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

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Tag Archives: Special Collections

KUED’s VERVE features Tryst Press

02 Thursday Aug 2018

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1493, A. Dean Larsen Book Collecting Conference, Ashley Swansong, Brigham Young University, Cabeza de Vaca, Caslon Oldstyle, Garamond, Georgia Buchert, handmade paper, handset type, Haniel Long, Harmann Schedel, Harold B. Lee Library, India, J. Willard Marriott Library, Jerusalem, KUED, letterpress, Michael Wolgemut, Nicolas Cochin, Nuremberg Chronicle, olive wood, Provo, rare books, Rob Buchert, Special Collections, Tal Walton, The University of Utah, Tryst Press, VERVE, woodcut

“Its not just this linear experience of open the book and get to the end of the book. Its also a trans-generational experience…you can open a book that was printed in 1780 and somebody sprinkled it with camphor and you can smell the camphor. Its not just the words that relate you to the book. Its the physical action somebody took on that object that is also important.” — Rob Buchert, Tryst Press

KUED‘s online video series, VERVE, features Rob Buchert and Tryst Press in its latest episode of the season, “It’s All About the Book.” VERVE is produced by Ashley Swansong, a graduate of The University of Utah and past student employee of Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library.

Rare Books holds all Tryst Press productions. We chose these three as favorite examples of Tryst Press’s work of the book.


“Their eyes followed us every moment. I do not forget their eyes…”

Interlinear for Cabeza de Vaca
Haniel Long (1888-1956)
Provo, UT: Tryst Press, 1996
E125 N9 L62 1996 oversize

Illustrated by Tal Walton. Printed by Rob and Georgia Buchert on handmade paper from India with Caslon Oldstyle type. Edition of one hundred and fifty copies.



“Behold, for this last time have we nourished my vineyard. And thou beholdest that I have done according to my will and I have preserved the natural fruit, that it is good, even like as it was in the beginning. And blessed art thou, for because that ye have been diligent in laboring with me in my vineyard and have kept my commandments — and it hath brought unto me again the natural fruit, that my vineyard is no more corrupted and the bad is cast away — behold, ye shall have joy with me because of the fruit of my vineyard.”

The Allegory of the Olive Tree
Provo, UT: Tryst Press, 2006
BX8643 O44 A42 2006

Printed letterpress with handset Nicolas Cochin and Garamond types on paper hand made for this edition. Edition of fifty copies. Rare Books copy is no. 6, one of eight bound with olive wood boards.


Jerusalem (Hierosolima)
Provo, UT: Tryst Press, 2007
Z241 L5 S32 2007

“Oldest printed view of Jerusalem. Woodcut by the shop of Michael Wolgemut. From Liber cronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle) by Hartmann Schedel, 1493. Printed at Tryst Press as a keepsake for attendees of A. Dean Larsen Book Collecting Conference, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, March 30, 2007.”

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A Patron’s Family History Research Sheds Light on 17th Century Printing

26 Thursday Jul 2018

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Benjamin Allen, Charles I, Charles II, Craig Dalley, Fifth Monarchist, Hannah Allen, Hannah Howse Allen Chapman, Hubble Space Telescope, J. Willard Marriott Library, John Cotton, John Lothrop, Livewell Chapman, London, Massachusetts, Matthew Symmons, Oliver Cromwell, Plano, Puritan, rare books, Special Collections, Special Collections Gallery, Texas, The Feminine Touch, The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Thomas Howse


It is a matter of just displeasure to God, and sad grief of heart to the church, when civil states look at the estate of the church, as of little, or no concernment to themselves.

The bloudy tenent washed and made white in the bloud of the Lambe
John Cotton (1584-1652)
London: Printed by Matthew Symmons for Hannah Allen, at the Crowne in Popes Head-Alley, 1647
First edition
BV741 W58 C6

English Puritan preacher John Cotton fled to Boston, Massachusetts in 1633 to evade persecution by Anglican Church authorities. In the colony he became an advocate of decentralizing the church and allowing individual congregations to govern themselves. Cotton defended a rule that allowed only church members in good standing to vote and hold office in the colonial government and condemned the idea of democracy in which policy decisions were made in popular assemblies.

