UW-Milwaukee Special Collections

👻Fairytale Friday: Spooky Edition🎃

Spooky season (my favorite) is upon us! This week, we're diving into the first American edition of Maurice Sendak's Seven Little Monsters, published in New York by Harper & Row in 1977. It's spooky, silly, and oh so Sendak.

👹Melissa, DC Library Assistant

Here are wood-engraved birds by Spokane, Washington printer & printmaker W. Gale Mueller from his Forty Years of Birds ‘n Blocks, printed from the original blocks at his Millstone Press in 2009 in an edition of 53 copies. Today we show engravings from 2004-2008, the final engravings in the book.

Here are 4 engravings of rural Wisconsin by Wisconsin born & educated artist Curt L. Carpenter from An Innocence of Prairie by Wisconsin educator, writer, & folklorist Robert E. Gard published by arborist R. Bruce Allison. Curt Carpenter made these prints from engraved end grain maple.

Typography Tuesday

Feral Font was created by Kalmyk-American poet, artist, and AI researcher Sasha Stiles and American artist, writer, and UW-Milwaukee art professor Nathaniel Stern using the Neural Network Font Type (NNFT), a custom AI typeface.

tinyurl.com/2w2t6jz3

On September 29th, 1547, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was born in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid. To celebrate we have The Dialogue of the Dogs (The Allen Press, 1969)) originally collected in Novelas ejemplares, published in 1613.

Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern

L'Amour qui Pousse sur les Arbres

Yesterday marked Shel Silverstein’s (1930-1999) birthday, which makes this the perfect week to share his timeless work, The Giving Tree.

tinyurl.com/mwz89dn7

–Melissa, Distinctive Collections Library Assistant–Melissa, Distinctive Collections Library Assistant

Here are some wood engravings that serve as short-story title illustrations by American wood engraver & painter Gillian Tyler from the 1978 publication Banquet: Five Short Stories, published by Michael McCurdy's Penmaen Press. The
title-page calligraphy is by American calligrapher Margaret Shepherd.

Typography Tuesday

Today we are presenting more specimen pages from Specimens of Printing Types and Ornaments Cast by James Conner & Son, printed in New York by William L. S. Harrison for James Conner & Son in 1852.

tinyurl.com/a5cwcfvh

On September 22, 1919, the American Federation of Labor organized a coalition of 24 unions, led by the AA in a strike for the conditions of steel workers.

The images come from The Great Steel Strike and Its Lessons by William Z. Foster

Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern

Fairest of All 🪞

This week’s tale draws us deep into the shadowed woods with Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs, the Brothers Grimm classic translated by Randall Jarrell and illustrated with chilling beauty by Nancy Ekholm Burkert.

tinyurl.com/4ve2fnw2

--Melissa, DCLA

Here are a couple of raptors found across parts of North American & Eurasia: the Merlin (Falco columbarius) & the Long-eared owl (Asio otus). These wood engravings are by British author & wood engraver Eric Fitch Daglish from his book Birds of the British Isles, published by J. M. Dent & Sons, 1948.

Here are some unidentified "circus-style" wood types printed by Racine-based book artist & letterpress printer Caren Heft from her 2012 artists book The Human Volcano: The Stories of Captain Don One Man Sideshow Sword Swallower, Fire Eater, & Tattooed Man, printed at Heft's Arcadian Press.

Peas de Résistance

The Princess and the Pea, retold and illustrated by American illustrator and children’s book author Rachel Isadora. Published by Puffin Books in 2009, this edition transports Andersen’s classic into an African setting.

tinyurl.com/ynp4nj66

–Melissa, DCLA

A Raptorous Feathursday

This week we present a few raptors from Bird Portraiture (“How To Do It” Series No. 35) by noted British naturalist artist and illustrator Charles Tunnicliffe (1901-1979), published in London and New York by The Studio in 1945.

Shown here is wood engraver Thomas Johnson's 1887 interpretive engraving of American painter John White Alexander’s Portrait of a Child, reproduced in Interpretive Wood-Engraving: The Story of the Society of American Wood Engravers by William H. Brandt, published in 2009 by Oak Knoll Press.

Here are some type specimens from the Pelican Press, founded in 1916 by British printer & activist Francis Meynell from the specimen book, Typography: Type Specimens… of the Pelican Press in the 1920s for the benefit of their customers “to assist the amateur to a right appreciation of type-forms.”

On September 8th, 1504, Michelangelo’s David was unveiled in Florence.

These sketches come directly from the years of preparation for David, 1501-1504, and are collected in Drawings of Michelangelo, published by George Braziller in New York in 1965.

Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern

Once Upon a Bray

This week, we follow the unlikely hero of The Donkey Prince, a tale spun from Grimm’s imagination and gently reshaped by M. Jean Craig.

Take a page from the donkey prince and trust that surprises and goodness can come in any form!

--Melissa, DCLA

tinyurl.com/8vaxu46a

A Mueller-engraved Feathursday

Here are some wood-engraved birds by W. Gale Mueller. From 1969 to 2009, Mueller and his wife Bonnie sent holiday cards with Gale’s original bird prints using several relief print processes.

uwmspeccoll.tumblr.com/post/7937756...

A Feathursday with Two Chickens and a Wren

Today we present three wood engravings from the same 2017 Wood Engravers’ Network (WEN) Printers Bundle we highlighted yesterday. The prints shown here are by, respectively, Sylvia Pixley, Keri Safranski, and Keith Cranmer.

Another selection of original wood engravings from the 2017 Wood Engravers’ Network (WEN) Printers Bundles that we received as a gift from Tony Drehfal. This time, engravings by Jon Hinkel, Maria Arango Diener, Gerard Brender à Brandis, Richard Woodman (inventor of Resingrave), and Colleen Dwire.

On August 25th, 1945, OSS field agent John Birch was killed in a confrontation with Chinese Communist Party soldiers. The images of Birch here are taken from The Life of John Birch, by Robert Welch published by Regnery in Chicago, IL, in 1954.

Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern

Our first edition copy of The One-Legged Ghost (Atheneum, 1968) is by Betty Jean Lifton & illustrated by Fuku Akino.

A boy sees a strange, one-legged creature soaring over the mountain. The villagers gather, but no one knows what it is. Ghost, animal, or something else? 👻

Melissa, DCLA

These wood engravings of the Corn Bunting (Emberiza calandra) and Cirl Bunting (Emberiza cirlus) are by British author and wood engraver Eric Fitch Daglish (1892-1966) from his book Birds of the British Isles, published in London by J. M. Dent & Sons in 1948 in a limited edition of 1500 copies.

Illustrator & wood engraver Fritz Eichenberg produced 10 full-page wood engravings for a 1982 edition of The House of the Dead, Fyodor Dostoevsky's early-1860s semi-autobiographical novel of convict life in a Siberian prison camp, printed by Daniel Keleher at his Wild Carrot Letterpress.

Green Arras was written, illustrated, & designed by Laurence Housman (1865-1959) & published in London by John Lane at The Bodley Head & in Chicago by Way and Williams in 1896. One visual element in this volume is the use of elaborate, Arts & Crafts-style initials found throughout the book.

August 18, 1920: The 19th Amendment is ratified and women win the vote after decades of struggle.

Victory: How Women Won It: A Centennial Symposium, 1840–1940 by the National American Woman Suffrage Association (H.W. Wilson, 1940) captures the courage, strategy, and persistence that made history.

🦁💙 Lion and Blue 💙🦋

Published in 1974 by Reynal in association w/ William Morrow & Company, Lion and Blue combines Robert Vavra’s fable of a golden lion & a blue butterfly with paintings by Fleur Cowles & a preface by the Prince of the Netherlands

Melissa, Distinctive Collections Library Assistant

Feathursday

Shown here are the Rook (Corvus frugilegus) and the Hooded Crow (Corvus cornix) from Bird Portraiture (“How To Do It” Series No. 35) by British naturalist artist & illustrator Charles Tunnicliffe, published by The Studio in 1945.

Fun fact: A group of Rook nests is known as a rookery!

Michael McCurdy was an illustrator, author, publisher, master wood engraver, & founder of Penmaen Press in 1968.

Shown here are 2 of McCurdy's wood engravings printed by Harry Duncan in the 1982 edition of Susan Efird's narrative poem The Eye of Heaven printed at Abattoir Editions.