the flood, though it is impossible to know what you are seeing unless you are looking for it. Why did the publisher of Le Tour Du Monde use this photograph as the one image of Denver in the article? Probably simply because it was available and he may have had no access to any other scene of the city. The Denver Public Library has a number of versions of this photograph, indicating that it was probably fairly widely disseminated, for a photograph, and the wood engraving in the magazine would have distributed it even more widely, though probably to an audience which had no idea about the actual subject matter!

Indian prints by W.M. Cary

2011-07-16T16:34:00.020-04:00

Next week I am heading off for another Antiques Roadshow taping, this time in Tulsa, Oklahoma. For those interested in western art, this means one thing: the Gilcrease Museum, one of the greatest museums of the art of the West.

My pending visit to Tulsa, together with our recent acquisition of a good collection of prints of the American West from Harper's Weekly, got me thinking about William de la Montagne Cary (1840-1922), better known to print collectors as W.M. Cary. That is because when Cary died, a large collection of his paintings and drawings were acquired by Thomas Gilcrease and they now reside at the Gilcrease Museum.

Cary was one of the significant contributors to the depiction of the American West in illustrated newspapers. His Western prints appeared beginning in the late 1860s and then continuing in subsequent decades, mostly in Harper's Weekly, but also in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and other illustrated periodicals. Like most of his fellow Western illustrators, Cary based his drawings on his own experience in the American West.

Cary began his art career at age fourteen as an apprentice to a commercial engraver. By age 20, he had worked in watercolor and oil, done some sculpture and had contributed a number of drawings to illustrated periodicals, such as the Aldine. Though encouraged by his family to pursue his artistic career through formal study abroad, Cary decided he wanted to seek adventure in the American West.

In early 1861, with two friends, Cary set off on a “sporting expedition” to the West, traveling from St. Louis, aboard American Fur Company steamers, up the Missouri to Montana, surviving a fire and exploding boiler along the way. They spent six weeks at Fort Union, hunting and befriending the Indians camped around the fort. Then the young men joined a wagon train and set off to Fort Benton. Along the way they were captured and then released by a band of Crow Indians, and upon arriving at Fort Benton they stayed for another two weeks hunting and exploring the area. From thence the threesome set off by foot and horseback across the Rockies to Washington State, subsequently returning back to New York City about a year after they had set out.

In 1867, Cary went West again, where he painted portraits of George Custer and William “Buffalo Bill” Cody, the latter becoming a lifelong friend. In 1874, Cary made a last trip to the West, joining in with the U.S. Northern Boundary Survey Commission on the last part of their expedition.

In New York City, Cary had set up a studio and became a well-established artist, known particularly for his western themed art. Cary produced paintings and also a number of images which were made into lithographs, etchings and book plates. His most prolific work, however, were the images he provided for the illustrated publications.

His periodical illustrations are of considerable interest. Many were based on first-hand observations and others were “imaginary scenes suggested by events at the time of their depiction,” (Robert Taft, Artists and Illustrators of the Old West, p. 53) though always informed by his considerable experience in the West. With our recent acquisition of a group of Harper's Weekly wood-engravings of the West, I was particularly struck by W.M. Cary's images of Native Americans.

Relationships between the Plains Indians and the EuroAmerican emigrants from east of the Mississippi, who passed through and then into the region in increasing numbers, had been problematic from 1850s on, with an on-going series of conflicts scattered in among a regular succession of "wars" and treaties. With the discovery of gold and the building of railroads across the Plains, "Indian Wars" were a regular occurrence and readers in the East had an insatiable interest in news of the dramatic events on the frontier.

Accounts appeared in books and periodicals, but the most common form of visual information about the Indian affairs of the West were the wood engravings from the illustrated newspapers. Cary was one of the most prolific contributors to this body of images in the 1860s and 70s, and he probably was the artist whose drawings were the most dramatic. Thus, it is not unlikely that Cary's prints contributed a large element to the visual image that most EuroAmerican's had of the Native Americans.

So what were they like; what sort of image did Cary give on the American Indian? The sample is somewhat small and so my thoughts that follow are very speculative, but I think it is interesting see what we can discern by looking at Cary's prints.

The prints from the 1860s were drawn when Cary was still in his 20s and not long after he had lived through a number of his own adventures in the West. These prints show the Indians as blood-thirsty and with exotic customs. They are shown attacking a fort and a boat-load of trappers and sneaking up to ambush peaceful settlers. The centerpiece of his "Life of An Indian" shows a brave proudly holding up his "First Scalp," while other images show him hunting and undergoing the "Trial of Endurance." It should be noted that in this print there is a nice vignette of an Indian mother and infant and also of a brave playing a flute for his son. Still, the Cary images of this period emphasize the wild and war-like.

The prints from the 1870s do, I think, exhibit a different emphasis (that is excepting Cary's wonderful image from the Aldine in 1873, showing the results of an Indian attack on a Pike's Peak gold-rusher, illustrated at the bottom). In his prints from the 1870s, Cary shows more images of Indian life, such as a canoe race, breaking a pony, and dealing with death.

In 1874, Cary did produce two images entitled "Sketches of Indian Warfare," including a scene of the Scalp Dance, but the other engraving shows the Indian less threatening than threatened. A chief stands on his horse, raising his hand to try to stop a wagon train passing through his lands. The Indian, armed only with a bow, spear and tomahawk, is facing men clearly armed to the teeth with guns and a train of innumerable wagons. One gets the sense that Cary no longer saw the Indians as wild savages (though it is not clear he ever did, for the earlier emphasis may have been more for popular consumption than his true feelings), but as members a doomed culture worthy of trying to understand.

Shaping the Trans-Mississippi West: 1810-1819

2011-07-06T17:52:00.012-04:00

In the previous blog in this series, we saw how in the first decade of the nineteenth century, the United States approximately doubled its size with the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase, from which the Tehttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrritory of Orleans—-consisting of those relatively settled lands in the southernmost part of the purchase-—was broken off as a separate entity.

While the basic outline of the Louisiana Purchase was fairly clear, essentially encompassing the lands west of the Mississippi River, drained by that river and its tributaries, the exact borders between the new American lands and those of New Spain in the southernmost part were open to debate. The Americans claimed that the Sabine River should be the border, whereas the Spanish claimed a border further to the east at the Calcasieu River.

Negotiations between the countries broke down in 1805, with Spain severing diplomatic relations with the United States. Over the next year there was conflict, in words and deeds, between the two countries over the lands between these two rivers. Finally in 1806, an agreement was signed to establish this as a neutral ground, which neither side would settle nor try to govern. Inevitably, into this lawless land, lawless individuals gathered and it became a hotbed for bandits who preyed on travelers. The border was eventually established as the Sabine River by the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819.

As I mentioned in the previous blog in this series, the large territories which were added to the United States west of the Mississippi River in the nineteenth century were divided into smaller units as they became settled; usually these smaller units were created first as territories, then later admitted as states once they reached a certain level of development.

In 1812, the Territory of Orleans became the State of Louisiana, but this had as much to do with the issue of slavery as with the region's development. Since the founding of the nation, there had been a fairly even balance between slave and non-slave states, but this was disturbed with the admission of Ohio in 1803, which would soon be followed by other non-slave states created out of the old Northwest Territory. Southerners were keen to add a new slave state to balance this trend, so Louisiana was admitted less than a decade after Orleans had been created as a separate territory.

That same year, in order that it not be confused with the new state of Louisiana, what had been the Louisiana Territory was renamed as the Missouri Territory. This was the remainder of the original Louisiana Purchase outside the new state. At that time, these borders were still not firmly established, but by the end of the second decade of the century, the borders in the north and south were defined by agreement with Britain and Spain respectively.

To the north, the border with the British in what is today Canada was established by the Anglo-American Convention of 1818, to follow the 48th parallel from Lake of the Woods to the continental divide. This in effect gave the United States the southernmost part of the Red River Valley and the British the northernmost part of the Missouri River Valley. The Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819, which had fixed the border of the new state of Louisiana, also clarified the rest of the border between Spanish and American claims for the new Missouri Territory. The United States gave up its claim over Texas and also gave to the Spanish lands between the Red and Arkansas Rivers, essentially in exchange for Florida.

In the same year as the Adams-Onis Treaty, the Territory of Arkansas was established from the lands south of the 36.30 degree parallel, running from the Mississippi River to the new border with the Spanish lands. The year before, in 1818, Missouri had applied for statehood. Centered on St. Louis, the pattern of settlement in Missouri had left something of a gap between the proposed state and Louisiana, so it seemed prudent to organize those lands into this new territory, especially given the large immigration there beginning in 1810, of both Anglo-Americans and Native Americans.

The line between the proposed state of Missouri and Arkansas was set at the 36.30 degree line, the same parallel that separated Tennessee and Kentucky. The one exception was the Missouri “Boot Heal,” which consisted of the lands east of the St. Francis River between the 36.30 and 30 degree lines. The reason for this land being assigned to Missouri and not Arkansas was essentially that the economy and settlers of the boot heal were intimately connected with the rest of Missouri, but some interesting legends about its creation have been put forth.

One story has it that a farmer who lived there asked the government to not make his land part of Arkansas, because he heard it was so sickly in Arkansas, “Full of bears and panthers and copperhead snakes, so it ain’t safe for civilized people to stay there overnight even.” Another story tells of a love-struck surveyor who ran the line further south in order to spare the feelings of a window who lived there and believed she lived in Missouri.

While the Arkansas Territory was created in 1819, the state of Missouri didn’t appear until the following year---a story to be told in the next blog in this series. So at the beginning of 1820, the United States west of the Mississippi had its borders fairly well established and it consisted of the state of Louisiana, the territory of Arkansas, and a large Missouri Territory encompassing all else.

Multi-view prints

2011-06-23T16:47:00.007-04:00

In previous blogs I have discussed my interest in what I call “novelty prints”, and mentioned the amazing collection of Richard Balzer. Many prints fall into this novelty category because there are multiple ways of looking at them. Today I will discuss prints which are structured in a three-dimensional manner so that they look different depending on the angle at which you view them.

We recently acquired a very interesting example of this sort of print, which you might call a “two-way” or “accordion” print (I have never come across one of these before, so do not know if there is a proper name for this sort of print). This print was issued in Paris sometime in the nineteenth century and it is a hand colored lithograph, but of definitely unusual form.

This print has the shape of an accordion, so that if you angle it to the left, you see an image of a flower vase, and if you angle it to the right, you see portraits of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. It is a little hard to tell how it was put together and I have not wanted to take it out of the frame, as it appears quite fragile, but as best I can tell this print was created by taking three prints (the vase, and then the two portraits), cutting them into strips, then pasting them on a backing sheet folded into the accordion shape.

A similar type of print appeared in the nineteenth century in America, but these add a third view, so that you see one image if the print is angled left, one image if angled right, and one image if viewed straight on. Richard Balzer calls these prints “triceniums.” These are made using three prints, two of which are cut into strips and glued back to back. These double-sided strips are then stretched on their sides, and spaced a couple inches apart above the third print. If you look at the print straight on, the strips do not block your view of the print at the back, but when viewed at an angle you see one of the other two prints.

All the triceniums that I have seen use Currier & Ives portraits related to the Civil War. They have had either George Washington or Abraham Lincoln as the print when seen straight on, and various generals (such as Grant, McClellan, Scott and Sherman) used as the two angled prints. Years ago one of these, with Lincoln used as the print at the back, hung in the Ford Theater in Washington, but I am not sure it is still there.

I have also seen a “southern” version with Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson (which I did an on-air appraisal of in an early Antiques Roadshow show), and I have been told by a fellow print dealer that he has seen a Currier & Ives tricenium with flower images.

All the ones I know of, at least those produced in America, use Currier & Ives prints. So were these published in this form by Currier & Ives? I have looked for years for any sort of advertisement or mention of this sort of print as being published by Currier & Ives themselves, but have never found any. Currier & Ives prints were ubiquitous around the time of the Civil War, and the firm did sell their prints to print sellers, bookshops, and framers around the country, so it is certainly a reasonable possibility that these prints were put together by a reseller and not Currier & Ives themselves.

Until someone finds a reference to these prints being sold or produced in the nineteenth century, the question of who put these together will be something we cannot answer. If anyone knows of any such reference or comes across one, I’d love to hear about it! I would also be keen to hear of any other examples of these multi-view prints, either using Currier & Ives prints or those by other publishers. These are a lot of fun and very little research has been done on them, something it would be nice to rectify.

Antiques Roadshow: Eugene

2011-06-15T15:36:00.005-04:00

I have been remiss about getting new blog postings up, mostly because I have been doing a lot of travel of late. One of my trips was to the Antiques Roadshow taping done in Eugene, Oregon earlier this month. This was the first stop for the 2012 season (the new season begins in January and it shows the episodes filmed the summer before). It was great to see all my fellow appraisers and the crowd in Eugene was terrific. The Roadshow is still very popular (viewer numbers are continuing to go up) and the crowd in Eugene was as good as almost any city I’ve been to in the 15 years of doing the show. Everyone was very nice and I saw some great stuff.

One of the surprises was that there were not as many out-right reproductions brought to the prints and posters table as usual; there were some, but I would guess at least half of what we see in most cities are reproductions and there were considerably less in Eugene. There were also less of the tourist prints we usually see so many of (as I wrote about in a previous blog). I had hoped to see some good Oregon views, but nothing of any note in that line came in.

What came in with somewhat surprising regularity were really good maps. I am not sure why that is other than that I think the map appraisals that are shown on the Roadshow are of considerable interest to people, spiking interest in maps in general (at least I hope so!). It also might be that maps remain a bit of a mystery to many people. Most prints are fairly obvious in terms of what they are about (a local view, a portrait of a famous person, a bird print, etc.), but unless you are someone who is pretty up on history or cartography, most people know nothing about the maps they have other than the geographic area they show.

Whatever the case, I enjoy it when maps come in; most have an interesting history and I love to explain the historic context of the maps for their owners. Maps also can be quite attractive, as was the Blaeu world map that I saw. This was a map which a young lady had inherited from her father. She thought it was nice, but really didn’t know anything about it. This was a beautiful example of a Blaeu world, with original color, and when she learned both how early it was (early 17th century) and its value (over $20,000), she was flabbergasted. Fun to be able to pass on such good news rather than the usual, “Your print is very attractive, but its value is really simply as a decorative item and it would probably be priced at less than $10 in a shop…”

I also saw a number of other very good maps (one of which was taped and I hope will appear in next year’s season). One was a nice “saddle bag” version of Simeon De Witt’s important 1804 map of New York State. De Witt had been the Surveyor General for the American army during the Revolution and he later became the Surveyor General for New York State, a post he held for half a century. In 1802, De Witt produced a large map of the state, based on earlier maps along with new surveys commissioned by De Witt. Two years later, this seminal map was issued in the reduced version, a nice example of which was brought in to the Roadshow. A rare map that is one of the best American maps of the first decade of the nineteenth century.

This coming weekend I am heading off for El Paso, Texas, for the second stop on the Roadshow tour this summer. One tends to expect to see things of local interest, but then again most of the things I saw in Eugene had little to do with Oregon. There are, of course, lots of great items related to Texas history: prints and maps. As I discussed in my blog of relative values for maps of different states, anything related to Texas history tends to be worth more than things related to the history of other states, so if I see a good view, battle scene or map of Texas history, it is likely to be worth a fair bit.

This brings up an issue I’ll briefly mention to end this blog, that is the importance of price or value for items on Antiques Roadshow. Early on, it was the big prices of some of the items which were filmed ($20,000!) that caught viewer’s attention on the show. However, large prices are not enough to sustain fifteen seasons of interest. It is a good story about an item that the producers are looking for. Yes, the price is important (most regular viewers I know are always trying to guess the value of items as they watch), but the story of the items is more so. Good thing for me, as on the whole maps and prints are in the lower price range in the world of antiques, but most of them have really interesting stories (to me especially). Here’s hoping to a bunch of fascinating and valuable items in El Paso!

Shaping the Trans-Mississippi West: 1800-1810

2011-05-21T18:32:00.010-04:00

The United States was born out of the British Colonies, which had been founded in North America beginning in 1607. These colonies were originally limited to the lands along the Atlantic Ocean, east of the Appalachians, but with their 1763 victory in the French & Indian War, the British gained control of almost all of North America east of the Mississippi River. When the United States was formed after the War of Independence, it consisted essentially of the territory in eastern North American between the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River in the north and Florida in the south.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the American western frontier consisted of the lands across the Appalachians, but east of the Mississippi. Citizens living in the area between the Appalachians and the Mississippi considered themselves westerners; for instance, Henry Clay from Kentucky was popularly known as “Harry of the West.” By the end of the century, however, the United States stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and it was the trans-Mississippi region which was then the American West.

In 1800, most of the trans-Mississippi region was either Spanish or French territory. French Louisiana consisted of those lands in the Mississippi drainage to the west of the river, so lying between the Mississippi and the continental divide. The lands to the west of the continental divide were primarily Spanish, being the northern part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, though the country north of the 42nd degree parallel was claimed also by the British.

So, in 1800, what would become the trans-Mississippi United States was divided into just three basic political entities, French Louisiana, northern New Spain, and (somewhat disputed) the British Columbia District in the Pacific Northwest. By the end of the century, this was all part of the United States and by then it was divided into 23 political units! The changing political configurations of the trans-Mississippi region between 1800 and 1900, as shown in contemporary maps, will be the subject of a series of blogs I will call “Shaping the Trans-Mississippi West.” Today I’ll look at the first decade of the 19th century.

French Louisiana originally consisted of most of the drainage basin of the Mississippi, on both sides of the river. In 1764, with her loss at the end of the Seven Year’s War (called the French & Indian War in North America), Spain relinquished the eastern half to the British and the western half to the Spanish. France regained control of Louisiana west of the Mississippi from the Spanish in 1800.

In the first few years of the nineteenth century, Napoleon Bonaparte was involved in much conflict and intrigue in Europe and the French dominions abroad, and he faced imminent war with the British and total financial collapse. Looking for a quick solution for the latter, in 1803 Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States for essentially 15 million dollars (about 220 million in today’s dollars), the equivalent of less than 3 cents per acre.

In this one transaction, the United States essentially doubled its size. The exact border between the Spanish lands in New Spain and Louisiana south of the continental divide were not clear, but that was settled by the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819. There was also still dispute about the ownership of the lands in the Pacific Northwest. Little was known of Louisiana, so President Jefferson almost immediately sent out an exploring expedition under Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Early maps were able to show a rough image of this newly acquired U.S. territory, but it wasn’t until the Lewis & Clark information and then later exploring expeditions that accurate details began to become available.

There are a number of common themes which we will see as we study the development of the trans-Mississippi West, one of which is that initially large territories were divided into smaller units as their population increased. Citizens would move into part of a large territory and would soon feel a desire for a more local government, which could take into account the particular needs and wants of that local population. These smaller units were usually also territories, but then over time they would usually become states (unless they were again subdivided).

Thus it was that in 1804, that part of the Louisiana Purchase south of the 33rd parallel became the Territory of Orleans. This was, of course, the area where there had been a large and sophisticated population of Spanish, French and now American citizens, who felt that they had little in common with the vast, undeveloped parts of Louisiana to the north. The remainder of the purchase, north of Orleans, became the unorganized District of Louisiana, which then became the Louisiana Territory in 1805.

Thus the political situation of the trans-Mississippi West in 1810 was very like that in 1800, though now divided into four parts instead of three: New Spain, the disputed Pacific Northwest, the American Louisiana Territory, and the Territory of Orleans. Before another ten years were up, another unit would be broken off, as we’ll see in the next blog in this series.

