Illustrating the Good Life
The Pissarros’ Eragny Press, 1894-1914
Catalogue of an exhibition of books, prints & drawings related to the work of the
Press. By Alice H.R.H. Beckwith. Preface by Alan Fern. 8” x 11”; x, 70 pp. Frontispiece and 38 color and duotone illustrations. An illustrated history and survey of the work of the Eragny Press by Alice H. R. H. Beckwith, followed by detailed descriptions of 104 items on display at the Grolier Club, Feb. 20-April 28, 2007. Designed by Jerry Kelly, set in Adobe Jenson and Epigrammata types, and printed in an edition of 400 copies.
(ISBN: 0-910672-71-7). Illustrated wrappers: $40
Placard descriptions in Case #10 of the exhibition:
“The Eragny Press Influence in the United States”
Text by Alice H.R.H Beckwith and used here with her permission
NIC = Not In Catalogue
I cannot help feeling very much impressed by the number of people both
in England and America who with such a splendid “esprit civic” spend their
lives collecting art treasures and leave them to some institution for the joy
of posterity. I am only too pleased to contribute my very small share in your
generous undertaking . . .
—Lucien Pissarro
Autograph letter to Philip
Darrel Sherman, August 26, 1926
Brown University
Library
Bibliophiles, typographers, and publishers in the United
States admired and collected Eragny Press books for the entire history of the
press. The British publisher John Lane opened his New York office in 1896 and
had available the Eragny Press’s first book, The Queen of the Fishes. Lane distributed Eragny Press books in the
United States until 1905. By 1904, Eragny books were so well respected that the
St. Louis World’s Fair accepted four of them for exhibition at the Louisiana
Purchase Exposition. Alfred Fowler, a Grolier Club member and editor of the
Kansas City-based Biblio
magazine, served as an Eragny spokesman and distributor beginning in 1913.
Educator and collector Philip Darrel Sherman lectured about printing and the
Eragny Press in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and western New York State. Daniel
Berkeley Updike, proprietor of Boston’s Merrymount
Press, appreciatively discussed and illustrated Eragny Press books in Printing Types (1922), the most
important American text on printing.
In preparation for the sale of his book collection in 1924,
John Quinn, an attorney and a major collector of modern books and art, told his
correspondent at New York’s Anderson Auction Galleries that everyone knew
Eragny books. Many of Quinn’s books entered the New York Public Library
collection after Quinn’s sale. The holdings of Eragny books in public
collections will be further investigated in the Brown University and Sacramento
Public Library versions of the Grolier Club exhibition. But it was the “Pirate
Prince of Publishers,” Thomas Bird Mosher of Portland, Maine, who gave Lucien Pissarro’s designs their widest circulation in this
country. According to his bibliographer, Philip R. Bishop, Mosher owned
thirteen of the Pissarros’ books, and used them as design sources in his own
publications.
Lucien Pissarro, Autograph Letter to Philip
Darrel Sherman, August
26, 1926, with a photograph of Lucien
Pissarro beside his Albion Press.
Philip Darrel Sherman taught
at Oberlin College in Ohio, and gave lectures about the history of printing at
the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. He used his
salary and lecture fees to buy books and manuscripts that he then discussed in
his classes and talks. He was also a member of the Rowfant
Club, a Cleveland society of book collectors. Such societies provided important
opportunities for discussion about literature and fine printing in the United
States. Sherman, always the teacher, donated his collection to Brown University
in honor of Professor Harry Lyman Koopman, his
teacher of bibliography at Brown and the man who inspired his interest in books
and printing. The heart of this Eragny press exhibition is from Sherman’s
collection. In support of Sherman’s teaching and his intention of giving his
books away, Lucien Pissarro generously gave Sherman the Eragny volumes of
Coleridge, Browning, and Rossetti.
Brown
University Library, gift of Philip D. Sherman in honor of his teacher Harry L. Koopman
Lucien
Pissarro. Bookplate of Joseph Manuel Andreini. Wood
engraving, 1907.
Joseph Manuel Andreini was a senior member of the Wall Street banking
firm of Lawrence Turnure and Co. and a member of the
Grolier and Rowfant Clubs. He had a standing order with the Pissarros
for every one of their books, and developed a warm friendship with the artists.
Andreini’s bookplate is a miniature masterpiece of
pastoral peace. The thoughtful shepherdess is seated beneath an oak tree with
sheep and poplar trees in the distance. The design follows Andreini’s
request. The bookplate seen here is affixed to Andreini’s copy of
the Eragny Press’s François Villon, Autres poésies de Maistre François Villon et
son école.
Gary Brenner
Collection
Copy of a
“Literary Note from John Lane,” New York, ca. 1905.
In this letter to American
bibliophiles, John Lane informs collectors about publication of the Eragny
Press Dream Come True collection of
poems by Laurence Binyon. Lane praises the Pissarros’
book arts skills as well as Binyon’s poetry, and he incites purchase by
proclaiming the limited number of copies available in the United States.
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware
Library, Newark, Delaware
NIC
Example of
John Lane’s New York Letter Head
Even when John Lane was not
promoting an Eragny book readers were aware of the Pissarros’ works, because
Lane cited his role as their publisher on the stationary used in his New York
Office.
Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, on loan to the University of Delaware
Library, Newark, Delaware
NIC
The Book of Ruth and the Book of Esther. London: Hacon and Ricketts, 1896.
This second book from the
Eragny Press is the first example of the Eragny floral-patterned printed
binding papers. Like the book itself the design of this paper is an early work,
lacking the complex geometry of the later papers. However, in this as in all
their books, the Pissarros’ respect for nature as a source of inspiration and
delight animates the six pairs of snowdrops and their surrounding leaves.
