Acceptance Remarks of Dr. Francine de Nave for the Plantin-Moretus Museum and the Municipal Printroom
“The Plantin-Moretus Museum: A Synthesis of its History, Treasures, Accomplishments, and Goals for the Future”
Ladies and Gentlemen:
As coordinating manager and director of the Plantin-Moretus Museum / Municipal Printroom, it is my pleasure to be with you this afternoon. I am very honored by your kind invitation to accept in person your highly esteemed Annual Award, which you have bestowed this year on the Plantin-Moretus Museum on the occasion of its 125th anniversary. I think that it is appropriate to mark this exceptional event by informing your very honorable company about the institution that you have distinguished, the Plantin-Moretus Museum, although many of you are probably familiar with it. Thus, in the following speech I will address three topics: 1) the museum’s history; 2) its treasures and collections; and 3) its significance, accomplishments, and goals for the future.
1. The Museum’s History Around 1440, Johannes Gensfleisch, alias Gutenberg, devised the means of printing with movable type in the western world. This process resulted in the first technical revolution that would help define the modern world. Within fifty years, this revolution swept through Europe, completely changing the diffusion and development of learning, sciences, knowledge of the economy, and intellectual life. Thanks to the new fabrication of books, knowledge that had previously been handed down and distributed through manuscripts could now be recorded in printed form in much greater quantities and at a lower price, thereby allowing it to be disseminated throughout broader levels of society. The rise of Humanism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and, two centuries later, the Enlightenment and the start of Democracy would not have been possible without the invention of printing. In other words, Gutenberg’s means of printing started the democratization of knowledge. His invention is, therefore, a milestone in history that changed the world. As one of the most important economic regions of Europe for typography, the practice was quickly taken up in the Low Countries by 1473. Eight years later, in 1481, Mathias van der Goes printed the first book in Antwerp.
By the mid-sixteenth century, Antwerp’s aura as a center for book production and the largest center for trade and the exchange of capital to the north of the Alps enticed the French bookbinder and leather craftsman, Christopher Plantin (Saint Avertin, near Tours, ca. 1520 – Antwerp, July 1st, 1589) to immigrate there from Paris. Registered as a citizen of the city on March 21st, 1550, Plantin wanted to establish himself as a printer. It took five years, however, before he gathered the necessary financial resources. The funds were probably provided by the heterodox sect “The House of Love”, which was interested in starting up a Press in the tolerant city of Antwerp for the distribution of the writings of its leader, Henrik Niclaes. Once he had the necessary capital, Plantin, who was then about thirty-five years old, started his printing and publishing career in 1555. Exceptionally intelligent and no less dynamic, as indicated by the motto he adopted in 1557, “Labore et Constantia”, Plantin developed an excellent reputation and created a modern integrated business, the “Golden Compass”, which, by ca. 1567, had become the most important Press in the world. Between 1568 and 1573, Plantin completed his masterpiece, the “Biblia Regia”, which was printed in five languages–Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syrian, and Chaldean or Aramaic–in eight folio volumes and was also provided with extensive commentaries and dictionaries beyond the text editions themselves. It was the largest polyglot bible produced in the sixteenth century and the biggest typographical undertaking by a single printer in the Low Countries. With this project, Plantin achieved the pinnacle of his career and his workshop flourished as never before, not only as a printing house, but also as a major humanist center in the western world.
With no less than 16 printing presses and 80 employees (20 typesetters, 32 printers and 3 proofreaders, in addition to domestic personnel and sales staff) the Officina Plantiniana was the biggest printing–publishing business and bookshop of its time and had an international clientele.
Through its internationally distributed production, which was superior visually and in terms of the quality of its contents, the Officina Plantinianacame to dominate the trade of books as far away as the Americas, North-Africa, and even in the Far East. The financial backbone of this capitalistic undertaking was the highly lucrative monopoly on the production and sale of liturgical and religious works for Spain and the Spanish colonies overseas, which Plantin, who had been named the royal printer on June 10th, 1570, had been granted by the Spanish king Philip II on February 1st, 1571. This trade with Spain declined after the Spanish Fury (Antwerp, December 4th-6th, 1576) and financial difficulties forced Plantin to begin working for those opposed to Spanish rule. In 1582, with the advance of Farnese and the impending siege of Antwerp, Plantin established another Press in Leiden. At the end of April 1583, as academic printer to the university (which he became on May 1st, 1583), he laid the foundations for academic publishing and book trade in the Dutch Republic. Nevertheless, he returned to Antwerp immediately after the capitulation of the city (on August 17th, 1585). Together with his son-in-law Jan Moretus I, he continued to re-build the Antwerp firm to such an extent that by the time he died on July 1st, 1589, it had become the most important printing-publishing business for the Counter-Reformation in the whole of the Low Countries.
Plantin’s enormous output in the course of his 34 years of activity–totaling ca. 2,450 titles, or an average of 72 editions a year–made him the first industrial printer in history. The quality of his production was always high, both in form and content. His output included religious (33.32%), humanist (35.47%), legal (1.65%) and historical (4.15%) publications, as well as musical scores and often pioneering studies in the field of geography (2.76%) and the sciences (7.37%)–botany, mathematics, astronomy, medicine and pharmacology, physics, and technology. As such, he was the first great publisher of Counter-Reformation literature and the most prolific printer of humanist, academic, and scientific publications of his time. In addition, however, he was also the most creative and productive printer–publisher of the second half of the sixteenth century and one of the greatest of all time. Moreover, his work also earned him a unique place in the development of typography as the first industrial printing entrepreneur in history. He consequently made a major contribution to the development of culture and book publishing and must thus be regarded as one of the great trailblazers of Western culture.
The credit for the continuance of the operations of Plantin’s enterprise into the second half of the 19th century must be given to the Moretuses. Following Plantin’s motto Labore et Constantia (“Through Work and Constancy”), Plantin’s descendants and successors, the Moretuses, were able to become the wealthiest residents of the city and its surroundings through rich marriages, business deals, and all manner of successful monetary speculations. Consequently, they were completely independent financially of their business income and enjoyed an opulent life-style once they entered the nobility in 1692. Nevertheless, the Moretuses continued to cherish and care for the old Plantin Press with all its treasures out of family piety until the last printer-entrepreneur of the Moretus dynasty, Edward Moretus, closed the book on three hundred years of printing on April 20th, 1876. To insure that the family estate should remain as the Plantin-Moretus Museum, the Officina Plantiniana, together with its buildings, grounds, and all its household effects, was sold to the city of Antwerp.
For a total sum of 1,200,000 BEF, including 230,000 BEF in the form of a government grant, the Plantin Press was preserved for future generations as the Plantin–Moretus Museum. The majority of the real estate (23/30th) became state property, while the moveable goods became part of Antwerp’s patrimony. As a result, the old Plantin House, still completely intact as a splendidly furnished mansion and fully equipped publishing and printing office, changed not only ownership but also purpose. After the completion of a number of alterations to accommodate museum visitors, the institution was opened to the public on August 19th, 1877.
2. Unique collections in a unique house: the treasures of the Plantin-Moretus Museum The Plantin-Moretus Museum provides us with one of the finest examples of a stately patrician residence from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. However, the Plantin-Moretus Museum is known not only as such but is famous primarily as a unique fully equipped printing business preserved as it was in the Renaissance and Baroque periods.
The world-famous Plantin-Moretus Museum offers the only original examples of the technique of printing as it was practiced since the middle of the 15th century. Indeed, as a unique and harmonious combination of a patrician residence and business, the Plantin–Moretus Museum houses, in its original historic setting, an exceptionally rich and diverse typographical collection, unequalled in the world.
The focal point of this collection are the two oldest preserved printing presses in the world. Apart from these presses, dating from approximately 1600, there are no less than five Blaeu-type wooden printing presses from the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as a press for intaglio printing dating from 1714.
In the typographical collection the type founding equipment, principally from the 16th and 17th centuries, is well represented both in terms of quality and quantity. No fewer than 278 moulds, 4,477 punches and 15,825 matrices form the equipment needed for the production of around 80 different letter types, including Greek, Hebrew, Syrian, and Ethiopian styles of letters, in addition to the beautiful 16th-century civilité-letter, which Plantin introduced into the Low Countries. Without question, the Museum’s typographical collection is, for the 16th century, unequalled in the world.