When Cotton arrived in Boston, Roger Williams was already in trouble with religious and political authorities. In 1635 he was convicted of heresy and spreading “new and dangerous ideas” and banished. Williams, supporter of religious freedom, separation of church and state; abolitionist; and ally to the American Indian, thought that the Puritans had not gone far enough in separating themselves from the beliefs and practices of the Church of England. Williams identified John Cotton with the Massachusetts Puritans and his tormentors, and his important tract on religious liberty, The Bloudy Tenent, was framed as a critique of Cotton. Cotton responded with his own Bloudy Tenent, a point-by-point rebuttal of Williams and a defense of the institution of the church. Cotton argued that the allowance of religious tolerance would give church members the sense that they could stray from a narrow path created by God.


And the Lord Jesus Christ himself (the God of Truth) who came into the world, that he might beare witnesse to the Truth, be pleased to beare witnesse from Heaven to his owne Truth and blast that peace (a fraudulent and false peace) which the Examiner proclaimeth to all the wayes of fashood in Religion, to Heresie in Doctrine, to Idolatry in worship, to blasphemy of the great Name of God, to Pollution, and prophanation of all his holy Ordinances. Amen, Even So, Come Lord Jesus

While visiting Special Collections from Plano, Texas in 2009, Craig Dalley perused The Feminine Touch, a Rare Books exhibition then installed in the Special Collections Gallery. In the exhibition was The Bloudy Tenent, a book he recognized as being printed by one of his distant ancestors. He published an article in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register (Volume 170, Winter 2016), “Religious and Political Radicalism in London: The Family of Thomas Howse, with Massachusetts Connections, 1642-1665,” which includes a discussion of Hannah Howse Allen Chapman (ca. 1614-ca. 1665), a printer and the publisher of the above book. Last week, Mr. Dalley visited us again and graciously gave us a copy of this issue for our collection.

Hannah Howse’s first husband, Benjamin Allen (ca. 1596 – ca. 1646), had published at least two pamphlets along Puritan separatist lines. Hannah continued printing and publishing separatist material with her second husband, Livewell Chapman (ca. 1625 – ca. 1665).

In 1642, “Parliament declared a book published by Benjamin to be heretical and ordered it to be burned by the hangman. Benjamin died the following year, and Hannah ran the publishing business from his death until her remarriage in 1651. Hannah freed her apprentice, Livewell Chapman…in 1650 and married him by September 1651. During the five years that Hannah ran the business, she published at least fifty-four books and pamphlets and extended the business in a radical direction. Hannah’s second husband, Livewell Chapman, became the leading publisher of the radical Fifth Monarchist sect.”

Chapman was arrested several times for his publishing efforts. “…Livewell published so much anti-Cromwellian material that ‘his share of responsibility for the change of government [when Cromwell was deposed] may well have been considerable.'” In 1660, Livewell was accused of publishing treasonous books and imprisoned. His condition for release “included that he would not ‘att any time hereafter by or with the consent & privity of his Wife, or any other person whatsoever, print, publish, disperse, vend, or sell or cause to be printed, published, dispersed, vended or sold any unlicenced, treasonable, factious or seditious Booke or Pamphlet.'”

Printing and publishing was dangerous business. “Hannah and her husbands were considered to be radicals throughout their lives, regardless of who was at the helm of the government. They fared no better after the execution of Charles I than they had before the overthrow of the monarchy, or than they did after the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II.”

Mr. Dalley concludes, “Hannah Chapman…was a radical publisher whose husbands suffered continual legal troubles — before, during, and after the Protectorate — because of their publishing activities.” Amongst Mr. Dalley’s ancestors, he discovers “a circle of family and friends who were considered to be political and religious radicals.”

Mr. Dalley is an engineer who started his career working on the Hubble Space Telescope. He has researched John Lothrop, his London congregation, and allied families for about twenty years and is planning a book to document his Lothrop research.

