Rare Books welcomes NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers

22 Friday Jun 2018

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16th Century, blog, clay tablets, collections, college, community outreach, coursework, digtital exhibitions, exhibitions, exploration, Italian Renaissance, lectures, library, museum, presentations, publications, rare books, Rare Books Department, Sumerian, travel, university

Rare Books welcomes participants of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute for College and University Teachers.

“The Book: Material Histories and Digital Futures” is hosted by Salt Lake Community College. Week One is being led by Nicole Howard and Johanna Drucker.

Today, participants take a field trip to Rare Books where they will have a hands-on opportunity to study pieces from our collections and learn how, for more than two decades, the Rare Books Department has used its collections to enhance college and university coursework; museum, library, and university exhibitions; and contribute to academic dialogue and community outreach through its presentations, exhibitions, digital exhibitions, lectures, conference papers, publications, and blog, Open Book.

From Sumerian clay tablets

to triumphs of Italian Renaissance printing and publishing

to accounts of exploration and travel

to first editions of Francis Bacon’s call for experimentation, empirical methodology, accurate observation and accumulation of reliable data

to the great 18th century French Enlightenment Encyclopedie, a vain attempt to collect all that data

to colonial American newspapers

to a now-obscure 19th century novel written by a Confederate politician

to an early 20th century fine press edition of Goethe’s Faust from a German press destroyed by Allied bombs during World War II

to a 21st century artists’ book of letters, poetry, essays, and pressed plants,

the rare book collections tell an infinite number of histories in a variety of ways, but always, the history of the “book.”

A Donation Makes a Difference in Denmark

25 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

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20th century, article, Brooklyn, commercial, communication, composing, Compugraphic, Compugraphic Universal V, Dad, Danish Association for Communication, Denmark, Design & Media, Don Gale, donation, electrical, electronics, ephemera, Fotosetter, Garamond, GRAKOM, gravure, Henning Impgaard Madsen, industry magazine, Intertype, Intertype Corporation, KSL, letterpress, lithographic plates, machine, manuals, marketing, media production, museum, offset, Outcome, paper, photographic, platemaking, plates, printer, rare books, Royal Danish Library, Special Collections, technology, type specimens, typographers, UDKOM, United States, Viborg, Vingaard Officinet

“These showings of Intertype “Fotosetter” Garamond mark an important event in the history of Intertype Corporation. All of the composition was produced on an Intertype Fotosetter photographic line-composing machine. The original film positives were used to make deep-etch lithographic plates, from which this booklet was printed. Quite appropriately for such an occasion Garamond, considered among leading typographers to be one of the most successful type faces ever introduced, was selected for these introductory specimens of Fotosetter technique.”

Fotosetter Garamond
Brooklyn: Intertype Corp., 1949
Z250 F75 1949

Any one of a certain age living in Utah knows who Don Gale is. Three times a day, in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, KSL aired Don’s short, stern, fair editorials. Don was the Vice President for Public Affairs and Editorial Director at KSL.

Over the years, Don has donated personal papers, videos of his editorials and other material to Special Collections. In 2006, Rare Books was the happy recipient of a collection of books and printed ephemera concerning twentieth century commercial printing technologies, including manuals and type specimen books.

Don’s dad was a printer.

In late November we received an email from Henning Impgaard Madsen in Denmark, who had discovered through the internet that we had “some information about the first Fotosetter in the world.” The Royal Danish Library did not have “any information.” Mr. Madsen said that he was helping a museum get an Intertype Fotosetter working but that he needed “some details about the electrical parts and how to work it.”

Thanks to Don’s donation, we were able to provide Mr. Madsen with all the details he needed.

Like Mr. Gale, Mr. Madsen is “retired,” although neither one of them is spending much time retiring. He studied electronics in school. Among other things, he worked with Fotosetters, “mainly Compugraphic from US.”
After he retired, Mr. Madsen and his wife visited museums featuring typesetting, but never ran across a Fotosetter. Then, in a museum in Viborg, the Vingaards Officinet, he found an Intertype Fotosetter. “I had no idea that the first Fotosetter looked like this.

“I talked to the people at the museum and asked why they did not have a Compugraphic, the one I knew from the 1970[s]. They answered, ‘If you can find one we would very much like to have one.’ Mr. Madsen thought to himself, no problem, easy job. “I started to call around, but all the machines or my old customers [had] disappeared. [Someone] gave me the idea” to contact, GRAKOM, the Danish Association for Communication, Design & Media. That contact led to an article about Mr. Mardsen in UDKOM (Outcome), an industry magazine covering issues and news for companies straddling design, media production, communication and marketing.

The article eventually led to a phone call from a man who had a Compugraphic Universal V. It wasn’t working, but Mr. Mardsen found some parts, did what he could and donated it to Vingaards Officinet.

The museum staff then asked Mr. Madsen to get their Intertype Fotosetter running.

And that is how Don Gale’s donation made a difference in Denmark. We supplied Mr. Madsen scans of a manual for operating the first Intertype Fotosetter, from Mr. Gale’s collection. And Mr. Madsen got the mid-century Fotosetter running. A generation made to last.

Thank you, Don Gale and good work, Mr. Madsen!

###

“The Fotosetter is an automatic, photographic line composing machine. It produces justified composition in galley form directly on film or photographic paper in one operation. This composition can be reproduced on offset-lithographic, gravure and letterpress plates, using standard platemaking methods in each case.”

Introducing the Fotosetter: the photographic line composing machine
Brooklyn, NY: Intertype Corp., 1950
TR1010 I58 1950

“The greater party of this manual is devoted to suppplying the Fotosetter operator with the information which he must have to set up, operate, and maintain his machine, and to understand the principles of its operation.”

Operators manual for the Intertype Fotosetter photographic typesetting machine
Brooklyn, NY: Intertype Corporation, 1955
Z249 O643 1955

Rare Books copy is a gift from Don Gale.

“Following a three year period of field testing in the U. S. Government Printing Office in Washington the first commercial installation was made in 1949. Since then Fotosetter photographic line composing machines have been installed and proven highly successful in all types of printing and composition plants throughout the United States and the world.”

Fotosetter type faces
Brooklyn: Intertype Corporation, ca. 1950
Z250 I58 F6

Rare Books copy is a gift from Don Gale.

We Recommend — One for the Books

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Lecture

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"graphic designer", Alabama, assisted living, book artist, book arts, Book Arts Program, bottles, cotton rag handmade paper, dolls, farm implements, fossils, Glenn House, Gordo, J. Willard Marriott Library, Jessica Peterson, lecture, letterpress printer, Ma'Cille House, memento, miscellanea, museum, New Orleans, newspaper archives, Northport, Paper Souvenir, Prince Edward County, Prince Edward School Foundation, public education, pull-outs, Rare Books Classroom, Rare Books Department, stab binding, t-shirts, taxidermy, The School of Art Institute of Chicago, The Southern Letterpress, University of Alabama, Virginia, workshop

Jessica Peterson, book artist, letterpress printer, and graphic designer is the owner of The Southern Letterpress in New Orleans. She holds an MFA in Book Arts from the University of Alabama and a BFA from The School of Art Institute of Chicago.

While visiting the J. Willard Marriott Library to teach a workshop for the Book Arts Program, she will also give a lecture on non-traditional letterpress techniques.

Thursday
July 13
6PM
Rare Books Classroom
Level 4
J. Willard Marriott Library
The University of Utah

Free and open to the public

The Rare Books Department is pleased to support the Book Arts Program with its collections and services.

Ma’Cille’s Museum of Miscellanea
Jessica Peterson (b. 1976), compilar
Gordo, AL: J. Peterson, 2011
N7433.4 P475 M33 2011

This book is an attempt to catalog Ma’Cille’s Museum of Miscellanea ten years after it closed, based on memories of people who visited the museum and newspaper archives. Ma’Cille House (d. 1999), whose formal education ended in 7th grade, began collecting miscellanea in the 1950s, including such things as dug-up bottles, dolls, farm implements, taxidermy, and fossils. After she had raised seven children, she established her museum, in the early 1960s, on a rural back road near Gordo, Alabama. By the time the museum closed forty years later, it was world famous – a multi-building institution visited by thousands of people. In 1998, the Ma’Cille’s family, facing the costs of assisted living care for her, and other financial burdens, auctioned off the museum’s contents. The story of the museum was preserved through stories that circulated about Gordo. Drawings by Glenn House, Sr. Letterpress printed on textblock cotton rag handmade paper from Alabama clay-colored t-shirts. Book contains pull-outs, including one printed memento from Ma’Cille’s. Paper covered boards with exposed stab binding. Laid in a printed four-flap paper folder. Issued in paper slipcase. Edition of thirty copies. Rare Books copy is number 6, signed by the compilar, who also researched, wrote and designed it.

Unbound
Jessica Peterson (b. 1976)
Northport, AL: Paper Souvenir, 2014
N7433.4 P475 U53 2014

From the introduction: “In the fall of 1959, the public schools of Prince Edward County, Virginia were closed in response to a court order to desegregate. The schools remained closed for five years. Many white children began attending a system of private schools established by the Prince Edward School Foundation. As permitted by state law, tuition for these schools was almost completely subsidized by the government. No one elected to attend the private academy for black students organized by the same group of white leaders…lawsuits about the intersection of public education and race circulated through the state and federal courts. Edition of one hundred copies. Rare Books copy is no. 81.

OPEN BOOK

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

Tag Archives: museum

Rare Books welcomes NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers

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We Recommend — One for the Books

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