In addition, the book illustration materials from the same period, comprising some 650 drawings, 2,846 copperplates, and 13,791 wood blocks, form not only a unique typographical collection but also an exceptionally rich art collection. In the collection of drawings, Antwerp’s greatest masters from the 16th and 17th centuries are represented, featuring in particular Pieter Paul Rubens, the universal genius who established Antwerp’s fame as a city of art forever.
Equally exceptional is the fact that the business and household archives are preserved here. Dating back to 1555 and comprising a nearly continuous series of records from 1563 to 1865, the more than 158 running meters of registers, bundles, and individual pieces provide an incredible wealth of detailed and accurate data. Consequently, the archives are an inexhaustible source for the study of the history of the book, as well as of the artistic, cultural, business, and socio–economic life of Antwerp and the Low Countries in particular, and of Europe in general. The archives of theOfficina Plantiniana are, therefore, more than an account of the fortunes of this large capitalist enterprise: they also reflect and are part of major European cultural currents. That is why this documentary heritage was included as the first Benelux entry–and one of the very few from Europe–on the UNESCO “Memory of the World” Register on September 4th, 2001, a distinction that was celebrated on November 30th, 2001, in the museum with the Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information of the UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization), Mr. Abdul Waheed Khan.
There is also the business’s production, which is housed in the old library. Established at the end of 1563 by Plantin as a working library for the Press, it was expanded by his bibliophile successors into a richly diversified private library. It is one of the very rare private book collections in the Low Countries that was built-up by one family and is preserved in its original surroundings! Due in part to the acquisition policies of the succeeding curators, it now contains some 25,000 volumes of early printed books and is exceptionally diverse in its holdings: 638 manuscripts (9th-16th centuries) and 154 incunabula (books printed before 1501), including the only copy of the 36 line Gutenberg Bible preserved in Belgium–this Bible was printed in Bamberg before 1461 with material that belonged to Johannes Gutenberg and possibly under his supervision. In addition, the library also contains a significant number of “post-incunabula” (books printed between 1501 and 1540) and is internationally regarded as the most complete single collection of Plantin and Moretus publications, as it contains more than 90% of their total production. In addition, it reflects the history of the art of printing and bookbinding in Antwerp from the late 15th century to around 1800 and constitutes one of the most important collections in this field.
Finally the unique and fully equipped workrooms –the type-foundry (1622), the printing office (1579), the proofreading room (ca. 1700), the book shop (ca. 1700), and the office (ca. 1576)– the like of which can be seen no where else in the world in their original state, give the Plantin–Moretus Museum its own, incomparable character.
3. A protected monument with a destination as a museum forever: the accomplishments and goals for the future of the Plantin-Moretus Museum The exceptional character of the Plantin–Moretus Museum makes it the crown jewel among the museums of Antwerp and the most authentic attraction among the world’s typographical museums. Simultaneously, because of its unique collections and archives –exceptional the world over for records of a printing and publishing house from the middle of the 16th through the second half of the 19th century– the Plantin-Moretus Museum is today an important research center for the study of printing in Europe and the Low Countries in the 16th and 17th centuries and, naturally, for the production of the Officina Plantiniana in particular.
Because of its unique character and the immense value of its building and collections, the Plantin-Moretus Museum has been recognized as a cultural patrimony of exceptional value and was designated as a protected monument by a decree from July 10th, 1997, by the Flemish minister of culture. In order to insure the recognition of the whole as a museum, the Flemish Community transferred its ownership of the 23/30th part of the property to the city of Antwerp on December 2nd, 1998. One condition of this transfer requires the government of Antwerp to respect its designation as a museum forever. This was explicitly stated by the Board of Aldermen and the City Council in their decisions of October 2nd and November 24th, 1997. Consequently, the museum must be recognized as such.
In 1974, ICOM (International Council of Museums) adopted the following definition of a museum, namely, as “a permanent institution at the service of the community and her development, accessible to the public, not aimed at making benefits, acquiring the material testimonies of man and his environment, preserving them, doing research on them, showing and commenting on them for purposes of study, education and pleasure.” The Plantin-Moretus Museum tries to fulfill a stimulating and motivating social role on local, regional, and international levels. As the Plantin-Moretus Museum is one of the main tourist attractions of Antwerp with an average of 100,000 visitors a year, we wish to take up and fulfill its social responsibility in the coming years. In addition, we are determined to keep the institution’s extremely rich cultural patrimony, already preserved for more than four centuries, intact for future generations.
More than ever, a priority is being given to providing public services. This fundamental aim will largely take the form of improved access to the collections and archives via computer and in extending educational services, underpinned by an active exhibition policy.
Moreover, we wish to play a continuing role in the dissemination of knowledge of the old typographic and graphic techniques in the multimedia society of the future. Thus, aside from organizing workshops for students, we are working together with the graphic school of the Plantin Society, which combines knowledge of older techniques with the study of the very recent evolution of graphic and typographical technologies. The courses organized by this institution are financed entirely with the support of several companies in the area of Antwerp, in particular, the Agfa-Gevaert Company. As such, the Plantin Society is acting as an intermediary between the Plantin–Moretus Museum and the graphic industry. These courses also add a new dimension to the museum’s identity. While the museum collections and research based upon them necessarily remain restricted to typographical techniques from pre-1800, is it possible to examine the subsequent and most recent aspects of graphic arts and the industry around it in these courses, designed for an interested public. This combination of old and new can also generate new quality. For example, famous international letter designers search out letter types from the typographical treasures of the museum in order to polish them op for the digital area.
Through these activities, we wish to implement the fundamental objective of the Plantin–Moretus Museum, namely, to support the study of the development of the book and prints as one of the most fascinating aspects of European civilization and connect this with the newest realizations in the exploding field of communication technology. In the coming years, we at the Plantin-Moretus Museum hope to investigate the development of 16th and 17th-century book and print production, as culture-generating media technologies at work since the 15th century, by drawing upon the precious heritage of the old Officina Plantiniana and linking it to the most recent realizations in the exploding field of communication technologies. We will thereby give a new significance and meaning to the museum’s collections.
In this way, the Plantin-Moretus Museum, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, will maintain a true interaction with society through a contemporary, renewing, inventive, and interdisciplinary approach, which already has been praised as a model during the conference “Le livre exposé. Enjeux et methodes d’une muséographie de l’écrit”, organized in Lyon in November 1999 by the Council of Europe and ENSSIB (Ecole nationale supérieure des sciences de l’information et des bibliothèques).
Due to the exceptional importance of its patrimony and its great cultural value these many years, the Plantin–Moretus Museum was also recognized by the Flemish Minister of Culture on February 15th, 1999, and designated as a museum of international importance in the Flemish museum landscape.
Since 1997, the Plantin-Moretus Museum has also been recognized far beyond the Belgian borders, in particular, in the Far East by the Japanese Toppan Printing Company Ltd. in Tokyo, whose activities and reputation extend world-wide. This resulted in an agreement to work together on April 13th, 1999.
Today, the Plantin-Moretus Museum is the honored recipient of the highly esteemed Award that, since 1976, the American Printing History Association has been giving to an institution for “distinguished contributions to the study, recording, preservation, or dissemination of printing history”. It is my pleasure to accept this Award that following the UNESCO designation, is the second major contribution to the prestige of the Plantin–Moretus Museum in a very short time.
Thank you.
Dr. Francine de Nave Administrative coordinator and Director The Plantin-Moretus Museum and the Municipal Printroom, Antwerp, Belgium
Dr. de Nave is author of Het Museum Plantin-Moretus te Antwerpen (Antwerp: Museum Plantin-Moretus, 1985), describing the library and archives.
Posted with the author’s permission. Copyright remains with the author.
Acceptance Remarks of Richard L. Hopkins for the American Typecasting Fellowship
Note: APHA presented its 2004 Institutional Award to the American Typecasting Fellowship, represented by Richard L. Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins, editor and publisher of the ATF Newsletter, spoke without notes using a Powerpoint presentation at APHA’s annual meeting held at the New York Public Library on January 24, 2004. The following notes were the basis for his off-the-cuff remarks, and have been expanded and slightly revised for presentation on the web.
What Is the American Typecasting Fellowship?