Miriam Leslie

2011-05-14T13:14:00.008-04:00

Any regular reader of this blog will know that I am very interested in prints of the American West from the illustrated newspapers of the nineteenth century. In my continuing research on the subject I came across what I think is fascinating story about a remarkable woman. It is more about the personalities involved than the prints, but still I think the story is appropriate for this blog

Frank Leslie, born in England as Henry Carter, began his career as an artist and engraver for the Illustrated London News. In 1848, at age 27, Leslie emigrated to America where he soon began work for Gleason’s Pictorial in Boston. He then moved to New York City to work as an engraver for P.T. Barnum’s Illustrated News, but that paper folded shortly thereafter. At that stage, Leslie decided he would do his own publishing.

Guided by his famous motto “Never shoot over the reader’s head,” Leslie was very successful as a publisher. Beginning with his first publication, The Gazette of Fashion, and until his death in 1880, he published over twenty periodicals and seventy books. The most successful of his publications was Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (1855-1922).

About the time Leslie started that paper, the American West was opening up and becoming a subject of great interest to the public in America and overseas. Thus American and British newspapers began to send artists to the West to document this frontier for their readers. Just a few months after the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, Frank Leslie sent Joseph Becker from New York to San Francisco and back by train to document this nation-changing trip.

Less than a decade later, Leslie decided he would make a grand tour of the West. Robert Taft wrote that “the nes plus ultra in the way of pictorial excursions to the West…was that of no less a person than Frank Leslie himself in the spring and summer of 1877.” Leslie brought along two correspondents, two artists, a photographer, some family friends and his wife, Miriam Leslie. It is Mrs. Leslie, as remarkable a personage as her husband, who is the focus of this story.

Born in 1836 as Miriam Florence Folline, by 1877 Mrs. Leslie was a highly educated woman, speaking four languages, and mainstay of New York social life. However, her early life was less highfalutin and, indeed, rather colorful. At age 21, Miriam she fell for a jeweler’s clerk named David Charles Peacock, and when her mother found out, Peacock was threatened with jail on a charge of seduction and forced to marry Miriam. No child appeared and soon the couple separated, the marriage (the first of four for Miriam) being annulled.

After a short career on stage, as part of the “Montez sisters” with Lola Montez, Miriam moved up in the world when she met and enchanted Ephraim G. Squier, an archaeologist and wealthy businessman. They were married in 1857 and Miriam moved easily into New York City society.

Ephraim and Miriam were both drawn into the circle of Frank Leslie, with the former becoming editor of the Illustrated Newspaper in 1861. At this time, Leslie separated from his wife and moved in with Ephraim and Miriam. Two years later, Miriam became editor of Leslie’s Lady’s Magazine. In this period, Miriam and Frank developed more than a business relationship. In 1867, the three, then a rather notorious ménage a trios, went on a trip to Europe. Frank tipped off old British creditors of Ephraim’s, who was promptly was arrested for debt when they landed in Liverpool, allowing Frank and Miriam free reign to enjoy their time together before they bailed Ephraim out of jail a few weeks later.

Frank and Miriam soon both divorced and were then married on July 13, 1874. Miriam, however, continued her colorful ways, for it is said that it was on their honeymoon that Miriam met author Joaquin Miller, with whom she began an affair; the main character in Miller’s book The One Fair Woman is supposed to be modeled on Miriam.

Miriam, of course, went along with Frank on the trans-continental excursion of 1877, writing a book on her experiences, Pleasure Trip from Gotham to the Golden Gate. Her narrative is often insightful, but also from time to time lacking in tack. In particular, Mrs. Leslie was not impressed with the burgeoning mining town of Virginia City. She wrote “To call a place dreary, desolate, homeless, uncomfortable, and wicked is a good deal, but to call it God forsaken is a good deal more, and in a tolerably large experience of this world’s wonders, we never found a place better deserving the title than Virginia City.” Not satisfied with this, she finishing up by remarking that “The population is largely masculine, very few women, except of the worst class, and as few children."

R.M. Daggett, the editor of Virginia City’s Daily Territorial Enterprise, was not amused. He thus assiduously gathered all the dirt on the Leslies he could, and on July 14, 1878, issued his paper with a full front page article headlined: “Our Female Slanderer. Mrs. Frank Leslie’s Book Scandalizing The Families of Virginia City—The History Of The Authoress—A Life Drama of Crime and Licentiousness—Startling Developments.” This vicious article detailed with glee Miriam’s scandalous life, both true and alleged, including an illegitimate birth, shot-gun wedding, time on the stage, extra-marital affairs, and her divorce from E.G. Squier, which was said to have sent him to a lunatic asylum.

Miriam’s remarkable life continued well past this notorious episode. When Frank Leslie died in 1880, deeply in debt, Miriam took over the business and put it on sound footing. She even had her name changed legally to Frank Leslie in 1881, successfully running the publishing house until she sold her interest in 1902. Meanwhile, in 1891, on a trip overseas, she married Willie Wilde, a brother of Oscar Wilde, who she subsequently divorced just two years later. Miriam died in 1914, at age 78, and left half her estate to Carrie Chapman Catt for “the cause of Woman’s Suffrage.”

Original matrixes

2011-05-05T12:00:00.008-04:00

Linda, who has a blog at Artifacts Collectors recently sent me some questions for an interview, which she has now posted on her blog. I thought her questions were interesting and hopefully my answers were as well. There were a couple of follow-up questions from readers that were posted, one of which raised an issue of some interest to me.

The question was: "Do you collect or sell the original matrix too? Were they kept at all after the print is published? Can new prints be made from them?" I did send Linda my reply to this, which is on her blog, but I thought I'd expand a bit on my answers here in my blog.

Original matrixes —wood blocks, metal plates and lithographic stones— do turn up from time to time and they are fun to acquire if you can. Interestingly, unless the image on the matrix is a famous one, they tend not to sell for a huge amount even though they are fairly rare. I think the main reasons are that they are a bit hard to display and, probably more importantly, they don’t look that great at immediate sight.

There are a number of reasons they usually don’t look that great. First is that they were practical objects, not decorative objects (though they were used to create decorative objects), and if they are indeed original matrixes, they will often show some sign of wear or age deterioration. Also, on plates and blocks especially, the design is not that easy to see. The designs were made to hold and transfer ink, not to display to the naked eye.

And finally, you have to remember that the image on the matrix was drawn backwards, so that the impression made from it would be right-way-round. This can make them look strange, especially for prints with text in them. This is one thing to remember, for we see with some regularity “plates” or “blocks” which are intended to look like original matrixes but are just decorative reproductions. The majority of these, however, are “right reading,” so they are usually easy to spot.

One of the reason that original matrixes are relatively rare is that -again because they were simply practical objects for a specific use, not ends in themselves- there was usually not a good reason to keep them around once the printmaker was done with printing them. If the printmaker was going to do another printing, then they would be saved, but if not, they took up too much room just to hang onto, and in some cases the material could easily be reused.

For copper plates, the metal itself was quite valuable, so once a plate had out-lived its printing life, it would usually be melted down to be used again. Lithographic stones, on the other hand, could easily be wiped clean and reused and as most originally came from Europe and the cost of purchase and shipping was substantial, this is what happened to most original lithographic stones.

The one type of original lithographic stone you do tend to find from time to time are what I call “storage stones.” It was standard practice in the nineteenth century for images to be transferred from one stone to another. If you were running off a large number of images, it was easier to have the artist draw the image onto one stone and then transfer that image to other stones so that you could have several stones being printed with the same image simultaneously.

Publishers soon realized that they could save “stock” images for use in the future. Many images that were used on advertisements, certificates, bank notes, stationary, etc. would be used over and over again by a lithographer, so these images were stored on stones which were just a collection of these images, waiting to be used. As these were stones that lithographers kept around, a fair number of these turn up from time to time. They do look a bit odd, as they usually contain a strange variety of images scattered across the surface of the stone, but they are interesting and fun to acquire if you can.

John Dare Howland

2011-04-30T06:00:00.000-04:00

As part of my "western art" education, I have been reading up on a number of the artists who produced first-hand images of the trans-Mississippi region in the nineteenth century. I have recently come across the artist "Jack" Howland, who had a fascinating history.

John Dare Howland (1843-1914) was born in Zanesville, OH, leaving home at age fourteen to move to the West. There he hooked up to travel on one of the American Fur Company boats traveling up the Missouri to Fort Pierre. During this trip he he went on buffalo hunts and became a great favorite of the Sioux, especially as he made drawings for them on buffalo skins and their tepees.

He subsequently traveled to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, where he is believed to have painted some Indian portraits, then in 1858 to Colorado for the Pike’s Peak gold rush. He was unsuccessful as a gold seeker and it is said that he became so destitute "that he often had to earn a few pennies for food by dancing a jig for the entertainment-starved miners." Howland then briefly turned to trapping, but this too proved unprofitable.

This was all done by the age of 16(!), at which age he joined the First Colorado Cavalry and then was later active in the Indian Wars, eventually reaching the post of Captain of Scouts. He used his saved earnings to traveled to Paris to study painting, but returned to serve from 1867 to 1869 as Secretary to the Indian Peace Commission between the US and the Plains Indian tribes.

He returned briefly to Paris, but ended up settling in Denver, where he founded the short-lived Denver Art Club in 1886. He designed the Civil War monument at the Colorado State Capitol and became well known in particular for his paintings of buffalo.

He is said to have produced a number of drawings that were published in both Harper's Weekly and Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper but so far I have been able to track down only one of these, a drawing he made when involved with the Indian Peace Commmission.

The 1860s saw many Indian attacks on EuroAmericans moving through and into the Great Plains. In an attempt to resolve this conflict, the United States set up a Indian Peace Commission which set out in the autumn of 1867 to treat with a number of Plains Indian tribes, including the Kiowa, Comanche, Plains Apache, Cheyenne and Arapaho. They met at a sacred Indian site, Medicine Creek Lodge, and signed treaties which obliged the tribes to move to the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in exchange for annual payments.

It was this Peace Commission for which Howland served as secretary and he made a number of drawings, two of which appeared in the print above from Harper’s Weekly, November 16, 1867. This is an excellent example of how the images in illustrated newspapers provide such an immediate and first-hand depiction on many of the events and personalities in the American West during the nineteenth century.

A Cabinet of Curiosities

2011-04-22T06:00:00.019-04:00

In my last blog, I wrote about what I call “novelty prints.” These are prints that were not intended to present a straight-forward picture, but that are unusual in the way they were intended to be used or viewed. About a year ago I came across a web site for a fabulous collection of such prints, The Richard Balzer Collection.

Dick Balzar collects all sorts of novelty prints and this web site is what he calls his Wunderkabinett, that is, his cabinet of curiosities. As he says in the introduction to his site, “Nearly five hundred years ago European collectors arranged their pieces in cabinets of curiosities (Wunderkabinette) in an attempt to display their rare pieces. As collections grew, the more ambitious set aside rooms called Wunderkammern (Rooms of Wonder) for visitors to come and view their collections. These were the first museums. Today, the internet allows the possibility of visiting museums without leaving one’s home, and similarly, the possibility of constructing a virtual Wunderkabinett -- my cabinet of curiosities."

Dick calls the theme of his collection “visual entertainment” and his collection includes the types of novelty prints I have already discussed (perspective views and horizontoriums), as well as many others such as “magic lanterns, peepshows, shadows, transparencies, thaumatropes, phenakistascopes and a variety of other optical toys.” The site focuses on “the presentation and cataloguing of these wondrous devices and their representation in a variety of forms from scientific tomes to representations in the popular culture of the period.” I have spent many an hour browsing through the site and it really is a Wunderkabinette!

As I find this topic of great interest and as this is the best collection of these prints I know of, I asked Richard if he would consent to an interview, which he graciously agree to:

Can you describe the character of your collection?

I like the idea that a collection has a character as well as a theme. The theme of my collection is easier to describe; it is visual media and is almost exclusively pre-cinema (before 1895). The three biggest areas of concentration of the collection, and each encompasses a wide variety of materials from objects to ephemera, are magic lanterns, peepshows, and optical toys. As to the character, it’s a reflection of the collector, a bit chaotic and eclectic.

How did you get started with your collection and what inspired you to start?

I came to collecting rather accidently. I was living in Oxford, England on a research grant and one weekend I went to an auction, something I had never done before. I was drawn to a set of photographic magic lantern slides from the 1880s that depicted daily life in China. The slides came with a beautiful but rather beaten up mahogany lantern, which I knew nothing about. No one else at the auction seemed interested so for 50 pounds (about $80) I bought the slides and the lantern.

A month later a friend told me someone was giving a magic lantern show in Birmingham, about an hour and half drive from Oxford. I went to the show, not expecting much, and was overwhelmed by a magical menagerie of painted circus figures gliding across the screen. Mike Simkin, the showman, really started me on collecting. After the show he invited me back to his house, and once I saw the treasurers of his collection I was hooked.

How big is your collection?

The English have a lovely turn of a phrase which is, “I have a modest collection”, which doesn’t exactly do justice to its size.

When were the objects in your collection made?

The vast majority of my items come from the 18th and 19th centuries. I have a small number of pieces from the 20th century and a bit more from the 17th century, and even a couple of pieces from the 16th century.

In what countries were your objects produced?

Items in my collection come from a wide variety of countries. I have shadow puppets from China, India and Indonesia. I have several wonderful prints from Japan and some peepshow related material from Russia. The largest country, as a contributor to my collection, is America accounting for probably 60% of my collection, not because it is the place with the most material but because it is my home and there are fewer collectors here collecting what I collect. Europe has more material but it also has more collectors seeking the material. Over the years, having lived in England and traveled extensively in Europe I have been fortunate enough to find a lot of material, particularly in England and France, although I’ve also found things in Germany and the Netherlands. Once I was lucky enough to buy a collection of leather skinned shadow puppets from a street vendor in Beijing.

What are your favorite types of objects?

I hate this kind of question because it suggests that in any collection there should be favorite types of objects. It would be easier for me to tell you about twenty favorite objects than four. If you asked at this moment (and of course this could change tomorrow) some of my favorite types of objects, I would say: Anamorphoses, Thaumatropes, Peepshow Boxes and Magic Lantern Prints. Writing this down I recognize that I didn’t mention peepshow prints, something that I wrote about in my book, Peepshows A Visual History.

If you asked what the most distinctive part of my collection is I would have said prints. Both the magic lantern, and peepshows were important visual icons of the 18th and 19th century and new (old) images keep turning up, which is a wonderful thing for a collector.

You seem to be interested in prints about optical items as well as prints that are the optical items themselves. How important is this to you and are you also interested in books on the topics?

Actually I am not so interested in pictures of the items themselves, but I am very interested in images that contain the objects. This probably isn’t very clear so let me say there were a lot of political prints, especially at the end of the 18th and throughout the 19th century where the peepshow and the magic lantern were used by artists to poke fun at particular politicians, royals or the government. Some of my favorites show a peepshow and an unsuspecting person bent over looking at a view while his pocket is picked. The person depicted looking at the show represents “the people” and his pocket is being picked, depending on the image, by a politician or the state.

If I keep saying I am very interested in something it will soon become apparent that I am interested in a great many things. One of the real joys of collecting for thirty years is that as you learn more about a subject, you often find more things to collect. I think it was five years of collecting magic lanterns before I began collecting optical toys, a wonderful array of persistence of visions toys from the 19th century with delightful Greek derived endings of trope or scope (meaning viewer), to add a certain educational panache. So you have, for example, Thaumatropes, Phenakistoscopes, Zoetropes, and Praxinoscopes all offering a host of visual delights. It was another five years before I began collecting peepshows and several more years before I became interested in antiquarian books about the things I collect. I wish I were fluent in languages in addition to English because it would make owning books in many other languages a deeper pleasure.

What major institutions are there that have significant collections similar to yours?

Sadly there is no major institution in the US with an extensive collection of the material I am interested in. The Getty Museum in LA has some great pieces and the MOMI (Museum of the Moving Image) in Queens, NY has some material. There are a number of museums with large collections of these materials in Europe. The two most impressive are probably the collections at Cinematheque Francaise in Paris, and the Film Museum in Turin.

Are there other private collectors in your field?

There are many private collectors in my field and each one has a different emphasis. In the US the biggest collector of magic lantern materials is Jack Judson and his collection is exhibited in his museum in San Antonio,Texas. In Europe there are numerous significant collectors. Three with the most spectacular collections are Werner Neke in Mulheim, Germany, Francois Binetruy in Versailles, France and Lester Smith, in London.

Is there a collectors' group or society related to your collection?

Wherever there are collectors there is a collector’s group. I belong to two:
The Magic Lantern Society of the US and Canada, and the Magic Lantern Society of Great Britain. Both are terrific organizations. They publish materials and hold conventions and are always looking for new members.

I have written about vue d’optique or perspective prints in this blog. What can you tell us about them?

These prints were primarily meant to entertain and educate. Travel in the 18th and for a good part of the 19th century was quite limited and any person could buy images of the world’s great cities and view them at their leisure at home. One could also educate their children about the wonders of the world with such images. They were very popular and were certainly collected at the time. The vue d’optiques are still readily available.

How did the market for these change over time?

Although originally intended as parlour entertainment, these prints were soon taken by showmen and displayed in peepshows in public spaces for a viewing public who would pay “a penny for a peep”. Soon the vue d’optiques were joined by more elaborate prints made specifically for viewing in a peepshow and I am very interested in these. The innovation was to pierce the image either with pin-pricks or cut-outs and to lay down colored paper on the back, so that when light came from the back the image could appear to be the same scene at night, with a star filled sky, lights in windows, silhouetted figures in windows, or fireworks. All this allowed a simple print to be transformed into a day/ night view. The craftsmanship required to make these views was impressive and the views are quite spectacular.

Are there any more recent types of optical objects which are not very valuable now but which might be in the future?

I am sure the answer is yes, but I don’t which ones to suggest. First, I don’t collect 20th century optical objects nor 21st century objects. Secondly, like many collectors, I collect with my heart and have not given much thought to which things would appreciate in value. What I have learned, often from mistakes, is that if you are interested in objects becoming more valuable it is usually a good idea to buy things in really good condition. This has not been a rule I have always followed. I like the items too much and have rarely let condition be the deciding factor in whether or not to buy something.

The Richard Balzar Collection is a wonderful collection and the web site is wonderful. As Richard says "Take a look. Perhaps you will see things you have not previously seen, learn something new. If you have more information on an item you see, sharing it will be a gift to me. Enjoy your visit!"

Novelty Prints

2011-04-18T06:00:00.000-04:00

As I have mentioned before, I am primarily interested in prints as historic artifacts, that is as objects which are part of our past, not as objects d’art. I like to study how they were made, why they were made, to whom they were sold, how they were used, what kind of impact they had on society and history, and so forth. Thus it is not surprising that I would be interested in what I will call (for lack of a better term) “novelty prints.”

I will use “novelty prints” to refer to prints that are not intended to present a straight-forward picture, but that are unusual in the way they were intended to be used or viewed. This includes perspective views (already written about in another blog), multi-view prints, and (to quote Richard Balzar) “magic lanterns, peepshows, shadows, transparencies, thaumatropes, phenakistascopes and a variety of other optical toys.” These prints have some “trick” or special character that lets them be viewed or used in a novel way. Novelty prints have a long history but are quite rare and not a whole lot is written about them. Richard Balzar, who I just quoted, has a huge collection of such prints and I will post an interview with him later this month, but today I will discuss one type of novelty prints which I find particularly interesting.

One of my favorite novelty prints is an unusual perspective view of a Philadelphia building which goes by the title of “Horizontorium.” A horizontorium is a type of print which, according to a letter published in Mechanics’ Magazine on March 28, 1835, was invented in 1821 by a British mathematical tutor named William Shires. According to Shires, his invention (illustrated above) was very much in demand throughout Europe and it was soon copied by others, who claimed the invention for themselves.

Though it looks exceedingly strange, according to Shires, “The horizontorium has nothing beyond common about it, the only peculiarity being that the view is projected on a horizontal plane, in lieu of a vertical one.” Shires' print shows a crenelated tower which appears to be misshapen, but which takes on its normal perspective when viewed from a particular angle. One was supposed to view the print by keeping the paper on a horizontal plane and looking at it with one eye from a position just above the spot marked at the bottom of the print. This can be facilitated by the cut-out eye piece shown above, which can be placed in the correct spot, and then the viewer looks through the eye hole.

