Kenny's Choice: March Binding of the Month Club

Welcome to the March 2016 Binding of the Month Club!

Did you know that the University of North Carolina Greensboro digital projects website is not the only place to view our collection of American trade bindings?  If you haven’t discovered them yet, let me encourage you to visit the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) (1). Headquartered at the Boston Public Library, the DPLA was launched in April 2013 after years of planning.  Their website gives this summary of their purpose:

"The vision of a national digital library has been circulating among librarians, scholars, educators, and private industry representatives since the early 1990s.  Efforts led by a range of organizations, including the Library of Congress, HathiTrust, and the Internet Archive, have successfully built resources that provide books, images, historic records, and audiovisual materials to anyone with Internet access.  Many universities, public libraries and other public-spirited organizations have digitized materials, but these digital collections often exist in silos.  The DPLA brings these different viewpoints, experiences, and collections together in a single platform and portal, providing open and coherent access to our society's digitized cultural heritage." (2)

The UNCG Libraries are a contributing institution to DPLA through the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, one of DPLA’s partners, and our American Publishers’ Trade Bindings (APTB) collection can be viewed in its entirety on DPLA.

Why bring up DPLA on American Trade Bindings and Beyond?  In addition to my personal respect for what they’re doing and the quality of the product (11,776,547 digital items as I write this), and that you can find our bindings on their site, and to celebrate their third anniversary, I was delighted to find that one of their staff is a big fan of APTB!  Let me introduce you to Kenny Whitebloom, Manager of Special Projects at DPLA.  According to his bio, Kenny “works to build DPLA’s network of users and supporters through events and programs, communications, partnerships, strategic initiatives, and other projects that promote growth and innovation. He previously worked at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Kenny holds a MLIS from Simmons School of Library and Information Science and a BA in History and Italian from Vassar College. Kenny’s current favorite DPLA items are the bindings for A Kentucky Cardinal and Aftermath (1900), Like a Gallant Lady (1897), The Tent on the Beach (1899), and The Legatee (1903).”

In addition to his accomplishments, Kenny also has great taste in bindings.  The titles he lists have binding designs by Hugh Thomson, Will Bradley, Margaret Armstrong, and the Decorative Designers respectively--all very heavy hitters in the world of binding design, and innovators in illustration and design.  Hugh Thomson (1860-1920) was born in Coleraine, County Londonderry, Ireland and died in London.  He was known for his work in periodical and book illustration.  In our context, he illustrated a number of classic authors, including Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, and Oliver Goldsmith, as well as contemporary authors such as James Barrie and James Lane Allen.  In the 1880s and 1890s he created binding designs (and illustrations) for a number of books for Macmillan and Kegan Paul.  These are instantly recognizable by their elaborate pictorial scenes, stamped in gilt, and usually on dark cloth (we have five of his covers in the collection).  

Will H. Bradley (1868-1962) was an artist, book, magazine and graphic designer, illustrator, typographer, writer, and was considered one of the pre-eminent poster artists in the United States.  He started his own publishing firm, the Wayside Press, in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1895.  He designed covers for both small presses (H.S. Stone and Way & Williams of Chicago, R.H. Russell of New York) and large publishing firms (Frederick A. Stokes, John Lane, Dodd, Mead and Company (3)).  We've met Margaret Armstrong (1867-1944) in several earlier posts and her work will be featured again; many consider her among the best, if not the best, of the binding designers.  For this post, however, my choice from Kenny's favorites is The Legatee, by Alice Prescott Smith (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1903), with a binding by the Decorative Designers--I'm an unrepentant fan of designs on black or charcoal gray cloth...

The dramatic pictorial cover shows a forest in flames.  The somber black cloth becomes silhouetted pines against a background of swirling multicolored flames reaching (by implication) far up into the sky.  This cover is a good example of the switching of foreground image (the only inked portion of the design) into background, with the illusion of background black cloth becoming the foreground image.  The extremely restrained lettering in the center of the cover completes the design.  At first glance the darkened portion of the flames in the upper right might be mistaken as intentional, representing smoke among the flames.  After a more careful look at our copy and comparing it to the copy at the University of California, this “effect” turns out to be nothing more than the result of aging and the thousand natural shocks that cloth is heir to.

