Exhibition: The Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada

Alcuin Book Design Awards LOGO

THE ALCUIN SOCIETY AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE IN BOOK DESIGN IN CANADA 2012

Since 1981 the Alcuin Society has sponsored the only national competition for book design in Canada. Each year, a call for entries is sent out. Books published in Canada during the calendar year of competition are eligible for submission. Each title must represent the exclusive work of a Canadian book designer. The judging of the entries takes place the following year in the spring, and the award winning books are posted to the society’s website, showcased in an awards catalogue produced by the Alcuin Society, and exhibited national and internationally. After the exhibitions, books have been contributed to various prestigious permanent collections in Canada, England, Germany, and Japan (excerpt from alcuinsociety.com).

This exhibit features 41 winning titles from 236 entries, from 9 provinces and 112 publishers.

A listing of winning titles from 2012 is available here: http://www.alcuinsociety.com/awards/2012/index.html

On view July 2013 at McGill University Library
McLennan Library Building Lobby
3459 McTavish Street
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 0C9
www.mcgill.ca/library

PRIX DE LA SOCIÉTÉ ALCUIN POUR L’EXCELLENCE DE LA CONCEPTION GRAPHIQUE DU LIVRE AU CANADA 2012

Presentée en juillet 2013 à la bibliothèque de l’université McGill
Édifice McLennan
3459 rue McTavish
Montréal, Québec
H3A 0C9
www.mcgill.ca/library
www.alcuinsociety.com

The Columbian Press – “phantasmagoria in cast iron”

It is a rare event when an assiduous researcher from a different corner of the world makes contact with a rare book librarian, and that the two benefit equally regarding their work in progress. A recent exchange with Mr. Bob Oldham of Ad Lib Press, who is currently conducting a worldwide census of Columbian hand presses in observance of this year’s 200th anniversary of their invention by George Clymer, is clearly an expert on the subject matter and offered some new facts about its manufacture. At this stage of our contact, Mr. Oldham is investigating our Columbian Press which will be recorded in his detailed census as well as in the North American Hand Press Database.

Columbian Press in William Savage's, Practical Hints on Decorative Printing, 1822.

Columbian Press in
William Savage’s, Practical Hints on Decorative Printing, 1822.

Our Columbian Press is one of five presses that the McGill University Library owns. It is without a doubt the most alluring of all the presses. It stands proudly on the fourth floor of the McLennan Library Building, in the corridor off the stairway.

This press was invented by the American engineer George Clymer of Philadelphia in 1813.  According to Mr. Oldham, “Clymer manufactured and sold about 20 of them in the USA until about May 1817, when he sailed for England to try the more stable printing press market there. He obtained a patent in England in November 1817 and built at least 415 presses in England under his own name until 1830. Clymer died in 1834, and his patent expired either just before or shortly after his death. At this point, there were many companies which began offering their version of the Columbian in England.  By the 1850s there were many competing companies selling Columbians. It was a very popular press for about 80 years.”

As for the design of the press, Clymer incorporated iron-casting techniques for its manufacture. It is lavishly ornamented with symbolic pieces in bronze and gilt such as the serpents on the levers which emblematize the virtue of wisdom, and the imperial eagle atop with extended wings representing might and power, clutching an olive tree branch and a horn of plenty, representing peace and abundance.  Former University Librarian of McGill University, Richard Pennington called it “phantasmagoria in cast iron” in his Account of the Redpath Press, 1977.

In this same account by Richard Pennington, we learn about the provenance of our Columbian Press. It was reportedly discovered in a basement in Fetter Lane, London, which had been “opened up by WWII bombardments” and re-located from London, England to Montreal Canada in 1957. It was determined to be a pre-1824 model and therefore probably manufactured by Clymer when he was in England due to the fact that the first type of these presses had the bar pivoted on the off or far side of the frame. In the post- 1824 model, sources say that this flaw was remedied so that “ the bar was placed nearer the hand of the pressman.” It occurred in both locations in 1820 and 1828, according to Mr. Oldham, so dating can be problematic.

An inauguration of the presses took place  on the 6th of December, 1957 in the presence of an illustrious crowd. An introduction was pronounced by Dr. Cyril James, former Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University, who praised the utility of presses for instruction to Library School students. In attendance was an astounding array of academics and donors to McGill which is a testimony to Pennington’s professional credibility. From the Account of the Redpath Press we cite: ” John Bland of the School of Architecture; William Colgate, the donor of the Printing Collection [and who helped the University acquire much of the machinery and set up the printing office that would become the Redpath Press]; Peter Collins, the writer on the aesthetics of architecture; Sidney T. Fisher, the electronics engineer and Shakespeare collector; Raymond Klibanksy, the philosopher and mediaevalist [and now the donor of a major collection on philosophy and the history of ideas]; Dr. Wilder Penfield; and Lawrence Lande, the donor of the Lande Library of Canadiana.”

We are most proud to house this historic monument to typography and scholarship.

 

Exhibition: Legacies Denied: Unearthing the Visual Culture of Canadian Slavery

legacies_denied_front_cover May 22nd to July 31st, 2013
in the Reading Room

Exhibition Vernissage: Wednesday, May 22nd, from 5:30pm to 7pm

This exhibition and the accompanying catalogue emerged from a fourth year undergraduate Art History course, “Canadian Slavery and its Legacies: a Curatorial Seminar,” taught by Dr. Charmaine Nelson, Associate Professor of Art History. Working with the holdings of the Rare Books and Special Collections Library (McGill University), the students curated an exhibition, assembling a variety of extraordinary art and visual culture objects of direct relevance to Trans Atlantic Slavery. Like the course, the catalogue and exhibition contest the erasure of Canadian participation in the histories of Trans Atlantic Slavery, instead highlighting the role of Canadian art and visual culture in producing, sustaining and resisting the enslavement of people of African descent and Natives in the territories that became Canada.

Many of the art objects, which the students selected from McGill’s Rare Books and Special Collections Library, are a part of an art exhibition that will be on display at:

Rare Books and Special Collections
McLennan Library Building
4th Floor
3459 McTavish Street
Montreal, Quebec
Canada, H3A 0C9

 

Exhibition: Passion Pursued with Discipline: Prints Collection of Thomas W. Mussen

mussen-poster-detail-1_0May 9th to September 30th, 2013
4th lobby of the McLennan Library Building

An exhibit curated by Svetlana Kochkina, Liaison Librarian, Nahum Gelber Law Library, McGill University.

The Reverend Thomas W. Mussen (1832-1901), former McGill student, was a man of culture and erudition, who possessed a large collection of early printed books, roman coins, and old master prints that he gathered by great diligence and economy. His final wish was that his collection was to be given to the McGill University. In 1919, the major part of Mussen’s collection was donated to the McGill Library by his widow and daughter. His prints collection reflects the professional and intellectual interests of its former owner, an Anglican rector with a deep interest in history and art, with four major themes: “Christianity, Bible”, “Holy Family”, “Ancient History/ Mythology”, and “Nature, Landscapes.”

Pieces of Art: a collection of engraved woodblocks

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.

#314

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.

Meetings with Books symposium videos now available

Colleen Cook, McGill's Trenholme Dean of Libraries, opens the symposiumVideo 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.

The “Art of Outline”

114A 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.

Recent acquisition: Cruikshank pamphlet (1869)

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 beCruikshank 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.

 

Symposium: Meetings with Books: Raymond Klibansky, Special Collections and the Library in the 21st Century

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/newsroom/node/18308

Raymond Klibansky

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

Free to attend
Lunch and reception included