Shires was probably spurred to write his letter of 1835—which was reprinted in the Journal of the Franklin Institute that same year—by the appearance of copy-cat horizontoriums. One of these was published in Philadelphia in 1832. This print is also entitled “Horizontorium” and it is the only known American example of this type of print.

This print was drawn by William Mason, a local artist who specialized in Philadelphia architectural prints. It shows the Philadelphia Bank building, which was designed by Benjamin Latrobe and stood at the corner of Fourth and Chestnut from 1808 until 1836. There were only two prints done of the Philadelphia Bank (which was the first Gothic Revival building in Philadelphia), the other being a print by William Birch published in 1809. It is fascinating to compare this view, which shows a rather squat building, to Mason's image, which makes the bank seem almost a skyscraper.

The start of the Civil War and Flag Mania

2011-04-12T06:00:00.007-04:00

One hundred and fifty years ago today, the first battle of the Civil War began, launching a conflict which would consume four years, over 600,000 human lives, and millions of dollars of resources. It is one of the defining events of American history and, not surprising, was well documented in contemporary prints (I have created a special section on our web site on this topic, A Nation Divided).

The Civil War began with the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April of 1861. The Confederates demanded the surrender of this fort in the mouth of the harbor at Charleston, S.C., but they were refused by the Union commander Major Robert Anderson. The Confederates opened fire on the fort on April 12, 1861, continuing to hail canon balls on Fort Sumter for 34 hours straight. The besieged garrison proudly flew the American flag over the fort throughout, until Anderson was forced to surrender at 2:30 on the 13th. The Union forces evacuated the fort, but Anderson saluted the flag as it was lowered and carried it with him as he left. It was later hoisted to the mast of their ship as they returned defeated, but unbowed to the North.

This attack on the United States and its flag caused a swell of patriotic fervor in the North which tended to focus on the flag as a symbol of the Union. As the editor of Harper's Weekly put it, "the flag of the United States is the symbol of the Government which secures and protects him in all his rights and interests..." (May 4, 1861, p. 274) Henry Ward Beecher gave a famous talk glorifying "The National Flag," in which he stated that "The stars upon it were to the pining nations like the bright morning stars of God, and the stripes upon it were beams of morning light." This image was taken up by American artist Frederic Edwin Church, who painted a small oil entitled "Our Banner in the Sky." In that oil, the American flag was formed by a field of stars in the evening sky, the colors of the sunset forming the stripes, and a tree trunk forming an apparent staff for the celestial banner. This painting was soon turned into a chromolithograph by Goupil & Co.

As copyright laws tended to be ignored, and as "flag mania" was raging, publisher William Schaus had artist William Bauly modify Church's image somewhat in order to make his own chromolithograph, entitled "Our Heaven Born Banner." The print was accompanied by the text of Joseph Rodman Drake's poem, "The American Flag," which describes the stars and stripes formed in the sky. In this print, a Zouave sentry looks out towards the celestial banner dawning over the hills, near which is seen Fort Sumter lying before Charleston. The sentry's rifle and bayonet form the flag's staff.

Printmakers in the North were quick to take advantage of these popular feelings by issuing a number of stirring patriotic prints featuring the flag. One of the earliest prints of this sort was issued by the Kellogg firm of Hartford. Their print shows the "brave volunteer" before an encampment and holding a rifle and the American flag. The volunteer is shown trampling on the flag of South Carolina. That flag was first adopted on January 28, 1861 and the focus on the flag of the first seceding state shows that this print was issued probably shortly thereafter.

Within short order, a print copied from the Kellogg's image was issued by the New York competitor to the that firm, Currier & Ives. This print has a similar title and is much the same image, though their print has the soldier stepping on the Confederate "Stars & Bars," an indication was issued a bit later when the focus was more on the Confederacy as a whole rather than just South Carolina.

Within little over a month, Currier & Ives were able to merge the flag theme with an image of the first Civil War hero to die for the Union cause. On May 24th, when Union troops were sent into Alexandria, Virginia, Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth went to the roof of the Marshall House Inn to remove the large Confederate flag which had been flying there, well within sight of the White House. The owner of the inn, James Jackson, who was a avid slavery supporter, took exception to this and shot Ellsworth with a shot gun, killing him instantly. Currier & Ives issued this dramatic print which further raised patriotic feelings and prolonged the nation's "flag mania."

Though the Ellsworth print showed a tragic event, most of the flag prints were positive and intended to be inspiring. These prints were wide spread and popular, but they were all issued early in the war. As the Civil War stretched on and its true horror became apparent, these prints lost their appeal and printmakers turned to other themes.

Value of Frames

2011-04-06T12:23:00.006-04:00

Most people who have antique prints have them in frames and many of the prints you run into at auction or in shops are framed. My focus is always on the value of the prints themselves, but surely the frames for these prints add value to the prints, right? Well, that question is actually fairly complex.

First off, as a rule our shop does not usually add any cost onto a print we have framed versus one that is unframed. So if we happen to have two examples of the same print, one framed and one unframed, they will usually be priced the same way. The main reason for this is that a lot of times someone wants a print that is in a frame but doesn't want the frame. If we added on for the value of the frame, then we would be obliged to knock off that cost if we sold the print unframed and we would end up with an empty frame that was not of a lot of use to us. The way we do it, you can take the print in the frame or out of the frame for the same price, and most people take the print framed and so we are not left with a lot of empty, relatively useless frames.

There are, of course, exceptions to this. If the frame is a really nice "period" frame (perhaps original) or if the frame is particularly wonderful (like the tramp art frame on our Custer's Last Stand print), then we do add onto the price of the print. However, this is the exception rather than the rule.

What this means is that we also do not pay extra for the frames when we buy the items. A number of people will bring us a print and expect to get extra for their frame, but as we won't charge more, we won't pay more. We also tell people they are welcome to keep their frames, but usually the people selling just want to get rid of the whole thing.

This can be very disappointing to people and it seems like it is unfair. As anyone who has had a print framed in the last decade or so knows, framing (especially museum standard framing) is very expensive. The frame for a moderately priced print is often more than the print itself, so how can it be that when you go to sell the print in the frame, you get nothing for the frame?

Well, there is a big difference between buying something "as is" and going out and having something made exactly as you want. If you are selling a print in a frame, the potential buyer has to take that frame or nothing. It is likely not the style, size, color or whatever they might have chosen; it just is what it is. People will usually not pay as much for something like that both because it probably isn't exactly what they want but also because it is a take-it-of-leave-it fait accompli. If someone is ordering a frame, they get just want they want and are having someone make it specially for them. It is much like buying an off-the-rack jacket vs. having a tailor make one specially for you. An existing frame just doesn't have that much value to buyers in the market.

And there is the other issue of whether the framing is "museum quality." A large majority of the antique prints framed today are in frames that are actually causing them harm (this is discussed in another blog). Not only is a buyer of such prints getting a frame that they didn't choose, but the frame needs to be taken apart and put back together to preserve the print.

Now it is true, as I said above, that there are frames which do add to the value of prints, but generally it is wise not to pay extra for a frame. If you really like the frame, ok, but it is also important to see if the framing is museum quality, for if it is not, you will be adding quite a bit of expense to the cost of the print (assuming you want to preserve it) and need to factor that in. There are actually a lot of cases where the framing can actually cause the print to be worth less! And finally, if you are looking to sell framed prints, don't expect to get extra for the frames. It just isn't the way things work.

American Indian Art

2011-04-02T18:28:00.007-04:00

The Print Shop has dealt with prints of American Indians for almost three decades, and indeed this has been a topic on which I have done quite a bit of research and have published a number of articles. So I was really surprised and delighted when just last week I had my eyes opened to a different way of looking at these prints.

What precipitated my new “insight” into these prints was a visit to the Denver Museum of Art to see their terrific new exhibit on American Indian Art. The collection of such art at the Denver Museum is one of the best in the world and they have recently remodeled their galleries and mounted a new exhibit on this collection. The art presented is breathtaking and the exhibit very well designed and a pleasure to view.

What is particularly of interest is the approach taken for this new exhibit, where the focus is on the individual artists and their creations, rather than on the art as examples of the culture of the tribe (which is how I have always looked at such art). Nancy Blomberg, the curator, explains that “Every artwork in our collection was created by an individual, with his or her own opinions, influences, and inspirations. This exciting new presentation will highlight the artist’s hand, and give visitors the opportunity to watch artists at work and evaluate their own perceptions of American Indian art.”

It certainly prompted me to look at the art in a new way and I started thinking about all the wonderful Indian art that appears in the prints we have. I have always focused on the art of the prints themselves; how well they are drawn, the process used, whether they show details of Indian cultures not available elsewhere, and the like. What I had not done was look “into” the prints to look at the art depicted inside the art of the prints.

When I got back to the shop after visiting the museum, I pulled out all our prints by McKenney & Hall and started to appreciate the artistic expression of the Indian artists who made the headdresses and beadwork on the implements shown; I looked at the Bodmer prints to view the elaborate art work on the Indian clothing, and I looked at the beautiful designs on the pots and baskets shown in other prints.

Now not all the Indian art shown in this Indian art is completely accurate, but these artists were working from first hand observation and their concern was to present an accurate picture of the Indian culture. While the fine skill and sensibilities of the Indian artists cannot be fully seen in these prints, it is another layer of meaning and richness to these prints; one that I now can appreciate and enjoy.

One of the things I love about my business is that I am always learning and seeing the material I deal with in a new light. Whenever I read a new reference book or visit a new exhibit I get an perspective on these old prints and maps and that immeasurably enhances my appreciation of them. Anyone in the Denver area should make it a point to visit this American Indian Art exhibit, for it will open your eyes.

Visions West, a reprise

2011-03-25T15:44:00.008-04:00

Back in January I went to the opening of the exhibition Visions West: 19th Century Expedition Arts at the Arvada Center for the Arts and was so impressed that I had to write a enthusiastic review in this blog. Well, the exhibit is going to be closing in just over a week, so now is the time to visit if you haven't yet!

The exhibition uses prints from the Graham and Barbara Curtis Collection. Mrs. Curtis and her daughter Kay Hunsaker were at the opening and I had the pleasure of meeting them. I asked Kay if she would answer a few questions about her parents and their collection and she kindly agreed.

Tell me a bit more about the collection.

It was my father's passion but my mother was very supportive and in the beginning, she learned to matte so that she could help him frame. The theme of his collection was the artistic documentation of the exploration, discoveries, and development of the American West. The original title he used for the collection was "Manifest Destiny, Exploration and Creation of the Nation."

How and when did your father start collecting?

Dad, a Geologist and hard rock miner at heart, always had a love of the Rocky Mountains, the mineral belt, and the exploration of them. Early on, he read about the West, and as he got older he started collecting antique geology and exploration books.

He then got the idea to share his love of America by giving "educational and enlightening" Bi-Centennial gifts in the form of western exploration lithography. While looking for suitable prints, he realized the extent of the availability, and the real treasures to be had. He found smaller, lesser known pieces of interest but when he found the "Rocky Mountains" by Bierstadt, he realized that famous prints could be obtained and that started his quest.

Were there types of prints or artists which he particularly liked?

Chromolithography is his favorite type, for he liked the bright, clear colors, but hand-tinting will always have a special place in his heart. Audubon's prints were his particular favorites as he always mentions them first, then adds Catlin, Bodmer, Bierstadt, and Moran. In truth, he has always loved birds and became a real "birder" after he acquired these prints.

What are his favorite prints?

Audubon’s Virginia Partridge and the Male Wild Turkey, George Catlin’s Buffalo, William Ranney’s Trapper's last Shot, Thomas Moran's Grand Canyon, and Albert Bierstadt’s Rocky Mountains.

Was there any print he was looking for a long time and finally got?

The Currier print “The Last War Whoop.” He acquired it just this past August. He had first seen it at the Buckhorn Exchange in Denver, but didn't get it. He quit looking for the print in the last few years but I located it and helped him purchase it.

There is still one he wishes he had gotten and that is the Jolly Flatboat Men by George Caleb Bingham. I found one but it is just too expensive at $15K!

When was the collection first put on display and where else has it been shown?

It was first displayed by the Arvada Art Museum for six weeks in 1986. The museum was pretty new and their staff was small. Dad helped them paint the walls in preparation, Mom and Dad both helped them hang pictures, and assisted in the cost of advertising.

Parts of the collection were also displayed at the Golden, CO Heritage Museum about 1987 & 1988, in the lobby of a bank in Downtown Denver during Denver's Western Heritage awareness, in 1993 or 1996, and in the Littleton Museum twice, in 2006 and 2008.

I wish I had had the opportunity to meet Mr. Curtis, but seeing this super collection in this excellent exhibit did give me a sense of his love and knowledge of the material. Anyone interested in Western prints should make it a point to head over to Arvada to see the collection before it closes on April 3. More information can be found on the Arvada Center's web site.

The American West in illustrated newspapers

2011-03-23T11:00:00.008-04:00

By 1848, the United States had expanded to encompass the entire central part of the North American continent between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the attention of Americans began to turn to the vast trans-Mississippi West. The emigrants to Oregon and the California gold rush from the 1840s were joined at the end of the next decade by those heading to the Pike’s Peak gold fields or the Comstock Lode. The end of the Civil War saw the building of railroads across and around the West, a region which attracted new emigrants who were at loose ends after the war or simply looking for new opportunities.

The trans-Mississippi West was essentially unknown to Americans when Thomas Jefferson purchased the French Louisiana territory in 1803, and it slowly revealed its secrets beginning with the Lewis & Clark expedition, followed over the years by other government and private explorations. The economic and political need to build a trans-continental railroad generated a spate of exploring parties across the plains and Rocky Mountains in the years before the Civil War, which resulted in a number of publications containing some of the first views of the West available to Americans east of the Mississippi.

As the reports of explorers, emigrants and travelers to the West trickled back east, Americans developed a fascination with this “wild” and far-away U.S. territory. However, first-hand images were hard to come by. There were the illustrations in the government railroad survey reports and in a few view portfolios produced for the elite by artists such as Karl Bodmer and George Catlin. These sources for images of the West, however, were limited in number and scope. Most of the general public did not have access to many, if any, of these views and there were many aspects of life in the region not pictured at all in these sources, which thus did not really meet the demand of Americans to have images of the West.

This demand, however, was well met by a wonderful series of images published in popular illustrated newspapers. This type of newspaper first appeared with The Illustrated London News, founded in 1842, and in the 1850s, a number of American papers followed, becoming hugely popular by the 1860s and 70s. The success of these newspapers lay in their wood-engraved illustrations. These prints were wide-ranging in their coverage of events, places, things and persons of interest to the readers, and they were extremely timely in their appearance, often being issued within two weeks of when the images were first drawn. Readers found it new and exciting to be able to have, within days and at an affordable price, a first-hand view of a disaster from across the country, to gaze on an image of a just constructed bridge, or to see contemporary pictures of far-away places…such as the American West.

The fact that these prints were “merely” illustrations in a newspaper and were issued in huge numbers has led some to dismiss them as unworthy of study or ownership. However, most of the pictures of the American West from this source were drawn by skilled artists, they are based on first-hand observation, and they provide some of the only contemporary images of these scenes available to readers at the time, and of course, to us today.

American and British newspapers sent a number of expert artists to the West to document this frontier for their readers. These artists included Frederic Remington, Charles Graham, R.F. Zogbaum, Thomas Moran, Paul Frenzeny and Jules Tavernier. Not only were events and places depicted, but the quotidian events of emigrants and settlers were also pictured, providing a rich, contemporary, generally accurate, and unique collage of nineteenth century life in the American West.

Promoting Knowledge

2011-03-11T14:26:00.017-05:00

I love prints of most types, but I have a particular fondness for prints that are fun but not too expensive. Such prints provide a way for people to have original art on their walls, items that are real antiques with historic interest, without spending the a huge amount to get them. I have just put together a window for the Denver shop with one group of such prints, those issued by the “Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.”

Quite a mouthful isn’t it? I will discuss this society, and another similar group below, but first I want to explain a bit about these cool prints. These are from series called “Plates Illustrative of Natural History.” They are small folio (about 10 x 12) wood engravings with original hand color. They were issued by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge between 1845 and 1847 and they illustrate fauna from around the world. These prints were sold individually, either “plain” or “coloured,” and also in bound volumes.

Each print shows a bird, animal, reptile or fish portrayed in an unthreatening, even anthropomorphic manner. The images are fairly accurate, though somewhat crude and certainly humanized to some extent, and the fauna are generally placed into a natural setting. Each print has text below the image about the animal depicted, text that has a mildly religious bent.

This is not surprising for a society designed to promote Christian knowledge. The society was founded in 1698 as an arm of the Church of England. It produced theological books as well as popular works on science, travel, biography, fiction and natural science. All their works were aimed at the literate middle and working class. It is clear that these prints were likewise aimed at the children of this audience, to help spread general knowledge (with a Christian bent). I think they are fun in appearance and their history makes them particularly interesting.

These prints represent an interesting aspect of the British upper class, viz., their concern to spread knowledge to those less advantaged. The British upper class certainly believed that there was a natural difference between themselves and those of the working and middle classes, but the nineteenth century was a period both when some of the lower classes were able to raise themselves up, but also when the wealthy businessmen of the Industrial Revolution needed a relatively educated working class to help run their businesses and the country. Thus the elite had moral and business reasons to help promote knowledge to the middle and working classes.

Another group of similar intent was the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (another mouthful), often referred to as the SDUK. This wonderful English enterprise, which had close ties to University College, London, was, similarly to the society just discussed, devoted to the spreading of up-to-date information and the enhancing of understanding for the working and middle classes.

Many of its publications were sold in only small numbers, though its Penny Magazine was quite popular, with a circulation of about 200,000 at its peak. The middle class did respond to some extent to its scientific publications, but the working class remained mostly uninterested. The society started in 1829, but went bankrupt in 1837, though some of its publications were picked up and continued to be published by others.

Interestingly, a similar organization, the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, modeled on the SDUK, was established in 1829 “to promote and direct popular education by lectures and other means. Besides its lectures, the Boston SDUK published a series of scholarly works as part of the American Library of Useful Knowledge, but the society was no longer active by mid-century.

Perhaps the most famous of the publications of the SDUK were its maps, which were issued from 1829 until 1844, separately and in a two volume atlas. These maps were very precise, based on the “latest” information and regularly updated.

Included in the series were 51 city maps, providing some of the best images of the cities of the work in the early 19th century. The maps/atlases were among the most successful of the SDUK publications, being issued in as many as 13,500 copies at the peak. The SDUK maps continued to appear as late as 1885, but by other publishers and in the later versions printed by lithographic transfers from the original steel plates.

Early prints and maps of Philadelphia & Denver

2011-02-24T15:56:00.008-05:00

For almost three decades I sold prints and maps in Philadelphia, and now for about half a year I have done the same in Denver. Any reader of this blog knows that my particular interest with this material lies in its historical nature and I have been lucky in that the histories of both places I have worked have been well represented in prints and maps.

Of course, the history of Philadelphia is over twice as long as that of Denver, but from its early days as a wintering ground for Native Americans, then as the focus of Pike’s Peak Gold Rush, through to its development as one of the most vibrant cities in the country, Denver has a history that is both complex and fascinating.

History is everywhere in Philadelphia, with centuries old buildings and historic sites of national import scattered thick on the ground. There are also some of the most important American institutions with an historical bent located in Philadelphia, such as the Library Company and Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The history of Denver is far less obvious, but it is still there for those with an interest, and in the Historical Society of Colorado and the Denver Public Library’s Western Collection, Denver holds its own with institutions of historical import.