UNCG copy





                          University of California copy

The Legatee is a story of the lumber districts and lumber trade in the northeastern peninsula of Wisconsin in the early 1870s.  With references to Lake Michigan and the beaches and bluffs around the town of Wilsonport, the location must be the southern coast of the Door Peninsula, though this is not specifically mentioned.  A young Virginian comes to the area after inheriting a lumber mill from his deceased uncle.  There is an immediate clash between the rural, isolated upper Midwest villagers and young Robert Proctor, our hero, who until the Civil War had been a slave owner.  Neither understands the other and hostility grows.  He comes to love Katherine Edminster, the daughter of the local doctor, and her initial animosity gradually turns to affection.  The novel culminates with an account of the Great Peshtigo Fire (though not called this in the book) of October 8-10th, 1871 which devastates the entire region.  A very favorable review in the San Francisco Call of April 26, 1903, draws particular attention to the creation of original characters and the relationships among them, and that the “The catastrophe is worked up with dramatic skill and is described with a genuine intensity of feeling and vividness of pictorial effect.” (4)  

From the November 25, 1871 issue of Harper's Weekly magazine

The fire which climaxes The Legatee was “the worst recorded forest fire in North American history.” Coincidentally (or is it?  There are theories, including aliens …), a much more famous fire broke out the same night, October 8th, in Chicago.  Although the Great Chicago Fire is now part of our shared culture, the Peshtigo fire, which killed between 1500 and 2500 people (the devastation was so great that local records were destroyed and an accurate count was impossible), and burned 1.2 million acres, is little known today.  The fires were caused by a prolonged drought coupled with high temperatures and sudden cyclonic western winds which turned small fires, set to clear forest land, into a firestorm, with “fire tornadoes,” winds over 100 miles per hour, and temperatures of 2,000 degrees. (5)

Little information about the author is readily available.  Alice Prescott Smith wrote four novels in the early part of the twentieth century, The Legatee (1903) being her first.  The next two, Off the Highway (1904) and Montlivet (1906), followed quickly, with her final book, Kindred, appearing in 1925.  The first three novels were published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company and the last by Houghton Mifflin Company, which took this new form of name after incorporating in 1908.   A “List of United States citizens (for the immigration authorities)” dated Dec. 14, 1927 (6), gives her name as a passenger on the S.S. “President Van Buren”, sailing from Marseilles, France, Nov. 30, 1927 and arriving at the port of New York, Dec. 14, 1927.  The same source gives her age as 58 years, 1 month, and her place and date of birth as St. Paul, Minn., Nov. 1, 1859.  Her U.S. address was at 992 Green St., San Francisco, Calif.  The review of The Legatee mentioned above tells us further that Alice grew up among the people and scenes she described.  Her father, a Congregational missionary, had a large parish of widely scattered farms and villages, and Alice accompanied her father on his many long drives from farm to farm and “there was not a village she did not know.”  During these visits she heard many stories of the great fire of October 1871.  The review further states that before The Legatee, she had been “content to write short stories,” and that she had been a resident of San Francisco for the past thirteen years (i.e. since 1890, so she arrived in California at roughly age 31).

"All that's very well--and who doesn't want to know about a huge fire--but what about the binding designer?"  That’s a fair question.  I apologize for treating the main course like dessert, but when it’s the Decorative Designers you really have both in one.  Much is known about the firm, in large part because of the pioneering work of Charles Gullans and John Espey (7) who had the good fortune to interview one of the co-founders of the firm, Lee Thayer, in the early 1970s.  UCLA’s Special Collections holds a substantial “Collection of Materials by and Relating to the Decorative Designers” donated by Gullans and Espey (8). 

 The firm was unique in several ways, first of all because it was a firm.  It was founded in 1895 by the architect Henry Thayer (1867-1940) who quickly hired Emma Reddington Lee (1874-1973), who was trained in the decorative arts.  Emma later married Thayer (1909) and changed her name to Mrs. Lee Thayer.  Two other artists were hired, Rome K. Richardson, (born 1877) and Adam Empie.  Later Charles Buckles Falls (1874-1960) and Jay Chambers (1877-1929) were added.  Most binding designers worked as individuals, whether by contract or commission by publishers, or as art directors for the publishers.  

