SPRING/SUMMER 2012 The Restoration of the Japanese House THE GRAPHIC HISTORY OF ROCK’S PSYCHEDELIC ERA WHAT IS A LETTER? The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens H olidays atTheL angham We invite you to join us as we celebrate the magic of the holiday season! The Hotel is offering special room packages, lavish holiday feasts, seasonal spa treatments and the timeless tradition of Teddy Bear Tea for the whole family. We guarantee you enchanting encounters this season at The Langham Huntington, Pasadena! For more information, to make a reservation, or to purchase a holiday gift card, dial (626) 568 3900 or visit pasadena.langhamhotels.com at T “I chcchosehose CiCitytyty NNationalational fofforor theirtheireir pprovenrovvenenen expexpertise.”ertise.” I wanted to freeee up more time to do the things I enjoy doing,doing, and I needed somebody to take responsibility forfor my individual assets. 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City National Asset Management, the investment management departmentdepartmenttment of City National Bank. ©2012©2012 City National Bank The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens FROM THE EDITOR SENIOR STAFF OF THE HUNTINGTON STEVEN S. KOBLIK NOW THAT WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION President JAMES P. FOLSOM Marge and Sherm Telleen/Marion and Earle Jorgensen Director of the Botanical Gardens KATHY HACKER Executive Assistant to the President N THE 1960S, ROCK CONCERT POSTERS SERVED A DISTINCT STEVE HINDLE W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research purpose—they got people to pay money to hear their favorite performers. KEVIN SALATINO Displayed on the walls of ticket outlets or record shops, such posters Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art Collections RANDY SHULMAN helped give shape to the psychedelic era, indelibly linking bands like Moby Vice President for Advancement IGrape, the Grateful Dead, and Country Joe and the Fish with eye-catching LAURIE SOWD colors, shapes, and typography. Vice President for Operations In this issue of Huntington Frontiers , David Mihaly, the Jay T. Last Curator ALISON D. SOWDEN Vice President for Financial Affairs of Graphic Arts and Social History at The Huntington, explains how a group SUSAN TURNER-LOWE of posters designed by graphic artist Wes Wilson for San Francisco’s Fillmore Vice President for Communications Auditorium form a unique kind of time capsule. Wilson may have been a DAVID S. ZEIDBERG Avery Director of the Library product of the 1960s, but he shows the influences of earlier artistic styles and movements, including Art Nouveau, particularly in his free-flowing and nearly illegible let tering. Mihaly explains how Wilson’s posters—recently donated to MAGAZINE STAFF The Huntington by Tony Newhall—have a rightful place in the vast holdings Editor MATT STEVENS of The Huntington, where visual and cultural connections can be discovered. Designer Also in these pages we get a fresh glimpse of the Japanese House through LORI ANN ACHZET the eyes of preservation architect Kelly Sutherlin McLeod, whose efforts allow visitors to see the crown jewel of the Japanese Garden in ways they hadn’t Huntington Frontiers is published semiannually by the before the garden closed in 2011 for a one-year renovation. McLeod explains Office of Communications. It strives to connect readers with the rich intellectual life of The Huntington, capturing that she has simply returned the house to its “period of significance”—that is, in news and features the work of researchers, educators, to the way it looked 100 years ago when it first adorned the garden during curators, and others across a range of disciplines. Henry E. Huntington’s lifetime. Through meticulous research and painstaking This issue printed in September 2012. craftsmanship, she and the restoration team accomplished this transformation INQUIRIES AND COMMENTS: one wood shingle at a time and with carefully applied layers of paint and plaster. Matt Stevens, Editor Huntington Frontiers What was once old has become new again. And, like those rock posters, 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, CA 91108 what seems new is timeless. 626-405-2167 [email protected] MATT STEVENS The magazine is funded by charitable gifts and advertising revenues. For information about how to support this publication, please contact Kristy Peters, director of foundation and corporate relations, 626-405-3484, [email protected]. Unless otherwise acknowledged, photography is provided by The Huntington’s Department of Photographic Services. Opposite page, left: Kelly Sutherlin McLeod, AIA, project architect for the restoration of The Huntington’s Printed by Pace Marketing Communications Japanese House, reviews the preservation plans prior to implementation. Photo by John Ellis . Right: City of Industry, Calif. Captain Beefhart [sic] & His Magic Band, Chocolate Watchband, The Great Pumpkin (BG 34 poster), © 2012 The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and designed and copyrighted by Wes Wilson, 1966. From a group of posters recently donated to The Botanical Gardens. All rights reserved. Reproduction Huntington by Tony Newhall. Bottom: Pinus wallichiana , more commonly known as the Himalayan pine, or use of the contents, in whole or in part, without per mission of the publisher, is prohibited. from Zsolt Debreczy’s Conifers Around the World . Photo by István Rácz . Correction: An article in the fall/winter 2011–12 issue of Huntington Frontiers , “At the Crossroads” by Jennifer A. Watts, misidentified the “Round House” depicted in the photograph Round House Yuma, Arizona Territory , 1880, by Carleton Watkins. Several readers pointed out that locomotives were not rotated in the structure featured at the left of the photo but rather on the turntable that appears at the right. The barn and turntable together comprise the “Round House.” [ VOLUME 8, ISSUE 1 ] Contents SPRING/SUMMER 2012 FEATURES ARE YOU VISUALLY EXPERIENCED? 16 What rock concert posters have in common with 19th-century and early 20th-century graphic art By David H. Mihaly BENEATH THE SURFACE 8 Preservation architect Kelly Sutherlin McLeod reflects on the restoration of the Japanese House By Diana W. Thompson DEPARTMENTS NEWS BYTES: There’s more to the story… 4 A CLOSER LOOK: What is a Letter? 6 By Peter Stallybrass FRESH TAKE: The evolution of Blake’s Genesis 22 By Matt Stevens POSTSCRIPT: ConiferWatch 24 IN PRINT: Recommended reading 25 HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 3 [ NEWS BYTES ] What’s in a Number? CONTEMPLATING THE MANY WAYS TO ADD UP A COLLECTION A Manuscript in the Hand In writing his new book, The Feathery Tribe: Robert Ridgway and the Modern Study of Birds , Huntington curator Daniel Lewis transcribed nearly 2,000 letters from archives around the world, including The Huntington. Ridgway was the first curator of birds at The Smithsonian, where his career spanned from the 1870s to the 1920s. He left a rich paper trail for Lewis, who concedes that his transcriptions might well have streamlined his writing process, but he never “Just as archival materials in underestimated the value of looking at the real the aggregate—letters by the thing. One of his favorite manuscripts, from the dozens, hundreds, or thou - Ridgway archive at Utah State University, is a letter from Ridgway to his mother that features doodles sands—provide useful grist for of three postage stamps—one each with a wood - a research mill, so too do bird pecker, an owl, and a crow. collections, similarly arrayed by When it comes to looking at the real thing, scientists in rows of dozens or you might think that the equivalent raw material even hundreds, reveal new of ornithologists would be limited to birds in trees things about the world.” or in flight. But in fact, as Lewis explained in his book, Ridgway and his tribe of bird professionals —Daniel Lewis, the Dibner Senior Curator of the History of Science, Medicine, and at other museums kept drawers and cabinets full Technology and the head of the manuscripts of stuffed dead birds. They relied on these “study department at The Huntington skins” to help them understand how particular Letter from Robert Ridgway to his mother, species had evolved over time. Ridgway kept June 24, 1867, Special Collections and 300 to 400 specimens for each species so he could lay them all out in front of him to Archives, Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State assess variations in color, beak size, or other criteria. Too many birds, and the distinctions University, Caine Manuscript Collection. were lost; too few, and the sample size was inadequate to measure change over time. Study skin of a Kioea ( Chaetoptila angustipluma ), a Hawaiian bird that is now The Feathery Tribe was published by Yale University Press and will soon be available on Audible. extinct. From the department of ornithology, American Museum of Natural History. Photo by Daniel Lewis . COLLECTIONS IN MOTION “Calendula Collection,” a video from Verso’s Videre series, shows a collection of 176 flower specimens from The Huntington’s Shakespeare Garden. The 2 ½ minute piece explores how a collection can simultaneously reveal patterns within a particular group and distinctions between individuals. Videre , Latin for to see , is part of In Motion ,Verso’s video project that aims to bring new light to the unique physical spaces, collections, and processes that constitute The Huntington. 4 Spring/Summer 2012 NOT FAR FROM THE PHYLOGENETIC TREE In August, John Zaborsky needed to collect leaf samples from a plant indigenous to Madagascar.