In my time here, I have found that while the specifics of their stories are very different indeed, Philadelphia and Denver are similar in that both of their histories are rich and are an important part of the fabric of the cities. (This is, of course, a good thing as we have opened a shop in Denver!) One thing I have noticed, however, is that the two populations have a very different approach to the views and maps of their locations.

In my opinion, Philadelphia has the most interesting and important body of antique views of any American city. From the earliest printed views in the mid-eighteenth century, leading to William Birch’s landmark City of Philadelphia, through the wonderful series of views by Cephas Childs and J.C. Wild, continuing past the commercial lithographs of post-Civil War period to an extensive body of images of the Centennial, the views of Philadelphia are rightly known as comprising a unique and important body of American iconography.

Philadelphians are quite aware of this fabulous graphic wealth. There are great repositories of Philadelphia views at its many cultural institutions, exhibits on the topic are regularly on display, and there is an impressive body of reference works on Philadelphia views, from Martin Snyder’s City of Independence to the forthcoming Philadelphia on Stone from the Library Company. Furthermore, there is a strong group of knowledgeable collectors and scholars with an interest in this topic.

Somewhat in contrast, while there is a significant body of early maps of Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania, there is not nearly the interest in regional maps as there is in views. There are certainly less collectors of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania maps than there are of views of the same area and there have been few exhibitions and no significant reference books on the subject. Sure there are great maps and some serious collectors, but these pale in comparison to the comparable print collections and collectors.

I think there are a number of reasons for this. In terms of Philadelphia maps, there are far fewer early maps of note than there are important early views. Also, most of the early maps of Philadelphia show only Center City, making them of less interest to the large population that lives outside this small locale. And, as I have written about elsewhere, maps of Pennsylvania are notoriously unloved.

What has struck me since my move, is that the attitude of locals here towards views and maps of Denver and Colorado is almost the inverse of that of those in the Delaware Valley toward views and maps of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Here, it is maps which generate the most enthusiasm, with views surprisingly under-appreciated.

There is an notably large contingent in the Denver area who are quite keen on maps of the region. The Rocky Mountain Map Society is one of the most active in the country, with many of its members impressively knowledgeable on various western map related topics. And this applies to those who wander into our shop; whereas in Philadelphia we are often answering queries about views, here it is usually maps and more maps!

Probably a lot of this is explained by the fact that the cartographic history of Colorado and Rocky Mountains is really more interesting and varied than that of eastern Pennsylvania. Until the early nineteenth century, there was essentially little or nothing shown on maps of this region, but then a number of expeditions were sent out to the West, leading to the gradual mapping of Colorado and the Rockies. The post-Civil War railroad surveys and other expeditions slowly filled in the topography of the area, so the maps from different years showed interesting progress. And the political development of the trans-Mississippi West went through a whole series of configurations from 1848 to the end of the century, each new map again providing an interesting contrast to those before.

Thus the interest in maps out here is no surprise. As I wrote in an earlier blog, I am having a wonderful time learning about the exploration and settlement of the region, studying how it is depicted on the hundreds of different maps in the second half of the nineteenth century. What did surprise me, on the other hand, is how little interest or knowledge there is about the early printed views of Denver and Colorado.

As I said, in Philadelphia there is an immense amount of interest in and knowledge of the printed views of the area, whereas in Denver there seems to be relatively little of either. Now I do have to admit that this does not seem to apply to the photography of the West, which is a fascinating subject about which I know rather little. But when you are talking about engravings or lithographs of Denver and Colorado, it just doesn’t seem to be something about which people out here are particularly excited.

That isn’t to say that there isn’t some interest in some views of the area. A.E. Mathews’ Pencil Sketches of Colorado are well known and desirable, and many of the map collectors in the area love bird’s eye views, but I find surprising apathy with reference to the more mundane, but still wonderful views of the area from the 1860s to 1900.

Just to give one example, I have talked to a lot of people out here and have yet to find anyone who knows what the first printed view of Denver is. I find that pretty amazing. Denver was only founded in 1858 and there are only so many prints done of the place before, say, 1870, so I would have thought people would know about this, and care!

Some of the lack of interest may be that there are not that many early views of Denver and Colorado, and other than Mathew’s set, most of those are wood engravings from illustrated newspapers. As I have written earlier in this blog, I think illustrated newspaper prints are historically and visually wonderful graphic images and so to me these early views of Denver are terrific, but I guess they haven’t really inspired enthusiasm in the general public.

I am hoping to change that by putting together as much of a history on the topic as possible. There is a recently published book, Illustrations of Historic Colorado, which does include an interesting collection of printed images of the state (most from illustrated newspapers), but I think this topic needs to be further explored and publicized. I plan to do some of this in this blog, but eventually I hope to get something more substantial published. And, by the way, I think I know what the first printed view of Denver is, a topic I will discuss in a forthcoming blog…

Map Fair & Map Museum

2011-02-04T12:39:00.007-05:00

While most of the US is suffering under cold & snowy weather, things look pretty nice down in Miami. This weekend there is a great reason to visit besides the great weather, the 2011 Miami Map Fair. Run by and held in the Historical Museum of South Florida, this is the preeminent map event of the year. 50 exhibitors are showing their wares on Saturday and Sunday, including many of the top map dealers in the world.

For the last four years I have been representing The Philadelphia Print Shop at the fair, but this year my partner, Donald H. Cresswell, will be attending instead. I envy him, for not only is the largest collection of available antique maps on display, but many of our friends in the business are either exhibiting or visiting. If you like antique maps, this is definitely the place to be (and don't forget your suntan lotion!).

One of the people who offen attends the map fair will be David J. Morgan, who just over a year ago opened a new non-profit museum, the CARTE Museum. Located at 2347 Christian Street in Baton Rouge, this museum was developed to make available to the public Dave's amazing collection for both research and exhibition. "Carte" is, of course, the French word for map, but Dave uses it also as an acronym for Cartographic Acquisition, Research, Teaching and Exhibition museum.

Dave's collection has been built over the past 40 years and its focus is on the Gulf Coast, though it is also strong in maps showing the political development of the United States. The collection includes complete atlases, books with cartographic content, and maps from atlases and separately issued. So far two exhibitions have been mounted, one of the discovery of the Mississippi River from 1513 to 1764, and the other on West Florida. Next week, the museum is opening a new exhibition "Mapping the Mississippi River and Its Tributaries," which covers the period from about 1750 to 1820. Dave is also planning a "jam-up Louisiana Statehood bicentennial exhibit" with an opening reception on April 30, 2012.

The museum is open to the public on Wednesdays from 9 to 5 or by appointment. Inquiries can be addressed to info@cartemuseum.org.

Visions West exhibition

2011-01-27T16:34:00.011-05:00

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, with the Louisiana Purchase, through the rest of the century, Americans have been fascinated by the trans-Mississippi West. This fascination created a ready market for images of the American frontier, a market that was served by a plethora of artists and printmakers.

I have always been interested in depictions of the American West by those who were early travelers there, an interest which has become particularly keen with my move to Denver. I have begun to delve past those prints which I have studied for years, by artists such as George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Moran, and learn more about the many other artists who traveled to the West on private and government explorations. Thus it was that I was especially pleased to hear of a new exhibition opening up just a few miles from our shop in Denver on the subject of images of the frontier West.

The exhibit is entitled "Visions West: 19th Century Expedition Artists," and it is running from now until April 3rd at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. I was able to attend the opening a couple of weeks ago and I was surprised and absolutely delighted at what a tremendous exhibit it is.

The theme of the exhibit is nineteenth century printed images of the American West done by on-the-spot artists. The prints in the exhibit are from the collection of Graham Curtis (about whose collection I will be writing a blog in the near future), which were generously loaned to the Arvada Center by Graham and Barbara Curtis with the help of their daughter Kay Hunsaker. The quality, variety and scope of the prints in the exhibit are amazing, making this an exhibition which anyone interested in the topic has to try to come and view.

The big names--Catlin, Bodmer, Bierstadt, Audubon, Moran--are all there, but the real strength in the exhibit are all the less well known, but equally important artists who documented the West between 1822 and 1883. Some of these artists, such as Seth Eastman, Peter Rindisbacher, and A.E. Mathews, were not part of Government expeditions, but most of the artists whose prints are on display were part of various explorations sent out by the Federal government. These include images by artists such as James W. Abert, John Mix Stanley, Samuel Seymour, John J. Young, Arthur Schott and many more whose accurate, first-hand images provide us with a window on the American West while it was still a "wild frontier."

The exhibition in Arvada is very nicely presented. The prints are arranged by artist, rather than date, and this allows one to look at some of these familiar prints from a new perspective, focusing on the artists, not so much the expeditions. The staff has written informative text on each artist and his work, and so the exhibit is a feast for the mind as well as the eye. All involved should be proud of this wonderful exhibit and again I encourage anyone who can to stop by to see the exhibit before it closes on April 3rd.

2011-01-19T12:47:00.006-05:00

On April 12, 1861, the first shots were fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, beginning the American Civil War, a conflagration which raged for almost exactly four years before, on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. The Civil War, as much as the American Revolution, was a defining event in American history, and this conflict has always figured large in the awareness of the American public.

The 150th anniversary of the Civil War will generate renewed interest in the war, with many events, texts, and other media pouring forth this year. As I am particularly interested in historical prints, I have always been a student of contemporary prints of the Civil War. Thus, I have decided to jump on the bandwagon and produce a section of our web site which will specifically consider how the war was pictured in contemporary printed images. This section of our site is called A Nation Divided.

The Civil War took place at a time when two significant historical trends combined to make the relevance of prints particularly important. First was the development, in the nineteenth century, of a growing percentage of the American population which both was literate and had an interest in and the wealth to afford books, magazines, newspapers, and prints for the home. The other trend was the development of printmaking processes that allowed for the relatively inexpensive production of large numbers of printed pictures and maps.

So, a century and a half ago, as the United States made its inevitable way towards the cataclysm which would tear the nation apart, these important historical trends made it so that printed images would become one of, if not the most important means by which the general public would follow the war. Thousands of portraits of political and military leaders, patriotic and partisan images, and scenes of the events and places of the war were printed and disseminated around the country (mostly in the North), providing many Americans with much of their understanding of what was going on in the war. These printed images provided one of the main threads in the fabric of Americans' lives from 1861 to 1865.

Thus it is that I believe the study of contemporary printed images of the Civil War is crucial to gain insight into that traumatic event in our nation's history. Not only do these pictures show us today what those people, places and events looked like (although not by any means always accurately), but also it is only through an awareness of these prints that we can gain any true understanding as to how Americans of the time saw the war.

An important part of the intent of this section of our web site is that it be a useful reference source for those interested in the topic, exploring the history, nature and impact of contemporary printed images of the Civil War. We will put up pages on general topics, such as portraits, cartoons, etc., but a main part of the web site will be a monthly account of the events of the war 150 years ago, with a consideration of the prints showing those events.

This web site is also, of course, intended as a sales tool for our shop. Thus we will include images and descriptions of prints and maps we have in our inventory, along with images which are important to the topic at hand, even if we do not have them for sale.

I welcome comments and corrections. As an historian and printseller, there are few subjects as important to my work and the shop as the prints of the Civil War. I would love to spread knowledge of and interest in this fascinating subject.

An Education: a stolen Speed map

2011-01-07T16:04:00.013-05:00

I recently watched the 2009 movie, An Eduction, which takes place in and around London in 1961 and is about a 16 year old girl, Jenny Mellor, who meets a man, David Goldman, almost twice her age, with whom she has an affair that ends unhappily. I thought the movie was terrific, but I was definitely surprised to see that a seventeenth-century map by John Speed played a cameo role.

While David is an appealing fellow, charming everyone in Jenny's family, he soon turns out to be something of a rogue. This all seems fairly harmless, and indeed is part of David's charm, until the inevitable truth come out that David is married, has a child, and has had similar affairs with other young woman in the past. I was going along with this plot line quite happily until about mid-way through the film when one particular scene put me right off David and his roguishness.

In this scene, Jenny, David, his friend Danny, and Danny's girl friend Helen are driving around the British country-side when they see a house-for-sale sign. Unexpectedly, David pulls over and he and Danny march off to view the house, sternly insisting that Jenny not join them. This mysterious attitude is soon explained when David and Danny stroll out of the house with a framed map in their possession, quickly piling into the car and driving off.

It is clear that the map was stolen from the owner of the house. Jenny is upset by this episode, to which David replies:

"It's an old map. A Speed. Poor dear didn't even know what it was. It's a waste. It shouldn't spend its life on a wall in...wherever the hell we were. It should be with us. We know how to look after it properly. We liberated it."

Well, right there I was totally put off David, though Jenny decided this wasn't so bad, thus continuing on her fateful path towards her deeper disappointment in the end.

Now, my wife tells me I am a prude about movies. Unethical behavior (criminal or sexual) is the foundation of many good movies, but I must say that I do not like it when the movie implies this behavior is just fine or at least can be "winked" at. And to steal a map! That really got my goat. I knew that if David was stealing old maps, he was definitely not a person that Jenny should hitch her wagon to! Quite honestly, if it had all turned out well in the end, I think I would not have liked the movie half so much as I did (I think my wife is probably right....)

So what was it that they stole? A map by John Speed (1552-1629). Speed is probably best known for his Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, first issued in 1611 and then several times again over the next few decades. Speed spent over 15 years assembling the information for this atlas, which contains maps of the entire British Isles, the individual nations, and separate maps for the counties. In 1627, Speed produced his A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World, which included maps of the rest of the world.

In many ways, it was Speed's maps which spurred the development of map collecting in the 20th century. Speed's maps are very attractive, with many decorative features such as coats-of-arms, city plans, vignettes of battles, and images of costumed figures. Dealers discovered that if these maps were colored (and almost all were issued uncolored), they would be decorative enough to appeal to the general public and so these became the bread & butter stock for many British dealers. I think that the Speed maps gave dealers enough business to encourage the trade and also brought in enough new buyers that this really was the genesis of modern map-collecting.

Be that as it may, Speed maps became very popular in the 1950s and 60s, and so they remain to this day. His maps are quite expensive, ranging from the mid-hundreds to over $20,000 for his world map. So, it is not surprising that David, who obviously did not have a robust ethical sense, might want to steal one when he saw the opportunity.

One of the interesting things about An Education is that it is based on a real-life memoir of the same title by Lynn Barber, a newspaper writer and interviewer. It turns out the theft of a Speed map was an actual event in her relationship with her older lover.

One weekend I was moaning - I was always moaning - "I'm bored with Bateman Street", so we drove out towards Newmarket. At a place called Six Mile Bottom, I saw a thatched cottage with a For Sale sign outside. "Look, how pretty," I said. "'Why can't you buy nice places like that, instead of horrible old slums?" "Perhaps we can," said Simon, so we bounced up to the cottage and an old lady showed us round. I was bored within minutes, but Simon seemed unconscionably interested in the bedroom corridor which he kept revisiting. Then I saw him going out to the car, carrying something.

Eventually we left and went for lunch at a hotel in Newmarket. We were having a rather lugubrious meal when two men came into the dining room and one pointed the other towards our table. The man introduced himself as a detective. He said: "We've had a complaint from a Mrs so and so of Six Mile Bottom. She says a couple visited her cottage this morning and afterwards she noticed that a valuable antique map by Speed was missing from one of the bedrooms." "Oh, Simon!" I said. He shot me a look. "Perhaps we could have this conversation outside," he suggested. He went outside with the policeman. I waited a few minutes and then went to the Ladies, and out the back door and away down the street. I had just enough money for a train back to London. I hoped Simon would go to prison.

He didn't of course; he bounced round to Clifden Road a few days later and took me out to dinner. "How could you steal from an old lady?" "I didn't steal. She asked me to have the map valued." "No she didn't - I was with you." "All right, she didn't ask me. But I recognised that the map was by Speed and I thought if I got it valued for her, it would be a nice surprise."

I knew he was lying, but I let it go. I said: "If you ever really stole something, I would leave you." He said: "I know you would, Minn." But actually I knew he had stolen something and I didn't leave him, so we were both lying.

Unfortunately, I couldn't tell from the very quick view of the map in the movie what the map was of, and of course the original memoir doesn't say what Speed map it was. So what would this "valuable" map have been worth in 1961? My only sources for this are the early 1960s issues of Ken Nebenzahl's catalogues, which do list a number of Speed maps. Most of the country maps were listed for about $20 to $35 (today these are in the low four figures), while the better American regional maps were $125 to $150 (today these sell in the middle thousands). Based on this, I would think the world map might have been as much as $200-$250.

So what does this mean in today's dollars? It means that if they had a comparable price today, the country maps would be sold for between about $150 and $250, the regional American maps $900 and $1,100, and the world map maybe $1,500 to $1,800. Makes you wish you could go back and stock up on these maps! I would be interested to know what map it was that Lynn's lover stole, but in any case, this story--both in the movie and the memoir--is an interesting one and it does show the notoriety of the maps of John Speed even half a century ago.

Denver Public Library

2010-12-22T14:47:00.008-05:00

Last week I attended a breakfast meeting at the Denver Public Library about their new Creating Communities project. This is a terrific program which is designed to make the historical resources of the library, as well as those from other affiliated institutions, accessible to the general public through the Creating Communities web site. As a die-hard believer in the use of historical material to promote knowledge and understanding of our past, and so also of our present, I was delighted to find out about this program.

First a word about the Denver Public Library. Until this summer, I lived for the last three decades in Philadelphia, which has one of the oldest and best public library systems in the country, so I was very pleased to find that the Denver library system is also absolutely first rate. The library was established in 1889, the city librarian calling it a “center of public happiness.” In 1910, a new Central Library building was constructed, and then over the next decade eight branch libraries were built, all with the generous help of Andrew Carnegie. As the library system matured, new branches were opened, old ones refurbished, and in 1995 an outstanding new Central Library was built, designed by Michael Graves.

I am a fan not only of libraries, but also of institutions which hold collections of prints & maps. It turns out that in Denver the public library is the institution in this area with the best collection of historic printed images, a collection held in the Western History and Genealogy department. Their collection of Western Americana is, without question, one of the best in the country.

Opened in 1935, the Western collection was initially intended to focus on books by Colorado authors, but soon the department broadened its focus to encompasses all phases of the development of the trans-Mississippi West. To quote the library web site, “[t]he collection continues to grow and presently includes 200,000 cataloged books, pamphlets, atlases, maps, and microfilm titles. In addition, it offers 600,000 photographs, 3,700 manuscript archives, and a remarkable collection of Western fine art and prints to researchers across the world.”

Among the collections in which the library is particularly strong are publications of Western railroads, reports and maps of Colorado mining companies, trade catalogs, records and printed memorabilia of Buffalo Bill's Wild West shows, frontier theater programs, land grant materials, Colorado territorial imprints, architectural drawings, and extensive clipping files of local newspapers. The maps and atlases, of which there are about 6,000, and the historical views are, of course, of particular interest to me. The Western Collection is a place I plan to spend much time researching.

As with any library, one of the main goals of the Denver Public Library is to reach out to the community, both to provide it with access to its resources, but also to stimulate curiosity and increase knowledge. That is what Creating Communities does. Other local institutions are also involved in the project, including the City of Denver, History Colorado, the Auraria Library, the University of Colorado at Denver, and the University of Denver Penrose Library. This program makes available on the web many of the resources about Denver and its history from these institutions. One of the main parts of the web site is a section with information on seven of Denver’s historic neighborhoods, and many of the Western Collection’s archival materials, in digital form, are also available through the site, including property maps of the city.

An interesting part of the program is “myDenver”, which is designed to allow the general public to upload photographs and stories of their own, and to be part of an ongoing conversation about their city. The further development of myDenver is one of the main goals of the Creating Communities program going forward.

I was rather spoiled by the extensive institutional riches of Philadelphia and I was a bit concerned in moving to “the West,” that I would be bereft of this important type of resource. I was, as I should have known, mistaken in this, for Denver not only has its own rich history (though not as long a one as Philadelphia) but also its own wealth of historical material which available to me and to anyone else with an interest in the history of this wonderful city.