Thank you, Mr. Dalley, for bringing life to this 371 year-old book.

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The Great American Read

22 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Events, Recommended Reading

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Adolfo Bioy Casares, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, American, Ayn Rand, banned, Barrington J. Bailey, Bob Johnson, book collecting, Boston, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Cold War, D. H. Lawrence, dust jackets, Ecclesiastes, English, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Frankenstein: or, Greek, Heinemann, Henry Miller, Holden Caulfield, Houghton Mifflin Company, J. D. Salinger, J. R. R. Tolkien, J. Willard Marriott Library, Jack London, James Agee, Kurt Vonnegut, literature, London, Luise Putcamp, Luise Putcamp Johnson, Margaret Atwood, New York, novel, Pan, Philip K. Dick, protest, rare books, Ray Bradbury, reading, rebellion, Robert A. Heinlein, Robert Hersel Johnson, Scribner, Second World War, Special Collections, the 100 list, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Great American Read, The University of Utah, Thomas Wolfe, Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, Ursula K. LeGuin, Wilkie Collins, William Kennedy, William Saroyan

Luise Putcamp and Bob Johnson, reading

“It’s up to you how you waste your time and money. I’m staying here to read: life’s too short.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

Rare Books salutes The Great American Read by inviting you to visit the Special Collections Reading Room on level 4 of the J. Willard Marriott Library to hold first editions of some of the classics included on the 100 list.



Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World

“My hours of leisure I spent in reading the best authors, ancient and modern, being always provided with a good number of books…”



Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus

“My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading.”



Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

“‘…and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice ‘without pictures or conversation?'”



The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“It consisted in a peculiar bird-like turn, a sort of liquid warble, produced by touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth at short intervals in the midst of the music—the reader probably remembers how to do it, if he has ever been a boy.”



The Call of the Wild
Jack London (1876-1916)
London: Heinemann, 1903
First English edition
PS3523 O46 C3 1903b

“But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as a man may read a book, and seeking for the mysterious something that called — called, waking or sleeping, at all times, for him to come.”



The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
New York: Scribner, 1926
First edition, first issue
PS3515 E37 S9 1926a

“’No; that doesn’t interest me.’
‘That’s because you never read a book about it.’”

The Sun Also Rises was published on October 22, 1926 in a first printing of 5090 copies. A second printing of 2000 copies was issued in November of that same year. By mid-December both printings had sold out. By 1961 the novel had sold more than one million copies.

The first issue of the first printing is noted by these factors: “stopped”, p. 181, line 26 is misspelled “stoppped;” and a quote from Ecclesiastes regarding vanity is on page [viii].

The University of Utah copy has the first issue dust jacket with the error “In Our Times” instead of “In Our Time” on the front panel. This is one of the two most rare and desirable dust jackets in twentieth-century American literature book collecting, the other being the dust jacket from the first issue of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The dust jacket was printed in gold, black, and tan, with a gold apple on either side of the title and beneath it the figure of a drowsing woman clothed in the style of Greek antiquity. A Pan’s pipe lay near her sandaled foot and another gold apple rested in the palm of her left hand. At the bottom, Hemingway was identified as the author of In Our Times [sic][ and The Torrents of Spring.



Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger
Boston: Little, Brown, 1951
First edition
PS3537 A426 C3 1951

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.”

A twentieth century American classic, Catcher in the Rye was extremely popular at the time of its publication, especially with young readers who strongly identified with the yearning for lost innocence by the novel’s narrator, Holden Caulfield. The novel added to a budding literary, musical, and artistic theme of youthful rebellion.

Catcher, however, raised a gentle voice of protest over growing militant rhetoric. Published after the triumphant yet devastating Second World War and during a pseudo-peace labeled “the Cold War,” youth in the fifties began protesting what they viewed as the failures of the adult world. Anger, contempt, and self-pity were prevalent in many works of the era, but Catcher captured a much more telling view of the era’s stresses with it’s decent but completely and genuinely perplexed teenager.

