Book of the week — Kuthan’s Menagerie Completed

18 Monday Apr 2016

≈ Comments Off on Book of the week — Kuthan’s Menagerie Completed

Tags

animals, anteater, booksellers, Canada, clamshell, colophon, debossed, endsheets, Felicity Reid, flamingo, folio, George Kuthan, Golden Hind laid paper, Heavenly Monkey, Japanese paper, landscape, linocuts, monkey, Nevermore Press, Paris, peacock, penguin, Perpetua, preface, racoon, Robert Reid, Simone Mynen, St. Armand handmade paper, Stephen Lunsford, title page, University of Prague, University of Utah, Vancouver, Vancouver Zoo, waste sheets, William Hoffer

“In the zoo we see, on a small scale, how different all animals are from each other…We have to live together whether we like it or not.”

KUTHAN’S MENAGERIE COMPLETED
George Kuthan (1916-1966)
Vancouver: Heavenly Monkey, 2003

Descriptive text about six animals – a raccoon, flamingo, anteater, penguin, monkey and peacock – each representing a different part of the world and each viewed by the artist at the Vancouver Zoo. Illustrated with multi-color linocuts by George Kuthan. Kuthan studied art at the University of Prague and in Paris before he moved to Canada.

Kuthan’s Menagerie of Interesting Zoo Animals was first published in an edition of one hundred and thirty copies by Nevermore Press, a single private enterprise by Robert and Felicity Reid, in 1960. Sixty of these copies were bound in quarter leather and Japanese paper over boards. Kuthan and the binder both died soon after this first publication. The remaining sheets were left unbound and unsold. Vancouver booksellers Stephen Lunsford and William Hoffer bought the unbound copies from the original binder’s estate in the late 1980s.

Heavenly Monkey issued the remaining sheets within a sheet of yellow Japanese paper (which served as the endsheets for the bound edition). New content (a title-page, preface and colophon) was set by hand in 18 pt. Perpetua and printed on blank and waste sheets of the original Golden Hind laid paper. The whole is in an outer wrap of St. Armand handmade paper and housed in a custom clamshell box covered in red Japanese fabric, with printed debossed paper labels, designed and made by Simone Mynen. The work is comprised of sixteen sheets loose, printed landscape on one side and folded folio, plus three sheets of additional matter. Printer Robert Reid explained that the folded sheets helped solve two problems: the translucent quality of the paper and to add to the bulk of the book when bound. Edition of fifty copies. University of Utah copy is no. 7, signed by Robert Reid.

Book of the week – De rerum natura

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

≈ Comments Off on Book of the week – De rerum natura

Tags

afterlife, Alexander Pope, biblical, blind-tooled, blindstamped, body, British, Cambridge, Church of England, classics, Constance, De rerum natura, decoration, engraved, Epicurus, fire, folio, French Revolution, frontispiece, Fulda, Germany, Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, Gilbert Wakefield, gilt, gods, government, Greek, Hamilton, Homer, Horace, Jesus College, Londini, Lucretius, mathematics, ministry, morocco, mortal, nature, New Testament, pamphlets, poem, poet, portrait, punishment, rules, scholar, soul, Titus Lucretius Carus, tragedies, Tuscan, Unitarian, vicar, Virgil, Wa, Wakefield, world

DE RERUM NATURA LIBROS SEX, AD EXEMPLARIUM…
Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BCE – ca. 55 BCE)
Londini: Impensis editoris, typis A. Hamilton, 1796-7
PA6482 A2 1796 oversize

De Rerum Natura is the only surviving work of Lucretius. Only one manuscript copy of it is known to exist. This manuscript was found in 1417 in a monastery at Fulda in Germany by Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, a Tuscan secretary to a church general council at Constance.

It is a didactic poem of 7,400 lines in six books, in which the poet expounds on the world view of the ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus. The object was to abolish belief that the gods intervened in the world and that the soul could experience punishment in an afterlife. Lucretius demonstrated that the world is, instead, governed by mechanical laws of nature. He described the soul as mortal and posited that it perishes with the body.

This is the first edition of the “Wakefield” edition, the edition by Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801). Wakefield was a biblical scholar. The son of a vicar, he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, through a scholarship. He studied mathematics and the classics. Although he took orders, he left the ministry and the Church of England and became a Unitarian. He earned his living as a tutor while writing controversial pamphlets attacking the government. He was imprisoned for two years for the publication of a pamphlet titled, “A Reply to some Parts of the Bishop of Landoff’s Address,” in which he defended the French Revolution. To support himself, he published a translation of the New Testament (1792), companion editions to Horace (1794) and Virgil (1796), an edition with commentary of Greek tragedies (1794), an annotated edition of Alexander Pope’s Homer (1796), and this, his Lucretius. He published his De Rerum Natura at his own expense.

The book established Wakefield as a leading British scholar. The large paper, folio edition was mostly destroyed by a fire in the printing-office in which they were stored.

Engraved portrait of Gilbert Wakefield on frontispiece. Bound in contemporary straight-grained black morocco, panelled covers with broad blind-tooled borders and gilt edges, spine with broad gilt rules and blindstamped decoration. Edition of fifty copies.

OPEN BOOK

~ News from the Rare Books Department of Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah

Tag Archives: folio

Book of the week — Kuthan’s Menagerie Completed

Like this:

Book of the week – De rerum natura

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: