Lettered

Joseph J. Gould
Lippincott's - May
1896
lithograph (poster)
Library of Congress, Washington DC

Eric Gill
Society of Wood Engravers
1920
color woodblock print
British Museum

F. Bernard Clarke
London County Council
A.R.P. - A.F.S.
1939
lithograph (poster)
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Dat Keely
A.R.P. - Women Wanted
1939
lithograph (poster)
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Ben Shahn
Break Reaction's Grip
1946
lithograph (poster)
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington DC

Elaine Lustig Cohen
The Strange Islands - poems by Thomas Merton
1957
lithograph
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Tomoko Miho
Broadway
1968
offset-lithograph
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Elaine Lustig Cohen
Russian Triquarterly
1975-
lithograph
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Shopping Bag from Fiorucci, New York
ca. 1980
offset-print on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Shopping Bag from Fauchon, Paris
ca. 1985
offset-print on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Austrian Designer
Shopping Bag from the Albertina, Vienna
1986
offset-print on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Philippe Apeloig
Chicago, Naissance d'une Métropole - Musée d'Orsay
1987
screenprint (exhibition poster)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Michael Schirmer
Alles Falsch - Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich
ca. 1989
screenprint (exhibition poster)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Shopping Bag from Chiasso, Chicago
ca. 1990
offset-print on paper bag
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Milton Glaser
Olivetti Quaderno
1993
offset-lithograph (advertising poster)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

William Eggleston
Untitled (Cushion, Purple Wall, Graffiti, Memphis)
2007
inkjet print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Philippe Apeloig
Vivo in Typo
Affiches et Alphabets Animés
2008
screenprint (exhibition poster)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

13 June 1947

    Last night I had a rather wonderful dream.  I was in a lofty dimly lighted old hospital ward, nurses moved about silently and rapidly, sometimes murmuring a word to a patient here and there.

    Beside my own bed stood a Roman Catholic priest, and behind him were two other cloudy people, perhaps an attendant priest and a staff nurse or matron.  He was a little ferrety man with large rimless glasses and a rapt, tortured expression.

    He seemed to bless me with embarrassing depth of feeling, then, still murmuring something, he put his first and second fingers into my mouth and held the points of them against the roof of my mouth very delicately.  He was looking up to heaven murmuring faster now.  His pale face was beginning to be dewed with sweat.

    Gradually a most delicious tingling began to spread through all my body from the point in my mouth which the priest's fingers touched.  In spite of this surging pleasure, I was dimly ashamed of being the priest's patient or victim.  I felt that he was a man I could not help despising a little.  I was in a false position.  He must feel that.  I loved him for the miracle he was performing, whereas I really felt, deep down, only a pale disgust for him and the thing he was doing to me.

    After some moments of this uneasy ecstasy, the priest lifted his two fingers to Heaven, then blessed me and left.  The nice staff nurse or sister at once came up to me and said, "You are healed, isn't it wonderful! You are healed!"

    I could hardly believe it, and kept saying, "Healed for the moment, healed for the moment," to myself.  Indeed my whole attitude in the high hospital ward was a grudging and humiliated one; yet I had affection for the nice sister and even felt something like respect for the priest, in spite of my distaste or rather through it. 

    Now that I was healed, I must have wanted to get away at once from all signs of pain and illness; for I next found myself in the wings of a vast theatre.  I had run there deliriously expecting to find all the friends I did.  Valerie White (a girl I had known at the art school, who has since become quite a well-known actress) was there.  I had never particularly cared for her, but now I was polite and kind and happy and she was too.

    I flitted from group to group of gay friendly people.  I explored all the strange heights and depths behind a stage.  I danced most of the way, spinning, tumbling, kicking, to exercise my new-found joy in movement to the full.  I was singing too, letting the wild excitement ripple off my tongue.