The book has been banned repeatedly from various school curricula from the time it was published to the present day.



Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1986
First American edition
PR9199.3 A8 H3 1986

“On the floor of the room there were books, open face down, this way and that, extravagantly”



The Rare Books staff offers these suggestions for summer reading, based on the criteria The Great American Read used to gather its 100. The five of us each chose five books. From those the editor savagely (as editors do) and without apparent rhyme or reason (and she will never tell) whittled the list down to this, in alphabetical order by author. Copies may be found in the General Collection on level 2 of the J. Willard Marriott Library.

James Agee, A Death in the Family (1957)
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine (1957)
Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel (1940)
Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White (1859)
Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (1997)
Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers (1959)
M. M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions (1978)
William Kennedy, Ironweed (1983)
D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer (1934)
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943)
William Saroyan, The Human Comedy (1943)
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (1937)
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (1963)
Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again (1940)

What do you suggest?

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Student Filmmaker Finds Stars in Special Collections

21 Monday May 2018

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Alison Conner, Department of Writing and Rhetoric Studies, Digital Storytelling, Natalie Stillman-Webb, Special Collections

This past spring, students taking Digital Storytelling, a course taught by Natalie Stillman-Webb, Department of Writing and Rhetoric Studies, worked with Alison Elbrader, Special Collections Reference Librarian. One student, Mickenzie Burns, produced this video, inspired by her visit.

Thank you, Mickenzie!

 

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We recommend — Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo Venture

08 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Reading

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architect, Berlin, English, Ernst Wasmuth, Europe, European modernism, Frank Lloyd Wright, German, Jack Quinan, overlays, Pomegranate Communications, portfolio, prints, San Francisco, Special Collections, Taylor Wooley, United States, Wasmuth Portfolio


“Between 1906 and 1909 he designed more than one hundred buildings…But after he initiated an affair with one of his clients, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, he ended up abandoning his family and his practice in 1909. Cheney and Wright traveled to Europe, where the architect produced in 1910 a large portfolio of lithographs entitled Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright [Executed Buildings and Studies by Frank Lloyd Wright] for the German publisher Ernst Wasmuth. That elegant summation of his early architectural production significantly influenced the course of European Modernism…”

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo Venture: From the Larkin Building to Broadacre City, A Catalogue of Buildings and Projects
Jack Quinan
San Francisco: Pomegranate Communications, Inc., 2012
NA737 W7 Q56 2012, General Collection, Level 2

Rare Books contributed several images to this book.

We invite you to Special Collections to look at:

Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe…
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)
Berlin: E. Wasmuth, 1910
NA737 W7 A28

The Wasmuth Portfolio was a collaborative effort between Ernst Wasmuth, a Berlin publisher and Frank Lloyd Wright. It was Wasmuth’s idea to publish a complete folio of Wright’s work to date. The project was completed during Wright’s first trip to Europe in 1909 and published in 1910-11. The collection of Wright’s houses and commercial buildings received far more attention and praise in Europe than in the United States. Contemporary architects called it “the most important book of the century.” The portfolio consists of one hundred and thirty-one prints and overlays with accompanying text in English and German. A letter from Frank Lloyd Wright to Taylor Wooley, dated 1911, suggests that six hundred and fifty copies were produced for this edition.

View a digital copy of our portfolio here.

See an article using our portfolio here.

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We recommend — Appendices Pulled from a Study on Light

24 Tuesday Apr 2018

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acanthus, Anglo-Norman Litany of Saints, April, Boise, border, burnished gold, Cami Nelson, chrysalis, color, Connecticut College, Craig Dworkin, Elizabeth Peterson, eye, Finger Lakes, fragment, France, Geoffrey Babbitt, gilded, gold pavé, gutters, heliotropic, Hobart & William Smith Colleges, Idaho, ink, ivy, Jerry Root, Julie Gonnering Lein, Karen Brennan, Kathryn Cowles, leaf, lift, light, littera gothica textualis, littera gothica textualis formata, Luise Poulton, Marriott Library, National Poetry Month, New York, New York City, Office of the Dead, Paisley Rekdal, Paris, pasture, poet, rare books, rinceaux, scribe, Shira Dentz, Special Collections, Spyten Duyvil, street lamp, tendrils, The University of Utah, thunder, Tom Stillinger, transport, vellum, Vespers, vines