Brown University Library
Ecclesiastes or the Preacher. Portland, Maine: Thomas Bird Mosher, 1907.
Americans defend freedom of
the press rigorously, and in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this
ideal fostered some dramatic examples of reprinting. English publishers and
printers called this practice piracy, but the publication of foreign works not
registered at the American copyright office brought no penalty under United
States law. The snowdrop binding on
Mosher’s Ecclesiastes is an example
of unacknowledged reuse of an Eragny Press design.
Philip R.
Bishop Collection
Unfolded Japan
vellum binding for Ecclesiastes or the
Preacher. Portland: Thomas B. Mosher, 1907.
Mosher observed Pissarro’s use of Japanese vellum and here employs that
material for a typographical tribute to the snowdrop pattern on their Book of Ruth and the Book of Esther.
Philip R.
Bishop Collection
Mosher Sales
Catalogue. Portland: Thomas B. Mosher, 1898.
Mosher’s adaptation of the
Eragny snowdrop design for his 1898 book catalogue is remote from its original
use on a Biblical text. Mosher’s commercial exploitation probably would have
upset the Pissarros more than the use of their design on the Ecclesiastes; however, despite the
commercial context, and the distorted bright red and green color scheme, Lucien
Pissarro’s snowdrops still manage to improve the
page, and raise viewers’ consciousness of beauty in nature.
Philip R.
Bishop Collection
Pierre de Ronsard.
Abregé de l’art poétique. London: Hacon and Ricketts, 1903.
Lucien Pissarro’s
design for the first pages of Ronsard’s Abregé de l’art poétique [Summary of the Art of Poetry] is organized like a carefully tended
garden. The floral borders framing each page are rectangular and symmetrically
placed. The centered pressmark on the first page balances the facing text
block. Each element relates to the others, and the design as a whole projects a
sense of harmony that is sympathetic with Ronsard’s advice to poets: to labor,
and polish their work as a gardener would prune his plants. This is the only
Eragny text that might be described as a teaching volume, because it is not a
poem in itself, but a guide to writing. Thomas Bird Mosher’s also took the
Eragny Ronsard as teacher, using the book as a design source more often than
any of the other twelve Eragny books in his collection.
Brown
University Library
Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass. Portland, Maine: Thomas
Bird Mosher, 1919.
Writing in the American Mercury in May of 1924, Harry
Lyman Koopman proclaimed that “discussion of modern
fine printing in America may well begin with the work of Mosher.” And indeed,
Mosher’s careful choice of paper, good quality ink, and an ornament borrowed
from the Eragny Abregé de l’art poétique, epitomizes
Anglo-French ideas about fine printing as interpreted by Lucien Pissarro.
Besides giving Mosher ideas about book ornamentation, Eragny books provided him
with examples of how effective good paper and ink were in producing visual
impact.
Philip R.
Bishop Collection
Ten Spiritual Designs, enlarged from Proofs of the
Originals on Copper, Wood and
Stone of Thomas Calvert. Portland, Maine: Thomas
Bird Mosher, 1913.
Mosher included a slip of
paper in his Calvert book crediting Lucien Pissarro with the designs for
ornaments used in the text. In his forward and on page three of the text,
Mosher combined a floral band from the Pissarros’ Abregé de l’art poétique, with a red initial A from the Eragny Descent of
Ishtar. Philip R. Bishop traced both of these books to Mosher’s collection.
Following Eragny Press precedent, Mosher also carefully chose the paper for his
books, and in this special edition he used Japanese vellum. It is not known why
Mosher chose to acknowledge his use of Pissarro’s
designs in this book, but it is one of his most visually impressive volumes. In
2000 it was chosen by Martin Hutner and Jerry Kelly as one of the hundred best
books of the last hundred years in their A
Century for the Century exhibition at the Grolier Club. Furthermore, in form and content it is very
much in keeping with the pastoral, harmonious natural world found in Eragny
Press illustrations and ornaments.
Philip R. Bishop Collection
Christmas Card: “Recessional,” by Rudyard Kipling. Printed for Edward
Woods, Portland: Thomas B. Mosher, 1918 – 19.
Red and green printers’
flowers from Pissarro’s designs for Francis Bacon’s Of Gardens enliven Mosher’s texts in
both The Last Christmas Tree and the
Christmas card. The introduction of green in the text is one more example of Pissarro’s influence on Mosher, and Mosher even retains Pissarro’s monogram at the bottom of the page on the
Christmas card. As a self-taught designer, Mosher turned to the only school
available to him: well-printed books. Eragny books were circulated in the
United States soon after Mosher began his career, and he took advantage of their
presence to learn from them.
Philip R.
Bishop Collection
Francis Bacon. Of Gardens, An
Essay. London: Hacon and Ricketts, 1902.
The Eragny Press printing of
Francis Bacon’s Of Gardens, An Essay
employed a combination of colored wood engraving and upper and lower-case
letters unlike anything else printed in the English-speaking world in 1902. The
grandeur of Bacon’s opening statement, “God Almighty first planted a garden,”
is echoed in the swaying stems and trumpeting flowers. Pissarro plays with the
text, using almost all capital letters interspersed with occasional words in
lower case. Such diversity in the text block avoids boredom and makes the whole
easier to read. In the Eragny Press Of
Gardens, the Pissarros and Francis Bacon perform Tikkun
olam.- by using the art of
design to repair and perfect the world around them. Form and content are
merged here, pointing out a pathway through a garden to the Good Life of
respect for one’s self, for others and for the natural environment.
Brown
University Library