In 1923, Mr. Clark purchased a set of promptbooks made by actor Lark Taylor, documenting the Shakespearean productions of Julia Marlowe and E.H. Sothern in which Taylor took part. Until last year, however, these volumes had never been cataloged. (Oops!) Now however, they are cataloged and discoverable through UCLA’s online library catalog and via the Online Archive of California.
The website for the Clark’s July-September 2009 exhibit, Commonplace Collaboration: Inheritance and Reuse in Everyday Manuscripts is now online (better late than never!)
Josephine Collins, Commonplace book, MS.2006.001. Part of the Commonplace Collaboration exhibition.
The Clark’s next exhibit, What Shakespeare Read: Highlights from the Paul Chrzanowski Collection, will be opening to the public this month. Please call the Clark in advance to schedule a visit! (323.731.8529)
The finding aid to a small collection of Pierre Louÿs material (MS.2010.001) recently acquired by the Clark is now online. Louÿs, a French writer and poet famous for his treatment of erotic and Classical themes, was part of Oscar Wilde’s continental circle, which is why this material has found a home with us. This collection contains a wide variety of notes and draft documents written by Louÿs, including notes on mathematical and scientific topics as well as on other writers, particularly Pierre Corneille.
Louÿs' notes on hydrostatics and heat
This collection joins several other Louÿs manuscripts already at the Clark, including a letter to an unknown literature critic (ba MS.2006.010), proofs of his 1896 book Aphrodite (MS.2008.011), and an 1891 letter to Oscar Wilde (Wilde Box 40, Folder 26).
Notes comparing Corneille, Goethe and Hugo's works written at different ages
In 2008, the Clark Library purchased both the library and archive of the Savage-Armstrong family of County Antrim, Northern Ireland, a collection that contains a wide variety of material collected and produced by George Francis Savage-Armstrong (1845-1906), his children and other various family members. George’s brother, Edmund John Armstrong, was a promising poet before his early death in 1865 at the age of 24, and George himself was a quite prolific and popular poet and scholar until his 1906 death. He came under harsh criticism from literary revivalists, particularly W.B. Yeats, and is now seen as a mostly marginal figure in Irish literature. Though the majority of the papers and manuscripts in the Savage-Armstrong collection were written and created by George and his children Francis S.N. (1880-1917), John Raymond (b. 1882), and Arabella Guendolen (b. 1885), there are also several items produced by members of the extended Savage-Armstong family, including this album of watercolor scenes, by an unknown member of the family.
"East front of Chipchase Castle, Northumberland, August 1828."
The Clark collections hold a number of manuscript cookbooks, most of them compiled in the 17th and 18th centuries. The item of the week this week, though, is a much more recent work, written around 1915 by Harriet Burlingame Mink (1879-1967). A part of our Montana Collection, the cookbook was donated by UCLA archivist and librarian James V. Mink III in 1979, in honor of William Conway, a former head of the Clark Library. Mink was a UCLA University Archivist, director of the oral history program, and head of the Department of Special Collections, among other accomplishments.
Harriet Mink’s cookbook (MS.1979.002) is written mostly in pencil in her own handwriting, and is organized by type of dish. Below, for example, are a couple of pages from the section on breads. As you can see below, there are some newspaper clippings pasted in the notebook, in addition to some other recipes typed on loose sheets of paper, tucked in at the back of the book.
A new finding aid for a small Frederic Goudy collection is now available via the OAC. The Clark’s Frederic W. Goudy Collection includes materials related to and honoring the career this prolific typeface designer. Goudy created over 120 type styles including University of California Old Style, exclusively for use by the University of California Press, and Goudy Old Style. Goudy founded the Village Press with Will H. Ransom and was the Art Director for the Lanston Monotype Machine Company from 1920 until his death in 1947. Printed ephemera, pamphlets, pictures and other materials in this collection display the variety of type styles Goudy created and commemorate various anniversaries in his life and career.
The Clark has two new Los Angeles-related finding aids now posted to the Online Archive of California, thanks to volunteers Jamie Henricks and Ashley Johnston.
Gathered over the years by the Clark and added to by donations from others, this collection contains material related to book designer, art collector and impresario Merle Armitage. Armitage was the art director of Look magazine, a founder of the Los Angeles Grand Opera Association, the manager of the Philharmonic Auditorium and the author and/or designer of over 100 books. The collection contains correspondence, ephemera and a large number of clippings, magazines and theatrical programs. A nice tribute to Armitage by art history professor Roy H. Behrens is here.
This collection, given to the Clark Library by Mrs. Fred S. Lang shortly after her husband’s death in 1945, contains invitations, prospectuses, pamphlets and other ephemera printed by The Fred S. Lang Company of Los Angeles. A framed photograph of Mr. Lang as well as awards for excellence in printing are also parts of the collection. Seven wood blocks (from which printed reproductions were made for an exhibit held in Mr. Lang’s honor by the Rounce & Coffin Club after his death) were also included as part of the original gift to the Clark Library. The variety of companies and events for which Mr. Lang printed, from the Los Angeles Grand Opera Association to the World Premiere of Walt Disney’s FANTASIA, illustrate his role in the developing cultural landscape of Los Angeles.
The keepsake below is one of many printed for members of the Zamorano and Roxburghe Clubs — two Californian clubs of bibliophiles who hold joint biennial meetings alternating between Northern and Southern California. Individuals well known to UCLA and the printing community have been and continue to be members, including Ward Ritchie, Lawrence Clark Powell, and H. Richard Archer.
Russell Maret is a New York letterpress printer who trained in California before setting up his own business. His recent books have been extraordinary, but his newest one, Aethelwold, Etc. (2009) goes beyond extraordinary to magnificent. At heart an alphabet book, it is gorgeously swamped in color and highly imaginative renderings of the 26 letters, every aspect printed letterpress.
The Clark copy is one of only nine with a second suite of the prints and a log of Maret’s use of color.
Russell Maret won the 2009 Rome Prize for Design, and is currently living in Rome and studying the letterforms of the inscriptions in the Roman catacombs. The Clark also owns his versions of Prometheus Bound and the Pervigilium Veneris, as well as some more modest books.
Bruce Whiteman
Though the Clark Library has a decent number of music manuscripts and other works, William Andrews Clark, Jr.’s lifelong interest in music is perhaps best reflected by his founding of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The Phil was founded in 1919 and soon replaced the Los Angeles Symphony (which Clark did not like) as the city’s pre-eminent orchestra.
Below is the cover to the “Fourteenth (Last) Popular Concert,” which took place “Sunday Afternoon, April 29, at 3:oo o’clock” in 1928 and featured popular pieces by composers such as Bach, Wagner and Mendelssohn.
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