“a trace unnameable — place
holding the child
to the first frost,
the street lamp, the pasture — ”

Appendices Pulled from a Study on Light
Geoffrey Babbitt
New York City: Spuyten Duyvil, 2018
PS3602 A224 A6 2018 (General Collection, Level 2)

“This is Geoffrey Babbitt’s first book. His poems and essays have appeared in North American Review, Pleiades, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Notre Dame Review, TYPO, Tarpaulin Sky, The Collagist, Interim, Western Humanities Review, and elsewhere. Raised in Boise, Idaho, he studied at Connecticut College and earned his Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Utah. Geoffrey currently coedits Seneca Review and teaches at Hobart & William Smith Colleges in the Finger Lakes region of New York, where he lives with poet Kathryn Cowles and their three daughters.”

Geoffrey acknowledges the help of many friends, colleagues and faculty from the University of Utah including Luise Poulton, Karen Brennan, Craig Dworkin, Julie Gonnering Lein, Cami Nelson, Paisley Rekdal, Jerry Root, Tom Stillinger, Shira Dentz, Elizabeth Peterson, and others.

Congratulations, Geoffrey!


MS Fragment: 4 — Date: ca. 1375 — Origin: France (possibly northeastern) — current location: Marriott Library, University of Utah, Special Collections, Rare Book Division — Materials: Ink, and burnished gold on vellum — Illustration: Detail — Size: 7 1/8 in. x 5 7/16 in. — Section: Anglo-Norman Litany of Saints — Script: littera gothica textualis formata

“vines scritched, chrysalis
onto vellum leaf–all
lost color, stolen thunder
–spiritual curl
of the vine tending
ultimately toward–tattered edge
curling from the gutters…”


MS Fragment: 8 — Date: ca. 1425-1450 — Origin: France (possibly Paris) — Current Location: Marriott Library, University of Utah, Special Collections, Rare Books Division — Materials: Ink, and burnished gold on vellum — Size: 7 1/4 in. x 5 3/16 in. — Illustration: Detail, border — section: Office of the Dead, Vespers — Script: littera gothica textualis

“lit border
buoys — acanthus
place setting
scribe sets — rinceaux
sprays, gilded ivy leaf,
bryony tendrils, gold pavé
fleur-de-lis — heliotropic
buoyancy — motor cells in
the pulvinus synthesize
bouncing light, con-
vert eye movement, displace
page’s gravitropic
polar auxin transport —
downwarding becomes lift”

April is National Poetry Month.

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Beer libator

05 Monday Mar 2018

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Arad, beer libator, cult, cuneiform, Dr. Renee Kovacs, funerary banquet, grain, J. Willard Marriott Library, Kenneth Lieurance Ott, King Amar-Suen of Ur, libations, mill, Okanagan County Museum, priestesses, rare books, receipt, Special Collections, Sumerian, tablet, The University of Utah, Third Dynasty of Ur, Ur-mes, Washington

https://openbook.lib.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Tablet1080p11s.mp4

Photograph and stop motion by Scott Beadles.

Sumerian Cuneiform Tablet of Third Dynasty of Ur
PJ3824 B33
From the Kenneth Lieurance Ott Collection donated to the Okanangan County Museum, Washington, now in the Rare Books collection, J. Willard Marriott Library, the University of Utah.

Our thanks to Dr. Renee Kovacs for this translation.

This tablet will appear in the master database of cuneiform tablets, CDLI Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative  and the specialised database of administrative tablets of this period, the Third Dynasty of Ur: BDTNS Database of Neo-Sumerian Texts.

Sumerian Cuneiform Tablet of Third Dynasty of Ur

Administrative, receipt of grain

dated to King Amar-Suen of Ur, year 2 (ca. 2045 BC)

3.0 x 3.0 cm. The tablet is complete, 8 lines of Sumerian cuneiform, (6 obverse, 2 reverse).