From the outset, I express my profound thanks to the American Printing History Association for selecting the American Typecasting Fellowship to be recipient of its 2004 Laureate Award for “a distinguished contribution to the study, recording, preservation or dissemination of printing history.” I am honored to be here among you to accept the award.
Since I suspect many of you have never heard of our organization, I will attempt to explain who we are. I can take credit for founding the American Typecasting Fellowship simply because I was the one who called the first meeting of typecasting enthusiasts together back in 1978. I was acting upon the consuming fascination I had with metal type–something which had “infested” me when I was in the seventh grade in 1953. By 1978 I had acquired my own Monotype system and had been successfully casting type for about seven years.
The reason I called the group together was simple: I knew there were other individuals “out there” who shared my fascination with type, and I wanted to bring them together to see if we might have a common bond. Thirty persons attended that first Conference, and it proved to be a “little gift from God to all of us,” for we found there was an intense common bond. Some were on such a “high” they never went to bed for three days. Instead, they stayed up through the nights, with non-stop chatter about Monotype machines, type designers, type designs, engraving mats, electro-depositing mats, three-phase electricity, converting machines from natural gas to LP gas, and all the other “in-between” stuff you get into when you become your own typecaster.
At one point during the meeting, I was on an errand to a nearby LP gas supplier to obtain hoses and couplings so we could hook up an ancient Bruce pivotal caster brought by Pat Taylor in pieces, strapped to the top of his sub-compact car. (I believe it had originally belonged to Ben Lieberman, a founder of APHA.) Pat and others had assembled the machine in my garage and they wanted to make type with it–and they did! But I’ve gotten off track. While I was out seeking these supplies, a group headed by Harold Berliner decided to name the organization and set up its by-laws. There was a good amount of alcohol involved, and the original text was scribbled on the back of an envelope. Here is what they came up with:
“Article I. The name of this association is the American Typecasting Fellowship. “Article II. There will be no officers of this association. “Article III. There will be two committees: a meeting committee and a communications committee. “Article IV. There will be no dues and the committees are urged to use their imagination in raising what little money they need for expenses. “Article V. There will be no other by-laws.”
Clearly, no one had vision of a “continuing organization.” I promised those in attendance that I would forward to them all a listing of discontinued American Type Founders faces which I had pulled from the 1959 ATF specimen book, along with a list of those in attendance. Hence, I put together my first edition of the ATF Newsletter, a combination of four 8.5×11 pages letterpressed and six offset.
Over the ensuing years, the only things which have held our organization together have been (a) the Newsletter, which I have continued to publish about once a year, and (b) our biennial meetings, called “Conferences,” which have ranged from Oxford, England, to Provo, Utah, and several places in between. From the outset, my single goal has been a strong orientation toward typecasting (and linecasting) equipment, its use, its maintenance, and proper care. On occasion the organization has strayed into the realm of what I call “bookish” venues, but I always have tried to pull us back to this central focus of using type-making equipment.
After two issues, I changed the format of my ATF Newsletter to a 7×10 page size so I could do it two pages at a time on my 10×15 Heidelberg windmill. I now also am a professional printer, so I’ll confess to having done several issues via offset, but there’s always been a thrust to try to do as much as possible hot metal. After all, that’s why we exist, right? And yes, my issues have, at times, become quite “bookish.” But also in these issues you’ll see articles about how to readjust a Monotype bridge, how to clean the waterways in a mold, or other down-to-earth practical discussions. I have neglected Linecasters and Ludlow machines only because their users only infrequently have come forward with articles; I have knowledge of these machines but don’t feel qualified to write “how-to” articles. TheNewsletter generally ranges around 40 pages per issue, so perhaps I should not have stayed with the name for indeed, as the samples I have with me will demonstrate, the publication is closer to a “scholarly journal,” as haughty and repugnant as that term might seem to me personally.
I insist there is absolutely nothing impressive about a dead, dusty, greasy Monotype machine sitting in the corner of a museum. The same can be said about a Linotype machine. But it is astonishing how animated and intrigued people become when they see one of these machines in operation. Way back when I was a college typography professor, my students, when visiting typography shops in Pittsburgh, always lingered in the hot metal departments, but scarcely raised an eyebrow when facing a big beige box described as a phototypesetting system.
I firmly believe the massive amount of human engineering, innovation, and sheer blood, sweat and tears, involved in the development and perfection of these devices–the technology, if you will–is just as important for preservation as the machines themselves. That’s what ATF is all about. There is a side benefit to this–the supplying of fresh type to those who continue to pop up as “private printers” or “private pressmen.” Without our typecasting efforts, soon their presses would all become silent.
Several of our ATF conference have had sessions regarding matters of equipment disposition, and the “training of a new generation of typecasters.” I personally had no instruction from a so-called “professional”; I taught myself how to use my Monotype machine in 1971. But many associates of ATF (keep in mind, we have no members!) were either typecasters by profession, or received their knowledge by working with professionals. In my Newsletter in 1994, I put out the call to start offering classes, but few responded. So I asked my good friends Paul Duensing and Roy Rice if they would help me with a week-long hands-on session with Monotype machines. They agreed and we took on our first four students. Somewhere along the line, Paul Duensing labeled the session “Monotype University.” That was in 1995. Since then, we have conducted sessions every two years and now have 26 graduates. More importantly, we have a new generation of typecasters enthusiastic enough to seek out and obtain their own equipment, and use it. There’s nothing more gratifying to me than receiving a small package in the mail containing a couple lines of type cast on a new machine by a graduate of Monotype University.
Thus, one might conclude that the American Typecasting Fellowship is trying to live up to the honor of this APHA laureate by both recording typecasting history and technology in its Newsletter, and by passing essential information among its members (especially via e-mail) and on to a new generation of typecasting enthusiasts. Perhaps our lack of formal organization is to our great advantage? Time will tell.
I am most gratified that the American Printing History Association has seen fit to name the American Typecasting Fellowship as recipient of the “institutional laureate” for 2004. The award states we’ve been “a significant contributor to the preservation of printing history” and I concur. It’s been our goal from the outset, with our quirky little angle of keeping the machinery that helped build this industry alive and operational. Words on paper are not adequate for the preservation of printing history. We seek to keep alive the machines and their technology, complete with their smoke, grease, and occasional metal splashes. Your laureate gives us a bit of self-satisfaction and encouragement, and for that we remain most grateful.
Richard L. Hopkins, American Typecasting Fellowship 23 January 2004 Posted with the author’s permission. Copyright remains with the author.
Interested persons may contact ATF and Rich Hopkins by writing directly: Richard L. Hopkins, P. O. Box 263, Terra Alta, West Virginia 26764. E-mail wvtypenut @aol.com.
The 2005 Institutional Award will be presented to the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia for its impressive contributions to the field of printing history. In the 55 years of its existence the Society has produced over 175 separate publications, in addition to the 54 volumes of its renowned Studies in Bibliography, which provide a wide range of scholarly articles on bibliographical and textual criticism. Indeed, the Society considers itself “a forum for the best textual and bibliographical work being done anywhere in the world.” G. Thomas Tanselle, the distinguished scholar and its former president, will accept the award on behalf of the Society.
Acceptance Remarks of G. Thomas Tanselle, President of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia
Note: APHA presented its 2005 Institutional Award to the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia. These acceptance remarks were delivered at APHA’s annual meeting held at the New York Public Library on January 24, 2004, and have been slightly revised for presentation on the web.
I am delighted to accept APHA’s Institutional Award for 2005 on behalf of the council, staff, and membership of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia. The Society’s latest accomplishments are owing to the devoted work of an outstanding council and staff. Simply to list our councilors’ names indicates the quality of support that we enjoy: Terry Belanger, Ruthe Battestin, Kathryn Morgan, David Seaman, David Vander Meulen, and Karin Wittenborg. You will recognize from this roster that we are well connected to the worlds of librarianship, physical bibliography, literary scholarship, book collecting, and the electronic dissemination of texts. And I cannot imagine a staff more congenial, involved, and effective than ours, consisting of Elizabeth Lynch, assistant to the editor of Studies in Bibliography, and Anne Ribble, the secretary-treasurer. I bring you the gratitude of all these people for the honor you have given us.
