Hot slugs! What a Jazz Age Scrapbook Teaches Us About Materiality

Hot slugs! What a Jazz Age Scrapbook Teaches Us About Materiality

81357_26_Hinshaw

As both academics and the public grapple with the nature of books and the impact of digital media on our daily lives,  one of the issues at the forefront of the discussion is materiality. How is a book made and distributed, who buys it and how do they use it? How are its physical characteristics related to its reception and influence? Does the shift to digital negatively alter patterns of consumption and creation?  You might think “A book is a book”, but often the answers to these questions are far more complicated and interesting, if difficult to elucidate for the majority of texts. Sometimes, though, the physical importance of a book is immediately obvious. We recently had an evocative piece with a particularly strong material presence, a Jazz Age scrapbook and diary that sheds light not only on the culture of the 1920s and the experience of a young person’s coming of age, but the relationship between an object and its consumer/creator.

Flapper Scrapbook

Senior year scrapbook compiled by Christine Hinshaw in 1925.

The owner of this scrapbook was a young woman named Christine Hinshaw, who was born in Winchester Indiana in 1908, the daughter of Dr. Otis W. Hinshaw and his wife Luetta Pearl Moody, both from well-to-do Quaker families. From the evidence of the scrapbook, Christine was a popular and outgoing student who served as the class secretary and was a member of the English Club, Drama Club, the Guild Girls (a church group), and the Delta Theta Tau sorority.

The book itself is a purpose-made school scrapbook divided into sections such as autographs; clubs and activities; sports, dances and other entertainments; “stunts & jokes”; “Kodak snap-shots”; and commencement. Though the book is copyrighted 1910 and the interior illustrations are in Edwardian and Art Nouveau styles, the cover is decorated with an up-to-date Art Deco design, indicating that the firm re-published it year after year, updating only the covers to save on expenses.

Flapper scrapbook

Hinshaw received the scrapbook on May 30, 1925 and began writing in it immediately, making extensive notes and also preserving the material traces of her experiences. A close look reveals that she initially based her topics on the printed headings, neatly entering her name and high school and describing various activities in their labelled sections. But she also adapted it to her own particular use, often ignoring the printed titles and using the pages differently than the publishers intended. In this way she took full advantage of each leaf, filling the book completely and creating a complex and highly personal record that goes far beyond a simple school scrapbook.

Flapper Scrapbook

The first section of the book is for classmate and teacher autographs and photos, but instead Christine lists them by name (the book was a graduation gift, so she may not have had the opportunity to obtain signatures in person), and writes notes, nicknames, and jokes alongside. Ruby Graft was “Sure a good old sport” and Don Baker had “loose paper scattered on the floor – Oh no!”, while history teacher Kate Brooks had “finally got married”, and of the school coach she had this to say: “By garsh he knew his onions!”

Flapper Scrapbook

Flapper Scrapbook

Hinshaw’s personality shines throughout the scrapbook, particularly in chatty, humorous recollections of her friends and their hijinks.  One evening after a meeting of the English Club, “a bunch of us kids went to one of the cafes up town & danced with their player piano. Bill Moorman’s lights on his car went out, it rained – oh how it rained! We got home way after midnight”. On another page she copies the joke poem “He drank but once, he drank no more, what he thought was H20 was H2SO4” and commented that, “I don’t know any Chemistry but they say its poison. I mean H2SO4”. Jazz Age culture makes a striking appearance in small-town Indiana when she writes that, “Joanna Mills was up at the dance with her hair slicked back fit to kill. She said ‘Look me over folks I’m from Broadway.’ Hot slugs” (her favourite exclamation, used frequently in the scrapbook).

Flapper Scrapbook

Calling and greeting cards.

Flapper Scrapbook

Holiday cards.

Flapper Scrapbook

Hinshaw was active in the The Drama Club, which “practised every morning from 8.30 to 9am on ‘Come out of the Kitchen’. With Fred Oxley & Geo Kendall running wild really the moral standard of our class was VERY low”. She writes about the play alongside a programme and a clipped newspaper review in which the reporter describes Hinshaw as having “covered herself with glory” in the lead role. She used the next page of the scrapbook to preserve the ribbons from her diploma, even though it was intended for “spreads & entertainments”.

Flapper Scrapbook

School play review and diploma ribbons.

Social rounds were also a significant part of Hinshaw’s life. She attended numerous bridge parties even though she was often “bored to tears. Bridge parties make me sick”, and pasted a number of Art Deco-style scorecards into the scrapbook.

Flapper Scrapbook

Bridge scorecard.

Flapper Scrapbook

Bridge scorecard.

Memories of a dances are preserved via a dance card with its tiny pencil still attached by string, as well as three full corsages.

Flapper Scrapbook

Dance card – “had a wonderful time”.

Flapper Scrapbook

Corsage.

Flapper Scrapbook

Dried flowers originally given for commencement, “They were awfully pretty”.

A high point of the summer was her attendance as a delegate at the three-day “Sunday School Convention” (The Indiana Convention of Religious Education) held at Winona Lake in June, her description accompanied as usual by newspaper clippings, programmes, and other ephemera.

Flapper Scrapbook

Graduation, as to be expected, forms a substantial portion of her remembrances, and she describes the event itself as well as satellite activities like dinners, picnics, and dances.

Flapper Scrapbook

Graduation programme.

These celebrations required a new wardrobe, and on two pages she pastes in the pattern-book illustrations of the dresses she had made, along with fabric swatches and notes. A peach silk dress was modeled after a professional pattern but altered so that it “Didn’t have any sleeves or collar,” and a dress made of moddish blue and red patterned fabric “Had a lace collar and jabo ”. She sketches her graduation dress and writes, “I had blond satin slippers there awfully pretty”. Fashion was clearly an important part of Hinshaw’s life. At one point she wonders about her new clothes for college and whether she will get a fur coat. When her parents give her a diamond ring as a graduation present she becomes too excited to attend a school event scheduled for later that day.

Flapper Scrapbook

The most substantial way that Hinshaw altered the scrapbook, though, was by transforming it into a poignant diary recording the summer between high school and college, as basic descriptions of class activities become longer entries discussing her day-to-day life and the excitement and anxiety she felt at embarking on adult life. Early in the book she describes her classmates’s transitions into employment or college, noting with some sadness that “Certainly doesn’t take a class long to scatter”. Later she writes, “We seniors were going to have a picnic or a party before we got scattered but we didn’t…lot of the kids are working. There were 34 in our class and not half of them were at Alumni”. By Alumni she meant the Alumni Banquet, where she “Had a pretty good time. This is the last function. Now we are DONE”.

Though her school days were ending, new opportunities presented themselves. “Mary Robinson is to be married June 29 and she has asked me to play at her wedding. I sure got a kick out of that. I have never played at a wedding before”.

Flapper Scrapbook

Flapper Scrapbook

Ribbon from wedding corsage.

In July Hinshaw spent a week with the Guild Girls at a cottage by Lake Webster, and though her mother was a chaperone, Christine was allowed to “take our car up & keep it there”. Along with her description of the lake trip she pastes in a butterfly she found, which is still remarkably intact.

Flapper Scrapbook

In an entry dated July-August 1925 Hinshaw reports that she is “learning how to cook. Get all the meals. Boy I’m keen. Clean chickens bake cakes & pies. Hot stuff! Am teaching Mom to drive the car. She tickles me so”. Though Hinshaw relates most of the stress of graduation with upbeat humour, she does record one momentary loss of equilibrium, an unusual, stream-of-consciousness entry. “Camping with . It’s awful cold. Still run the radio. Aunt Blanch comes down a lot. Gee. Talk about cooking – but I really do like it. I would like to write something here but I guess I won’t. It’s nothing anyhow only a bubble. Sometimes strange things happen. I love to ride horseback”.

Flapper Scrapbook

Throughout the summer Hinshaw prepared for the start of college at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, about fifty miles south of Winchester. In a wonderful example of both her pride and trepidation at entering college she writes that she had to, “get my certificate filled out for Miami…. Made 159 on it. 120 is normal intelligence. Hot slugs. Wonder folks don’t put on dark glasses when there near me. Oh yes I oughta make something wonderful of my self. I’ll probably take in washing”.