The tablet records an amount of a grain (lillan”-grain) for provisions for the funerary cult of the former “lords”, that is the rulers, the en-priests and priestesses. The grain was issued from the mill by an official named Arad and received by an official Ur-mes with the title ‘beer libator”  This title was used specifically for an official who performed libations during the funerary banquet for the deceased rulers.

The English units of measure  in the translation do not reflect actual Sumerian volumes but merely the sequence of units, large to small, of the Sumerian.  The regnal years of kings were identified by assigning a  name for a significant event of that year.

1 0.2.2  4 silà (še <gur> lugal 2 “barrels”, 2 “gallons” 4 “quarts”  of lillan-grain
2 níg-dab5-en-en-ne provisions for the Lords
3 é-HAR-ta from the mill
4 ki Arad2-ta from Arad
5 Ur-mes kaš-dé-dé Ur-mes, libator for ritual meals,
6 šu ba-ti received.
rev 7 iti dLi9-si4 Month IX
8 mu Ur-bí-/lumki ba-hul Year (named) ” The year Urbilum was destroyed.”

 

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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.

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Rare Books Goes to Utah State University!

23 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Rare Books Loans

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ailments, Alexa Sand, Andromachus, animal, antidotes, Antioch, antiquity, Arab, Arabic, aristocracy, artists, Athalus III, Avicenna, Baghdad, Barcelona, benefits, Bibliotheque National de France, binding, bites, border, Byzantine Renaissance, Cairo, climate, codex, Constantinople, court, covers, Criton, culture, display, doctor, drink, drugs, Egypt, Ellucasim Elimittar, exhibition, facsimile, food, formulas, French, fruits, Giovaninno de Grassi, grammarian, Graz, Greek, handbook, happiness, healing, health, Hebrew, Hellenistic, herbal, herbs, Homeric, household, hygiene, Ibn Butlan, illustration, Italian, Italy, King of Pergamum, Latin, layout, layperson, leather, magical, management, manual, Materia medica, medical, medicine, medieval, Merrill-Cazier Library, Mesopotamia, Middle Ages, mineral, miniatures, Mithridates, Moleiro, monk, movement, nature, Nero, Nestorian, Nicander of Colophon, observation, occidental, opium, pain, paper, patrician, Pedanius Dioskurides, pharmacological, physician, plants, poet, poisons, potions, publicity, rare books, reception, remedies, rest, Roman, sadness, samples, scholar, science, simples, sleep, Special Collections, stings, substances, symposium, Syria, Syrian, Theatrum sanitatis, therapeutic, toxicology, Trajan, Ububchasym of Baldach, University of Utah, Utah State University, vegetables, Venice, woman, wooden

Last semester, Rare Books loaned six of its medieval manuscript facsimiles to the Merrill-Cazier Library at Utah State University in collaboration with an art history course taught by Professor Alexa Sand. The upper-level course, “Special Topics Seminar in Medieval and Early Modern Art: Rare Books and Facsimiles,” provided a wide-ranging introduction to the interdisciplinary field of manuscript studies. The focus was the history of the codex from its advent in late Roman times to the early print era.

Each student selected a facsimile and researched its origins, history, and significance toward the final assignment of including it in a group-curated exhibition displayed in the library. The seminar concluded with a one-day symposium in which student researchers played an active role in discussion.

The materials selected for study related to botany and its medical and magical associations from late antiquity through the early modern period. Students prepared all aspects of the exhibition, from layout and display to publicity and the opening reception, working with Special Collections faculty and staff and Professor Sand.

Facsimiles on loan from Rare Books were:


Des Pedanius Dioskurides aus anazarbos arzneimittellehre in funf buchern
Ca. seventh century, Italy
Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1988
R126 D56 1988

Facsimile. This manuscript is one of the oldest in the tradition of Materia medica, a pharmacological treatise written by Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in the first century CE. Dioscorides’ work was used by the medieval world for centuries. In the sixth century it was translated into Latin and by the ninth century it had been translated into Arabic, Syrian and Hebrew. More than four hundred plants are described in this illustrated herbal manual, each illustration bordered in red ink. The binding of wooden covers and leather accords with the character of the original.


