Free Library Field Trip

 Last Friday the Rosenbach's collections department took a field trip up 20th Street to visit our new colleagues in the Rare Book Department of the Free Library.   We're no strangers, having worked together though PACSCL (the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries) for years and having researched at the Free Library and borrowed from them for past exhibitions, such as Chosen in 2007.  But it was nice to have an excuse to get together, discuss our work, and get to see some of their wonderful collections.

In our brief visit we got to see some highlights from the Elkins Room (including a map by John Dee, a fascinating character who is featured on our Magic hands-on-tour), fantastic material from their Pennsylvania German collections, as well as their First Folio, several medieval books of hours, and the Ferrara Bible (which our curator Judy Guston remembered vividly from Chosen). We all wished we had more time, but luckily this is only the beginning.

Here is Janine Pollock, the head of the rare book department, retrieving a book for us in Elkins room. To learn more about William McIntire Elkins and his collecting, you can check out this essay by Ellen Schaffer. We all coveted the elegant library ladder that you see in the foreground of this picture, but it seems that the staff actually use the more prosaic steps that Janine is standing on.

 

We neglected to take a group shot, but we want to extend our thanks to all the folks at the Free Library who took time out of their busy schedules to spend with us. We are looking forward to returning the favor.

Kathy Haas is the Associate Curator at the Rosenbach Museum & Library and the primary poster at the Rosen-blog

Fairy Ballads

After last week's post on cannibalism we promised a lighter topic for this week, which comes to us courtesy of our departing collections intern Anne Baker

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When thinking of May and what to write about, I thought of how the month is known for flowers.  In searching through the collections I came across a bound set of beautiful watercolors and decided to investigate them further. It appeared that they were for a book by Caroline Elizabeth Sheridan Norton and there is a letter from her included, with instructions for the artist. The book was entitled “Fairy Ballads,” and the watercolors were done by the artist John Absolon.

John Absolon. "They All Take Hands in a Fairy Ring." Illustration for Aunt Carry's Ballads. ca. 1847. Rosenbach Museum & Library 1954.322.

I wanted to find out more about the book, so I turned to Google. “Fairy Ballads, by the Honorable Mrs. Norton" (as written on the title page) does not appear in searches.  However, I did find a book called Aunt Carry's Ballads for Children, by the Honorable Mrs. Norton; With Illustrations by John Absolon, published in 1847. This matched the title given in a laudatory poem bound with the watercolors. I had found it!

John Absolon. "Fairy Ballads" ca. 1847. Rosenbach Museum & Library 1954.322.

The title page in the Rosenbach collection (which is not used in the published book)  is a very striking and a beautifully composed image. Three mermaids surrounded by sea corral and shells, frame the bottom of the page, while above two women sit in the trees looking down while a woman in white, in the company of a lamb, is in the scenic distance. The colors are bright and cheerful while the watercolor technique is detailed and picturesque. 

As Mrs. Norton's ballads are not included with the Rosenbach’s watercolors, I had to search elsewhere for the text that corresponds with the drawings; here is an example of the accompanying poetry from the final published version:

Excerpt from "Adventures of a Wood Sprite, or The Fairy of the Hawthorn Tree" from Aunt Carry's Ballads for Children, by the Honorable Mrs. Norton; With Illustrations by John Absolon  (pgs 5-6)

Once on a time, on a Summer’s day,
When mowers were tossing the new made hay,
And children were playing in the garden bowers,
And butter flies flitting among the flowers,
And dragon-flies darting here and there,
All golden and green in the sunny air:
A Hawthorn tree, that so long had stood,
Its trunk was all gnarled and knotted wood,

And its bark half covered with lichen and moss,
Was cut down, to make a new path across
The gentleman’s lawn where it sheltered so long
The Tom-tit’s nest, and the Robin’s song:
Woe is me! Ah! Woe is me,
A Wood-sprite lived in that Hawthorn tree!

Reading briefly about Mrs. Norton proved to be interesting. The granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, she had an unhappy marriage (ending in separation) and her husband accused her of having a scandalous affair with the Prime Minister of England, Lord Melbourne. Her frustration with the legal powerlessness of married women led her to work to change the law. I encourage you to look her up!

Anne Baker is a Museum Student at the University of the Arts. She is from Delaware, Ohio, just north of Columbus. She enjoys Art History (Italian art) and painting and has just completed interning at the Rosenbach in the Collections Department, which she describes as "a blast, I have learned so much!"

Civil War and Cannibalism

I would like to start off by inviting all Rosen-readers to come enjoy Voices of 1863: Witnesses to the Civil War, which opened just this Wednesday. We've packed Gallery 1 full of wonderful Civil War documents that really illuminate the wartime experience, plus there's a chance to hear some of Dave Burrell's compositions inspired by our 1863 collections, and to dig deeper with a kiosk of the Today in the Civil War blog.

In unrelated news from two and a half centuries earlier, my news feed has been burning up with Wednesday's articles about the archaeological discovery of cannibalism at Jamestown. I was just at the Jamestown archaeology site less than a month ago on a spring-break trip with my children, so I was especially interested.

If you missed the story, you can read an account at Smithsonian Magazine or a number of other news outlets. Basically, the short version is that archaeologists have discovered bones from a 14-year-old English girl at Jamestown that show signs of having been dismembered for food during the 1609-1610 winter known as "the starving time".

John Smith, The generall historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles.
 London : Printed by John Dawson and John Haviland for Michael Sparkes, 1626. A 626s

All the articles note that cannibalism at Jamestown was already known from contemporary accounts, which drove me to the Rosenbach's historical collections. Here's the description of the starving time in John Smith's famous Generall Historie of Virginia, New England and the Summer Isles," published in 1624 (the Rosenbach has both the 1624 and 1626 printings, these images are from the 1626 version). I've modernized the spelling and inserted some breaks in the transcript which follows.