This year the Society is fifty-eight years old, and it is fortunate to have had similar groups of complementary individuals looking after its welfare from the beginning. I will not attempt on this occasion to recount the history of the Society–which has in any case already been admirably told by David Vander Meulen, in a volume that should be read by all who are interested in the history of the book world in the twentieth century. But I would like to name a few of the persons to whom the Society has been most indebted over the years. The interconnections among all parts of the world of books are strikingly shown by the triumvirate that played the leading roles in the Society’s earliest days: Fredson Bowers, a literary scholar who became the dominant figure in bibliographical and textual scholarship for the next four decades (2005, by the way, is the centenary of his birth); Linton R. Massey, an important collector whose financial support for the Society was for many years crucial to its survival; and John Cook Wyllie, a rare-book librarian whose insight into bibliographical evidence inspired several generations of students and enriched the collections of the University of Virginia Library.
Their worthy successors have included Irby B. Cauthen, Jr., Ray Frantz, Julius Barclay, Anne Ehrenpreis, Walker Cowen, Mary Massey, and three others that I want to single out for comment. One is John T. Casteen, president of the University of Virginia, whose interest in the work of the Society has led to financial support from the Alumni Association. Another is Kendon Stubbs, a former president of the Society and a long-time deputy university librarian, whose concern for all aspects of our organization was indicative of the kind of intelligence, both visionary and practical, that he brought to many university endeavors–so many that in 1998 he was given the Thomas Jefferson Award, the highest honor bestowed by the University of Virginia. The third person is David Vander Meulen, Fredson Bowers’s successor in the Virginia English department and as editor of Studies in Bibliography, the annual volume founded by Bowers as s Society publication in 1948. Vander Meulen, with tireless dedication, has maintained the great tradition of this journal, and he continues to duplicate this feat every year, along with overseeing the Society’s other publications and handling many additional details as the Society’s vice president.
From the beginning, the Society’s publication program has been its major activity, and the annual appearance of Studies in Bibliography quickly became, and has remained, a major event in the international bibliographical world. The mystique surrounding SB is suggested by Robin Myers’s comment, on the occasion of the Society’s fiftieth anniversary, that this “very special publication” causes “a yearly frisson of pleasure as it thuds down on bibliographical doormats everywhere.” Further recent indication of the prominence of SB was the fact that it was one of five scholarly journals selected for discussion in the latest “Learned Journals” issue of the London Times Literary Supplement (5 November 2004), where David McKitterick noted that the journal is both forward-looking and conscious of bibliographical history and biography. The journal has always been international in its roll of contributors, which has included many of the major scholars in the field, such as (to name only a dozen) Fleeman, Foxon, Gaskell, Greg, Hinman, Kyriss, McKenzie, Needham, Silver, Stevenson, Todd, and Alice Walker (plus Bowers and Vander Meulen themselves). And the subject matter treated has been similarly cosmopolitan, ranging from fifteenth-century European books to twentieth-century American ones, from medieval manuscripts to modern literary holographs, from the physical analysis of books (an area in which SB holds a particularly historic place) to the theory and practice of textual criticism and scholarly editing. The journal has also published, from the start, articles dealing with book publication and reception–the kind of work that now falls under the rubric “history of the book.” David Vander Meulen, besides continuing this tradition, has increased the journal’s attention to bibliographical history, having recently published biographical studies of Bowers, Stevenson, Fleeman, Foxon, and Ridolfi, as well as McKerrow’s unpublished 1928 Sandars Lectures, on the relation of Renaissance printed books to authors’ manuscripts, and Gordon N. Ray’s unpublished 1985 Lyell Lectures on the Art Deco book in France (which still make a significant contribution to their subject). (I might add, parenthetically, that the unparochial nature of SB reflects the diversity, both geographical and intellectual, of the Society’s membership, and indeed its leaders: my presidency, for instance, symbolizes–since I have no connection with the University of Virginia–the fact that the Society, despite its name, is more than a local organization.)
If SB–or “Studies,” as it is more often called within the Society–is the centerpiece of the Society’s publication program, it is not the only element in our commitment to the dissemination of scholarship. We take pride in the fact that the Society has published over 175 other works, and I can give a flavor of what this accomplishment amounts to by naming a few of the landmarks. Paul Morrison in 1950 and 1955 published indexes to the printers, publishers, and booksellers in the Pollard-Redgrave Short-Title Catalogue and in Wing; Charles C. Mish brought out in 1967 his final version of a listing of seventeenth-century English prose fiction; and Roger Bristol published in 1970-71 the final revision of his supplement to Evans’sAmerican Bibliography. Although Morrison’s work was superseded by the third volume of Pantzer’s STC revision, and although all three are now superseded by the electronic English Short-Title Catalogue, they served a crucial function for many years. D. F. McKenzie’s Stationers’ Company Apprentices, 1605-1640 (1961) was the first book of this major bibliographical scholar; and Rollo G. Silver’s Typefounding in America, 1787-1825 (1965) and The American Printer, 1787-1825 (1967) were the two main books of one of the premier historians of American printing (and the second recipient of an APHA Individual Award). B. C. Bloomfield’s 1964 descriptive bibliography of Auden, especially as revised with Edward Mendelson in 1972, is generally regarded as one of the models for twentieth-century author bibliography (a cause also promoted by a series of descriptive bibliographies named in honor of Linton Massey). A substantial collection of Bowers’s essays, published in 1975, has been one of the Society’s most often cited books. And two distinctive instances of the responsible publication of facsimiles, which demonstrate the scholarly contributions that can be made by such editions, are G. Blakemore Evans’s eight-volume series of Shakespearean Prompt-Books of the Seventeenth Century (1960-96) and David Vander Meulen’s exemplary historical study of Pope’s “Dunciad” of 1728 (1991).
In recent years the Society’s publication program has taken full advantage of the possibilities for electronic dissemination on the internet. One of Kendon Stubbs’s many services to the Society was to get us started on this venture, and since then we have been expertly assisted by David Seaman, Matthew Gibson, and the staff of Virginia’s Electronic Text Center. We were able to announce, at the Society’s fiftieth-anniversary gala, that the full run of Studies in Bibliography was accessible to all readers on the Society’s website. I believe we can correctly claim that SB is the first scholarly journal with a long run to be made available in its entirety and free of charge on the internet. And it can now be read in ebook form as well. Our program of electronic publications includes not only other previously published works but also new works, such as Emily Lorraine de Montluzin’s record of attributions of authorship in the Gentleman’s Magazine, and supplementary material to accompany contributions to SB, such as the illustrations for Gordon Ray’s study of the French Art Deco book.
If the Society’s influential presence in the bibliographical world comes largely through its printed and electronic publications, it does sponsor other activities for a local audience in Charlottesville. From the beginning the Society has held a student book-collecting contest, which now brings to the winners not only the monetary prizes provided by the Society but also a number of gift certificates from booksellers, an exhibition in the library, publicity in the newspapers, and a special session with the curator of rare books–plus, for the first-place winner, a tuition-free class in Terry Belanger’s Rare Book School. The Society’s meetings in recent years have also recognized the importance of encouraging bibliographical work among students. In alternating years graduate students are asked to read papers on bibliographical and textual subjects–and in the intervening years Virginia faculty members report on their work in these areas.
This APHA award brings welcome attention to all these activities of the Society. But there is one other aspect of the award that I want to mention: that it comes from an organization with the word “history” in its name. Some of the work supported by our Society would of course be considered “history” under anyone’s definition. That bibliographical scholarship is necessarily historical scholarship, however, is not always recognized. To me, this situation is epitomized by the fact that listings of scholarship in book history rarely include work in bibliographical analysis, even though such analysis has repeatedly uncovered facts of printing history–facts that are just as much a part of the full story of each book’s life as are publishers’ marketing decisions and readers’ responses. People sometimes have claimed that analytical bibliography–that is, the activity of examining the manufacturing clues present in printed artifacts like books and ephemera–involves too much interpretation to result in solid facts, such as those supposedly derived from archival records. The answer to this claim is that the products of the printing press are part of the archival record and that whatever difficulties they pose for interpretation are matched by those present in other archives, such as printers’ and publishers’ papers and ledgers.
