Connecticut College Digital Commons @ Connecticut College Friends of the Connecticut College Library Friends of the Connecticut College Library Newsletter Fall 2017 Fall Newsletter 2017 Benjamin Panciera Connecticut College, [email protected] Becky Parmer Connecticut College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/fol Recommended Citation Panciera, Benjamin and Parmer, Becky, "Fall Newsletter 2017" (2017). Friends of the Connecticut College Library Newsletter. 35. http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/fol/35 This Newspaper is brought to you for free and open access by the Friends of the Connecticut College Library at Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Friends of the Connecticut College Library Newsletter by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author. F2017RIENDS of the CONNEI CT CUT COLLEGE LIBRARY FallCHARLES E. SHAIN LIBRARY Newsletter ❦ GREER MUSIC LIBRARY ❦ LINDA LEAR CENTER FOR SPECIAL COLLECTIONS & ARCHIVES BEATRIX POTTER CELEBRATED AT CONNECTICUT COllEGE Connecticut College hosted a sympo- Happy Pair (1890) and the collection Over the following day and a half sium of the Beatrix Potter Society June of rhymes Comical Customers (1896), symposium attendees heard keynote 9-11, which brought scholars, collec- both published several years before The presentations from two Connecticut tors, and enthusiasts from across North Tale of Peter Rabbit. There were also College alumni and Friends of the Li- America and the United Kingdom to brary, Linda Lear and Mark Samuels New London to celebrate the beloved Lasner, and from British collector author and illustrator. This was the and scholar Selwyn Goodacre. Linda first such meeting held in the United Lear, author of the 2007 biography, States in five years. Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature, spoke The symposium, “Beatrix Pot- of her fraught introduction to work- ter in New London on the Thames ing in archives, as well as her subse- River,” began with a reception and quent delight in and mastery of the the opening of a major exhibition, mysteries of biographical research. both sponsored by the Friends of Mark Lasner discussed the impor- the Library. The exhibition, entitled tance of bibliographical study and the “The Passion for Fantasy Animals in quirks of Beatrix Potter’s publication Victorian Children’s Literature and history, which has resulted in the Beyond,” situated Beatrix Potter’s absence of a comprehensive scholarly art within the context of illustration bibliography of this seminal author. of animals in human form in the Selwyn Goodacre provided an often Victorian Era. Such depictions were humorous overview of the holdings Detail from the cover of the American edition of The relatively rare prior to 1850 but came of Beatrix Potter rarities in libraries Tailor of Gloucester, printed in 1903 to be a dominant theme in children’s around the world. literature by the 1890s. The exhibi- Panel presentations examined tion utilized three floors of the Shain rare photographs of Beatrix Potter and subjects ranging from Beatrix Potter’s Library. On the main floor, exhibit cases original watercolors and ink drawings, American friends, to the work of re- contained works of British and American loaned from private collections. Exhibit searching and publishing about Potter’s illustrators from the second half of the cases on the third floor of Shain Library life, to the many biographies of Potter. 19th century, including artists who were contained books published in the 20th Between sessions, symposium attendees among Beatrix Potter’s greatest influenc- century depicting anthropomorphic rab- hosted a reading at the New London es: Randolph Caldecott, Edward Lear, bits, from the pirated editions of Peter Public Library, shared information on and the various artists who brought Joel Rabbit in the early 1900s to the work collecting Potter materials, and learned Chandler Harris’s Brer Rabbit stories to of beloved authors like Maurice Sendak about the use of Beatrix Potter in the life. The Lear Center exhibit area on the and Margaret Wise Brown. The exhibit classroom and life at Castle Cottage, second floor contained the work of Bea- provided an excellent showcase of the Potter’s homestead in the English Lake trix Potter herself and grouped together library’s exemplary collections in Brit- District. Following the final session, her drawings of particular animals: cats, ish and American children’s literature. symposium organizers and attendees squirrels, mice, and especially rabbits. While the exhibit ended in August, it agreed that Connceticut College’s Highlights of this part of the exhibition lives on in virtual form at http://omeka. campus, arboretum, and library made included rarely seen early illustrations conncoll.edu/exhibits/show/bps-fantasy- it an ideal location to