Exploring Printing History at the Newberry Library

A project supported by the CLIR Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program

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About these beauties:

-Hand-printed posters composed of wood type, manufactured by the Hamilton Manufacturing Co.;

-letterpress printed on a Vandercook printing press using foundry and wood type;

-created during the summer of 2014 for an exhibition at the Haley Gallery at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, TN.

Bee, Small Beetle and Snail are part of the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum collection.

Title: Letterbugs

Artist: William Moran, 1962-

Newberry call number: Wing broadside ZPP 2083 .M675

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Samples of Martin-Cantine Company’s “Cantine coated papers” from the Newberry’s ongoing Paper Specimen Collection.

Newberry call number: Case Wing folio TS1220 .N49, Martin-Cantine Company

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Magazine of “Warren’s Silkote” papers by the S.D. Warren Company, part of the Newberry’s growing Paper Specimen Collection.

Newberry call number: Case Wing folio TS1220 .N49, S.D. Warren Company

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Paper sample of German company Deutsche Grosseinkaufs-Gesellschaft from the Newberry’s ongoing Paper Specimen Collection.

Newberry call number: Case Wing folio TS1220 .N49, Deutsche Grosseinkaufs-Gesellschaft

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Samples of Canson & Montgolfier’s Vidalon papers from the Newberry’s ongoing Paper Specimen Collection.

In the second image, we see how “fine printing qualities” make fancy people feel.

Newberry call number: Case Wing folio TS1220 .N49, Canson & Montgolfier

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Top:

Illustrated by artist John Averill. The 1937 exhibition was presented by R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company in cooperation with the Art Directors Club of New York at the Lakeside Press Galleries.

Bottom:

1929-1930 Christmas and New Year card from the Lakeside Press.

The Lakeside Press was the printing firm of the R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company, where Chicago designer and typographer Burton Cherry began his career. Starting as a journeyman compositor and production operator, Cherry eventually worked as a designer under William A. Kittredge.

Burton Cherry Ephemera Collection (box 3, folder 62)

Newberry call number: Case Wing folio ZC 1 .183

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Images from “Fairfield Japan” (1912), a paper sample book produced by Strathmore Paper Company. The company began in 1892, in Mittineague, Massachusetts. Since then, it has become one of the leading suppliers of high quality art papers used worldwide.

Newberry call number: Wing TS1220 .S854 1912

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1956 advertisement for Artype transparent, self-adhering acetate sheets featuring hand-lettered alphabets (”actual type faces [...] selected by master typographers and designers”), numbers, reference letters, arrows, symbols, borders, and more in a range of styles and sizes.

Burton Cherry Ephemera Collection (box 1, folder 9)

Newberry call number: Case Wing folio ZC 1 .183

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Stamps printed by Artmaster commemorating the 400th birthday of Shakespeare

Newberry call number: Case Wing folio PR2877 .S53

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1933 Japanese wood block print on Mulberry paper. Collected by Burton Cherry, Chicago-based designer and typographer.

Burton Cherry Ephemera Collection (box 7, folder 125)

Newberry call number: Case Wing folio ZC 1 .183

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Cheers my dears!

From “Aunt Effie’s Rhymes for Little Children” (1852) by Jane Euphemia Saxby, with illustrations by Hablot K. Browne.

Publisher: Addey and Co. (London)

Printer: Petter, Duff, and Co. (London)

Newberry call number: Wing ZP 845 .P39

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This sign language finger spelling chart was printed by J.P. Migne in Paris sometime between 1836 and 1875.

Newberry call number: Case Wing broadside HV2480 .A67 1836

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Chicagoans, get your bicycling in before the heat wave!

Letterpress poster created by Bill Moran of Blinc Publishing, a print and design studio located in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Collection: Blinc Publishing Ephemera Collection

Newberry call number: Case Wing oversize Z232.B65 B55 1997

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This Spanish translation of Lucian Deslinières Comment se réalisera le socialisme (1919) is from 1937. The publisher, Editorial Marxista, was founded in 1936 by the P.O.U.M (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista), one of the many factions in the Spanish Civil War. Editorial Marxista would last only 11 months but was prolific in its short life, producing dozens of Marxist classics and more than fifty different pamphlets, many of which were translations - like this one. In June of 1937, the Communist police seized the offices of the POUM and Editorial Marxista, destroying any EM material they found. Those items that remain have historical as well as intellectual value to historians of the Spanish Civil War and Marxist intellectual thought.

Newberry call number: Wing ZP 940 .E49

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Christeliicken waerseggher, illustrated by Cornelis Galle and printed by Jan Moretus, is a 1603 Dutch translation of the well-known emblem book, Veridicus Christianus by the Jesuit Father Jan David. An emblem is essentially a picture used to portray an idea or teach a lesson, in this case religious or moral, and is usually accompanied by a motto and verse (here the motto is in Latin on top of the image and verse in Latin, Dutch, and French on bottom). One image shows different interpretations of the crucifixion portrayed by artists (including one heretical portrait being painted of a demon on the bottom left). The last image is of a man’s head seen as a house warning the viewer of the risks of opening one’s senses to temptation (”greedy prying eyes”). In the background is Eve with an apple (letter A), David watching Bathsheba in the bath (letter B), and Lot’s wife just before turning into a pillar of salt with Sodom in the background (letter F).

Newberry call number: Wing ZP 6465 .P675

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This satirical broadside from 1847 lampoons English politicians including  John Chevallier Cobbold, Hugh Adair, Henry Vincent, Sackville, William Gladstone, Walter Lane-Fox, and their “political steeplechases.”

Newberry call number: Case Wing ZC 3 .175 no. 6

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“Who is she that sitteth in the shrine of the temple of Bacchus?”  

Well, “The Barmaid”, of course.

Illustration and text from Gavarni in London: sketches of life and character.

Artist: Paul Gavarni

Illustrator: John Gilbert (1817-1897)

Engraver: Henry Vizetelly (1820-1894)

Publisher: David Bogue (1852-1897, London)

Printer: Vizetelly Brothers & Co. (London)

Newberry call number: Wing ZP 845 .G384