Every category of surviving artifact requires informed judgment for its decipherment, and what we call historical facts are always the result of an interpretive process and thus subject to future refutation. Much of what we wish to extrapolate from tangible evidence–and therefore much of what we regularly call “history”–consists of past events: that is, the actions and thoughts of particular individuals at certain times. Reconstructing the activities of compositors and pressmen on specific occasions (or, indeed, the intentions of authors at specific times) is no different from the myriad other acts of hypothesizing that historical knowledge is made of. We in the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia are therefore particularly gratified that a printing history association has again chosen to recognize the activities of a bibliographical society, and we thank you very much.
G. Thomas Tanselle President of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia 29 January 2005
Posted with the author’s permission. Copyright remains with the author.
Introduction of the John Carter Brown Library’s Director, Norman Fiering Introductory remarks by David R. Whitesell
When in 1552 Francisco López de Gómara dedicated his history of the conquest of Mexico to Charles V, he said: “Most excellent Lord[,] the greatest event since the creation of the world … is the discovery of the [Americas].” His comment was echoed two centuries later by Adam Smith, who probably did not realize how prescient these 1776 remarks would be: “[T]he discovery of America, and that of a passage to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, are the two greatest and most important events recorded in the history of mankind.”
Although quick to import and exploit the New World’s resources, Europe was slow to export one of its own chief resources: printing. A press was established in Mexico by 1539, Peru by 1584, and Cambridge by 1640, but many locales in the vast American hemisphere did without during much of the colonial period. Efforts to collect, preserve, and study the printing history of the Americas were likewise delayed until undertaken by pioneers such as Thomas Prince and Isaiah Thomas.
From its founding in 1846 as the private collection of John Carter Brown—and since 1901 an independent center for advanced research in history and the humanities located at Brown University—the John Carter Brown Library has been at the forefront of these efforts. That the JCB has carefully assembled what is probably the world’s finest collection of primary printed sources pertaining to the discovery, exploration, and history of the colonial Americas—North and South—might be reason enough for an award. But the JCB and its dedicated staff have consistently excelled in applying these unequalled resources to the practice of printing history.
The contributions of George Parker Winship, Lawrence C. Wroth, and Thomas R. Adams—to mention only a few JCB staff—to the history and bibliography of colonial North American printing and cartography are well known. Of equal importance are the JCB’s model fellowship and exhibition programs, which have enabled scholars from around the world to study its holdings and to disseminate their findings, not only in books and articles, but in exhibition catalogs of permanent value. Knowing that American imprints are usefully studied in conjunction with their European counterparts, the JCB has long paid these close attention, culminating in the monumental six-volume bibliography, European Americana.
More recently, under the direction of Norman Fiering, the JCB has done much to cultivate “book history” in Latin America. In 1987 the JCB hosted a landmark conference on “The Book in the Americas,” and I am sure that many of you have seen the superb traveling exhibition and catalog which complemented it. The JCB has also been enlarging its enviable holdings of Latin American and Brazilian imprints, which it plans to document in several forthcoming book catalogs. By cataloging these to the highest standards, and by sharing the information with bibliographical databases such as the online Latin American STC, the JCB is once again laying the groundwork which will pay rich scholarly dividends.
For over 150 years the John Carter Brown Library has made printing history its special province, an enduring achievement which the AmericanPrinting History Association gratefully recognizes with this award.
Acceptance Remarks of Norman Fiering, Library Director Note: APHA presented its 2006 Institutional Award to the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University for its leadership in collecting, preserving, and promoting the printing history of the colonial Americas, North and South. [Read the citation.]
These acceptance remarks were delivered by Library Director Norman Fiering at APHA’s annual meeting held at the New York Public Library on January 28, 2006, and have been slightly revised for presentation on the web.
On behalf of the JCB, I want to express our gratitude for this recognition from APHA. I hope I do not appear immodest when I say that, taking the long view, the Library deserves it, and not because of anything that has happened there since I have been the Director, although I have tried to do my part.
APHA is 30-some years old; the JCB is more than 150 years old, and so strong is the tradition at the Library of attention to printing history that one might say that the JCB was a division of the American Printing History Association before there was such an Association.
One thinks immediately, of course, of two of my predecessors, George Parker Winship and Lawrence Wroth, whose combined service at the head of the JCB covers about fifty years. Their contributions to the field in the first half of the 20th century were seminal. Some of Winship’s most fundamental work was done after he had moved from the John Carter Brown Library in 1915 and taken a post at Harvard, but he left an indelible impression on the Library (to use a printing metaphor).
For Winship, I am thinking, for example, of “Early Mexican Printers,” published in 1899; Rhode Island Imprints, 1727-1840, published in 1914; “French Newspapers in the U. S., 1790 to 1800 ” (1920); Gutenberg to Plantin: An Outline of the Early History of Printing (1926); and most well known, perhaps, The Cambridge Press, 1638-1692, published in 1945.
Wroth was thirteen years younger than Winship and came to the JCB in 1923. His Printing in Colonial Maryland had appeared the year before. His work on Abel Buell of Connecticut, the first type-cutter and caster in English America, appeared in 1926. And in1931, he published his much esteemed The Colonial Printer, which concerned British America, but like Winship, Wroth was hemispheric in outlook. He wrote on the book arts in early Mexico, and on the origins of typefounding in North and South America. He was also keenly interested in prints and maps, and in 1946, with Marian Adams, published a catalogue of American Woodcuts and Engravings.
The tradition at the JCB goes back even earlier, to John Russell Bartlett, the first librarian, less well known than his successors, perhaps, but an extraordinary bookman in every sense. He served as John Carter Brown’s personal librarian from 1855 until Brown’s death in 1874 and then continued in that role for John Carter Brown’s widow and sons until his own death in 1886.
Bartlett compiled the first catalogues of the John Carter Brown Library, known as the Bibliotheca Americana, beginning in 1865. Those early catalogues remain splendid examples of bookmaking, aside from their exemplary content as bibliographical records. The catalogues were awarded a medal at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876.
During most of the years that Bartlett served the Brown family as librarian, he was at the same time the elected Secretary of State of Rhode Island, offering estimable service in that post, among other things assembling for the first time the earliest archives of the state and publishing them in ten volumes under the title, Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations 1636-1792. That Bartlett arranged to have fifty copies of this publication printed on large paper, at his own expense, shows a consciousness of the importance of presentation.
Bartlett was always into projects, as a lexicographer, historian, bookseller, documentary editor, bibliographer, extra-illustrator, and distinguished artist. We will be publishing this spring a brief autobiographical memoir left by Bartlett, which records a life of remarkable accomplishment.
I want to quote from a not untypical page, representing Bartlett’s unflagging energy and enterprise:
When the late rebellion broke out [i.e., the Civil War], I commenced the collection of slips from the newspapers relating to it. I thought the war might last about a year; nevertheless, having begun the work, I continued it, scarcely omitting a day without clipping & pasting. I think that I labored on an average three hours a day for four years.
After mentioning the several newspapers from which he clipped articles, he continued:
At the same time, I collected all the pamphlets and books appertaining to the war that I could lay my hands on. . . . My collection finally increased so much that towards the end of the war, I found that a catalogue was necessary, in order that I might know what I had. I therefore with much labor made a catalogue. When it was completed, I thought it would be better for me to include in it every thing that had been published relating to the war, whether I owned it or not. I accordingly carried out this plan, and furthermore included in it the titles of all publications appertaining to American Slavery. This seemed properly to belong to the subject, as it was the cause of the war, while emancipation was its result. Then, in order that others might derive benefit from my labors, I published the catalogue, under the title, The Literature of the Rebellion. . . .
We see in this account that familiar, quite logical sequence, one act leading to the other, almost like destiny: collecting, cataloguing, publishing. That catalogue of works relating to the Civil War came to a massive 477 pages, and once more, Bartlett tells us regarding presentation: “Of this work 250 copies were printed in royal 8vo, and 80 copies in 4to.”
In this instance, Bartlett was primarily interested in content, not in the history of printing as such, but he was immersed in print throughout his life, a phenomenon not uncommon in the second half of the nineteenth century, which was, in my opinion, the high point of book culture in the West.
Book collecting and cataloguing are obviously a kind of preparation for the study of the history of printing, as such, a point that I will come back to.