meet and discuss by Potter for Frederic Weatherly’s A animals/introduction. Beatrix Potter’s literature and art. FEATURED ACQUISITIONS in a studio art class. He also made a UT OF THE KY O S gift to the Lear Center of two sets of The Linda Lear Center recently acquired prints: Liber Mobile, a set of typographic a significant work by one of our favorite prints exploring the use of letterforms as artists, Werner Pfeiffer. Each of Pfeiffer’s abstract art, and a set of seriograph and books is unique and challenging, per- embossed prints from early in his career. COMICAL CUSTOMERS The Lear Center was pleased to have the opportunity to purchase a copy of Comical Customers from the library of noted Beatrix Potter collector Derek Ross. This collection of children’s The Friends of the Connecticut College rhymes and stories was published Library in 1896 by Ernest Nister, a popular http://www.conncoll.edu/information- publisher of juvenile literature. At first services/wfriends-of-the-library/ W. Lee Hisle Vice President for Information Services and Librarian of the College Benjamin Panciera Ruth Rusch Sheppe ‘40 Director of the Lear Center for Special Collections and Archives and Newsletter Editor Werner Pfeiffer with his book Out of the Sky in the Charles Chu Asian Art Reading Room Charles E. Shain Library Greer Music Library haps none moreso than Out of the Sky. Detail from a Beatrix Potter illustration in Connecticut College Comical Customers. Published in 2006, it was his response 270 Mohegan Avenue to witnessing the attacks of 9/11 first New London CT hand from where he was teaching on the it looks like any of the many such il- campus of the Pratt Institute in Brook- lustrated miscellanies of the time. The 06320-4196 lyn, only a mile away from the World illustrations were produced by a collec- This and other issues of the Friends of the Trade Center. Pfeiffer had experienced tion of artists, some well known and Library Newsletter may be viewed online at the horror of war as a child in Germany. others less so. Among the well known: http://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/fol/ That such a thing could come to New William Foster, who illustrated dozens This newsletter was designed by Susan York City compelled him to create an of books for children in the 1880s and Lindberg. artistic response. 1890s and Louis Wain, whose illus- is constructed of out trations of cats were widely beloved. December 2017 Out of the Sky sheets of cardstock, which unfold to Among the new and unheralded artists: create blocks. These blocks stack to form Beatrix Potter, who was still six years two structures, each nearly six feet high, away from publishing The Tale of Peter in the shape of the North and South Rabbit. Potter’s illustrations for the Towers. The names of the victims of the poem “A Frog He Would A-Fishing attack run vertically down the towers, Go” provide an early rendering of Jer- mimicking the famous ribbed structure emy Fisher, whose own tale would ap- of the buildings, before disappearing pear in 1906. With this acquisition the into a woodcut illustration of tangled, Lear Center now owns the two known falling bodies. In October, Pfeiffer came illustrated books of Beatrix Potter from to campus to speak about his art, present the 1890s, the other being the exceed- the new acquisition, and teach students ingly rare A Happy Pair. UPCOMING EXHIBITS IN THE CHARLES SHAIN EXHIBIT AREA Etchings by Bob Nugent, February 1-March 31, 2018 This year the Linda Lear Center received six portfolios of etch- ings by the American artist Bob Nugent. Individual plates from these collections (Topologia do Encontro, Acima/Abaixo, Insetos, Semente, Xingu: Lost Worlds, and Sob a Abódoboda: Under the Canopy) will be displayed and the artist will come to campus to speak at the opening of the exhibit and to teach a class to Connecticut College students. Nugent became interested in the Amazonian rainforest and its people in 1984 and has traveled repeatedly to South America where he has studied the natural history of the region. His art reflects this interest and the threat posed to it by man’s “inhu- manity to nature.” CURRENT EXHIBIT THROUGH JANUARY 31, 2018: IN THE LINDA LEAR CENTER FOR SPECIAL IN THE CHARLES E. SHAIN LIBRARY COllECTIONS & ARCHIVES EXHIBIT AREA, LINDA LEAR EXHIBIT Fine Press Printing Between the Wars, February 1-June 20, 2018 The Arts and Crafts movement gave rise to the rebirth of book AREA, AND CHARLES CHU ASIAN ART printing as a fine art, with several presses producing exquisite READING ROOM volumes for the luxury market. This style of printing was largely brought to an end by the onset of World War I, but fine printing Open Books: A New Dialogue rose up again in the postwar period, democratized and intended This major exhibition features the works of over four dozen for a large middle-class market.