Another unique feature of the firm was division of labor.  Henry Thayer, trained as an architect, was responsible for a great deal of the lettering on book covers or other work (the firm also did illustration, dust jacket design, advertising, and other design work).  Lee Thayer was responsible for decorative designs and borders.  Richardson, who was with the Decorative Designers from 1896-1901, and Adam Empie transferred the designs to brass plates and engraved them.  Charles Buckles Falls and Jay Chambers, the latter working for the firm from 1902-1913, provided the figurative drawings used for “narrative” designs.  Although work for the firm was either unsigned or signed with their distinctive interlocked DD monogram, with the second “D” reversed, all of the artists working for the firm produced covers that were largely or completely by the single artist.  Falls, Richardson and Empie also signed these solo efforts with distinctive monograms.  Examples of these single designer bindings and monograms are given below (except Empie, as we have no examples of his solo work).  In all, the firm produced an astonishing output of around 25,000 pieces of design work, an unknown number of which were book covers, though they were certainly in the thousands.  The firm was dissolved in 1931 and Lee and Henry Thayer’s marriage ended in divorce the next year.  Our digital collection includes 120 covers by the Decorative Designers at this time.  Only somewhere between 10 and 100 times that number to go!

Cover designs by Lee Thayer (left) and Henry Thayer (right) and Jay Chambers (below)(9)

Cover designs by Rome Richardson (below left) and Charles Buckles Falls (below right)

And their monograms

Thanks again, Kenny, for your interest in the American Publishers’ Trade Bindings digital collection, and for a fine selection of favorites.  And to our visitors, don’t forget that your’s could be the next selection for Binding of the Month.  Just drop us a comment.

(1) Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Public_Library_of_America for a brief overview.

(2) http://dp.la/info/about/history/ viewed March 30, 2016.

 (3) A nice site with brief biography, checklists of his artistic output and writings, timeline, etc. is at http://willbradley.com/

(4)  “Tale of ‘The Legatee,’ by Alice Prescott Smith, Is Strong in its Types.” Review:  San Francisco Call, Volume 93, Number 147, 26 April 1903.  http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19030426.2.54

(5) Deana C. Hipke. The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871. http://www.peshtigofire.info/  Also see “The Peshtigo Fire” (http://www.weather.gov/grb/peshtigofire ) and “The Great Midwest Wildfires of 1871” (http://www.weather.gov/grb/peshtigofire2)

(6) “New York, New York Passenger and Crew Lists, 1909, 1925-1957," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1942-21741-32740-69?cc=1923888), 4184 - vol 9331, Dec 14, 1927 > image 184 of 486; citing NARA microfilm publication T715 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d.).

(7) For a useful short account of the firm, see:  Gullans, Charles and John Espey. “American Trade Bindings and Their Designers, 1880-1915.” In Peters, Jean, ed. Collectible Books: Some New Paths. New York: Bowker, 1979, p. 32-67.

(8) Online finding aid at: http://pdf.oac.cdlib.org/pdf/ucla/mss/deco1182.pdf
(9) Attributions by Lee Thayer as reported by Gullans and Espey in Collectible Books.  The image for The Yellow Van is from the invaluable website Publishers Bindings Online (PBO) with my thanks.  We have a copy in our collection but it's in poor condition.

Babyhood...it's not for the faint of heart

Sometimes, book covers can just be creepy.  A case in point is this book, “Babyhood: Rhymes and Stories, Pictures and Silhouettes for Our Little Ones,” which recently came across my desk.  In my opinion, it has a cover that just has to be shared.

The artist(s) who prepared the cover is currently unknown to us.  Some of you out there might know who the artist was (and if you do, please send the name our way). Published by Estes & Lauriat in 1878 and edited by Laura E. Richards, this book looks very sweet at first glance: a baby in a basket, what's not to love?