Peter Marzio

2010-12-13T08:00:00.000-05:00

I just learned of the passing, on December 9, of one of the superstars of the print world, Peter C. Marzio. Peter was the director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, a post he held for almost three decades, and he was instrumental in helping build the museum into a world-class cultural center. He died last Thursday from cancer at age 67, much too soon.

Peter's was something of a rags to riches story. He was born into a working-class immigrant family, becoming the first in his family to graduate from High School. At Juniata College he became inspired by the art and museum world, deciding to make this his career. He went on to earn a doctorate in art and American history from the University of Chicago. He served as curator of prints and drawings at the Smithsonian and then as director and chief executive officer of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, before becoming the director in Houston.

Peter is best known to the general public for his art scholarship, educational programs and for his dynamic leadership of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. However, for those in the print world, Peter is "the man" when it came to chromolithography. As I have mentioned many times in this blog, I think chromolithographs of the nineteenth century are among the most interesting and over-looked American prints and it was Peter's work which turned me on to these wonderful prints.

In 1979, while director at the Corcoran, Peter Marzio wrote his superb book on American chromolithographs, The Democratic Art. Pictures for a 19th-Century America, , as well as curated an exhibition on the subject at the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art. This was the first time that a serious work on American 19th-century chromolithographs was published and that a major exhibit on the subject was put on.

The books is tremendous and when I first read it, it opened my eyes as to the fascination and importance of these hitherto overlooked prints. Peter wrote in his preface that "My deepest wish is that this book will help students to see the field of American lithography as worth of research." It certainly has done that, and while Peter contributed a huge amount else to the art world, if this was all he had done, his name would still be one revered among those with an interest in American prints. The world is a poorer place now than before his death, but much richer for his having been in it.

Audubon's Birds of America sets record price

2010-12-10T12:18:00.020-05:00

On December 7th, a beautiful, complete copy of John James Audubon's Birds of America sold at Sotheby's auction in London for a hammer price of 6.5 million pounds. With the commission charged by Sotheby's, this brought the total paid by the buyer to slightly over $11.5 million dollars! The work, complete with its 435 hand-colored aquatints bound into four volumes, sold to London art dealer Michael Tollemache. You can read the BBC report on the sale and watch an interesting video on the BBC News web site.

This is the most ever paid for a printed book, a record established both because Audubon is "the" great name in American natural history illustration, but also because this is a superb example of an extremely scarce book. Audubon's masterpiece was very expensive even when produced, so few were published. Just over 100 complete sets are known to exist, almost all of which are held in public institutions. The last complete set to go at auction sold for $8.8 million dollars in 2000.

It is interesting to note that when one takes into account inflation since 2000, the new record of $11.5 million is not a significantly higher price than was paid for the set a decade ago. So, I guess one can conclude that the value of this work is not really increasing that much. However, I would note that the economies of 2000 and 2010 are very different, so for the volume to even maintain its value is pretty impressive.

A sale of this magnitude is interesting to reflect upon. What is going to happen to this set? Will it affect the prices of individual prints? What does this say about the print market?

As to what is going to happen to the set, the new owner calls his set "priceless" and says that he will just keep it and enjoy it for a while, though he did not rule out eventually selling it. Frankly, I do not buy this (though it could, of course, be true). $11,500,000 is a lot of money for any dealer (unless Bill Gates decides to become an art dealer) to invest in something he is simply going to enjoy. My guess is that Mr. Tollemache already intends to sell or has already sold the set.

So, did the new owner buy the set with the intent of putting it on the market to see how it goes? I will say that I find it hard to believe the set was bought on speculation. Given that this is a very widely publicized auction price, and given that this is the most ever paid for a printed book, how much upside is there on the price that a dealer could ask? Certainly, even a small percentage, say 5%, is a lot of money ($575,000), but $11.5 million is a lot of money to put up front to make only half a million.

Now Mr. Tollemache made the surprising assertion that the amount he paid was well less than the amount one could get if one broke up the set and sold the prints individually (something his emphatically denied intending doing). This sure sounds a bit like a sales pitch to a prospective client (gee, Tom, just think, if your gold mines go bust you can always break the set and make a tidy profit selling them individually...).

However, Mr. Tollemache's claim is just not true. If one calculates the per print price of this set, it comes to about $26,500 per plate. That seems pretty reasonable when a good number of the better birds are bringing well over $100,000 each. However, if anyone has looked through the full set of Audubon images (you can do this even with the octavo set to understand this point), you will realize that there are a lot of prints of smaller or not terribly attractive birds where the prints sell on today's market for only around $2,000 each. And there are even more of these prints---of quite attractive and biggish birds---which sell for between $4,000 and $20,000, still under the average price of this set.

So, if you take out all these prints, the ones selling for under $20,000, the average cost of the remaining birds is much, much higher than $26,500. I have not calculated the exact figure of the 435 prints at today's retail, but I can tell you it will not be equal to, much less greater than, $11.5 million.

So, this raises a few questions: why did Mr. Tollemache make this implausible claim, what are his plans for this set, and how will this affect the market for Audubon prints? My guess to the first two questions is that Mr. Tollemache actually bid on this set for an unknown client. This would make a lot of sense, for if he is using someone else's money, then a small percentage profit would be great. This would also explain his comment on the break-up value, trying to make his client feel good about the purchase. It is even possible that Mr. Tollemache did the bidding for the client at only a token commission, as the publicity of being the buyer of this set is "priceless."

This is, I want to emphasize, pure speculation. I know nothing about Mr. Tollemache other than what I have read since the sale. My comments are also not really at all pejorative, for it would not be at all surprising if a new owner of this work would want to remain anonymous. Also if Mr. Tollemache is fibbing, it is a harmless fib and one of a sort that is not uncommon in the art world. I may be wrong, but it sure makes a lot more sense to me that Mr. Tollemache bought this for someone than that he bought it for himself.

As to how this sale will affect the market for Audubon prints, I think probably not a lot. First, as noted this price is not really that much higher than the 2000 price, when adjusted for inflation, so I do not think anyone is going to think all of a sudden that Audubon prints are worth more than they were. The publicity will increase interest in Audubon prints, but such increased interest does not often turn into an increase in sales/values. For instance, after Ken Burns' Civil War series appeared, there was a lot of increased interest in prints of the Civil War, but very little increase in sales of them.

I am, however, encouraged by the sale. Any publicity about an any prints helps raise the general awareness of the items with which I work, and that is great. Also, it shows that there is a belief that prints can be things which have a significant value and that even in today's economy they are worth investing in.

Thematic maps

2010-12-08T17:08:00.006-05:00

A thematic map is a type of map which is designed to show a particular theme, other than geographic data, expressed onto a geographic base. Themes can include social, cultural, political, economic, agricultural, climatic, historical, or pretty much any other theme which has a presence in the physical world. Thematic maps differ from regular maps in that for the latter, the geographic information is the end in itself whereas for the former, it provides the context for the thematic data.

What thematic maps do is to give the viewer a unique way to look at quantitative information, which can provide insight not obtainable directly from the raw data itself. It is the nexus of the data and the geographic base which presents new patterns, which in turn can lead to a new understanding of the data and, in some case, important discoveries.

Perhaps the earliest extant thematic map is the Turin Papyrus, an Egyptian map from about 1160 BC, which was prepared for Ramesses IV’s expedition to Wadi Hammamat to obtain sandstone for his construction projects. The map shows the wadi with the location of gold deposits indicated, as well as the distribution of different rocks and gravels (by use of different colors and symbols), making this the first geological map.

Another early thematic map is the Peutinger table, a map based on a 4th-century Roman map. A 13th-century copy of the original map was discovered at the end of the fifteenth century and ended up with Konrad Peutinger (thus its name). The map shows Europe and parts of Asia and Africa, but the map is designed to show the roads and travel routes of the Roman legions, with each day’s march marked on the roads. It is very elongated, as the map is built around the Roman road system network which primarily ran east-west.

One of the most important figures in thematic mapping was British astronomer Edmond Halley, who published the first meteorological chart in 1686 and then a map of magnetic variation in 1701.

The most famous early example of thematic mapping was John Snow’s map of the incidents of cholera in London in 1854. Cholera was a serious and not-understood health issue in the nineteenth century. Snow decided to plot the incidents of cholera onto a map of the London neighborhood just north of Piccadilly Circus, upon which was also marked the water pump locations. The pattern which emerged clearly showed that the cholera incidents centered around a pump on Broad Street, indicating that this was the source of the epidemic. The pump was put out of commission and new cholera cases ceased. This was the first real indication that cholera was spread by tainted water and not through some air-borne medium.

Thematic maps use various techniques, such as the marks used by Snow, or applying different colors to represent different densities of the theme in question (choropleth maps), or the use of proportional symbols on a map, or isarithmic or contour maps, where a fixed data point of, say, precipitation or temperature, is mapped in a continuous line on the map (reminds me of what a map of Alcatraz by an ex-prisoner is called, a Con Tour map…).

While few thematic maps have had quite the impact of Dr. Snow’s, there have been many instances of important and fascinating thematic maps over the years. A nice book on the topic is Arthur H. Robinson’s 1982 Early Thematic Mapping in the History of Cartography.

The subject of this blog was inspired by a fascinating talk on thematic maps by Dr. Susan Schulten of the University of Denver. Her talk, “Disease Mapping and the Advent of Meteorology in America,” was presented as part of the Arts in Medicine program at the University of Colorado medical school. Susan looked at how the attempt to understand the nineteenth century epidemics of cholera and yellow fever involved the use of maps (the Snow map, obviously, featuring prominently), and how the success of thematic mapping in this arena extended its use to other areas of science, such as meteorology.

Susan (another example of the terrific network of map scholars who are members of the Rocky Mountain Map Society) is nearing completion of a book on thematic mapping. This is what she says about her project.... “The book I'm writing is a history of thematic mapping in the nineteenth century, looking at maps of the present but also the rising interest in old maps and maps of the past at that time. I'm closing in on a draft of the entire manuscript…. It will come out with Chicago, and will be accompanied by a website where high resolution versions of the maps will be available for close inspection.” I am looking forward to its publication and I’ll make sure to announce it in this blog when it makes its appearance.

Miscellaneous

2010-11-27T13:06:00.006-05:00

I am sitting in our new Denver branch, The Philadelphia Print Shop West, just a week after our "Grand Opening." We had a great party with lots of enthusiastic visitors, and my partner Don Cresswell was able to come to Denver to help with the opening and see how the new space worked out.

The shop space has turned out quite nicely, with everything easily viewed and lots of light. We haven't been here long enough that a lot of people are coming here specially to see us, but we have had good foot traffic and I am looking forward to the Christmas season. It is certainly interesting opening this branch, for it has been a long time since we were anything but a very established business. Starting up a new shop is both exciting and scary. However, so far I'm having fun!

Though I have been rather irregular of late in terms of keeping this blog up-to-date, it did get a nice mention in an interesting Interior Design blog written by Sharon Harlon. She put up a post on 40 Antique Shopping blogs. I have enjoyed looking at the other antiques blogs she listed and, of course, it is always nice to get a plug...

And then I was also surprised and pleased that this blog was selected as one of the Best 50 Antiques Blogs on the Guide to Art Schools web site. This site is designed to assist prospective art students and it is great that the authors of the site are interested in my blog and antiques in general. It is a common complaint among antique dealers that the "young" are not interested in antiques, but this shows that this is not true. This shows that antiques can appeal to all ages if presented in the right way.

One other blog I came across recently of interest is "Franky's Scripophily BlogSpot," which concerns antique share certificates. Something I never realized is how many of these certificates depict maps. The blogger, Franky Leeuwerck, has put up a number of interesting posts on the subject of maps on share certificates. Worth checking out...

One final subject I wanted to mention is my great pleasure in now being in proximity to the Rocky Mountain Map Society. The Print Shhop has been a member for years, but now I am able to get to know its many members and attend the lectures. Earlier this month there was a terrific lecture on Alexander von Humboldt by Dr. Imre Josef Demhardt. The membership of this society is very active and many members are extremely knowledgeable about maps, especially those of Colorado and the American West. I will write this up more extensively down the road, but I will mention that in the works is a joint project for July 2012 between the Rocky Mountain Map Society, the Denver Public Library, the University of Denver, and the Texas Map Society, which will include a map symposium followed by a reprise of the Map Fair of the West. Lots of exciting stuff going on out here in Denver...

Wall maps

2010-11-10T15:02:00.020-05:00

Since the earliest days of civilization, maps have been useful items which have been created in many different formats. From the earliest ephemeral maps drawn in the dirt, on papyrus or constructed from sticks, to the more permanent maps engraved in clay or stone, maps later appeared on metal plates, made up of tiles, drawn on vellum and paper and finally, beginning in the fifteenth century, printed on paper. It was this last format which proved to be the most affordable and practical. However, even within the range of printed maps on paper, maps appeared in many different formats. The most common that survive to today are those which were issued inside books or atlases, but others were produced which were separate broadside maps, folding saddle-bag and pocket maps, and wall maps. In this blog I will take a look at wall maps.

As maps were usually created to serve practical purposes, it made sense to produce maps which could be examined conveniently by a number of people. The best format for this use was the the large format wall map. By mounting a map onto a wall, one could allow viewers, several at one time, to easily study a map of quite large size. These wall maps were usually comprised of several sheets of paper mounted together on a backing fabric and then suspended from rods and hung on the wall. Often, especially in the nineteenth century, the maps were varnished to protect the surface from fingers, insects, smoke and other damage.

These maps first seem to have appeared in the seventeenth century and they were fairly common in the homes and workplaces of the wealthy Dutch, as demonstrated by some of Vermeer's famous paintings. The maps were likely used in the libraries or offices of the wealthy and nobility throughout Europe in that and the following century, and wall maps also hung in many places in America in the eighteenth century, for instance in the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg, Virginia.

By the nineteenth century, wall maps were used throughout the United States. They hung in government offices, public meeting places, schools and in some homes. Early on in the century, wall maps showed the expanding country, with its natural features and political divisions, roads, canals and then railroads. As these maps were specifically designed for practical use, and because their large format made careful study of details more likely, map makers were careful to update their maps regularly to keep them as current and accurate as possible. This can be seen by the two examples of S. Augustus Mitchell's "New National Map of the United States" above (the one of the left is 1856 and the one on the right 1862).

It was usually economic factors which drove the creation of these elaborate, large and expensive-to-produce wall maps. As local economies became stronger in the second half of the nineteenth century, local wall maps began to appear more regularly. County maps and city maps were produced of many prosperous communities. These tended to show not only the natural features and transportation nexus of the areas depicted, but also indicated many of the local land owners.

Most of the local wall maps one comes across are from the east coast or mid-west, for not only was this where most map publishers were located, but these regions had dense populations and economic development, making local maps of greater use. It was thus a wonderful surprise when I recently came across a fabulous 1873 wall map of Marin County, California. This map was drawn by F. Whitney and published by A.L. Brancroft of San Francisco. It is a very early and rare example of a wall map from California.

One particularly cool thing about the Marin County map was that on the back of it (it is still on the original backing) was a stamp for the San Francisco firm "W.D. Walkup & Co. Map, Chart & Card Mounters." I have never seen a "map mounters" label from anywhere, much less San Francisco. My guess is that most of the work for Walkup & Co. was for sailing charts as these were universally backed onto linen so they could be easily handled and rolled for storage. The "cards" which the label refers to are probably advertising cards, like those mentioned in the previous blog on Philadelphia prints.

This map is particularly rare, but all nineteenth century wall maps are rare. These maps were, as I have said, generally hung in public spaces intended for general use. This led to much "handling" which would naturally cause them to deteriorate. Also, hanging in the open made them subject to sun, moisture and insects, all of which would take their toll. Also the varnish typically used on the front of the maps and the glue used to attach the paper to the linen backing caused these maps to deteriorate over time. Finally, when these maps became out of date, they were often rolled and left in a corner or on the floor, where they could get mishandled or have water drip on them. It is rare to find nineteenth century wall maps at all, but when one does find them they tend to have flaking of the surface and stains, sometimes quite extensive.

Unfortunately, it is a considerable job to fix these maps. The varnish needs to be removed, the map lifted from the old backing, the paper conserved, and then put back down--often with the sections having to be pieced together--onto new linen. This makes the whole process expensive and so many of these maps are not restored. I remember back in the 1980s seeing a large pile of rolled wall maps in a major map library. The maps were falling apart more and more each year because there were no funds available to fix them. Luckily, the values of these maps have gone up enough in the last decade or so that now it makes more sense for owners or map sellers to conserve the maps.

I think wall maps are some of the most interesting antique maps of all. They are fascinating to study, often highly decorative, and one of the best ways for us to see our past through our ancestor's eyes.

Representations of Economy at Library Company

2010-10-18T07:00:00.000-04:00

I spent last Friday at a terrific print conference at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Entitled "Representations of Economy. Lithography in America from 1820 to 1860," this conference was sponsored in part by "Philadelphia on Stone," which I have discussed in an earlier blog. Philadelphia on Stone is a project under the auspices of the Visual Culture Program at the Library Company (VCP@LCP), which joined up with the Program in Early American Economy and Society (PEAES) to put on the conference.

A lot of confusing names of programs, I know, but this conference is a great example of the exciting results of new programs and collaborations which have been appearing at the Library Company and elsewhere. VCP@LCP is a program which promotes the study of historical images as primary source material (note that the images in this blog are all from the image data base they have put up on the Philadelphia on Stone web site). If you have read this blog regularly you will realize is a thing I am very keen on. As Cathy Matson, director of PEAES said, historic images are not just supplements to textural history, but they are primary sources which can provide unique information and insights.

PEAES is a project from LCP which is dedicated to the promoting of the study of early American economy, broadly understood. The two programs obviously overlap considerably and it was in that area of overlap that this conference was conceived.

The period between 1820 and 1860 was one of tremendous change in the American economy, with the country moving from a primarily agrarian/rural society to an industrial/urban one. In this period, lithography made its appearance and grew to be the dominant printmaking medium. Lithography was not only a product of the changing American economy but it also graphically reflected that metamorphosis. Even more, in a period when many were illiterate or did not speak or read English, pictures provided them with much of their understanding of their world. Thus, these historic images helped to both form and disseminate the culture of the period. Last week's conference examined these and more of the fascinating aspects of American lithography in this period.

As an introduction, we were treated to viewing a film posted on YouTube which explains and demonstrates the process of lithography. It is worth viewing for anyone interested in how lithographs are made and can be seen here.

All of the talks were stimulating. I learned a lot and ended the day with a load of questions I'd like to pursue, including:

How were the large "trade cards" (really advertising broadsides) of Philadelphia businesses used? We they posted in public spaces, sent out to resellers, put in shop windows, or used to adorn the boxes or packages the goods were sold or shipped in? No one really knows how they were used and there are few, if any, images showing them being used, so there are lots of possibilities to consider.
I'd love to learn more about on how popular prints were sold. Gigi Barnhill and Nancy Finlay both discussed the business of print selling by popular print makers, but there is much more to learn.

Without spending far more time than I can spend on this blog, I can only skim over some of the topics and questions generated by the conference. The conference was a great example of how current scholars are using historic prints to not only increase our knowledge of our past, but also to open up new avenues to explore.

In finishing I have to mention another conference which is coming up in just a couple weeks that I know will prove to be just as stimulating and educational as last week's.This is the annual conference of the Center for Historic American Visual Culture at the American Antiquarian Society.

Last year I was able to attend this conference (and wrote a blog about it), and I wish I could go again this year, for it is on a topic which I think is great fun: "History Prints. Fact and Fiction." The conference will take place in Worcester, MA, on November 12 and 13th and it will be well worth attending for anyone interested in historic prints. Registration is open until October 29th. More information can be found here.

Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

2010-10-05T18:19:00.014-04:00

Finally I have a little time to put up a post about prints... Today I'll look at the “Buffon” prints, which are some of the most ubiquitous and delightful natural history prints there are.