    Then just as I was in a low, wide corridor hung with choking draperies of cotton, a sort of dust-sheet decoration, grim and hopeless, just as I was beginning to feel tired and very thirsty, someone appeared dressed as Hamlet in tight black velvet.  He carried a wide stumpy crystal goblet frosted with cold.  He was rather short, or perhaps the wide shoulders made him look stocky.  His face was squarish – lips, nose, eyes, the cut of his dark hair.  Although I have never seen anyone like him in real life, he was immediately, I knew, my best friend.  He knew it too, and offered me the goblet with a gay flourishing gesture, as if he were laughing at himself.

    I took it in both hands and drank the inky purple liquid; it was loganberry juice – something I have not had since I was seventeen.  It seemed that I could never have enough of the ice-cold deliciousness.  I drank and drank and looked over the rim of the goblet at My Best Friend.  Why did he seem to wear this invisible label?  He was smiling at me, laughing with me; we seemed in complete accord, yet I could tell at a glance that we were very different types of people.  This seemed to make his graciousness all the more precious.  I found myself thinking wildly of ways in which I could be of service to him.  I stretched out my hand to him, he stretched out his hand to me; we were about to do some stamping, strutting, military dance, when he dropped his stage bravado, ran up to me and urged me to leave, in a low serious voice that cut across all our former gaiety.

    The dream faded as we both fled on tiptoe, our fingers to our lips.  But in spite of this ballet-dancer's ending, there was real regret in both of us.  We seemed to be acting this stealth and anxiety to cover up the fact that we must part at the stage door.

– from The Journals of Denton Welch (who was born in 1915, gravely injured in 1935, then wrote the journals between 1942 and his early death in 1948), edited by Michael De-la-Noy (1984)

Letter and Image - I

Anonymous German Artist
Initial G with God the Father, Holy Ghost and Christ
ca. 1550-75
woodcut
(excised from printed book)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Girolamo Rossi after Pier Leone Ghezzi
Initial S with The Resurrection
1712
etching and engraving
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Lucas Kilian
Ornamental Alphabet - Letter S
1627
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Pier Leone Ghezzi
Initial F - Christ washing Feet of St Peter
ca. 1720
engraving
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Pier Leone Ghezzi
Initial F - Christ washing Feet of St Peter
ca. 1720
etching
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of François Regnault, Paris
ca. 1500
woodcuts and letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Lucas & Leonhard Alantsee, Vienna
1517
woodcut and letterpress
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Hans Wolff Glaser
Indigenous Woman and Daughter from Polar Region
put on display in Antwerp
1566
hand-colored woodcut and letterpress (broadside)
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Wolfgang Kilian
Dedication to Emperor Ferdinand II
1611
hand-colored engraving
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Anonymous German Artist
Ex Libris - Seidler
(Apollo with Nymphs in Grotto)
ca. 1750-1800
etching (printed in sepia)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Anonymous German Artist
Ex Libris - Walspeck
ca. 1550-1600
etching
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Jacques Callot
Varie Figure Gobbi
(title-page to portfolio of prints)
1616
etching and engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Robert Vaughan
The Portraitures at Large of Nine
Moderne Worthies of the World
1622
engraving (title-page)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Johann Adam Schweickart
Double Herm of Epicurus and Metrodorus of Lampsacus
1743
etching
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Hieronymus Wierix after Ambrosius Francken
Fall of Man
1578
hand-colored engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Martin Wiegel
Satirical Figure of Landsknecht
ca. 1560
hand-colored woodcut and letterpress
(broadside)
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

I am Sardis, the chief city of Lydia, who stand under flowery Timolus, by the stream of Maeonian Hermus. I witnessed first the birth of Jove, for I refused to betray the secretly born son of my own Rhea. It was I, too, who nursed Bacchus, and I saw him shining with broader flame in the lightning-flash. First in my fields did Autumn, the giver of wine, milk from the udder of the grape-cluster the golden juice. Everything combined to adorn me, and old Time often saw me envied by the most flourishing cities.

