Smithsonian Libraries

Choose American Line!

International Mercantile Marine Company, American Line, ca. 1906, Back cover

The On the Water Exhibit at the National Museum of American History illustrates the important role ships have had in the past and in the present. Before airplanes, ships were the main mode of trans-Atlantic transportation. Why not choose American Line as your transport choice for traveling into the past?

American Line “has been specially arranged to accommodate those passengers who want good food and service, moderate speed and to have the best accommodation the steamers afford at moderate cost.”   Based in Philadelphia, American Line typically ran a Philadelphia-Queenstown-Liverpool shipping and travel service to and from Europe. This turn-of-the-century American Line brochure can be found in the Smithsonian Libraries' Trade Literature Collection. Within its twenty-eight pages, the brochure gives advice for travel with American Line and travel beyond the sea—points of interest, rail and alternative ship companies further east, and a foreign money exchange rate chart. A picture of either an English tourist landmark or one of the five company steamer ships features on the top of each page. Although once a part of the International Mercantile Marine Company, American Line ceased to exist after 1925.—Mary Jinglewski, with assistance from Jim Roan

Picturing Words reception next week!

To celebrate the current Smithsonian Libraries exhibition Picturing Words: The Power of Book Illustration, Helena Wright, Curator of Graphic Arts at the National Museum of American History, will present “Book Illustration and Visual Culture.”

The lecture will take place in the National Museum of American History Carmichael Auditorium, located at 14th Street and Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. next Wednesday, June 24, 2009 at 5:30 pm, with a reception to follow.

If you would like to attend, please Rsvp to 202.633.1522 or SILRsvp@si.edu

May is Jewish American Heritage Month

The Libraries' exhibition, Picturing Words: The Power of Book Illustration is currently on view in the National Museum of American History. One of the items featured in the exhibition is a wonderful woodcut-illustrated book by Nikos Stavroulakis, Yirmeyah (The Book of Jeremiah). Why not celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month by perusing these illustrations?—Elizabeth Periale

Yirmeyah (The Book of Jeremiah), Woodcuts by Nikos Stavroulakis, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973, p. 67 woodcut

Yirmeyah (The Book of Jeremiah), Woodcuts by Nikos Stavroulakis, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973, p. 88 woodcut

19th-Century Mother-of-Pearl Photograph Album

We like to think we have many jewels in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries' collections in the figurative sense, but here is a lovely volume bound in precious mother-of-pearl with silver filigree ornamentation and gauffered (decorative blind-stamped) gilt edges, dating from the second half of the nineteenth century.

This exquisite book, currently on display through September 7, 2009 at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City as part of the exhibition Shahzia Sikander Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection, was most likely an album for a collection of photographic portraits. The album is empty now, but the names of the Italian revolutionary Garibaldi and the French author Chateaubriand are still faintly visible in pencil on the interior leaves, which are decorated to look like picture frames.

The story behind the creation and history of this particular album is only partly known. Most likely the volume is of European origin (for instance, the lithographed pages of the album feature the French copyright notice, Déposé). The remarkable workmanship of the jeweled cover, however, may have originated in the Middle East or Asia, where there is a long tradition of fashioning decorative items using mother-of-pearl. An old ink inscription on the front free endpaper of the volume is signed Angela Matilde Aròstegui y Castillo, either a former owner or perhaps someone who presented this album as a gift.

This volume was accessioned into the Cooper-Hewitt library's collections in 1959, where it aptly illustrates the power of the art of design, combining the utilitarian album format with precious materials to create an unforgettable historical artifact. (Z269.3.F55M68 1850z CHMRB)—Diane Shaw

Mother Goose Day

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker's man.
Bake me a cake as fast as you can;
Pat it and prick it and mark it with B,
Put it in the oven for baby and me.

Walter Crane (1845-1915), A Romance of the Three Rs, London: Marcus Ward, 1886, Mary Stuart Book Fund

—Elizabeth Periale

Libraries exhibition featured on Art Daily.org

Art Daily.org, "The First Art Newspaper on the Net" recently featured two Libraries exhibitions, Picturing Words: The Power of Book Illustration and The Art of African Exploration on its website. —Elizabeth Periale

Another Picturing Words gem

Picturing Words: the Power of Book Illustration is currently on display in the National Museum of American History.