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Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-88), was an amazingly talented man, whose studies ranged from natural history through mathematics, astronomy, and all the sciences. His name was legendary in the eighteenth century, a vital period for natural history: he was to France what Linnaeus was to Sweden.

Buffon, as he is commonly called, was the keeper of the Jardin du Roi, the precursor of the Paris Zoo. He decided to undertake a prodigious task, that is to describe the entire animal kingdom. The result was his Histoire Naturelle, which was first issued in 35 quarto volumes between 1749 and 1788. This became the most influential natural history of the 18th century. It contained Buffon's text and illustrations of numerous natural history objects by different artists. The latter are engravings, many hand colored, which have made Buffon famous among print collectors today.

The Histoire Naturelle was issued in many different editions and his words and the illustrations were copied by other publishers over the years. Among the most famous of the “Buffon” prints that appeared are the bird prints engraved by Francois Nicolas Martinent , but there are many other subjects by many other engravers which appeared in the many editions of Buffon. These are delightful graphically, but of particular interest is that they provided the main visual knowledge for most educated Europeans about what the world's animals and birds looked like.

Buffon’s natural history theories were very influential in his own day, though some were controversial. In particular, his argument that New World species were inferior to those of the Old World caused much umbrage among Americans. Buffon argued that because of the marsh odors and dense forests in America, the New World species (including humans) were degenerate forms of Old World species.

Thomas Jefferson, who was the American ambassador to France, was so peeved by Buffon’s stance that he determined to show Buffon the true “stature and majesty of American quadrupeds.” Jefferson therefore had the complete skeleton, skin and horns of a Moose shipped to him in Paris and mounted in his hotel!

Philadelphia Print Shop West

2010-09-30T12:29:00.007-04:00

Despite my best intentions, I have just been too swamped with all the things involved in setting up the new shop in Denver to be able to write any blog postings. Next week I should be able to get have a print related post, but just to get something up, I'll give a brief report on my efforts here in Denver.

We got into our new space at the beginning of September. It is a terrific space located in the Cherry Creek North section of Denver (2819 E. 2nd Ave). The previous tenant left their "slat wall" system, which isn't really our "ye olde printe shoppe" style, but it is very versatile and will work fine.

The first week or so I had to clean out the stuff that was left, get some furniture in the shop, get the walls painted, etc. etc. Then Jon arrived with the initial shipment of inventory from Philadelphia. Jon had taken our "Denver" inventory to an antique show in Minneapolis and then drove on to Denver. Long drive for Jon, but now I have inventory!

The next few weeks will involve getting print racks, plan files, unpacking and getting things ready for our grand opening. As I will be exhibiting at the San Francisco Antiques Show in late October, our grand opening won't be until November 13th. If anyone is in the Denver area, I hope you will stop by! Or if anyone has any questions about the new shop, feel free to call the new shop number at (303) 322-4757.

Fun with maps of the American West

2010-08-17T16:53:00.022-04:00

The Philadelphia Print Shop has always carried maps of the American West and we have done a reasonable business in them, acquiring and selling many of the great nineteenth century maps of that region. However, I have never studied what the maps showed specifically of the American West, really looking at what they depicted. I studied the maps as historical documents, but not as physical objects. Now that I am about to head out to live and open a shop in Denver (I leave Philly in just under two weeks!), I have started to look at these maps more closely and boy am I having a blast!

As I have written before, new cartographic information on maps is often what makes them specially interesting and valuable. The first depiction of a particular place, changing political borders, new discoveries of mountains and rivers, or corrections of previous mistakes are the stuff that make map collectors drool. I am trying to learn more about the geography of the American west and as I now closely study the maps we have in stock I am finding all sorts of fun things I was unaware of before. I plan to write a number of blogs on this subject (as I think it is pretty cool), and today I am going to use the example of four unprepossessing maps of North America from the mid-nineteenth century.

These are quite small maps that probably have been sitting in our map drawers for over a decade, pretty much just ignored. They were all issued in different nineteenth century geographies, the type of geographies that were probably intended for students. They are small maps, are colored only in broad sections by country, and frankly, before I decided to move to Denver, I pretty much thought they were an uninteresting 'much or a muchness.'

I am trying to learn about the history of the mapping of my new home, Denver, which is located between the vast plains and the steep Rocky Mountains. The junction of Cherry Creek and the south branch of the Platte River was a place where Indians and trappers had camped for years and with the discovery of gold there in 1858, several towns soon appeared, which morphed into Denver within a short time. Colorado Territory was formed in 1861 and Denver became a major western town by the 1870s.

The earliest maps of the region around Denver show the Platte River and usually Cherry Creek, though the latter is often not named. Denver is located a bit southeast of Long's Peak and a bit northeast of "Pikes Peak." If you look on a map for the south branch of the Platte River and those two mountains, you can hone in on the location that would eventually become Denver. I started doing this for almost every map we have from the mid-19th century and it was by doing this that I discovered these four geography maps are a lot more interesting than I thought!

The earliest of the four is from Roswell C. Smith's A Precise and Practical System of Geography, published by Burgess & Co. in 1853. As you can see from the detail above, it does not have a lot of information on the Denver area and some of that is incorrect. It does show Longs Peak and Pikes Peak, but the latter is here identified as "James Peak," a name that was sometimes used for Pikes Peak until the name became attached to the present-day James Peak. It does show the southern branch of the Platte River (which is identified by this name), but rather than curling south along the foot of the Rockies, it is depicted as running straight west between the two indicated peaks.

The other interesting thing about this map is that it shows the "American Desert." This was a description given in the early nineteenth century to the “high plains” that border the Rocky Mountains to the east. “Desert” was used in the sense, common at the time, of a treeless area unfit for cultivation. Early explorers were unimpressed with the high plains. Zebulon Pike put a legend on his map that the region had “not a stick of timber,” and Stephen Long’s 1823 map labeled the area the “Great American Desert,” the accompanying report from his expedition stating that the region “is almost wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course, uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence.”

The next map was issued about 1858 by S. Augustus Mitchell, a leading American map maker and probably the largest publisher of school geographies of the period. 1858 was, of course, the year that gold was discovered in Denver. Gold had been panned in the South Platte River as early as 1849 to 1850, but it wasn't until 1857 and 1858 that significant gold was found near Denver, precipitating the Colorado Gold Rush what would last until about 1861, with an estimated 100,000 gold prospectors participating (their slogan was "Pike's Peak or Bust!"). Here, on a map issued just at the beginning of the Gold Rush, Mitchell marks the location in capital letters as "GOLD REGION." The Platte (here called the "Nebraska River") meanders to an end right in the Denver area.

The next map was also issued by in a Mitchell publication, Mitchell's New Intermediate Geography, but this one published by J.H. Butler in Philadelphia in 1875. By 1875 a lot had happened in the Denver region, but this map shows no new information, other than the heights of Longs and Pikes Peaks and the modification of the course of the Platte, which has now been extended further and more southerly. I think this was somewhat typical of the maps published in student geographies; there was little care to keep them very up-to-date, it being cheaper to simply reissue the same map year after year.

The last of these four maps is undated and has no publisher, but it is very similar in size and style and coloring to the other four maps. Our best guess for a date is about 1870, and here for the first time on one of these geography maps is "Denver City." right besides the Platte as it correctly winds its way south along the edge of the Rockies. By 1870, the railroads finally reached Denver and it began to change from simply an old gold rush city to the Queen of the High Plains that it would become.

While none of these maps has any real significance for map collectors, and none of them are that impressive aesthetically (though they are all pleasant enough in appearance), they become fascinating once you start to look closely. I only studied the immediate Denver area and I am sure that there are other spots around the continent where these maps either show new information or anachronistically ignore major changes. This is just one example of the fun that can be had by studying nineteenth century maps of the American West. I plan to publish some more blogs on similar topics in the not too distant future.

"What the experts collect"

2010-08-12T16:55:00.002-04:00

I was recently contacted by the folks at AmeriCollector.com, a blog on "events, news and information for collectors of all stripes." I had not run across the blog before, but looked it over and was pretty impressed. As I have mentioned before, I not only work with a lot of collectors, but I am a collector myself. This blog has a series about "what the experts collect," and they asked if they could interview me about my wife's and my collections, and I was happy to do it. As I have said, this summer is a crazy time for me so I am going to just copy the interview into my own blog. This is a bit cheeky (and I did ask them if it was ok), but I thought you all might be interested.... (It is worth visiting AmeriCollector.com and you can see the original interview there)...

AmeriCollector: It always amazes me that people would buy some mass-produced framed print or some other tacky reproduction from a department store instead of getting a genuine old print – even an attractively designed book page or an illustration from an old newspaper – and having it framed, preferably with preservation materials (acid-free matting, conservation glass – the subject of an upcoming AmeriCollector.com story). Even though there’s a multitude of beautiful images and typographical examples available in a wide price range – with many beautiful engravings and chromolithographs costing not that much more than a print from Target – some folks would rather decorate their homes like a Motel 6 than put a little piece of history on their wall. Go figure.

An old print or poster makes a fantastic gift as well, and if skillfully framed can become the centerpiece of a room, more furniture than accouterment. Having a print (or photo or document, like a vintage stock certificate) custom framed can be pricy – and may even cost more than the print itself, especially if you have it done with the archival materials, which you should – but my motto is: If it’s worth framing, it’s worth framing right. Believe me, there’s a world of difference between a beautiful print that’s beautifully framed and one that looks like your kid framed it in arts & crafts at summer camp.

It’s also a lot of fun selecting an old print, especially if you want an image that connects to your or a loved one’s collection. Sometimes that just means riffling through old magazine ads to find one for Harley-Davidson if your boyfriend’s other passion is his hog, or an old “Police Gazette” engraving of a twelfth-round knockout if Uncle Rocky is an ex-pug. Of course, if you dream big - a long rail journey to Istanbul or a passage to India, perhaps – an old travel poster in your living room or home office will keep you focused and on course.

Prints can really make a statement: who you are, where you want to go …

However, I’m just a casual print collector: What does a bona fide print maven – a print professional – collect? I asked “Antiques Roadshow” appraiser Christopher Lane, co-owner (with Donald H. Cresswell) of The Philadelphia Print Shop (www.philaprintshop.com), who I introduced in my last post and who will open The Philadelphia Print Shop (West) in Denver in October, about his love of prints …

AmeriCollector: What do you primarily collect?

Chris Lane: I got into this field because of my interest in maps. I was a graduate student in philosophy and went looking for a map to give to my sister as a wedding gift. The dealer I bought the map from offered me a job and so I took a break from my thesis to work for a year and learn as much as I could about old maps. I got hooked and at the end of the year decided to start my own business, which I did in 1982 with my partner, Donald H. Cresswell.

I have always had a bit of the collector bug and of course had to collect antique maps. Because I didn’t want to compete with my clients – partly because it wouldn’t be fair to Don – my wife, Lindsey, and I decided to collect maps of the British Isles and Oxfordshire. I had met Lindsey when studying at Oxford (she is British) and so this was a natural thing for us to collect and a subject for which there were not a lot of American collectors.

Early on we both got interested in American ornithological prints, particularly through the wonderful prints of Mark Catesby. Our first non-map was the Catesby “Blue Heron” and now we have nice examples by almost every naturalist who made prints of American birds.

AC: What do you enjoy about collecting maps and prints?

Chris: The thing I enjoy most about collecting – other than the thrill of the chase – is that in building a collection one builds a graphic history of the topic you collect. My background is not at all in art; it is in history. While I primarily studied philosophy, history was always a “minor” in my studies. I found that I was able to envision history, and remember it, much better when I had contemporary images, prints and maps, of the subject I was studying. When you put together a collection of prints or maps of a particular place, you can visually see the history of the place: the changes in society, the physical structure, the economy and pretty much everything else. Then when you read about a period of history, you have an image in your mind that you can hang the text on and that really broadens your appreciation and understanding of that history.

AC: How do you build your collection?

Chris: Probably the thing that Don and I spend most of our time on here at the shop is buying inventory. It is relatively easy to sell when you have good items – the problem is finding those good things. So in our constant hunt for good inventory we regularly come across things that fit my collecting interest. We do most of our buying privately, but we also buy from other dealers and a little (probably about 5 percent of our inventory) at auction.

AC: What do you look for when choosing a new map or bird print to your collection?

Chris: I look for items that will fill in “gaps,” mostly by date, but also in trying to have items by all the major print or mapmakers who made items that fit our area of collecting. Also major items, even if I have other things that are similar, and those items that are “special” in some other way – such as a map that was particularly well colored at the time. Sometimes, though, we’ll buy something simply because we like it, mostly when it makes us smile to look at it, whether it is important or not. We are always concerned about condition, but if the item is rare enough, we’ll add it to our collection, hoping that maybe someday we’ll be able to upgrade.

Price is rarely a consideration. Now, of course I do have an advantage at usually being able to buy at “wholesale,” but it still costs me money when I add something to our collection, as I have to make good with my partner. If there is a map or print that fits our criteria and is something that should be added, unless the price is totally out of line, I’ll go for it, even if I think the price is too high. In the long run, I will be far unhappier if I pass it up than that I paid a bit too much. I have seen that many times with collectors I have worked with, and while I usually warn them (of course, they think I’m just trying to make a sale), usually a collector doesn’t learn that lesson until they pass something up that was “too expensive,” only to regret it the rest of their collecting days.

AC: Is there a “holy grail” that you’re trying to find?

Chris: I would love a nice example of the George Lily map of the British Isles, first drawn in 1546. The “holy grail” for maps of Oxfordshire is the map from Christopher Saxton’s atlas of 1579. I have a wonderful example of that with original color which I found at an auction in Ohio and was able to buy for $200! I heard about the auction — that it had some British maps — and got a list, which included an unidentified map of Oxfordshire. From the description I recognized it as the Saxton map and after talking to the auctioneer on the phone I became convinced it was an original with original color, though it was laid to a backing. I didn’t want anyone to realize what it was, so I just asked the auctioneer if I could bid on the phone for a number of the British maps. I had decided I would pay as much as $5,000 for the Saxton, but bidding started at $50. When it got up to $200 I didn’t hear anything more. I was terrified the person on the phone might have missed a bid, so I kept saying, “Am I still high bidder?” Finally, I was assured not only was I high bidder but that I had won the map. As a business, The Philadelphia Print Shop has had a few great buys like that, but it was particularly fun that this time it was for me personally!

AC: Any advice for collectors of prints and/or maps?

Chris: The most important thing to me is for a collector to focus on a theme for the collection. Without a theme, it will just be a “group” of prints or maps, not a collection. The theme is what gives form and coherence to the group, making it a collection. The theme can be anything you are interested in: a time period, a style; prints showing canoes, maps of a particular place, presidential prints or whatever. Make it something you like and the collection will have meaning.

The next most important thing is to educate yourself. Learn how prints and maps were made and in what form they were issued so that you can recognize an original (we still find reproductions being sold as originals in some of the major auction houses!). Also, learn about the history of whatever theme you have chosen; this will help you appreciate those items you have and also to learn which items are important to your collection and which aren’t. Also, learn what is out there within the scope of your collection and how rare or important things are. That will help you decide whether to get something, even if you have to pay a premium or it isn’t in great condition.

A few degrees of separation

2010-08-04T07:00:00.001-04:00

Sherlock Holmes and John James Audubon? How would these two be connected. Well, a member of the Yahoo Audubon prints group made an interesting post earlier this week explaining how...

The prints by John James Audubon, especially his large, double elephant folio bird prints, are among the most famous and popular of all antique prints. There is a fairly active Yahoo mailing list that is dedicated to Audubon and his prints. If you are interested in this subject, it is well worth joining on the Yahoo site. It is easy to join, and of course free.

In any case, Rama, a member of this group, made the following rather interesting post on Monday...

"...I was watching an old B&W Sherlock Holmes movie on the TV and in the credits I noticed that the actor who played the famous detective was a guy by the name 'Basil Rathbone.' His last name immediately caught my attention because Audubon visited a Richard Rathbone in Liverpool/England after leaving New Orleans, and even honored him by naming a warbler after him (Havell Plate #65 [image above]). After some digging, this is what I found - - Richard Rathbone's (1788-1860) elder brother William Rathbone V (1787-1868) was the great grand father of Basil Rathbone (1892-1967) who made a name for himself by playing Sherlock Homes in the 1940's era movies."

[Here is a link to the Rathbone family tree]

Any one else know of any connections between actors and antique prints?

Enthusiasm and life

2010-08-02T14:59:00.003-04:00

Yesterday evening, my "favorite uncle" Charles Rand Penney died. This was quite a shock, coming just seven months after the passing of my father, and a mere two months after the death of my mother, his sister Virginia Penney Lane. Uncle Charlie was quite a remarkable man and I wrote a post in this blog about him just about a year ago. I am incredibly sad, but I am also grateful that I had Charlie as my uncle and was able to get to know him and love him over the last 30 years. Interestingly, our relationship was built on our shared interest in antique prints.

Charlie was probably the most enthusiastic, curious, and dedicated collector I have ever met. I got into the business I am in because of my enthusiasm for original graphic depictions of history. I did not learn my enthusiasm from Charlie, but we certainly shared that and I am convinced it runs in the Penney blood. What I did learn from Charlie is what can be done if one takes ones enthusiasm and channels it with focus and dedication.

Charlie at one stage had 100 collections, and while he spent the last decade or so deaccessioning so that he could find appropriate, lasting homes for his collections, he never lost his love of what he was doing. Until his health slowed him down, Charlie used to do everything himself. He had files on everything and everyone he came in contact with, he collected books and archives related to his collections, and he even lived in the midst of his statues, furniture, paintings, prints, Mr. Peanut memorabilia, and wooden hotel hangers!

Some of his collections were not terribly impressive, but others were absolutely world class. Charlie was interested in almost anything he came across and he probably would have collected a little of everything if he could. Charlie always brought enthusiasm, interest, and a willingness to invest to all his collecting; sometimes he needed a bit of focus and discipline and that is where our relationship bloomed.

I like to think that our relationship vis-a-vis his collecting was something that benefited both me and him. Obviously I had known Charlie all my life and he was always an interesting figure. Rather exotic and unusual, but always fun to be with and talk to. When I studied in Oxford, Charlie came to visit and that was when as an adult I first really got to know him. I told him how I was getting interested in old maps and prints. Charlie encouraged me and told me how he had quite a number of old prints in his collections.

Then when I went into business, he approached me about helping him improve his collection of antique prints. At that stage he had a lot of prints, mostly showing scenes in western New York, from Rochester to Niagara Falls. Some were in good shape, some not so much; some were in their "original state," others with new color added. I talked to him about how he should really focus on one particular topic (he chose Niagara Falls) and how he should use a series of criteria for what he would accept in his collection (for instance, avoiding "new" colored prints where possible).

Together we spent over a decade expanding and refining his collection of Niagara Falls prints. We got rid of the prints that didn't meet his new criteria and looked for better examples. We used references to build a list of what prints were out there and tried to acquire the most important ones. Whenever I came across a Niagara print not in his collection, Charlie would always agree to add it--rather of a dream for a printseller!

Soon it became apparent that his collection was the best there was on Niagara Falls prints; better than that in the Erie County Library, the Erie County or Niagara Falls Historical Societies, or even the Library of Congress. I also called to his attention that while there were a number of good books on Niagara Falls images and prints, there was no really exhaustive work that tried to document the entire scope of printed views of the Falls. So, with his typical enthusiasm, Charlie gave me the go ahead to write a book and even plan an exhibition on the topic from prints in his collection. After many years collecting and research, Impressions of Niagara. The Charles Rand Penney Collection opened in the summer of 1993 at the Castellani Art Museum of Niagara University. This was certainly one of the highlights of my professional life and I know also of Charlie's collecting.