Then you turn the book over and look at the back cover.  There you find some nice childhood vignettes: a Jack and Jill scene, some kids running while holding hands, and even a little girl chasing a butterfly. But then your eyes are drawn unwillingly to the central figure, a somewhat creepy baby tearing through the paper cover and popping out of the book at you in a very "here's Johnny" kind of way. And you know that this baby recognizes you—and knows all about you!  Not only that, but you have a strategically placed fly to the left of the creepy baby ...

Here's a close up for your viewing pleasure:

My first thought is why? What made the publisher (and the artist who designed the cover) think that the fly was a good idea? Was there any conversation about putting a fly into the image? Flipping through the book, there doesn't appear to be a story or poem about flies although there are plenty about meadows and being outside. And was the baby popping out of the book okay when the book was first published?  I have to remind myself that The Shining wasn't around back then to cast its shadow over this innocent(?) baby picture, so the intended audience might well have thought it was cute and perhaps even endearing.  But what about the fly?

The illustrations in this volume, while mostly sweet and cute, also include a duck eating a frog, and a cat carrying away a mouse in a dress which I find mildly disturbing, though realistic (except for the mouse wearing a dress, of course). 

I wouldn't want to end this post after only showing the oddities of the book, so here is an image of the lovely pink endpapers to send your cuteness meter over the top and make partial amends for the strange baby. Who doesn't love babies and dogs?

But … what about that fly?

Hearts Looking at You, Kid: February Binding of the Month Club

The last day of February, in a leap year, has come.  The end of the month of love, with Valentine’s Day falling squarely in the middle—there to spread its aura over the days preceding and following.  Chocolates and candies; flowers; dinners; cards, of course, some with astonishing sentiments--barrels of pure, sweetened and condensed sentiment; and hearts—a profusion of hearts of every variety in every imaginable material.   And “sweethearts,” aka “conversation hearts,” those tiny candy wafers printed with brief but imperishable mottoes (XOXOXO, BE MINE, MARRY ME, and WINK WINK).  I was surprised to learn that the same manufacturer, the New England Confectionery Company, makes, and has made since 1847, the classic and indescribable Necco wafers.

Image from wikipedia (1)

Now that love and hearts have entered this post, I must say that I love, perhaps even heart, the cover of our February book (with more on why after I present the binding).  My local NPR station has relentlessly been reminding me that not only is February the month of love but it’s also the month of giving—“our volunteers are standing by to take your pledge…”  With that in mind we now give you the February binding of the month.  

Heart’s Desire: the Story of a Contented Town, Certain Peculiar Citizens, and Two Fortunate Lovers: a Novel by Emerson Hough.  New York: Macmillan, 1904.

The book is the work of Emerson Hough (1857-1923).  A native of Iowa, Hough was a lawyer, journalist, historian, novelist, sportsman, essayist, early conservationist, and incurable traveler, particularly in the American West.  

Of most relevance in this context, Hough was admitted to the bar in Iowa in 1882.  Shortly afterwards he was invited by a friend to join a law practice in White Oaks, New Mexico, where Hough arrived on June 1, 1883.  White Oaks was transformed into the New Mexico town “Heart’s Desire” in the novel.  One of the central characters is the red-headed cowboy “Curly”, about whom Hough wrote a number of humorous stories from 1902 to 1905.  These stories were turned into his novel about Heart’s Desire, a critical success (2) but a complete financial failure. (3)  Throughout his career Hough was noted for his humor, objectivity, and honesty, particularly on western subjects, though he was never considered artistically successful.  He finally achieved financial security in 1922 on the strength of his next to last novel, The Covered Wagon, which was adapted for the movies.  His final work, North of 36, was also a huge success but he died two months after selling the film rights.  More information about Hough’s life and work can be found in an article by Carole Johnson. (4), 

Though not many might find the cover a masterpiece, it does feature a competent and evocative design.  A central panel shows a wagon and team of horses in silhouette cresting a rise against a blue background suggesting “big sky” country.  The whip and use of the cloth color to show the sandy nature of the countryside are nice touches.  The “rustic” western font used for the lettering and the binding cloth used, unpatterned rough grain and sand colored, further reinforce the far western feel of the design.  The cover design is completed with heavy dark red rules and lettering and a vaguely heart-shaped object under the title.  Under slight magnification, the latter appears as two overlapping hearts and confirms that what we will find within is a western love story.  