I am the house of Anastasius, the emperor, slayer of tyrants, and I alone far excel all cities of the Earth. I am a cause of wonder to all, since the architects, seeing my height, length, and vast breadth, were minded to leave the huge pile unroofed; but skilled Aetherius, the most eminent master of that laborious art, devised my shape, laying the first-fruits of his toil before our stainless emperor. Therefore, stretching on all sides my vast bulk, I surpass the celebrated wonders of the Italian land. Beauty of the Capitoline hall, give place to thy betters, even though thy roof of bronze dazzles the eye. Hide, Pergamus, thy splendid ornament, the grove of Rufinus, narrow now beside the halls of this limitless palace; and thou, Cyzieus, standing fast on the long cliff. The pyramids are not capable of vying with me, or the colossus, or the Pharus; I alone surpass a great legion of buildings. My prince himself, after his victory over the Isaurians, completed me, the house of the Dawn, shining with gold, on all sides exposed to the breezes of the four winds. 

I am hung round wealthy bridal beds and am the net, not of the huntress Artemis, but of the tender Queen of Paphos. I cover the sleeper with a many-meshed web, so that he in no way loses the life-giving breeze.

Come here for a little, traveller, and reclining in the greenwood shade rest thy limbs from thy long and toilsome journey. Here amongst the plane-trees the fresh streams of water running at its will leap forth beautifully from many-mouthed fountains. Here in spring the soft violets mixed with roses empurple the ground. Look how, engarlanding the fresh meadow, the luxuriant ivy twines its flowing hair. The river runs between its foliaged banks, grazing the base of the self-sown grove. Such is Eros. What other name would be appropriate for a place replete in every way with charm and loveliness?

Musonius built me with great labour, this large and imposing house exposed to the north wind's blasts. Yet did he not avoid the dark house of Fate, but abandoning me he dwells underground. In a narrow bed of earth he lies, and I, his chiefest delight, am given up to strangers.

– from Book IX (Declamatory and Descriptive Epigrams) of the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)

Letterforms - I

Lucas Kilian
Ornamental Letter W
1627
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Lucian Bernhard
Aviation Exhibition, Berlin
1909
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Lex Reitsma
Theo van Doesburg
2000
offset-print (exhibition poster)
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Richard Long
A Random Bicycle Ride
1981
screenprint
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Fritz Rehm
Le Délice Cigarette Papers
1910
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anonymous German Designer
Ex Libris - Hagenreiner
ca. 1795
letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Anonymous German Designer
Ex Libris - Knöringen
ca. 1750-1800
letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Anonymous Austrian Printmaker
Fledermaus - Miss Young
1910
lithograph (poster for cabaret)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Moriz Jung
Fledermaus
1910
lithograph (poster for cabaret)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Klinger-Julius-
Osram Lampe
1908
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Eric Gill (designer)
Railway Station Advertising
ca. 1909
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous Italian Artist
Portrait of Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma
17th century
engraving and letterpress
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Hollerbaum & Schmidt (printers)
Möbelmesse
(furniture fair)
1912
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Schnebel-Karl-
Die Gartenlaube
(magazine)
ca. 1910
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous Swedish Designer
Klädd & Oklädd, Nationalmuseum
(dressed and undressed)
1996
lithograph (exhibition poster)
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Heinrich Aldegrever
Putti supporting Tablet with Roman Alphabet
1535
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

They planted me, a walnut-tree, by the roadside to amuse passing boys, as a mark for their well-aimed stones. And all my twigs and flourishing shoots are broken, hit as I am by showers of pebbles. It is no advantage for trees to be fruitful. I indeed, poor tree, bore fruit only for my own undoing. 

Zeus, who ruled the holy land of Corcyra, though thy ears be ever full of the fears of suppliants or the thanks of those whose prayer thou hast heard, yet hearken to me, too, and grant me by a true promise that this be the land of my exile, and that I may dwell in my native land, my long labours over. 