To be able to share our enthusiasm and dedication together and produce something as worthwhile as that exhibition and the accompanying catalogue was a great thing. It showed me what was possible and it bonded us together in a lasting relationship, which unfortunately yesterday I lost. I think I carry my enthusiasm and dedication for antique prints and maps with me every day and while some of that I was born with, without doubt it is the model of Uncle Charlie which gives me a constant reminder that this is the way one should approach one's life. Charlie did not waste his time in the world; every day he got the most out of life that he could. He, I and everyone who knew him was enriched by this remarkable life. Thanks Uncle Charlie.

Some thoughts on print values

2010-07-19T14:30:00.009-04:00

Despite my intent, I have failed to make regular posts to this blog over the last couple of months. My excuse is that not only that I am in the midst of a move of my home and work from Philadelphia to Denver, but with the recent death of my mother, I have been swamped with personal matters. I have to confess that print thoughts have been pushed to the back of my mind since the end of May. I am finally beginning to get back on top of things and so plan (and hope) that I'll be able to make posts on a more regular basis here-on-in. In order to get at least one post done, I thought I'd just ramble on a bit about some thoughts I have an issue that comes up in queries about antique prints we get all the time: their value.

Through this blog, from our regular web site, and from our appearances on Antiques Roadshow, we get dozens of calls and emails each day with print questions. I would say that at least 80% of these have to do with the value of prints owned by the person contacting us. While I do understand this, it still is something that wears on us and is certainly less interesting than someone asking about the history of a map or the meaning of an obscure political cartoon. It is almost always the value of prints that people seem to want to know about.

One of the sources for this preoccupation with value is, of course, Antiques Roadshow, which Don and I have been appraisers on for more than a decade. Everyone who watches this program remembers the blockbuster items with huge prices. This seems to have raised everyone's expectations for the value of what they own. When we first went into business, if we offered $100 for a large historical engraving that we would sell for $250 after fixing up, the owner was usually surprised they could get that much. Today, if we offer $200 for the same print (which now after restoration would probably sell for about $500), they look at us like we are trying to cheat them. "I saw one just like this last week on Antiques Roadshow and it was valued at $3,000!

Of course the print on the program was quite different, but everyone's expectations have been raised and a lot of people tend to think their print is one of those very valuable ones. Soon I will make a post about the Roadshow stop in Billings, MT earlier this month and I will discuss the issue of values on Antiques Roadshow then, but suffice it to say here that this show has definitely raised everyone's awareness of the potential value of antiques of all sorts, including prints.

The thing we run up against vis-a-vis prices and antique prints is that relative to most types of antiques, prints and maps--for the most part--are not things that bring large prices. Most of the prints and maps we sell are priced between $300 and $1,500; this is no tiny amount, but relative to most antiques it is fairly low market. The "best" things we see tend to be in the $3,000 to $5,000 range and many very fine prints and maps we sell are in the mid-hundreds. This does not seem to impress many of the people focused on value of prints, so all the time I am finding I am being enthusiastic about a print someone asks me about where they are disappointed that their print is worth "only" $400. (Of course, this is when someone asks us about a print they own; if we are selling a print for $400, all of a sudden the question is raised about how it could be worth so much...)

Why is it that antique prints and maps tend to be in the lower range of prices in the antiques world? There are a number of reasons for this. First and foremost is that prints are, by their nature, multiples. For many antiques, each item is hand made, whereas prints and maps are usually printed off in relatively large numbers by a mechanical process. The matrix used to print the image is made by hand, but after that the process is less "hand-done." Many antique prints are very scarce now, but there still are usually a good number around.

The most desirable Currier & Ives print would just break six figures in price, but most of their prints are valued well under this despite their iconographic importance and the great demand for them. These prints were originally run off in the thousands and some of them are still relatively common, which keeps value of Currier & Ives prints reasonable even though they are as desirable antique prints as there are.

There are a number of other reasons that antique prints tend to be at the lower end of the value scale. One of these is the fact that to really appreciate the value of a print, you usually have to know the history of it. Prints tend not to "show" their value on the surface. Yes, the double elephant folio Audubon prints are big, bold, and beautifully made, which explains why they are some of the most expensive antique prints there are. However, compare these to the natural history prints by Mark Catesby. The Catesby prints are medium sized, somewhat crudely etched and drawn, and just don't "look" that valuable. To me, however, they are the most desirable of all American natural history prints. The same type of thing affects political cartoons, allegories, etc., where if you do not understand them, you cannot really appreciate their value.

This is one of the reasons why the publication of a book on a particular topic can be a big factor in helping to raise the awareness of the importance and thus value of certain prints and maps. For instance, we found that once we published Impressions of Niagara in 1993, the prices of some of the more important, though not necessarily visually impressive prints went up significantly. Our shop has always based our selling philosophy on educating our clients about the history of the prints in our inventory; this not only is something we believe in philosophically, but it also helps our business.

Another reason print prices tend to be fairly moderate is the fact that the vast majority of prints--both modern and antique--were issued specifically as decoration. Most people cannot afford original watercolors and oils for all their decorating needs and prints have always played the role of providing an affordable way for people to decorate their homes and work places. There is nothing at all wrong with this, as most people have a need for affordable decoration, but it does mean that the majority of prints are by nature going to have only "decorative" value.

The moderate value of prints is something I am perfectly happy with. It allows us to have a large inventory of material that I think is great but which is also affordable for most people Sure, I love to sell an expensive Audubon heron, Currier & Ives large folio winter scene or landmark American map, but it is more important to me that what we sell in any price range is appreciated for what is is. I think basically all antique prints and maps are great if appreciated for what they are and that is my main goal in this business, to facilitate that appreciation.

My main frustration when people ask about the value of their prints is when they are disappointed that their prints are not worth more. I guess it is human nature, but it is nice when people are turned on to their prints not because of their value, but because of their history.

New season of Antiques Roadshow

2010-06-25T16:57:00.004-04:00

I am sitting in a hotel room in Billings, Montana, just about to head off for the appraisers meeting for the second stop on this summer's Antiques Roadshow tour. Earlier this month, my partner Don Cresswell went to San Diego for the first stop. He saw the usual mix of good and bad items and was taped with a terrific map. I hope you will all be able to see this taping when the 2011 Antiques Roadshow series runs, beginning next January.

I arrived in Billings yesterday and was able to visit the Battlefield of Little Bighorn, which was quite a fascinating and moving experience. It was exciting and enlightening to see the actual site and get a good idea of the actual events (the National Park Service does a terrific job with exhibits and signs, etc.) of this legendary episode in the sad history of the relationship between the United States and Native Americans.

This battle was almost immediately obscured by myths that developed around Custer and the events which transpired exactly 134 years ago today. Part of the myth making, of course, came through the propagation of prints of the battle. As I have written a number of times in this blog, the relationship between actual events and the way they are depicted in prints, as well as the impact that prints have on history are subject that I am particularly interested in. I plan to write a blog soon on the subject of printed images of the Battle of Little Big Horn.

On that subject, there is one print, or more specifically a series of prints, of the battle which are more common and had more influence than any other. Those are the prints that were issued by Anheuser-Busch as advertisements for Budweiser beer. I would be very surprised if any reader of this blog has not seen this famous image somewhere, even if not one of the original prints. The print was first issued in 1896 but was revised and continued to be used to as late as 1962. The earlier examples have quite a bit of value, whereas the later ones do not. This is one print I would love to see come in tomorrow at the Roadshow, for it has a very interesting history and is graphically terrific.

So what else might come in for me to see tomorrow? As I wrote last year, I enjoy trying to guess what I might see. Even though Billings is quite a small city and not surrounded by a very large population base, I could see some unusual things. I would expect I might see some good folding maps, as these were often used by those who traveled out to this part of the world in the second half of the nineteenth century. There might be some interesting views of western settlements or perhaps nearby Yellowstone, such as the great series of prints by Thomas Moran.

There also could be some good western art. Most of what we think of as "western art" is more recent than the 19th century. At that time, the west was not as glamorous as it later came to be; it was a rough and dirty and primitive life out here and not many of the general public wanted images of that life nor were there many artists out here making prints of it. There are some good prints done, however, and I hope I might get to see a print by some of the work of, say, Karl Bodmer or George Catlin.

I'll write up a report of my experience next week and with luck you'll get to see one treasure that comes in when the 2011 season runs...

Indian Target Practice

2010-06-15T10:52:00.005-04:00

One of the things I love about my profession of antique print & map seller is that I am always running into "new" old prints which I have never seen before and about which there is little or nothing written. It is always a treat to find such an item and then to try to figure out what was going on with it. We recently acquired just such a print, an image of an American Indian with a target stuck right in the middle of his face!

We have never seen anything like this and it seems pretty clear that this is an ephemeral print intended for use as a target. It could be for archery, but given the size of the target, I assume it was for rifle practice. The publisher is J. John & Moser from Magdeburg, Germany, who made postcards and other ephemeral items late in the nineteenth century or right at the beginning of the twentieth. This print appears to be a wood or wax engraving with hand color. It has "No. 2208" in the bottom left corner, so it seems that the firm did other similar prints, maybe a whole series of decorative targets for a German/European audience.

From our experience, the fact that an "Indian target" would be produced in Germany is not at all surprising. The Germans had long been interested in the American west and its "wild Indians." Throughout the nineteenth century, German visitors--tourists, scientists, and artists--traveled about the American west. Prince Maximilian of Wied and Karl Bodmer are probably the most famous, but there were many others such as Rudolph Cronau, who in 1881 was sent to the United States as a special correspondent for the German newspaper Die Gartenlaube. His assignment was to produce a series of articles documenting American landscapes, cities, Native Americans, and life on the frontier, a subject ever popular in Germany.

It fascinates me to look at this print and think about how the image of the Indian with a target drawn in the middle of his face reflects German attitudes to Native Americans (and probably that of many others at the time). I can just imagine a marksman dreaming of being on the frontier of America and taking aim at the wild Indian about to attack him. I suppose I may be reading too much into this print, but it certainly is a wonderfully thought-provoking image.

AHPCS Pittsburgh Meeting

2010-06-11T11:51:00.006-04:00

On May 20 to 22, the American Historical Collectors Society held their annual conference in Pittsburgh. The conference, run superbly by Marilyn Bruschi, was filled with good company, interesting talks, and visits to some of Pittsburgh excellent institutions.

On Thursday we visited the Senator John Heinz History Center. The history center is the largest history museum in Pennsylvania and even includes the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum. We had a couple of interesting presentations by the Anne Madarasz, the Museum Division Director, and David Grinnell, the chief archivist. The library, archives and museum include a large number of rare views and books on Pittsburgh history and I spent many, many hours there researching Panorama of Pittsburgh. It was fun to get to revisit the History Center and for other members of the AHPCS to see what a great resource and fun museum it is.

At the end of the afternoon, we were the guests of Bruce Wolf at the famous Duquesne Club, founded in 1873, which has an impressive collection of paintings by local Pittsburgh artists, especially David Gilmour Blythe. The centerpiece in the visit was the viewing of the remarkable 1859 bird's eye view of Pittsburgh by James T. Palmatary. This is the only known example of this print and it was "discovered" and researched by Bruce, with help by AHPCS member John Reps.

Friday was a very busy day filled with exhibitions and lectures. We started at the Carnegie Museum of Art, where we heard scholarly lectures on natural history illustrations in 19th century museum journals, by Bernadette Callery, and on sheet music covers by Mariana Whitmer, from the Society for American Music at the University of Pittsburgh. While I know a reasonable amount about both subjects, I found the lectures filled with interesting facts and insights. Following, I presented a lecture about one aspect of views of Pittsburgh I noticed while writing Panorama of Pittsburgh, viz. that an awful lot of these prints were simply copied from previously issued prints. This happens everywhere, but seemed particularly common in Pittsburgh.

After lunch, we were treated to viewings of a number of wonderful exhibits at two of Pittsburgh's great institutions. We started at the Carnegie, where we viewed an interesting exhibit on "Sixteenth Century Tapestries and Related Prints," and an exhibit I particularly enjoyed on "Cariacature, Satires and Comedy of Manners," featuring prints by Hogarth, Daumier and Francisco Jose de Goya. Amanda Zehnder, who put together this thoughtful, fun and visually excellent exhibit, gave a personal tour, which was universally enjoyed. Following this we went to another Pittsburgh gem, the Hunt Botanical Library at Carnegie Mellon University, were we hear Lugene Bruno talk about botanical printmaking and were able to visit the library and its current exhibition. These exhibits are still up and I highly recommend them to anyone near Pittsburgh.

After this exhausting day, AHPCS members had the chance to explore some of Pittsburgh's superb restaurants and a number of us took the incline up to the top of Mt. Washington, where the view of Pittsburgh is unsurpassed. Unfortunately, I had to leave early the next morning before our visit to my favorite Pittsburgh institution, the Frick Art & Historical Center, the sponsoring institution for both the exhibit and book, Panorama of Pittsburgh. I was especially sorry to miss the presentation by George Nama, a friend who happens to be the most knowledgeable expert on Pittsburgh prints, as well as a terrific artist in his own right. I heard reports that his talk was wonderful, which would make it a fitting end to a wonderful annual conference!

Denver Here We Come!

2010-06-10T13:15:00.005-04:00

My blogs have slowed down considerably since I was doing two a week until fairly recently. I have not even quite managed once a week, which is my current goal. There are a number of reasons for this, including presenting a paper at the recent AHPCS conference (that conference is the subject of my next blog, which I hope to get up soon), and the BIG NEWS, which is that I am moving to Denver!
My wife has accepted a terrific job offer from Denver Childrens Hospital and I am tagging along for the ride. Since I have too much fun in this business and with the Print Shop to do anything else, we are going to open a branch in Denver, "The Philadelphia Print Shop (West)." We should be opening sometime in the autumn and plan to locate in Cherry Creek North, which is a very nice shopping district in the city of Denver, not too dissimilar to where we are located in Philadelphia. Our shop in Chestnut Hill will, of course, remain as our primary location, but I'll be taking a good variety of material to Denver with an emphasis, naturally, on western material.
Denver is a wonderful city and my wife and I are really looking forward to the adventure of moving away from the East Coast. I hope anyone from that part of the country will come by and visit. We'll be making a more formal announcement once we have the shop opened, but if I am a bit tardy in posting my blogs, at least now you'll know why!

A puzzling Bunker Hill print

2010-05-21T16:29:00.003-04:00

In my last blog I wrote about John Trumbull’’s paintings of events in the American Revolution and of the engravings that were made from three of these paintings: the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Death of Montgomery, and the Declaration of Independence. Trumbull had intended to make engravings of an entire series of his paintings, but it appears that these were the only ones he succeeded in bringing to press. The first two, produced in the late eighteenth century, were engraved by European craftsmen, as Trumbull could not find an American engraver with sufficient skill, but the last, made early in the following century, was engraved by the American Asher B. Durand.

I say that it appears that these were the only three paintings Trumbull was able to have made into prints because there is a fourth engraving of a Trumbull painting which it is possible that he was involved in having made. This is a very rare print which, in fact, is something of a puzzle.

The Trumbull images have been very popular with printmakers over the years, copied by other publishers into prints from early in the nineteenth century until the present day. These copies range from moderate sized, separately issued engravings to small book illustrations to popular lithographs by firms like Currier & Ives to modern color reproductions. The most unusual of these is a print of the Battle of Bunker Hill engraved by John Norman (ca. 1748-1817). That print is quite large (almost exactly the same size as the Müller engraving), may have been engraved in the eighteenth century (even possibly before the Müller engraving), and may (like the Müller engraving) have been commissioned by Trumbull

The print in question is entitled “The Battle of Bunker’s Hill, or the Death of General Warren.” The only credits on the print are “Painted by John Trumbull, Esq.” and “Engraved by J. Norman.” The print is 19 1/2 x 29 1/2 and created by the joining of two plates. There is no indication of publisher, nor of place or date of publication.

John Norman trained as an engraver in London and in 1773 he emigrated to Philadelphia, where he continued in his trade, producing mostly small engravings. In 1781, Norman moved on to Boston where he was particularly involved in engraving maps, becoming an important figure in the Boston chart trade. One of his most important works was the twelve plate “An Accurate Map of the Four New England States,” published in Boston in 1785.

Most of Norman’s earlier plates were copies of European models and the quality of his work is rather crude. The engraving of the Battle of Bunker Hill appears to fit this picture nicely. It seems to be a copy of a European model (Müller’s engraving) and it is definitely crudely done. The print is quite detailed and large, but the engraving quality is really rather poor. So, at first glance it appears that what we have with the Norman print of the battle of Bunker Hill is something fairly common of the period, a crude attempt at copying a European-made engraving.

The problem with this is that the Norman engraving really doesn’t fit this story that well. It just doesn’t make complete sense. A separately issued print like this would have been produced on speculation, with the intent of making money from sales, and who would have had the resources and interest in paying for such a print? This was not just a cheap copy of Trumbull’s image, but a large, elaborate and clearly expensive print. There is no evidence that Norman himself had the resources to undertake such an expensive proposition nor does it seem he ever had any inclination for such ventures.

But who else would, between 1798 (the date of publication of the Müller engraving) and 1817 (Norman’s death), have commissioned such an elaborate and expensive plate from an American engraver of, at least, suspect ability? Trumbull’s own print of the battle of Bunker Hill would have been readily available to anyone who wanted such an engraving and it did not sell that well. I can see someone producing a cheap copy, as the subject would likely have been fairly popular, but not such an expensive and elaborate copy when the original was still around. So if Norman himself did not undertake the production of this print and it doesn’t make sense that another publisher would have, who did?

There are only two names that appear on the print, Norman’s and Trumbull’s. Since we have ruled out Norman, let’s look at the other, John Trumbull himself. Why would Trumbull have commissioned an American engraved version of the Battle of Bunker Hill? There are actually a couple of possible scenarios that have me thinking that one of these is likely the true story of the Norman print.

Trumbull’s two European-made engravings, of the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Death of General Montgomery, did not sell well, but in 1817 Trumbull decided to try again by producing a print of his image of the Declaration of Independence. Initially he hired English engraver James Heath to do the work, telling James Madison that he did not believe an American engraver had the experience or skill to produce a quality engraving of this magnitude. There was an outcry against using a European engraver for such a quintessential American subject, so this is when Trumbull turned to the American Asher B. Durand.

It seems possible that at some point previously Trumbull had heard the grumblings about his American subjects having been engraved in Europe and that he thought his prints might sell better if he had an American re-engrave them. He might then have chosen John Norman to do this re-engraving because Norman had shown himself capable of engraving on a large scale, for he had made the twelve sheet “Map of the Four New England States” in 1785. The plates for this map are 54 x 42 cm, which David Bosse argues was larger than any other plates done at the time in America. It is interesting to note that for Norman’s engraving of the Battle of Bunker Hill, which is printed from two plates, the larger plate is 54 x 43 cm.

Under this scenario, sometime in the early 19th century, Trumbull, finding that his European-made prints were not selling well, commissioned Norman to undertake an American-made version, only to be dissatisfied by the results (the print really is not very well made!) and so abandoned the project. This would make sense of a number of things about this print. It would explain who would be willing to put up the money to sponsor such an elaborate copy of Trumbull’s scene, why only Trumbull’s and Norman’s name appear on the plate, why there are so few of these prints around, and why Trumbull made the comment to Madison about American engravers not being able to produce a large print of sufficient quality.

One other scenario is that it was Trumbull who commissioned the print, but much earlier in the process. It took over two years for Trumbull to find an engraver for his Battle of Bunker Hill, so it seems possible that at that time Trumbull might have sent a copy of his painting to America to see if Norman could do the work. If this happened, Trumbull would have seen the quality of the engraving produced and then given up the hope an American could do the work. If this scenario is the true story of this print, the Norman engraving of the Battle of Bunker Hill will actually predate the Müller engraving!

It is fun to try to figure out why the Norman print was made, who paid for it, and when it was done. I have not found any clues in the available information on Trumbull or Norman, but a consideration of the print’s nature leads me to believe that it was Trumbull, at some point, who had Norman try his hand at copying his image. It didn’t work out well for Trumbull, but we are left with this very interesting and puzzling print.