The two hearts are much clearer on a later printing of the book, in which the design is simplified (and made cheaper to produce) by stamping in black only.

But what elevates this design to the sublime is the sheer goofiness, or perhaps I should say whimsy, of the spine.  The spine is cleanly and modestly decorated with gilt lettering and brown rules.  Then the unexpected enters ...

Now, you can come hat in hand, eat your hat, talk through one, keep things under one, tip it, pass it, or wear two of them.  Likewise your heart can sink, bleed or be made of stone or gold; you can wear it on your sleeve, have it in your mouth, put your hand on it, or change it.  But having a hat on a heart is a long step beyond any cliché or idiom I've heard!  Where did this come from?  Who was the designer who came up with the idea of a heart wearing a hat?  Unfortunately, we don’t know at this time but I for one take my hat off to her or him.

I simply can’t get over this cover.  The only way you could possibly improve on it?

(1) Necco_factory_with_water_tower.jpg: Jill Robidoux - Necco factory with water tower.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4786418

(2) See, for example, the review by Churchill Williams, “Mr. Hough’s ‘Heart’s Desire,’” in The Bookman,  Dec. 1905, v. 22, p. 367-368.

(3)  Although I should note that Heart’s Desire is listed as book no. 5745 in the Catalog of the Illinois State ReformatoryLibrary at Pontiac, Ill., 1912.

(4) Information on Emerson Hough from:  Johnson, Carole M.  “Emerson Hough’s American West.” Books at Iowa 21, Nov. 1974. 

Happy Chinese New Year!

The 2016 Chinese New Year began on Monday, February 8^th.  The year of the monkey!  To celebrate, we’ve prepared a short post featuring monkey bindings.  These are not a type of binding that you can hang from a branch by their tail bands.  Nor should you attempt to feed one fruits, nuts, or insects of any kind, particularly book worms.  Rather, they feature monkeys as a theme.  Monkey bindings are quite scarce in the American Trade Bindings Collection, but what we have we now offer in celebration of the Year of the Monkey.

New York: L.C. Page & Co., 1900

The Story of Dago by Annie Fellows Johnston (1863-1931), of The Little Colonel fame.  

This children’s story is an autobiography of Dago, told by himself to “the mirror-monkey” (his reflection).   The illustrations are by Etheldred Breeze Barry (born 1870), a prolific illustrator of children’s books including many by Annie Johnston.  The cover design shows Dago holding a vase which, along with the monkey’s paw and tail emerge from the central frame.  The inks used on the binding can vary in different copies, but the really interesting variation is that on an unknown number of copies the title lettering has an almost unnoticeable addition: a small cross stroke below the crossbar of the “H” in “THE.”  Here’s a rendering of what I mean:

In this way a monogram is partly hidden within a title letter.  The monogram in this case is “FH” for Frank Hazenplug (1874-1931), who changed his name in 1911 to Frank Hazen.  We’ll have more to say about him in a later post.  This copy does not have the monogram in the title letter nor does any image that I found, but I have seen the variation on a copy.  The cover design was also used on the British edition of 1902, published by the London firm Jarrold & Sons Ltd.

I also must mention that the ornament at the head of the contents page:

is by Amy Sacker (1872-1965), who was a well-known and prolific binding designer.  Our colleague, Mark Schumacher, details the widespread use of this engraving on his Amy Sacker website.

Next we have a pair of monkeys from the cover of Extracts from Adam’s Diary by Mark Twain.  We don’t have to look far to find that this is an adaptation of a portion of the frontispiece, signed by the illustrator F[rederick] Strothmann.   Whenever we can we try to identify the artist who produced the cover design.  In the period of the artist/designer it should be remembered, the artist did not actually engrave the die that was used to stamp the cover; that was the work of a separate engraver(s).  

By placing an enlargement of the decorated part of the cover next to the frontispiece we can see some interesting differences.