I, Sir, who once gained the crown on the banks of Alpheius, and was twice proclaimed victor by the water of Castalia; I, who was announced the winner at Nemea, and formerly, as a colt, at Isthmus; I, who ran swift as the winged winds – see me now, how in my old age I turn the rotating stone, driven in mockery of the crowns I won. 

The temple servants destined as an acceptable sacrifice to Latona's daughter a heifer big with young; but happy birth-pangs anticipated her approaching death, and she was sent to the herd to bear her child in freedom. For the goddess who presides over child-bed deemed it not right to slay creatures in labour, having learnt to pity them.

The husbandman Archippus, when, smitten by grave sickness, he was just breathing his last and gliding to Hades, spoke thus to his sons: "I charge you, dear children, that ye love the mattock and the life of a farmer. Look not with favour on the weary labour of them who sail the treacherous waves and the heavy toil of perilous sea-faring. Even as a mother is sweeter than a stepmother, so is the land more to be desired than the grey sea." 

This is the book of learned Aratus, whose subtle mind explored the long-lived stars, both the fixed stars and the planets with which the bright revolving heaven is set. Let us praise him for the great task at which he toiled; let us count him second to Zeus, in that he made the stars brighter. 

– from Book IX (Declamatory and Descriptive Epigrams) of the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)

Hand-Colored

Conrad Felixmüller
ABC – a Nonsense Alphabet
(colophon)
1925
hand-colored woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Conrad Felixmüller
ABC – a Nonsense Alphabet
(illustration page - A-B)
1925
hand-colored woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Conrad Felixmüller
ABC – a Nonsense Alphabet
(illustration page - E-F)
1925
hand-colored woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Conrad Felixmüller
ABC – a Nonsense Alphabet
(illustration page - G-H)
1925
hand-colored woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Conrad Felixmüller
ABC – a Nonsense Alphabet
(illustration page - K-L)
1925
hand-colored woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Conrad Felixmüller
ABC – a Nonsense Alphabet
(illustration page - U-V)
1925
hand-colored woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Kiki Smith
Pool of Tears 2
2001
hand-colored etching and aquatint
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Edvard Munch
Lovers in the Waves
1896
hand-colored lithograph
Guggenheim Museum, New York

William T. Wiley
Hornicopia
2000
hand-colored linocut
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

William T. Wiley
Burden Landscape
2000
hand-colored linocut
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Louis Portman after Jacques Kuyper
New Hollanders
1802
hand-colored engraving
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Pietro Fabris
Sir William Hamilton conducting their Sicilian Majesties to view Vesuvius by Night
1771
hand-colored etching
British Museum

Thomas Rowlandson
The Covent Garden Night-Mare
(caricature of politician Charles James Fox as Fuseli pastiche)
1784
hand-colored etching and engraving
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Philibert-Louis Debucourt
Robe en Organdis de Couleur
1800
hand-colored etching
(fashion plate)
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

George Humphrey
Vice and Profligacy extinguished by Equity
1827
hand-colored etching
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Ferdinand Bauer
Gymea Lily
ca. 1806-1813
hand-colored engraving
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

from Primer

A final lassitude, of snapdragons

Puckering in their plot, the air like bronze,

Ringing of bronze, even the fieriest ones

Too weary in their exile to deny

Taste of the forbidden fruit of the bare sky.

"Blessed is what is born, for it shall die"

                  *          *         * 

– The words were next to nothing, but we shook
Enhancement from them, like the childhood book
Wherein, since then, we had not thought to look:

How much we had forgotten. The first page
Bespeaks a pang no worldliness can gauge:
Once more its glimmering scripture to assuage

Calls from within us cypress and flowering thorn,
Carpets, the woman and the god each morn
Naming the creatures to their latest-born. 

– James Merrill (1951)