Murmurs from the Montana Collection, Part Two: Idah Meacham Strobridge

From Nicoletta Beyer, Library Assistant.

“Chasms where the sun comes late, and leaves while yet it is early afternoon.” (Land of Purple Shadows, 2)

My favorite library experiences are born from the discovery of a new book and following its trail through history. The sleuthing can be more fruitful in some cases than others.

In the case of The Land of Purple Shadows (1909), I unearthed an unexpected history of terrible tragedy and personal rebirth. The author of Shadows was a woman named Idah Meacham Strobridge. Born in 1855, she was a wife, mother, and cattle rancher from the Great Basin desert of Nevada. As her parents ran a hotel that hosted many westward travelers, the landscape of Strobridge’s childhood was speckled with wagon trains, new railroads carrying homesteaders, Mexican vaqueros, Chinese placer miners and Native Americans from the Paiute and Bannock tribes. Come the 1880s, Idah met her husband Samuel Strobridge and they began a family together on a ranch not far from her parents.

The Strobridges’ first son died the day after birth. The severe winter of 1888 – 1889 brought blizzards that killed most of the family’s cattle herd and pneumonia took the lives of Idah’s husband and one other son. The following year her last son died as well, leaving Idah alone on a broken ranch in the solitary Nevada desert.

After such catastrophic devastation, Idah Strobridge carried on, working as a guide for prospectors of the mining industry while she maintained the cattle ranch. It was at this time that her identity as mother and wife ended and what remained was an empty slate of the future. She began writing under the pseudonym George W. Craiger and completed three novels; tales of a Nevadan love of desert life as well as painful solitude. She established a book binding business in the attic of her ranch house, the Artemisia Bindery.

In 1901, Strobridge left her Great Basin home behind for a fresh start in Los Angeles, California. Here in Southern California, she recreated her Artemisia Bindery and published her three novels, respectively featuring illustration by Maynard Dixon (see image above) and painting by Frank P. Sauerwen. She was welcomed into the local bohemian fine press and literary culture, becoming close with legends like Mary Austin and Charles Fletcher Lummis, and received awards for her book binding artistry.

Her works are now regarded as icons of the old western desert culture of Nevada, as well as artifacts of Southern Californian book arts history. The Clark Library came into these three limited editions by way of Ward Ritchie in 1996.

Published Works:

Strobridge, Idah Meacham. In Miners’ Mirage-Land. Los Angeles: Baumgardt Publishing Company, 1904.

Strobridge, Idah Meacham. The Loom of the Desert. Los Angeles: Artemisia Bindery, 1907

Strobridge, Idah Meacham. The Land of the Purple Shadows. Los Angeles: Artemisia Bindery, 1909

The Clark’s Night with Coffee: Thierry Rigogne on Myths and Histories of the French Cafe

Last night’s visitors to the Clark were full of merriment and nostalgia for cafe culture and coffee itself.  We were thrilled to welcome Thierry Rigogne, Associate Professor, Department of History, Fordham University, to present his lecture, “Myths, Anecdotes, Petite Histoire and Some History, Too: Creating the French Café.”  Further information about Rigogne’s lecture can be found on the Clark/Center calendar.  Prior to the lecture, guests were treated to a coffee tasting provided by Verve Coffee Roasters of Santa Cruz, CA, and mingled on the front steps enjoying the late afternoon sun.

The Clark’s current exhibition also keeps close to the coffee theme.  Shannon K. Supple and Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft curated the exhibition and more information on its contents can be found here.  The exhibition will be on view through March 22, 2013.  Please click-through the gallery below to enjoy images from last night’s event!

This Weekend: Eric Gill Exhibition Opening at Loyola Marymount!

From Jennifer Bastian, Visual Resources Specialist.

This Saturday, January 26th, an expansive exhibition of British artist Eric Gill’s work will be on view at Loyola Marymount University’s Laband Art Gallery.  Over 100 works will be featured, including original drawings, engravings and paintings.  The Clark Library is very pleased to be involved in this exhibition so soon after our own celebration of Eric Gill.  We have loaned out one of our most prized Gill pieces: a 5-piece woodblock depicting Our Lady of Lourdes.

This block was originally separated into 3 pieces, which allowed for a 2 color print.  At some point, Gill cut the block into 5 pieces, giving him the ability to create a 4 color print from it.

Here is an example of what the original prints from the full block looked like, and a photograph of our 4-color print.

From Eric Gills Book of Engravings, published by Douglas Cleverdon, 1929

As you can see, the carved block alone is a work of art to be appreciated.  It will be on display at the Laband Gallery adjacent to original sketches and drawings created in planning for the carving and subsequent prints.  While we will be paying special attention to our item on display, the dozens of other prints and drawings are a sight to behold.

For a preview of the exhibition, the press release and accompanying images may be viewed here. There are several public programs related to the exhibition that are not to be missed, including a lecture this Saturday.  I will be there, soaking up Gill imagery that both complements and adds new meaning to the Clark’s own collection.  I hope some of our Clark regulars will join us on the other side of town to support this wonderful event!