 Obviously the illustration has been greatly simplified, omitting everything except Adam chiseling the face of a woman on a slab (and covering her own eyes) while two monkeys watch.   So no Eve; no smiling pelican, lion, tiger, or snake; no squirrel perched on the slab, or turtle, or frog sitting on another drawing; no supporting wall against which the slab rests--which makes the cover image look unsettlingly like a tombstone.  What Adam has acquired though is a fine leafy smock, although he is naked in the illustration.  In addition, a large chunk of Adam is missing from his upper thighs to his waist (presumably obscured by the seven blades of grass).  A strange red swatch is also added around the leaf smock and under his arm, possibly to hold the leaf smock on, although it makes him look more like a Christmas tree tied to the top of a car.  Thus chastely emended, Adam chisels on… 

I could accept the illustration’s Adam and Eve producing Cain and Abel, but I have my doubts about the cover Adam.  We don’t know who was responsible for this modest proposal, but I would be very surprised if it were the artist.  It seems much more likely that the art department at Harper had a simplified die made expressly for the cover.  For this reason, our description states that the cover is after the Strothmann illustration and it does not give a binding designer.

The third title is actually from my own collection, but there’s just too much monkey on this one to pass up.

New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1898

Henry Drummond (1851-1897) was a Scottish minister with a strong interest in the natural sciences.  He traveled widely and became famous after his first book, Natural Law in the Spiritual World, was published in 1883.  Undoubtedly his most popular book was The Greatest Thing in the World and Other Addresses (1894) which was published and republished in hundreds of editions.  Every publisher seemed to have an edition or two, in much the same way that Sonnets From the Portuguese and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam were publishing “standards.”  If you have any desire to pick up a copy today there are dozens of editions available.  In addition to his scientific and religious writings, he edited the British children’s magazine Wee Willie Winkie for several months in 1891 while the regular mother and daughter editorial team, Isabel Aberdeen and Marjorie A.H. Gordon, were in Canada.  According to the preface in The Monkey That Would Not Kill, Drummond wrote the first part of the story as an anonymous serial which ran in Wee Willie Winkie.  The story was so popular and requests for a sequel so great that he wrote another serial with his monkey protagonist appearing under a new name and in a new setting.  The first story featured “Tricky” and his escapades both at sea and on an unnamed Scottish island, and the second, “Gum,” had the renamed monkey drift ashore in California. 

The pictorial cover of the book was designed by George Wharton Edwards (1859-1950).  He was known for his impressionist paintings and as an illustrator.  He also designed book covers and in the 1910s wrote, illustrated, and provided cover designs for a series of travel books, many of which were issued by the Penn Publishing Company of Philadelphia.  Somewhat older than most of the cover designers we have discussed, he is often not included among the great designers of the 1890s and 1900s.  A selection of his work can be seen at our American Publishers’ Trade Bindings site.  You can identify his bindings by his monogram, several versions of which are reproduced below.

George Wharton Edwards, from Wikipedia

The British edition of this book was published by Hodder and Stoughton, also in 1898, but with a very different cover(1).  This edition features a design after one of the illustrations by Louis Wain (1860-1939)(2).  Wain was an enormously popular English artist chiefly known for his humorous illustrations of anthropomorphic cats with large eyes engaged in human behaviors and situations.  He often dressed them in clothes, from bowler hats and bow ties to full suits and dresses.  The cover is based on the illustration on page 21 in which Tricky goes on a painting frenzy aboard the ship Vulcan, at the beginning of which he paints the ship’s parrot.  Did I mention that Tricky/Gum is continually up to various sorts of mischief?

London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1898

And finally, because you’ll need a place to keep all these monkeys, we offer the following:

A Box of Monkeys and Other Farce-Comedies, by Grace Livingston Furniss.  New York: Harper and Brothers, 1905.

Happy New Year!


1) Images from the copy held by the Baldwin Library, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida
2) Louis Wain led a difficult life.  He spent his later years in various mental institutions, possibly afflicted with schizophrenia.  This youtube video shows a progression of drawings, roughly before and after he was institutionalized.