Flapper Scrapbook

The final entry in the scrapbook reads, “Was over at school a minute this afternoon. There are so many new kids it doesn’t any more seem natural I have no desire to go back. I am no longer Pres of Guild or Secretary to Delta Theta Tau. I have gone to the last card party I will attend before I leave & have had Delta tonight. My trunk is gone & I’m all ready. I can hardly wait. Sure & I suppose I’ll get homesick but who hasn’t. There will be over 800 in my class. Am not expecting to know them all the first day. People this certainly is a great life if you don’t weaken”.* Hinshaw’s conclusion is followed by the only such illustration she made in the scrapbook, a stick figure in a skirt and feathered hat carrying a suitcase toward a building that looks like a house but is labelled “Miami”.

Flapper Scrapbook

Hinshaw’s scrapbook is an entirely personal, deeply engaging, and visually enchanting record of one young woman’s coming of age during the Roaring Twenties. But it’s also a wonderful example of an individual creatively combining book, text, images, and ephemera as a record of her life.  Though pundits like to argue about the ways that new technologies alter or enforce certain behaviors, we can look to this much older technology, the scrapbook, to understand how individuals take control of the tools at their disposal and adapt them to their own circumstances.

*This phrase, a rallying cry for soldiers during the First World War, had become popular as the title of a Gene Byrnes comic strip published in the New York Evening Telegram between 1915 and 1919.

For more Jazz Age culture visit our post Flappers at Sea, and click here to browse our stock.

Why was the first English book printed in Bruges?

Why was the first English book printed in Bruges?

 

The recuile of the Histories of Troie

Title page of the third edition of the first book printed in English, The recuile of the Histories of Troie (1553).

Today’s post was written by Peter Harrington partner Adam Douglas, who specialises in pre-20th century literature, history, and economics.

We recently acquired a rare and splendid sixteenth-century book, The recuile of the Histories of Troie, published by William Copland in London in 1553 (book sold, 2012). The first edition of this text, published in Bruges in 1473 or 74 by William Caxton, was the very first book printed in the English language. Caxton himself is famous as the first printer in England. But why was his first English book printed in Bruges?

Philip the Good

Philip the Good, Valois duke of Burgundy. Portrait after Roger van der Weyden c.1450

In the mid fifteenth century Bruges was the capital of high style. Ruled over by Philip the Good, Valois duke of Burgundy, whose court was the most splendid and fashionable in all of Europe, it was the centre of trade in haberdashery, cloth, and luxury wares like silks. Illuminated manuscripts with miniatures by fashionable Flemish artists were a particularly valued Burgundian export, regularly shipped in large numbers from Flanders to London.

Burgundian illumination by the master Simon Marmion

An example of Burgundian illumination by the master Simon Marmion, whose main patron was Philip the Good.

To a prescient few, Gutenberg had sounded the death knell for the trade in illuminated manuscripts. William Caxton was a shrewd Kentish mercer, long settled in Bruges. By 1465 he had established himself as the leading English merchant there. He realised that his English customers would soon demand printed books in their own language. And so he began his English translation of a hugely popular Burgundian work, a retelling of the legend of Troy by Philip the Good’s chaplain, Raoul le Fevre.

Turbulent political times interrupted his plans. England and Burgundy plunged into a trade dispute, forcing the English merchants to leave Bruges. Caxton set aside his translation to seek an end to the trade war. Tensions eased around the time of Philip the Good’s death in 1467, and Anglo-Burgundian relations were further improved the following year when his successor, Charles the Bold, married Margaret of York, sister of Edward IV. The English king soon had reason to be grateful for the new alliance. He was deposed in 1470 and fled to Flanders under the protection of his new brother-in-law. Edward used his time there to patch up his European trade relationships, before sailing back to England in April 1471 to regain his throne.

Three months after Edward’s restoration, Caxton went to Cologne to learn the craft of printing, which had reached the city in 1464. Cologne was the Hanseatic town with the closest links to England and it had helped to settle Edward IV’s trade disputes. Here Caxton acquired a printing press, the expertise to run his own publishing business, and a German assistant, Wynken de Worde. By his own account it was during his stay in Cologne that he completed his translation of Le Fevre’s History of Troy.

Danse Macabre of 1499

The earliest known image of a printing press, published in a Danse Macabre of 1499. Caxton would have used similar equipment in his printing business.

At the end of 1472 Caxton returned to Bruges with his new printing press ready to produce his long-gestated first work. It was a large book and took about a year to complete, being finished in late 1473 or early 1474. It was dedicated to Margaret of Burgundy, sister of the restored English king. The finished books were shipped to England for sale.

Caxton immediately printed a second English book, the Game of Chess, but his next four books were all in French. Caxton struggled to sell English books from his Bruges base.

Caxton woodcut chess

Illustration from the second edition of Caxton’s The Game and Playe of the Chesse, 1483.

Probably in 1476 but possibly as early as 1475, Caxton took his printing press to England, renting premises in Westminster Abbey, at the centre of court life. From now on he would print only in English and occasionally in Latin. He never printed in French again, though almost all his translations were of works written or recently printed in France or Flanders which could be marketed as new and fashionable to his English buyers.

Caxton's device, or logo, from a book he published in London in 1489

Caxton’s device, or logo, from a book he published in London in 1489.

When Caxton died in 1492, de Worde took over his print shop and set about training a new generation of English printers. Among them was Robert Copland, who had translated French books for de Worde before turning printer himself. When Robert Copland died in 1547, a kinsman of his, William, most likely his son, took over the business. William Copland therefore represents the fourth in a direct line of succession from England’s first printer. With reprints such as this third edition of The recuile of the Histories of Troie, he provided a connection between popular reading taste of the late fifteenth century and that of the seventeenth. The eleventh edition of Caxton’s translation appeared as late as 1684, a remarkable span from Edward IV to the final year of Charles II.

Below, the sumptuous late eighteenth-century morocco binding on our 1553 copy of The recuile of the Histories of Troie:

Le Fevre

Late eighteenth-century binding on a third edition of The recuile of the Histories of Troie printed in 1553.

A Leaf from the Gutenberg Bible

A Leaf from the Gutenberg Bible

A leaf from the Gutenberg Bible containing the Old Testament, Book of Jeremiah.

We made an exciting acquisition this week, a single leaf from a copy of the Gutenberg Bible, the first substantial book produced using movable type. Also known as the 42-Line Bible, it was printed in Mainz between 1450 and 1455 by Johann Gutenberg and his business partner Johann Fust. Gutenberg’s genius lay in his development and combination of three distinct technologies:

  • Movable type – each letter was an individual unit cast from metal, meaning that text could be efficiently assembled, broken down, and reassembled. Other techniques for producing type had occasionally been employed in Europe and China, but Gutenberg, who had trained as a goldsmith, perfected the process of casting the individual pieces so that they could be produced quickly and easily.
  • The printing press – based on screw-driven wine and olive presses, this was one of the world’s first mass-production machines.
  • Ink – Traditional water-based inks were too thin and runny to be used in mechanical printing, so Gutenberg developed a thicker oil-based ink that would adhere to the type.

Gutenberg probably printed other small books and ephemeral items, but little evidence of these survives, and it was the Bible that would stand as his masterpiece. Its appearance was based on manuscript Bibles, with the type designed to mimic hand-written text and space left in the margins for illuminations (many surviving examples contain beautiful designs commissioned by the original purchasers). Gutenberg also planned to print red initial letters, but this was inefficient because it required two press pulls. Instead, spaces were left within the text so that scribes could finish the job. It is estimated that 160–185 copies were printed, with a small number on vellum, the traditional material of book pages, and the rest on paper, which was more suited to printing.

Though Gutenberg’s business eventually failed, printing quickly spread across Europe and was firmly established in most regions by 1500. Today there are 48 known copies of the Gutenberg Bible, of which only 21 are complete, and other copies are known from fragments. Most are in institutions, and the last copy to appear at auction fetched two million dollars in 1978 (Christie’s New York, 7 April, 1978, lot 1);  a similar copy today could be worth up to 35 million.  Our leaf was taken from a Gutenberg Bible in the 1920s, when a New York book dealer named Gabriel Wells divided an imperfect copy into individual leaves and a few larger fragments, selling them in morocco folders along with a bibliographical essay by prominent book collector A. Edward Newton. These became known as “Noble Fragments”. Ours is from the Old Testament, containing Jeremiah chap. 18, with parts of chaps. 17 and 19.

 

 

Forgery or History?

Forgery or History?

Today’s post is a collaborative effort with my colleague Adam Douglas.