One of Bartlett’s specialties was extra-illustration, the original hyper-text, taken literally. He could expand a work of two volumes into a work of ten volumes with his left hand, and did so in several instances. He lists in his memoir 21 books to which he gave this treatment. For example:
Bryan’s Dictionary of Painters and Sculptors, 2 vols, extended to ten volumes with 2,000 illustrations. Marshall’s Life of Washington, 5 vols. Extended to ten volumes. Drake’s Dictionary of American Biography, 1 vol., extended to 7 volumes, with 1,135 portraits.
Enough about Bartlett for the moment.
Again going back to the beginning of the 20th century, and the JCB as a proto- division of APHA, there is Daniel Berkeley Updike, the founder of the Merrymount Press and the author of Printing Types, Their History, Forms, and Use (1922), in two volumes, a work that has been referred to as the printers’ bible.
Updike was a close friend of one of John Carter Brown’s sons, Harold Brown, who died prematurely in 1900 at age 35, and because of that association, as well as for other reasons, Updike did all of the early printing for the JCB.
At the Library we take for granted these productions for forty years by our “house printer,” so to speak, but Updike collectors are dazzled. In 1916 Updike joined the Board of Governors of the Library, at that time called the Committee of Management and consisting of only five persons. He remained a member of the Committee, and thus was intimately associated with the JCB, until just before his death in December 1941.
In 1935, Updike gave the JCB a bible printed at Lyons in 1550 by Sebastian Gryphius. In the JCB annual report for that year, the gift was recognized as follows: “The book is surely one of the great works of typography of its time. It is printed in folio, in double column in a large letter, and it notably demonstrates the clarity, dignity, and elegance that mark the best French printing of the first half of the sixteenth century.”
At Updike’s death, the Library’s Committee of Management included in its memorial minute these words: “In the business of the Library, Mr. Updike gave of the best he had in judgment and action. . . . His devotion to the ideal of quality in doing and thinking, his reliance upon simple integrity in the large and small things of life, made him incomparable as an adviser and friend.”
Bartlett, Winship, Updike, Wroth, takes us up to about 1960. That’s a great legacy, which I would not dare to say has been continued in its full glory since then. My immediate predecessor, Tom Adams, is certainly one of the pre-eminent bibliographers of the second half of the twentieth century, but he made no substantial contributions to the technical history of printing, although he became an expert on the London printers Mount and Page. Adams is renowned for his fundamental bibliographies of both British and American political pamphlets printed during the revolutionary period, 1764 and 1783.
Less well known is Adams’s bibliography of English Maritime Books Printed before 1801, compiled with David W. Waters, which in 1995 the JCB published jointly with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, in 400 copies. Maritime books may appear to be an esoteric subfield in the history of printing in England before 1800, but in fact it is central to the history of English printing in this period.
It has been said (and maybe it’s true) that the most frequently printed “genre” of all books printed in England in the eighteenth century was the maritime book, in all of its many facets–– navigation manuals, seamanship manuals, shipbuilding manuals, hydrographic texts, navigation tables, books on tides and currents, books on health at sea, books on gunnery, books on nautical instruments, and so forth.
To take just one example from Adams and Waters, almost at random, a work called The Boate Swaines art, or the compleat boate swaine, by Henry Bond, first printed in London in 1642. This book appeared in later editions in 1664, 1670, 1676, 1677, 1695, 1699, 1716, 1726, 1736, 1764, 1772, 1775, 1781, 1784, 1787–140 years and at least 15 editions!
Another instance, even more staggering, is Andrew Wakely, The Mariners compass rectified. This book first appeared in London in 1665(maybe even earlier but no copies have survived) and was re-issued 57 times––that’s right 57 times––before 1800. The last one in the 18th century was published in 1796, 131 years since the first edition was printed.
The JCB owns 11 editions of Wakely’s Mariners compass, of the 57 issued before 1800, and we would be happy to acquire more, a fact that may need explanation. Our mission, unchanged by hardly a hair since 1846 when the Library was founded, is above all to collect and preserve contemporary printed and manuscript records relating to the history of the Americas, North and South, during the colonial period.
Maybe half of the JCB collection consists of works printed in the Americas (from the beginning of printing in this hemisphere in Mexico in ca. 1540) and half of works printed in Europe about America, beginning with seven pre-1500 editions of Columbus’s “Letter” from 1493 announcing his discovery. We collect European maritime history because the European conquest of the oceans was the precondition of the discovery, exploration, settlement, and development of the Americas, and hence an integral part of the story. War, commerce, empire, at the time, all depended upon prowess at sea.
To come back now to John Russell Bartlett as a collector of Civil War material and what might be called inadvertent or indirect contributions to printing history. The JCB, I often tell people, is one of the few rare book institutions in the U. S. that collects intensively on a large scale. I mean we collect intensively not just for one or several authors, or one or several printers, or a particular geographical region, but intensively for the whole of the history of the Americas, from Hudson Bay to Patagonia, from 1492 to ca. 1825 in seventeen different European languages, plus Native American languages.
Eleven editions of Wakely’s Mariners compass is not unusual at the John Carter Brown Library. We have 30 editions of Antoniode Solís’s Historia de la conquista de Mexico, first published in Madrid in 1684. We have copies printed not only in Spain, but in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, England, Germany, and Denmark, all before 1800.
When as a committee at the Library we make our acquisitions decisions from week to week, one rarely hears the argument that we should not buy a particular work because we already have ten editions or three translations; more often that fact is presented as a good reason to buy, because we are striving for totality: copies of every single title printed in the Americas to the end of the colonial period in each country, in every edition, and similarly, copies of every European book with a mention of the Americas before 1825. We can never achieve that totality, but it is a guiding aspiration.
We do not routinely collect to document printing history as such, but of course, the JCB, because of its policy of intensive collecting––i.e., its goal to become denser and denser as a collection, not broader in time or space––is a marvelous resource for the study of printing history.
This leads me to a few final remarks about more recent initiatives at the Library. Our holdings of works printed in the Spanish empire in America are unrivaled in the world (7,000 titles in all)––with the strongest concentrations for Mexico and Peru, the two principal centers of the press in the early years, but also including Guatemala, Argentina, Chile, and so forth. Naturally, we felt an obligation to promote the study of printing history in Latin America, which Bartlett, Winship, and Wroth all had taken an interest in.
Moreover, the rising fashion in the early 1980s of the study of the history of the book in France, England, Germany, and the U. S., gave us a good opportunity to call attention to Latin America. In 1988, we organized a memorable international conference at the Library entitled, “The Book in the Americas: The Role of Books and Printing in the Development of Culture and Society in Colonial Latin America.” One of my greatest regrets as Director of the JCB for twenty-three years is that we never did publish the papers from that unprecedented conference, which all of those who were present still recall with appreciation. Those papers were full of new information, especially new information made available for the first time in the English language.
I referred earlier to that compelling natural sequence of collecting, cataloguing, publishing, with the last meaning printing on paper. That sequence is generally short-circuited these days to: collecting, cataloguing,visit it online. Institutions now take inordinate pride in the fact that they have abandoned publication on paper, but I am not convinced it is such a great virtue in all cases.
At the JCB I have continued to operate in the faith that for many purposes the printed book is the ultimate convenience, and we have no less than five real, not virtual, publications in the pipeline that are simply specialized subject catalogues of a particular part of the JCB collection as a whole: a catalogue of our Portuguese and Brazilian Books, a catalogue of books with American Indian language content, a catalogue of our Chilean imprints, a catalogue our Peruvian imprints, and the final two volumes of a catalogue of our holdings of works in the German language (all relating to America, of course). In all of these areas the JCB’s holdings are matchless or nearly so, and hence these printed catalogues will serve as yardsticks against which to measure similar collections elsewhere.
None of these publications will sell more than 300 or 400 copies, and of course, they are expensive to compile and produce. Moreover, all of the data, i.e., the cataloguing records on which these books are based, are available online, and what is worse, because we are actively continuing to acquire books in all of these areas, these printed catalogues will be out-dated a month after they are published.
We have words like “bibliomania” to refer to insane book collecting. Is there a word to describe an insane desire in the cyber-era to continue to put into print bibliographical data or specialized subject catalogues? Typomania? Vanity?