Theriaka y Alexipharmaka de Nicandro
Nicander of Colophon
Barcelona: Moleiro, 1997
QP41 N53 1997

Facsimile. The Greek text for this codex, produced in the tenth century, was written in Constantinople in the second century BCE. Nicander, a trusted doctor, poet, and grammarian served in the court of Athalus III, King of Pergamum. In Homeric-style verses, Nicander describes poisons caused by animal bites and stings and by the ingestion of plant, animal, and mineral substances. Antidotes are given for each type of poisoning. These nearly sixty formulas were later improved upon by Mithridates, who added opium and aromatic herbs to the potions. Nicander’s work was used by Criton, the doctor of Trajan, and Andromachus, Nero’s doctor, and is the oldest extant Greek text relating to toxicology. Using this text as his basis, Andromachus compiled a list of seventy-one curative remedies – a list used until the nineteenth-century as the panacea textbook for all and any poisonings. The tenth-century codex, a product of the Byzantine Renaissance, is the only remaining illuminated copy of Nicander’s poetry. The forty-one illustrations form a part of the Hellenistic artistic tradition. The original is now housed at the Bibliotheque National de France. Facsimile edition of nine hundred and eighty-seven copies. University of Utah copy is no. 469.


Theatrum sanitatis
Ububchasym of Baldach (d. ca. 1068 AD)
Eleventh Century
Barcelona: M. Moleiro, 1999
RS79 T46 1999

Facsimile. This handbook of health was written between 1052 and 1063 CE by the Arab scholar Ububshasym of Baldach, better known throughout medieval literature as Ellucasim Elimittar. Many of the concepts used in his writing were derived from earlier Greek, Roman, and Arabic medical treatises. Good health depended upon six essential factors: climate, food and drink, movement and rest, sleep and wakefulness, happiness, pain and sadness. Plants, fruits, vegetables, and basic hygiene also affect a person’s health. Ninety-nine of these and other elements are described with the therapeutic properties of each and the ailments that may be helped by them. The illustrations were influenced by the school of Giovannino de Grassi. Two hundred and eight red-framed, nearly full-page illuminations illustrate scenes from daily life as well as the elements described.


Tacuinum sanitatus in medicina.
Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1986
RS79 T335 1986

Facsimile. Northern Italy. This illuminated medical handbook was produced for a layperson – a woman of the upper aristocracy or of a rich patrician family able to read, and afford, a lavish book. A reference of sorts for the household management of health and healing, this type of book goes back to an Arab source written by the physician Ibn Butlan in the 11th century. The Arab art and science of healing decisively influenced occidental medicine and enjoyed a long-lived and distinguished reputation. The Latin translation, which made the codex accessible to the educated of the medieval western world, was widely known. Many copies survive. This particular copy is one of the finest of its kind, displaying over two hundred full-page miniatures of all that was considered important with regard to human health and well being. Beginning in the 14th century, the text was placed below an individual image. The evocative miniatures portray everyday life of late Medieval Italian culture. With a natural style and strong colors, two artists portrayed plants, animals, food, and drugs. All of the objects are within scenes centered upon a human. The text below each miniature describes both the benefits and shortfalls of the object depicted. Derived from the classical herbal tradition, but closely related to Arab manuscripts, the format follows a later western tradition. Bound in leather on wooden boards with hand stamping according to contemporary pattern.