John Smith, The generall historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. London : Printed by John Dawson and John Haviland for Michael Sparkes, 1626. A 626s

Now we all found the loss of Captain Smith, yea his greatest maligners could now curse his loss: as for corn provision and contribution from the Savages, we had nothing but mortal wounds, with clubs and arrows; as for our Hogs, Hens, Goats, Sheep, Horse, or what lived, our commanders, officers and Savages daily consumed them, some small proportions sometimes we tasted, till all was devoured; then swords, arms, pieces, or any thing, wee traded with the Savages, whose cruel fingers were so oft imbrewed in our bloods, that what by their cruelty, our Governor's indiscretion, and the loss of our ships, of five hundred within six months after Captain Smiths departure, there remained not past sixty men, women and children, most miserable and poor creatures; and those were preserved for the most part, by roots, herbs, acorns, walnuts, berries, now and then a little fish: they that had starch in these extremities, made no small use of it; yea even the very skins of our horses.

Nay, so great was our famine, that a Savage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and eat him; and so did divers one another boiled and stewed with roots and herbs: And one amongst the rest did kill his wife, powdered [i.e. salted] her, and had eaten part of her before it was known; for which he was executed, as he well deserved: now whether she was better roasted, boiled or carbonado'd [i.e. grilled], I know not; but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of. 

This was that time, which still to this day we called the starving time; it were too vile to say, and scarce to be believed, what we endured: but the occasion was our own, for want of providence industry and government, and not the barrenness and defect of the Country, as is generally supposed...

Sobering thoughts. Perhaps next week we will return to a more cheerful topic on the Rosen-blog.

Kathy Haas is the Associate Curator at the Rosenbach Museum & Library and the primary poster at the Rosen-blog

Sendak and Science: Atomics for the Millions

Final drawing for Atomics for the Millions.  Pen and ink, gouache.  (C) 1946-7 by Maurice Sendak.

Maurice Sendak got his first “gig” in the world of book illustration when he was 18, as some astonishing materials recently purchased by the Rosenbach attest.  It was the spring of 1946, and his physics teacher at Lafayette High School in Brooklyn, Hyman Ruchlis—recalling Sendak’s artistic talent from his contributions to the school literary magazine and comic strips—asked his student to produce illustrations for a book he was co-writing on atomic energy.  Ruchlis, co-author Maxwell Eidinoff, and publisher McGraw Hill, needed lively and informative scientific diagrams as well as larger pictorial sequences for their book, tentatively titled Atomic Adventures.  This week the Rosenbach acquired 18 original drawings for Atomics for the Millions, as it came to be called, as well as the contracts signed by Sendak and the authors. 

Contract for Atomics for the Millions, July 22, 1946

It wasn’t a bad “gig” for an 18-year-old aspiring artist.  As the contract shows, Sendak was paid $100: $50 in advance, $50 upon delivery (though, as legend has it, a passing grade in physics was also part of the deal).  It was hard-earned, since Sendak created over 100 pen-and-ink illustrations for the book, with imagery as diverse as a portrait of Einstein contemplating the relationship between matter and energy, the uncontrolled atomic reaction triggered by a nuclear weapon, and a medieval alchemist in his rudimentary laboratory.  A dome-headed, lab-coated scientist also shows up in several of Sendak’s drawings investigating the secrets of the atom.  He has the feel of a stock comic book scientist, possibly of the “mad” variety.  

It was another four years before Sendak illustrated another book: Marcel Ayme’s Wonderful Farm, which marked the beginning of his career in children’s books.  Sendak’s illustrations for Atomics for the Millions were long presumed destroyed, and it is a shame no other illustrations have resurfaced.  But these 18 demonstrate a number of characteristics about the young illustrator that could be said of the mature Sendak, as well.  They reveal his debt to comics and early animation; his blend of literal, serious imagery (such as the Einstein and Curie portraits) with imaginative, humorous illustrations (Sodium and Chlorine atoms as dancing partners "attracted" to each other); and his developing pen-and-ink style that favored shading and texture through cross-hatching.  Atomics for the Millions might not be the brightest star in the constellation of Sendak-illustrated books, but it may just be the big bang where some of the elements of his illustration find their origins.  See for yourself next week, when we install one or two of the drawings in our current exhibition, Maurice Sendak: A Legacy (closes May 26th). 

Final drawing for Atomics for the Millions.  Pen and ink, gouache.  (C) 1956-7 by Maurice Sendak.

Patrick Rodgers is Curator of the Maurice Sendak Collection at the Rosenbach Museum & Library. 

Merger Media Medley

Free Library Foundation and Rosenbach directors and board chairs with the mayor and Dr. R

 Clearly the big news this week at the Rosenbach is our plan to merge with the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation. Here's a quick round-up of some of the news coverage that the announcement has been receiving, in case you'd like to read more:

Philadelphia Inquirer 4-17-2013 

AP Wire  4-17-2013 (very short notice)

WHYY  4-17-2013

KYW 4-17-2013

Philadelphia Inquirer 4-18-2013 (this second Inquirer article focuses on the Rosenbach's collections)

Metro 4-18-2013

Library Journal 4-19-2013

We also had brief clips on 6ABC and Fox29 news.  A pretty good start for what is going to be an exciting new step for the Rosenbach!

Kathy Haas is the Associate Curator at the Rosenbach Museum & Library and the primary poster at the Rosen-blog