Our typomania goes even further because the JCB supports the use of letterpress whenever it can prudently do so. Our letterhead and some other official JCB publications are printed letterpress, which we do for reasons beyond the aesthetic, although that alone is compelling. We do it on principle. Institutions heavily invested in the history of printing should help to support the traditional trades.
With regard to teaching and research in the field, the JCB, along with several other rare book libraries, offers, thanks to Bill Reese, a fellowship every year for research on book history and the history of printing.
On a grander scale, in 2001 several members of the Library’s Board of Governors came up with $1 million to create an endowed visiting professorship in historical bibliography and the history of the book. Named in memory of Charles H. Watts II, who served on our Board for twenty years, the JCB makes arrangements with either the History Department or the English Dept. at Brown University to appoint this visiting professor each year, who teaches a semester-length course, in the Library, on book history.
This course is for credit at Brown University, which is necessary if undergraduates are going to pay attention, but, regrettably, no academic department wants to host true technicians in the history of the book or in typography; so the education the students receive in the history of printing is relatively superficial. Book history in only the most general sense is the norm.
You are all no doubt familiar with this problem, which has arisen on various campuses, of how to fit the history of printing into the present organization of the disciplines and the passing trends in academe.
The Rhode Island bibliophiles group, the John Russell Bartlett Society, which was founded at the JCB in 1983, offers a prize for undergraduate book collecting, the Margaret B. Stillwell Prize, and the dream was that the Watts professorship would stimulate that interest on campus and increase the sophistication of young collectors. That may be happening at Brown, but to a limited degree thus far.
We have the resources on the Brown campus right now, thinking of the John Hay Library as well as the JCB, to substantially direct undergraduate attention to the study of printing and to “rare books” as objects, but this potential has not yet been fully realized. It’s a worthy goal, however, and we may yet get there.
Once more, on behalf of the great institution that I represent, and its distinguished past, I want to express my gratitude to APHA for the honor it has bestowed upon us.
Norman Fiering, Director John Carter Brown Library January 28, 2006 Posted with the author’s permission. Copyright remains with the author.
The awards were presented during the Annual Meeting of the American Printing History Association, on Saturday, January 28, 2006, in the Trustees Room (2nd floor), New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York City. A reception followed.
Proprietor, Robert D. Fleck Introductory remarks by Jane Rodgers Siegel
The awards criteria read, in part: “The APHA Institutional Award will be bestowed upon institutions that have sponsored, supported, or themselves made distinguished contributions to the study, recording, preservation, or dissemination of printing history.” Oak Knoll Books & Oak Knoll Press, a bookseller and publisher of books about books, bibliography, book collecting, book design, book illustration, book selling, bookbinding, bookplates, children’s books, fine press books, forgery, graphic arts, libraries, literary criticism, marbling, papermaking, printing history, publishing, typography & type specimens, and writing & calligraphy, has quite possibly disseminated more printing history than anyone else, including (and I do mean that their list includes) Henry Morris.
Founded in 1976 by Robert D. Fleck, Jr., a reformed chemical engineer, Oak Knoll Books maintains a stock of 20,000 items and has published over 280 catalogues, thus making available a tremendous amount of out-of-print material to institutions, historians, and collectors. As a publisher, Oak Knoll Press has published and distributed over 1000 titles, both original work and reprints of important hard-to-find works, making available the research of such authors as: Nicolas Barker, Sidney E. Berger, John Carter, Roderick Cave, Mirjam Foot, Colin Franklin, John Lane, Bernard C. Middleton, Richard-Gabriel Rummonds, Stephen O. Saxe, Marianne Tidcombe, and Michael Twyman. Topics covered by Oak Knoll Press books include everything from the work of Harold Pinter to bookbinders’ finishing tool makers and the papers used by J. M. W. Turner, and their list is impressively long. Publishing partners include The British Library, the Library of Congress, and the Private Libraries Association. In addition, Oak Knoll Press distributes books for the American Antiquarian Society, the Bibliographical Society of America, the Caxton Club, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Typophiles.
They have made a valuable contribution to printing history simply by making such a quantity of new and old books about books available, providing fodder to historians, and useful manuals to novice letterpress printers, binders and other practitioners of the arts of the book.
In addition to its bookselling and publishing activities, each October Oak Knoll hosts a fine press book fair, with lectures and panel discussions, the topics of which have included the history of papermaking, book illustration, book selling, institutional collecting, fine press printing and publishing. The Fine Press Book Association had its start at the Oak Knoll Fest in 1997. The Fest provides a delightful opportunity for book-makers and book-buyers to congregate and socialize, and for neophytes to be drawn into the world of well-made books.
It is an honor to present the 2007 [sic] American Printing History Association Institutional Award for Distinguished Achievement in Printing History to Oak Knoll, in the person of Bob Fleck.
The awards were presented during the Annual Meeting of the American Printing History Association, on Saturday, January 28, 2008, New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York City. A reception followed.
(John Randle accepting) Introductory remarks by Daniel J. Slive
Whittington Press for Matrix: A Review for Printers & Bibliophiles
The 2009 APHA Awards Committee nominates the Whittington Press as the recipient of the APHA Institutional Award in recognition of the press’s renowned journal Matrix: A Review for Printers & Bibliophiles. Issued annually since 1981, Matrix has made distinguished contributions to the study, recording, preservation, and dissemination of printing history, and has done so utilizing a remarkable combination of authoritative scholarship and fine printing.
The Whittington Press was started in 1971 by John and Rosalind Randle in the Cotswold village of Whittington. The founding, according to the Randles, was “the result partly of an early enthusiasm for Caslon type, Albion presses and hand-made paper, and partly the wish to escape from London publishing jobs at the weekend.” The initial product of the press was Richard Kennedy’s A Boy at the Hogarth Press, which was published to general acclaim in 1972. Since that first successful book, the Whittington Press has printed and published over 180 titles including bibliographies, type specimens, collections of illustrations and printed papers, and other books about books. The press has also regularly issued Matrix, now in its twenty-seventh year.
John Randle noted in The Whittington Press, a Bibliography 1971–1981that “Matrix came about partly because we had projects in mind which would not quite make a book, but which nevertheless needed publishing, and partly because, although the Americans had their Fine Print, we in England, with the notable exception of Albion, seem to be poorly provided with a journal devoted to fine printing in its finest sense, from practical printing to book collecting.” The first issue, printed in an edition of 350 copies, consisted of 76 pages. The number of pages included and copies printed have since increased with recent issues of approximately 800 copies containing over 200 pages. In Printing at The Whittington Press, 1972–1994, Mark Batty has described the combination of physical and intellectual content of Matrix that differentiates it from other journals devoted to printing history. “In its pages can be found enormous editorial diversity, and daring and maverick experiments in production in the form of foldouts, tip-ins, bind-ins, specialist papers, and various printing methods for illustrations. This varied content is held together by a consistent design style involving careful and conservative use of typography. This facilitates elegant legibility and a background framework to project the strong editorial.”
Matrix has covered a range of topics in printing history since 1981 including substantial articles on typefaces, typesetting, and founding (including hieroglyphical and hieratic types and exotic typefaces); papermaking, fine papers, and decorated papers from around the world; wood-engraving and other illustration processes including pochoir and autholithography; book design; and major British printers and publishers. As noted above, numerous articles have included specimens of type, paper, and illustrations which have complemented and enhanced the texts. Contributors to Matrix have included significant figures in printing and scholars of printing history (including several APHA laureates). A selective listing of this remarkable gathering of authors includes Nicolas Barker, Sebastian Carter, Roderick Cave, John Dreyfus, Vance Gerry, Jerry Kelly, David McKitterick, Ruari McLean, Henry Morris, James Mosley, Stan Nelson, and William S. Peterson.
In a critical appreciation of the first thirteen issues of Matrix, typographer and printing historian John Dreyfus concluded, “A vast amount of experience is stored up in Matrix. All this can be invaluable to those who have to take decisions about fine printing, either as practitioners, as patrons, or as collectors.” A decade and a half later, Matrix has remained an essential resource for all readers engaged in the study and appreciation of printing.
The awards were presented during the Annual Meeting of the American Printing History Association, on Saturday, January 24, 2009, New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York City.