The philosophy of book dealing has changed radically since the days when dealers stripped every trace of prior ownership from books before reselling them, going so far as to wash medieval marginalia from the pages of manuscripts. Today, both dealers and collectors have a firmer grounding in the history of books and understand that vestiges of ownership not only give a book character, but can be valuable historical and cultural artefacts. Our practice at Peter Harrington is to preserve as much as possible about a book, including bookplates, ownership inscriptions and even the ephemeral items that we find nestled in the pages. But what do you do when those traces of the past are fraudulent?

Last year a book runner dropped by the shop with a two-volume set of Shakespeare Illustrated, published in London in 1793 and bound in attractive Regency-era blue morocco.

Shakespeare First Edition

The most interesting aspects of the set were its fore-edge paintings, miniature artworks painted onto the leading edge of the leaves that can only be seen when the pages are fanned. The runner claimed that these particular paintings were executed and signed by John Edwards of the Edwards of Halifax family, innovative booksellers and binders in London during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. John Edwards created some of the firm’s famous painted vellum bindings, and his fore-edge paintings are now highly sought-after. “Paintings signed by him are rare,” the runner reminded us.

The fore-edge of one volume as it normally appears. All that can be seen is the gold leaf covering the painting.

The fore-edge of one volume as it normally appears. All that can be seen is the gold leaf covering the painting.

The fore-edge paintings on volumes I and II, visible when the leaves are fanned.

The fore-edge paintings on volumes I and II, visible when the leaves are fanned.

We bought the books but, as sometimes happens in large bookshops, they were set aside on the reserve shelves for over a year. When we looked at them again we were intrigued, but not in the way that we’d expected.

Our first indication that something was amiss was that the artist, who signed the paintings as “J. E.”, had also dated them to 1799. One of the reasons for the scarcity of fore-edge paintings signed by John Edwards is that he mysteriously disappeared during a business trip to Paris in 1793. His family came to the conclusion that he had run afoul of the revolutionary mob and been guillotined, but whatever the case, he was certainly not executing bindings in 1799.

Next we come to the book itself. Although done in Regency style, it doesn’t have any of the characteristics of a true Edwards of Halifax binding. It is not Etruscan calf or painted vellum, and the border decoration is not the Edwardses’ splendidly named “metope-and-pentaglyph” roll. The image below and to the left is a detail of the border decoration on our volumes, composed of alternating Greek key and leaf designs. To the right is a lovely metope-and-pentaglyph roll on a true Edwards of Halifax binding (many thanks to Phillip J. Pirages Fine Books for providing the photo). The metopes are the concentric circles and the pentaglyphs are the lozenges grouped in five.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the front pastedown we found, reassuringly, the bookplate of the Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929), a prime minister and noted book collector unlikely to be fooled by a false fore-edge painting. Unfortunately, the plate only appears in the first volume, whereas Rosebery would normally have placed one in each volume. This example is also worn and scratched, as if it was removed from another book and pasted here to add authenticity.

By far the most spurious evidence is found at the front of each volume. Each is signed and dated 31 March 1849 by R. W. Hay. Tipped in opposite is a hand-written note, presumably by the person who sold Hay the books. “The fore-edges of the pages of these 2 volumes were painted by John Edwards, bookbinder of Halifax, brother of James Edwards, bookseller of London and were purchased by my brother James Frith at the dispersal of the Richard Heber Library in 1835 for £45. Alex Frith, The Close, Halstead, Essex, June 4th 1848.”

That seems clear enough at first glance. Richard Heber is probably the most famous book collector in English history: the term “bibliomaniac” was coined for him. He owned some 15,000 printed books, and his sales catalogues run to sixteen volumes. But £45 sounds like a lot of money in 1835, and we know from other reference sources that his copy of the second folio of Shakespeare made £10.5s. So according to the note, Alex Frith’s brother allegedly paid five times as much for these pleasant but ephemeral volumes as the second edition of Shakespeare’s plays made at the same sale. What Frith seems to have provided for the hapless Mr. Hay is the Victorian equivalent of an eBay certificate of authenticity.

So everything about the book speaks of a long history of fraudulent claims. Is it entirely worthless? We don’t think so. Described honestly, as an attractive book in an anonymous contemporary binding, we feel we can price it competitively. That leaves the question – should we remove the Rosebery bookplate and Alex Frith’s mendacious little note? To allow them to remain is to risk that future buyers will be duped, but removing them destroys the record of the deceit, which is interesting and even historically significant in its own way. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.