McGill’s woodblock collection, previously in storage, can now be studied at Rare Books and Special Collections.

This collection, acquired in 1932, includes beautiful examples of wood engraving from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries in the UK, with special attention to the work of Newcastle designer and engraver Thomas Bewick (1753-1828).

From very crude early blocks to George Cruikshank’s refined caricatures, make your pick! The images represented on the woodblocks range from biblical scenes to animals, to early flying machines and household scenes, and they were used for a wide variety of publication types.

The Elephant by Thomas Bewick. Woodblock 314 used in p.186 of the 1791 Newcastle edition of the General History of Quadrupeds (Blacker Wood Collection, QL706 B57 1791).

This elephant, for example, was designed and engraved by Thomas Bewick for his General History of Quadrupeds, one of his most famous works. But most woodblocks were used to illustrate small chapbooks and popular children’s books such as Robinson Crusoe or Robin Hood.

A more complete description of the collection can be found on the Library website.

Video recordings from the one-day symposium, Meetings with Books: Raymond Klibansky, Special Collections and the Library in the 21st Century, that was held at McGill on March 20, 2013, are now available. Webcast recordings of the opening remarks, both keynotes and the panel discussions have been posted for viewing online or downloading.

• Symposium description and program
• Read about McGill’s Raymond Klibansky Collection.

A collection of 81 plates of cut-outs by the Italian artist Ugo Mochi (1889-1977) was recently brought to light from one of the library’s storage areas.

The collection is composed of silhouettes of animals, each one cut from a single piece of black paper.

Ugo Mochi studied art in Florence from the age of 10 before leaving to Berlin at 21 to attend the Art Academy. For a time sculptor, painter and musician all rolled into one, Mochi decided to focus on paper-cutting before coming to the United State in 1928. He then became a book illustrator, using his silhouettes.

He was passionate about wild animals and spent much time at the zoo, studying animal behaviour and movements. His tendency to create in series is very clear throughout the collection: dozens of giraffes, twelve elephants, numerous birds of every kind, and all sorts of goats, cattle and antelopes are represented.

The art of Ugo Mochi was exhibited at McGill Library in 1930, but he spent most of his career in New York. His work was greatly appreciated by the American Museum of Natural History, which still possesses some of Mochi’s most famous pieces.

The plates are now available for consultation in Rare Books and Special Collections.

Rare Books and Special Collections has recently acquired a copy of George Cruikshank’s  Our ‘gutter children‘, a large, four-page pamphlet with a colour illustration at the head. This document, which complements RBSC holdings of Cruikshank’s illustrated book works and extensive caricature collection, appears to be the only recorded copy in a Canadian library.

George Cruikshank (English, 1792-1878) was a print maker and caricaturist who achieved fame first through political and social caricature in the popular press and later as a successful  illustrator of books. His output was extensive, and he created plates for Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, and the Brothers Grimm, to name a few.

Our ‘gutter children‘ will be of particular interest to researchers looking at Home Children, the movement of child emigrants from Great Britain to Canada between 1869 and the 1930s.

“…a proposition has been made, through the press, with an appeal for pecuniary aid, to assist in transporting to Canada and the Western States of America, some of the deserted and neglected children of this country, who are to be found in the GUTTERS of our Cities and Towns…”

This item is available for consultation in Rare Books and Special Collections.

Join Tom Mole, Laura Murray, Darren Wershler, Danielle Léger, Isabelle Robitaille, Ann Marie Holland, Eli MacLaren, Laura Cameron, Sonia Cancian, Dominic Hardy (to be confirmed), Jody Mason, Chantal Savoie, Sandria Bouliane and Will Straw for a symposium on Cultural Ephemera. Please RSVP: william.straw@mcgill.ca

Many if not most rare book libraries have a long and complicated history of acquisitions that reflects the varied interests of collectors and benefactors, of librarians and scholars, and by happenstance and serendipity.  It is not just the individual titles that carry information; the histories of the collections do so as well and it is often in exploring these histories that new understandings are born.  How, then, are we to understand and explore these diverse and, indeed, disparate collections?  Furthermore, does the increasing use of digital technologies alter the way we need to discovery and to understand them?

The purpose of this one-day symposium is to begin this process of investigating the full and complex potential of these collections and the ways to do so.  This has to be a joint enterprise of scholars and librarians; it is only by working together that we can ask the questions and tell the stories that are to be found in rare book and special collection libraries.

The symposium agenda can be found here: http://www.mcgill.ca/library/channels/event/meetings-books-klibansky

RSVP by March 15, 2013
rsvp.libraries@mcgill.ca
514.398.4681

Free to attend
Lunch and reception included

Ski Fun.  Lithograph. Issued by the Province of Quebec Tourist Bureau.

This ski poster represents just one of more than a hundred posters promoting Canadian tourism dating back to the early 20^th century. Posters such as these were issued by various provincial agencies or by shipping and railroad companies; all are undoubtedly vibrant works of graphic design.

Thanks to a recent project initiated by the BAnQ, we now know more about the poster holdings in Rare Books and Special Collections. In fact, McGill Library reported 1,600 Canadian posters in total, 900 of which have Quebec content. McGill Library was just one of eighty-three institutional repositories that participated in this collaborative project to record posters printed and published in Quebec or having content relating to Quebec. The result was an online inventory launched in October 2012, produced by the BANQ : Répertoire des collections institutionnelles d’affiches d’intérêt québécois. 

If you are interested in learning more, Professor Marc H. Choko of the Ecole de Design de l’UQAM, is the principal scholar dealing with the content and design of the Canadian poster and author of several publications, two of which are : L’affiche au Québec (2002); Posters of the Canadian Pacific (2004 with David L. Jones).