From the Illustrating Natural History section:

Das Mineralreich (The Mineral Kingdom)
Reinhard Brauns (1861-1937)
with additions by Leonard J. Spencer
Esslingen a. N.: J. F. Schreiber, 1912

At the end of the 18th century, a growing popular interest in natural history resulted in an increase of illustrated field guides and collectors' manuals. Images of plant and mineral specimens, drawn from nature, were printed for study and comparison. Improvements in color printing allowed artists, scientists, and publishers to include intricate details.

Images of mineral specimens were accurately drawn and colored to illustrate Reinhard Brauns’ Das Mineralreich (The Mineral Kingdom). The plates were issued bound in the book and separately. —Elizabeth Periale

Picturing Words all over the web

 The Libraries exhibition, Picturing Words: The Power of Book Illustration is currently on view at the National Museum of American History. The exhibition features beautifully illustrated books from the collection of the Smithsonian Libraries, including The Nuremberg Chronicle as well as works by Gustave Doré, Walter Crane, Andreas Vesalius and Marcus Vitruvius Pollio.

The exhibition is getting some notice on the web, as well:

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/?s=picturing+words

http://goodnaturepublishing.blogspot.com/2009/02/picturing-words-power-of-book.html

http://www.intute.ac.uk/artsandhumanities/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=20081005-21495836

http://go.si.edu/smithsonian/notice-description.tcl?newsletter_id=2269374

http://www.gosmithsonian.com/museums/national-museum-of-american-history/http://shaunaleelange.com/2008/11/30/picturing-words-the-power-of-book-illustration/

—Elizabeth Periale

Orchids Through Darwin’s Eyes Exhibit at NMNH

For this year’s annual orchid exhibit, which celebrates Charles Darwin’s 200^th Birthday, the Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL) has played a small, but pivotal role.  In the middle of the exhibit room, you will find a beautifully displayed first edition of Darwin’s book, On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilized by insects and on the good effects of intercrossing published in 1862.  It is bound in a plum cloth with an orchid gilt on the front cover.  You’ll also find quotes from this book on several of the interpretation panels.

In this book, he describes the relationships between orchids and the insects that fertilized them.  The observations Darwin made by studying orchids and their pollinators, gave support to the theory of natural selection that he describes in his more famous book “On the Origins of Species”.  “Fertilization of Orchids” was praised at the time by his contemporaries in natural history and botany. 

However, initially, the book was not a bestseller, selling only six thousand copies by the turn of the century.  Later editions found the title shorten a bit by removing “On”,“British and foreign” and "and on the good effects of intercrossing". Darwin updated the second edition which was published in 1877.  Today, the book is still in print and considered an important early work in the science of orchidology and pollination biology.   

The exhibit Orchids through Darwin’s Eyes is located on the first floor of the National Museum of Natural History from January 24, 2009 to April 26, 2009.  Go to:   http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/orchids/index.html

 

The Art of African Exploration

In the town of Ujiji in what is now Tanzania, Henry Morton Stanley, sent by a New York newspaper to track down the missing Dr. David Livingstone, finally found the man on this day, November 10, in 1871. Many had believed the ailing missionary and explorer to be dead. 

Their meeting has become legendary - even in its day it was the focus of media attention.  African exploration was a hot topic in the Victorian era in both the U.S. and Britain, capitivating the public's imagination with tales of adventure and discovery and paving the way for the West's colonialist claims on the continent. 

In a forthcoming SI Libraries exhibition, set to open December 9th at the National Museum of Natural History, African exploration is examined using an array of visual materials that emerged from that critical and complex time.  All but a few of the items on display come from the Russell E. Train Africana Collection (kept in the Cullman Library), a collection rich in illustrated and original materials.  Included in the exhibit are collectibles and ephemera, lantern slides (like the one shown above), early guide books, scientific illustrations, travel narratives, and actual explorer's sketches and journals, spanning from 18th century accounts of voyages to original field sketches from the early 1900s. 

We hope you'll come out next month to see some of these uncommon and intriguing items.