John Trumbull's prints of the American Revolution

2010-05-19T10:00:00.022-04:00

John Trumbull’s “Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill” is one of the most famous pictures of American history, an iconic image. In this dramatic scene, the British forces are shown cresting the last defenses of the rebels, who continue to fight bravely. Maj. Gen. Joseph Warren is seen lying mortally wounded, while one of his companions and British officer Maj. John Small restrain a ‘lobster back’ from bayoneting him. This image has appeared in many different formats since Trumbull first painted it in 1785-86, including in numerous prints issued for over two centuries. It is interesting that the publication of a print of this image was actually part of John Trumbull’s intent from the very beginning.

Trumbull, son of the Governor of Connecticut, was uniquely qualified to paint scenes of the American Revolution, as he served in the Continental army during the war and knew first-hand the characteristics of the American and British armies and the nature of this conflict. He also knew many of the participants of the Revolution and so was able to hear first-hand those events he did not himself participate in. During the battle of Bunker’s Hill, Trumbull was stationed in Roxbury, on the far side of Boston from Charlestown, whence he could hear the sounds of the battle.

Trumbull decided as a young man that he wanted to pursue a career as an artist and late in the war he sailed to England to study under Benjamin West, an American who had established himself so well there that he was appointed by King George III as historical painter to the court. At the time, historical painting was considered one of the highest forms of art, but most historical paintings showed mythological, sacred or classical history, and when contemporary events were depicted, the participants were shown in classical dress. West, had in 1770, broken with this tradition by painting the “Death of General Wolfe” with its participants in contemporary uniforms and setting.

There was some controversy over this, but West continued this course with further “modern” history paintings of “The Battle of La Hogue” and “Penn’s Treaty with the Indians.” West encouraged his pupil John Trumbull—-and possibly was even the originator of the idea—-to undertake a series of such painting on the history of the United States. West could not undertake this on his own because of his ties to the King, who would not have taken kindly to his court painter glorifying the recent victory of the Americans over the British.

In 1784, Trumbull took up this project as his main artistic ambition. He began with a painting of “The Death of General Warren at Battle of Bunker’s Hill” in the fall of 1785, finishing it the follow March. This canvas was called by Benjamin West “the best picture of a modern battle that has been painted” and it was well received by those who viewed it in West’s studio. Trumbull had absorbed the style and form of West’s work, but added to this his own personal knowledge of the individuals and the military dress, weapons and events of the time.

Trumbull was worried about the prospects of selling his American historical paintings, for not only would the subject likely rule out any English buyers, but there were in general less patrons who would purchase an historical painting than a personal portrait. To help with the financial situation, West encouraged Trumbull to have the paintings made into prints, for there was a better likelihood he would make money by selling prints than just from the paintings. West told Trumbull that West's painting of “The Battle of La Hogue” sold for only 500 guineas, but that the sale of prints, at one guinea each, had generated three times that amount. Thus from the start, Trumbull intended to have his American historical paintings made into prints, beginning with the first two canvases he was working on, the painting of the battle of Bunker Hill and one showing the death of General Montgomery at Quebec.

Through West, Trumbull met Antonio di Poggi, an artist and print publisher, who agreed to publish the prints for a share of the profits. They decided to look in Paris for an engraver, as no British engraver would dare to do the work on this subject matter. They searched through the summer and early fall of 1786 in Paris and then Frankfurt, with no success. When Trumbull returned to London in October 1786, Poggi kept the paintings to continue to look for an engraver. Poggi finally found Johann Gotthard von Müller, an engraver from Stuttgart, who agreed in July 1788 to undertake the engraving of Trumbull’s Bunker Hill.

In 1789, Trumbull sailed to America to work on promoting the sale of his forthcoming prints. At this stage the engraving by Müller was not progressing very fast. Trumbull tried to market his prints when he arrived and awaited proofs, which Poggi promised to send as soon as they were pulled, to show potential subscribers. In 1795, Trumbull visited Stuttgart and was satisfied with the progress Müller was making. Finally in July 1797, Trumbull heard from Müller that the plate was finished.

Shortly after that, the engraving of the “Death of Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec,” which had been assigned to other engravers, was also finished. Unfortunately, the sale of subscriptions for these prints did not go very well for Trumbull, covering only about three quarters of the cost of their production. This was likely primarily the result of the long delay between the original conception and its fruition, as by the end of the eighteenth century large patriotic engravings of the heroics of the Revolution were not in demand, as they likely would have been a decade earlier. The lack of financial success ended Trumbull’s plan to produce an entire series of engravings of the War of Independence.

Trumbull had, however, been working on a painting of the Declaration of Independence, for which he had spent much effort in making accurate likenesses of the participants. At the end of 1817, Trumbull decided to try again with the production of a print of this historical subject. Initially, he agreed to hire the English engraver James Heath, telling James Madison that he did not believe an American engraver had the experience or skill to produce a work of art of this magnitude. There was, however, something of an outcry about using a European engraver for this quintessential American subject, so Trumbull reconsidered and hired Asher B. Durand, the most accomplished American engraver of the period, to do the work.

The resulting print is a terrific example of both Trumbull’s art and Durand’s skill. However, Trumbull still had problems getting subscribers, even though he had already signed up the then four living Presidents—-Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe. By the time the print was published in 1823, Trumbull had sold only about 275 subscriptions, just about breaking even.

These three prints, the Battle of Bunker Hill, Death of Montgomery, and Declaration of Independence, are among the most desirable American historical prints ever made. They are quite rare, but do come on the market from time to time. Because Trumbull's images are so iconographic, they have appeared in many other prints over the years, including some of considerable quality and some that are merely decorative. In the next blog I will talk about one print that is of particular interest and something of a puzzle.

Steel engravings: large, frameable prints

2010-05-11T08:00:00.001-04:00

In the last blog we talked about steel-engraved illustrations. These small prints were issued in very large numbers, usually bound into a book or magazine. Today we’ll look at another group of steel-engraved print, ones at the other end of the size spectrum.

Beginning in the 1840s and lasting primarily into the 1870s, very large steel engravings were issued as separate prints by publishers, intended for people to frame and hang for display. These prints were very popular as decoration in that period and they would have hung in many middle and upper class homes, not to mention in well-heeled offices. Similarly to the small steel engravings, these prints were issued uncolored and would have been displayed as such.

We discussed the advantages of steel engraving in the previous blog and many of these advantages apply also to the large, frameable steel engravings. For instance, steel allowed for the printing of very large numbers of prints without wear. While the large steel engravings were not issued in anywhere near the number of impressions of the book illustrations, they were still run off in large numbers. Also, steel engraving allowed for very fine lines and many of these large prints have an impressive amount of close detail.

One benefit of steel engraving which did not apply to the book illustrations was that it made it practical for printmakers to create larger prints than one could do easily with copper. Many of the frameable steel engravings of the period are quite large, often ranging in the mid-20 inch high by upper-30 inch wide size.

The American Art Union and up-market publishers like Goupil & Co. did produce some lovely genre engraving in steel, but most of the large American, steel engravings had historical subjects. Images of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and other famous American figures appeared time and again. Because of the size, these prints tended not to be just individual portraits, but were scenes at court, cabinet meetings, or other large gatherings of individuals. Political or historical allegories were also popular, and a number of battle scenes likewise appeared in this format.

When issued, these prints were considered not simply to be decorative, but also enlightening and ennobling. They were generally of high quality both in artistic rendering and skillful engraving; “fine” art, not simply “popular” art. They were “serious” prints, intended not just to decorate, but also to educate and inspire. It is interesting that at the time these prints were issued, these steel engravings were more expensive than the similarly-sized hand-colored lithographs, whereas today the opposite is true.

Their popularity seems to have been greatest in the antebellum period, and while they were issued later in the century, other types of large prints overtook them in popularity. At first, large hand-colored lithographs began to appear in greater numbers and then later in the century, large -sized chromolithographs offered just as much wall coverage, but for less cost and with color.

There was something of a revival of interest in large uncolored prints in the 1880s and 90s, with the etching revival, but by the 20th century such art fell well out of favor. It is because of this that many of these wonderful, mid-nineteenth century steel engravings were subsequently colored by printsellers, so that many are found "colorized" today. However, I am pleased to report this is beginning to change. A growing awareness of the historic importance and the visual appeal of these striking black & white images has led to a return of the appreciation of these prints both as fine antiques and as unique art for the home or office.

Steel engravings: book illustrations

2010-05-04T08:00:00.018-04:00

In earlier blogs I talked about different print processes, including those which fall into the category of intaglio prints, that is prints where the image is printed from a recessed design incised or etched into the surface of a plate. In an intaglio print the ink lies below the surface of the plate and is transferred to the paper under pressure. One of the most common types of intaglio print is an engraving, where the image was cut into the metal plate by use of a pointed tool called a graver or burin. Engraving was one of the first forms of print making, with the earliest engravings issued in the fifteenth century.

At first engravings were made from copper plates. Copper is quite malleable and so it was relatively easy to work the image into the plate with the burin and also not too difficult to flatten out the surface when a correction needed to be made. The problems for printmakers in using copper, however, were several. It was a relatively expensive metal, the softness of copper limited the fineness of line which could be achieved, the softness also limited the number of impressions which could be run off before the image quality deteriorated to an unacceptable extent, and there was a limit to how big a plate it was possible to use on a printing press.

All of these problems were solved when a process of working in steel was developed in the early nineteenth century. When compared to copper, steel was less expensive, a finer line could be achieved, huge numbers of impressions could be run off without loss of quality, and the stiffness of the plates allowed for much larger prints to be created. Steel, of course, had its own problems, the primary one being that it was difficult to work.

An American inventor, Jacob Perkins first developed a process of steel engraving for use in banknote printing. His process was a success and he was invited to England to help produce steel engraved banknotes in 1819. At the end of that year, Perkins, and his partner Gideon Fairman, were joined by Charles Heath, the Engraver to King George II. Heath, who was known for his engraved book illustrations, realized the potential of steel engraving, and in 1820 he produced the first steel engraved book plates for Thomas Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope.

Other engravers soon began to work in and make improvements in steel engraving, including Charles Warren, William Say, and John Thomas Lupton. In 1822, Lupton produced a mezzotint portrait of the comedian Joseph Munden on steel, for which he was awarded the Isis Gold Medal of the Society of Arts. The process which evolved was for the engraving to be made on a steel that had been annealed to soften it (creating what is called mild steel), and then subsequently the plate was rehardened so that prints could be run off in the thousands without wear. Improvements continued to be made, including the development of ruling machines which allowed for the mechanical production of fine lines over a large area of the plate.

The development of steel engraving was a positive boon for book publishers, for it allowed for book illustrations which could have fine detail and which could be run off in huge numbers. Within a few years, many publications began to appear with steel engraved illustrations, including histories, travel books, gift books and magazines.

Steel engraved book illustrations are probably the most ubiquitous type of antique print which people come across. Given the large number of books published with such prints and the huge runs of many of these books, there are thousands of these prints available on the market today. Some of the prints have a genre theme, but the ones which are particularly popular today tend to be the images of events (such as battle scenes), portraits (such as images of Presidents) and scenes of particular locations (such as the widely popular views by William Bartlett).

With their small size and large number printed these prints tend to be relatively inexpensive. To get an original view of your home town or a favorite vacation spot from the first half of the nineteenth century for around $100 is a wonderful thing. These prints make great decoration and gifts. Probably more of these prints are sold than of any other type of antique print (a previous blog discusses a steel engraving of the Bartlett waterworks scene, illustrated above, which we have sold more of over the years than any other print).

I'll conclude with a few comments on these steel engraved book illustrations. First there are a number of issues involved with the fact that these prints were for the most part originally published in books but are now being sold as separate prints. There is no question that many of the prints sold today were originally published in a bound book and this is a somewhat controversial issue (I will address the topic of “breaking books” in a future blog). However, it should also be noted that many old books have fallen apart on their own, some of the prints were originally issued in parts or fascicles (so that they were never actually bound into a book), and also that publishers did sometimes issue these prints as separate publications for framing.

Another issue concerning these steel engraved book plates is the question of color. With very few exceptions, these prints were issued uncolored. Many of the volumes included a good number of plates and each plate was run off in a very large number of impressions, so it would have been impractical for the publisher to have issued them colored. However, the majority of these plates that one finds for sale on the market are now colored. What gives?

Almost all of these prints have been colored by dealers in order to sell them. There is no question that these small engravings (particularly the views) sell much better when colored than in black & white as originally issued. Many are still being colored today, but this has been going on probably since the prints were first made. I did talk about coloring prints in another blog, and the issues are interesting, but here is a case where I do not have any problem at all with these prints being colored (as long as it is well done).

The prints were issued uncolored not because the printmaker thought they should be black & white, but because it was too costly to have them colored. It is important for historical reason, I think, that there be examples of these prints still in the volumes in their “original” state, so if there is a very rare volume it would not be good to have those prints removed and colored. However, for most of these steel engraved views (like those by Bartlett or from Picturesque America) there are plenty of complete sets in their original state so there doesn't seem to be a good reason they should not be colored if people prefer them that way.

There is one other situation in which I would rather prints not be colored, where they are part of a “collection.” Part of the point of a collection is to document the history of prints of a particular topic and part of that history is that some of the prints were issued uncolored. So, for instance, when I was working with Charles R. Penney on his collection of Niagara Falls prints, I made sure he had a set of the Bartlett views and those from Picturesque America in their “original” uncolored state.

Beyond that, however, I see no reason that most of these steel-engraved book illustrations shouldn’t be colored if people want them that way. I also see no reason people should want to have them colored for display in their homes. These prints really are lovely once colored and if appropriately colored, they do not, I think, lose any of their historic interest and content.

Mythical Islands: Brasil

2010-04-28T08:00:00.000-04:00

Last blog I talked about the legendary St. Brendan's Island which floated around the North Atlantic for many centuries. Another non-existent island in the North Atlantic which was based on legend was Brasil (also called Brazil, Bersil, Brazir, O’Brazil, O’Brassil, Hy-Brasil or Breasail).

This is not to be confused with the country Brazil. That country was named after brazilwood, which was exported to Europe for its red die. As João de Barros wrote in 1552,

"When it came to the 3rd of May, and Pedroalvares [Cabral] was about to set sail, in order to give a name to the land thus newly discovered, he ordered a very great cross to be hoisted at the top of a tree, after mass had been said at the foot of the tree... and then he gave the country the name of Sancta Cruz... But as soon as the red wood called Brazil began to arrive from that country, he wrought that the name should abide in the mouth of the people, and that the name of Holy Cross should be lost, as if the name of a wood for colouring cloth were of more importance than that wood which imbues all the sacraments with the tincture of salvation, which is the Blood of Jesus Christ."

It is not clear where the name of the legendary island Brasil came from, but it may have its roots in the Gaelic "Hi-Breasail," which may refer to an old Irish clan or possibly an ancient demi-God. It could also come from from the Gaelic "breas-ail", meaning blessed, and so it might be connected with Brendan's Fortunate Isles. Whatever the source of the name, the island was a fixture in early Irish legend, first recorded as "O'Brasil" in the Voyage of Maelduin from about 1100 A.D. The legend is that Brasil was an island just to the west of Ireland which was constantly covered by mist, except one day every seven years when it becomes visible at sunset. Even today some of the inhabitants of Aran and the west coast of Ireland claim to have seen the island rise from the sea every seven years.

Beginning in the late fifteenth century, sailors out of Bristol are recorded by the Spanish representative to England, Pedro de Ayala, as sailing in search of Brasil. A letter by John Day from 1497-98 stated that Brasil had been visited by John Cabot, who had learned of it from earlier Bristol sailors. This probably refers to English voyages to either Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, and it is even possible that some of the early Irish references to the island reflect knowledge of North America.

Brasil first appeared on maps in the fourteenth century, including in the Catalan atlas of 1375, where it appears twice. While St. Brendan's Island began to disappear from maps in the early seventeenth century, Brasil was a regular feature of the waters to the west of Ireland for over a century more. By the nineteenth century Brasil had morphed into "Brasil Rock" on the Admiralty Charts, before it was finally removed officially in the second half of that century.

Mythical Islands: St. Brendan’s Island

2010-04-22T14:17:00.011-04:00

The most common type of mythical geographical feature are non-existent islands. Sailors called these “flyaway islands,” because they were not where they were supposed to be when a crew went looking for them. There are a number of reasons that non-existent islands appear so often on maps, including a basis in legends, optical mistakes, navigational mistakes, and deliberate misinformation. Today I’ll talk a bit about one of the islands based in legend.

Historically, the oceans almost always formed the edge of the known world. It is likely that the question of what lay over the water, beyond the horizon, was a subject that stirred the imagination of coastal visitors for as long as there have been humans. This naturally led to speculation about what possibly existed far out at sea, resulting in the oceans becoming the location of numerous legendary places and beings. Every nation located on the coast of a large body of water has tales of places out at sea that were based on myths and fables. Sometimes these were the location of Earthy Paradise, or a magical land or certainly at least a land of unimaginable wealth.

There was a long tradition of rich islands off the coasts of Asia and Africa. The wealthy kingdom of Ophir from the Bible was often believed to be an island, the Garden of Eden was thought by some as an island, and others said that Adam and Eve went to an island in the east after being expelled from Eden. John Mandeville spoke of over 5,000 islands east of Asia, Marco Polo said there were 12,700 islands in the India Sea and 7,459 in the China Sea, and Arab geographer Al-Idrisi said the oceans contained 27,000 islands!

The Atlantic was also heavily populated by legendary islands. I have already discussed, in an earlier blog, the non-existent islands based on the reports of the Zeno brothers, but there were a number of mythical islands with an even longer history, including St. Brendan’s island, Brazil, Antilla, and the Island of Seven Cities. Though none of these islands existed (at least as they were thought to exist), many Europeans went looking for them time and again over the centuries.

St. Brendan’s Island

St. Brendan of Ardfert (ca. 484-578) was an Irish monk who was said to have sailed, with sixty men, into the Atlantic Ocean in search of the Isle of the Blest. According to the story, they sailed for five years and saw many wonders, eventually reaching a beautiful island where they met a holy man. Brendan believed this to be his “Promised Land of the Saints.”

Legends about Brendan became current shortly after he died and by the tenth century a number of books had been written about his voyages. The written accounts differ with each other, but there is enough in them that matches the geography of the North Atlantic that it seems to indicate that the accounts probably reflect some knowledge of voyages in the North Atlantic by Irish monks, including possibly by St. Brendan himself. Certainly Irish monks had been to Iceland before 800 A.D., and it is possible that they made it to Greenland.

Beginning in the fifteenth century, expeditions were sent out from Portugal and Bristol, England, to locate St. Brendan’s island, though of course this non-existent land was never discovered. Still, by the thirteenth century the island appeared as a concrete place on maps. The first map to include the island seems to be the Ebstorf mappemundi of 1235. It also appeared on the Hereford mappemundi of 1275 (above), which labels the island as “Fortunate Insulae sex sunt Insulae Sct. Brandani.”

St. Brendan’s island appeared on maps to as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, wandering about the Atlantic Ocean in numerous locations. Sometimes the island might actually reflect newly discovered islands, such as the Madeiras or Canaries (which are also called the “Fortunate Islands”), or it might simply be inserted in some unexplored blank spot at the guess of the mapmaker. The island appeared on the Behaim globe of 1492 and prominently on a number of other maps, including those by Abraham Oretlius (above) and Gerard Mercator (below).

Though St. Brendan’s island did have a long history on maps, lasting almost 500 years, it did begin to disappear from most maps by the early seventeenth century, for by then it seems to have mostly been accepted as referring to the Canary Islands. There was another island, of equally legendary status, that floated about the Atlantic even after St. Brendan Island vanished. I’ll write about that island, Brasil, in the next blog.