Livre des simples medecines
Antwerp : De Schutter, 1984
QK99 A1 L58 1984 v.1

Facsimile. This late fifteenth-century manuscript is of what has become known as “Livre des Simple Medecines,” a major text of medieval science. Many manuscript copies of this work exist – at least twenty-three from the fifteenth century and one from the sixteenth century. It was first printed in 1488 and printed nine more times before 1548. In classic herbal format, Livre des simple medecines is an alphabetical list of “simples,” that is, unadulterated vegetable, mineral or animal products. Each entry provides a description and, among other things, its usefulness in treating ailments. Herbals as pharmacopeia began in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. The earliest surviving medical herbal is a work in Greek compiled by Pedianos Dioscorides. This work would dominate European herbals for the next fifteen centuries. It was translated into Arabic as early as the ninth century and influenced Avicenna and other physicians from the Arab world. Herbals were living works. That is, copyists, often practitioners of medicine themselves or copying for practitioners, would contribute to adapt or modify an herbal depending on new or different experience. In this tradition, the French translation here includes new sources such as ibn Butlan, an Arab physician, and others. The four hundred and fifty-seven illuminations in this copy, the Codex Bruxellensis IV, reveal an attempt by the artists to be faithful to nature. In this sense, the desire was to return to copying nature, instead of merely copying degraded illustrations from older herbals. Deliberate observation and representation of nature emerged in all forms of art in the fifteenth century. Codex Bruxellensis IV was copied onto paper. Written in maroon ink by a single hand sometime in the second half of the fifteenth century in a cursive script, the copy also contains marginal annotations by at least two sixteenth-century hands. An attempted pagination was added by a seventeenth-century hand. At some point in its history, one owner added dried samples of plants within its leaves. Facsimile edition of two thousand copies. The University of Utah copy is no. 316.


Tacuinum sanitatis/enchiridion virtutum vegetablilium, animalium, mineralium rerumque omnium: explicans naturam, iuvamentum, nocumentum remotionemque nocumentoru[m] eorum/ authore anonymo
Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1984 RS79 T33 1984

Facsimile. Venice, 1490. Tacuinum Sanitatis (Handbook of Health) is the modern title given to one of the most popular treatises on medicine during the later Middle Ages. It combines Arabic and western knowledge on many types of foods, plants, and circumstances, with particular reference to their useful and harmful properties, and how the latter could be cured if necessary. The illustrated versions of this text yield much information on medieval daily life. The manuscript is comprised of 82 leaves, with four miniatures per page, a total of 294 miniatures. The captions or text are based on the Taqwin al-sihhah of Ibn Butlan (d. 1066), which was unillustrated. Ibn Butlan, originally from Baghdad, visited Cairo about 1049, after which he went to Constantinople before settling at Antioch in Syria and becoming a Nestorian monk. Facsimile edition of nine hundred and eighty copies, numbered.

Photographs of people by Andrew McAllister/Caine College of the Arts, Utah State University

Digital scans of books by Scott Beadles/Department of Art, University of Utah

Special thanks to our colleague Jennifer Duncan, Head of Special Collections, Book Curator, Merrill Cazier Library, Utah State University.

 

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Pioneers of Science — Now Online

05 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Events

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Antoine Lavoisier, Carl Gauss, Charles Darwin, College of Mines and Earth Sciences, College of Science, Euclid, Frontiers of Science, Galileo, Isaac Newton, J. Willard Marriott Library, Johannes Kepler, Louis Pasteur, Luise Poulton, Marie Curie, Michael Faraday, Pioneers of Science, rare books, Scott Beadles, Special Collections, The University of Utah

photograph by Scott Beadles

“A library is as much a scientific instrument as a telescope.” — Luise Poulton

Pioneers of Science: Ten Thousand Pages That Shook the World now online.

Euclid’s Elements of Geometry was first printed in 1482, just as soon as one of the early masters of movable type figured out how to do it. Not only does the Marriott Library have this first edition, but also first editions of books by other pioneers of science: Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Galileo, Antoine Lavoisier, Carl Gauss, Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, Louis Pasteur, Marie Curie, and more. Each of these books has its own story to tell. Together they give insight into the communication, conversation, collaboration, and controversy that made science possible: a revolution that has been going on in print for more than five hundred years.

Presented for the 2017/2018 Frontiers of Science lecture series, College of Science and College of Mines and Earth Sciences, The University of Utah

Luise Poulton, Managing Curator, Rare Books, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah

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