Alexander Campos accepting Introductory remarks by Daniel J. Slive
The 2010 APHA Awards Committee has nominated The Center for Book Arts as the recipient of the APHA Institutional Award in recognition of the Center’s extremely active and accomplished promotion of both traditional printing and the contemporary exploration of the book as art object. Since 1974, The Center for Book Arts has made distinguished contributions to the recording, preservation, and dissemination of modern and contemporary printing history, and has done so through a remarkable education and outreach program. The Center for Book Arts was the first non-profit organization in the United States dedicated to the book arts and has become a model for similar organizations throughout the world. In its thirty-five years, the Center has pioneered many activities that may now seem typical of such an organization: classes on traditional and innovative techniques, galleries and publications dedicated to the book arts, and access to printing equipment and studio space.
Its extensive instructional program offers over one hundred courses, workshops, and seminars in letterpress printing and typography as well as bookbinding and other aspects of book production. Classes available in Fall 2009, for instance, included an introduction to hand typesetting, contemporary letterpress printing, digital letterpress, platen press, monotypes, and four-color printing from polymer plates. In the course of its tenure, the Center has educated and trained thousands of people including artists, teachers, librarians, book conservators, collectors, and others intrigued with, and engaged by, books and their creation. Many of these former students have themselves become teachers and have provided instruction privately, at other book arts organizations, or in academic institutions. Through this extensive and successful instructional program, the Center has contributed to the preservation and promotion of the vibrant art of printing.
The Center’s extensive documentation of modern and contemporary printing is represented by over 175 exhibitions. These have included shows dedicated to individual artists and imprints, production techniques, social and aesthetic themes, and presses from particular geographic regions. A highly selective listing includes individual exhibits devoted to the work of Lynne Avadenka, Julie Chen, Tom Phillips, Claire Van Vliet, and the Whittington Press; shows focusing on printing techniques ranging from letterpress to offset printed artist books to mail art; and a wide variety of thematic shows such as “The Altered Page” (an exhibition of selections from the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Visual and Concrete Poetry), “Grimm & Grimmer” (historical children’s books and related contemporary artists’ books), and “No More Drama: The Saga Continues” (contemporary artists responding to Latin American telenovelas). The Center has also organized a particularly notable, and perhaps unique, series of exhibitions focusing on different geographic regions of book production in the United States and abroad. These have ranged from the Lower East Side to Northern and Southern California and beyond to Latin America, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Russia, and Iraq. In sum, the Center’s exhibition program, often documented by complementary exhibition catalogues, has provided practitioners, curators, collectors, and the general public access to a significant variety of modern and contemporary printing.
The Center for Book Arts’s remarkable record of exhibitions and instruction is strengthened by additional activities supporting the preservation and promotion of printing and the book arts. These include publications, lectures, artist services, access to studios and equipment, and numerous opportunities for printers and book artists to practice and develop their skills and their craft. In nominating the Center for the Book Arts for the APHA Institutional Award, the Nominating Committee is pleased to recognize both the Center’s longevity and the quality of its instruction, outreach, and support programs which have successfully contributed to the promotion of printing and printing history.
It is a pleasure to present this year’s American Printing History Association Institutional Award to The Center for Book Arts
The Alabama program has been a leader in its field, offering a book arts MFA since 1987. This degree program builds on a tradition of printing and book-history training that goes back even further, to individual courses and workshops offered to library science students starting in the 1950s, often by pioneers in the revival of historical printing arts in the Unites States, including Gabriel Rummonds, R. Hunter Middleton, and Carolyn Hammer. The present program’s goal for its MFA students is particularly sensitive to the need for historical knowledge and historically informed creativity. In the words of its own prospectus, it aims to produce “book artists who have well-honed technical knowledge of the various facets of contemporary bookmaking, and who have an understanding of the historical evolution of the book including its materiality, and the role of the book in society. Courses explore the reconciliation of modern sensibilities with historic craft.” The degree program includes two required book history courses that cover the essentials of bibliographical analysis and physical description and an introduction to the cultural impact of printing across five centuries. The program is grounded in the belief that mastering the best practices of the past (that is, recreating historical excellence) is the best preparation for future artistic achievement. In this way, the Alabama program has fostered traditional values in modern printing. In particular, we note that the Alabama program employs three fully credentialed faculty in printing, book binding, and the history of the book, and that they teach both students in the MFA program and graduate students and undergraduates in other university departments. As such, the book arts faculty have a significant role in disseminating appreciation for the historical study of the book among many students of library and information science and beyond. This is an important dimension of higher learning in our age of “digital everything.”
Its extensive instructional program offers over one hundred courses, workshops, and seminars in letterpress printing and typography as well as bookbinding and other aspects of book production. Classes available in Fall 2009, for instance, included an introduction to hand typesetting, contemporary letterpress printing, digital letterpress, platen press, monotypes, and four-color printing from polymer plates. In the course of its tenure, the Center has educated and trained thousands of people including artists, teachers, librarians, book conservators, collectors, and others intrigued with, and engaged by, books and their creation. Many of these former students have themselves become teachers and have provided instruction privately, at other book arts organizations, or in academic institutions. Through this extensive and successful instructional program, the Center has contributed to the preservation and promotion of the vibrant art of printing.
Of course, the true effectiveness of any educational program lies in the quality of its alumni and in their achievements. Alabama’s program excels in this regard, too, having produced such outstanding educators as Inge Bruggeman (Oregon College of Art), Kate Martinson (Luther College), and Katherine McCanless Ruffin (Wellesley College), to name only a few. These alumni and others have filled leadership positions in organizations like the New York Center for the Book and the Guild of Bookworkers. Most impressive is the number of graduates who have maintained their contact with the foundations of fine printing nurtured in the program by establishing private presses that have produced and continue to do work of quality. The Alabama program has had broad influence in other ways too, through an exciting cultural exchange with book artists in Cuba, and as a leader in the foundation of the new College Book Arts Association.
The awards were presented during the Annual Meeting of the American Printing History Association, on Saturday, January 29, 2011, New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York City.
The 2012 APHA Awards Committee nominates the CODEX Foundation of Berkeley, California for its institutional award. Recognizing that institutions as well as individuals make important contributions to history and that the preservation of such history-minded institutions is a high priority today, APHA stipulates that the criteria for this award should be the same as those for the individual award, namely that the institution is making “a distinguished contribution to the study, recording, preservation, or dissemination of printing history, in any specific area or in general terms.”
The mission of the foundation we recognize today is stated with admirable succinctness thus: “The Codex Foundation exists to preserve and promote the hand-made book in the broadest possible context as a work of art and to bring to public recognition the artists, the craftsmanship, and the rich history of the civilization of the book.” Although a relatively young institution (it was founded in 2006), the foundation has fulfilled this mission admirably, largely through its sponsorship of an eponymous biannual gathering of professional and amateur book artists, publishers, educators, scholars, and collectors. This CODEX festival has been variously described by APHA members as a collection of “superb practitioners, scholars and artists,” “vibrant in inspiring new people towards an interest in the book arts,” and “pulsing with excitement.” This combination symposium and book fair draws participants from Asia, Europe, Central and South America, and the Middle East. The foundation has embodied the excitement and intellectual content of its international festival in a major published collection, book art object (2007), and in a series of monographs on topics relating to the handmade book. The series includes important writers and artists like Robert Bringhurst (Canada), Alan Loney (Australia), and Ulrike Stoltz and Uta Schneider (Germany). In 2011 the foundation, in collaboration with Mexican partners and Stanford University Libraries, has inaugurated CODEXMEXICO with events and exhibitions in Guadalajara and (later this year) in Mexico City.
Most importantly to APHA, the Codex Foundation promotes the idea that there is great value, both historical and contemporary, in the handmade book. For its founders and directors, the collecting and studying of printed books in traditional historical terms is complemented by the work of printers who seek to breathe new life into old technologies. This is not merely preserving old technology; it is making it alive and relevant to today’s art world. The resulting emphasis on both innovation and respect for tradition represents historic preservation at its dynamic best. We commend the Codex Foundation for so high-minded a philosophy and above all for putting it into practice.
It is a pleasure to present this year’s American Printing History Association Institutional Award to the CODEX Foundation.
The awards were presented during the Annual Meeting of the American Printing History Association, on Saturday, January 28, 2012, New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York City.