Laband Art Gallery Presents Extensive Exhibition of‌ British Artist Eric Gill

On View January 26 – March 24, 2013

Opening: Saturday, January 26, 2013

Lecture by curator Thomas Lucas, S.J.: 3pm with reception to follow, 4-6pm

Seasonal Greetings!

Designed by Franz Geritz and printed by the Fred S. Lang Co., 1924

The Clark Library — and the rest of UCLA — will be closed from December 22 to January 1.  We wish you a lovely holiday season and look forward to seeing you when we reopen on January 2, 2013!

New Publications from Clark Scholars

Our former fellows have been busy lately!  In the last week, our friends Ellen Crowell (St. Louis) and Soren Hammerschmidt (Ghent) have announced the publication of  papers drawing on their research at the Clark.

Ellen’s “Oscar Wilde’s Tomb: Silence and the Aesthetics of Queer Memorial“ featured online in BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History and Soren’s “Pope, Curll, and the intermediality of eighteenth-century character” in Word & Image (Volume 28, Issue 3) both draw on our collection material in addition to featuring images of items housed at the Clark.

Congratulations to Ellen and Soren on the publication of these papers!  We hope your future projects will bring you back to visit soon!

Incomplete Binding, Completed Lecture

From Visual Resources Specialist, Jennifer Bastian.

Last month the Clark Library welcomed Nicholas Pickwoad from the University of the Arts London for his lecture, Unfinished Business: Incomplete Bindings Made for the Book Trade from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century. The lecture and accompanying visuals were truly marvelous.  We are so pleased to have hosted this event, which was co-sponsored by The Huntington Library, UCLA Library Special Collections, and UCLA Department of Information Studies, with support from the Breslauer Chair Fund.  It was a great experience for all involved.

More information about this lecture can be found here.

 

Gardens at the Clark

From Nina Schneider, Head Cataloger              

The Clark’s Head Cataloger will be hosting an employee from the Denver Botanic Gardens next week. This got us thinking about some of the botany, horticulture, and design books held at the library: volumes such as the 1682 copy of Labyrinte de Versailles published in French, English, German and Dutch by Nicolaus Visscher in Amsterdam (call#: SB466.F83 V56 1682*), or the 13th edition of The Gardeners Kalendar: Directing what works are to be performed every Month in the Kitchen, Fruit, and Pleasure-gardens by Philip Miller (1691-1771), printed by the author and sold by John Rivington [et al.] in 1762 (call#: X 92571D3), or Victoria Padilla’s 1961 book on Southern California Gardens: an illustrated history, published by University of California Press and designed by Ward Ritchie (call#: Press coll. Ritchie)

The Clark also has numerous reference books, such as The English Garden: Literary Sources & Documents edited and with an introduction by Michael Charlesworth (a three-volume reference source published in 1993 [call#: PR1111.G3 E5]). Last but not least, Senator Clark’s own Montana amusement park is charmingly described in Beautiful Columbia Garden : The Far-famed Pleasure Resort of Butte, published in the mid-19th century by the Butte Electric Railway Company (call#: Mont. Coll. B38b).

Senator Clark and his daughters Andree & Huguette, likely at Columbia Gardens, ca 1916

For those of you who haven’t visited, the Clark Library sits in the middle of a city-block, surrounded by well-manicured lawns, boxwood hedges, flowering arbors, expanses of English ivy, clusters of Strelitzia (or Birds of Paradise), a rose garden, fountains (that need refurbishing), statuary,  and our extraordinary Moreton Bay Fig trees. The most amazing part of our property is that the Clark only has one (very hard working) gardener to maintain it. It’s a peaceful oasis in the middle of Los Angeles, open to the public during the week. It’s not unusual to see our neighbors strolling on the grounds during a beautiful autumn day.

New Acquisition: The 1932 Los Angeles Blue Book of Land Values and, of course, Mr. Clark

From Gerald Cloud, Clark Librarian.

The Clark has always been interested in its own history and the library maintains a substantial collection of letters, receipts, invoices, and other materials that document both the construction of the building and the formation of the collections (recall the earlier entry: “I’ll-bet-you-didn’t-know-it-was-at-the-Clark, part 1: an introduction to Mr. Tenniel” ).  The Clarkive, as it is referred to locally, is a rich resource for the book trade as well as the building trades, albeit, at the higher end of the scale.  IN keeping with our efforts to document the Clark, its building, and the contemporary period in which Mr. Clark lived in Los Angeles, we recently acquired the following book from local bookseller John Howell:

The title of the guide will be familiar to automobile-dependent Angelenos, but this Blue Book aims to provide a comprehensive survey of Los Angeles land values, circa 1932.  The area it covers is shown in this key map:

Of greatest interest to the Clark is page 149, which shows how our West Adams neighborhood looked before the 10 freeway was built.

The guide is illustrated with various building types and a wealth of information on real estate and property values.  Mr. Clark passed away shortly after the publication of this guide, so the Los Angeles shown here is the one he knew at the end of his life.

Not by Oscar Wilde: A Clark Quarterly Lecture

We were recently graced by the presence of a former Clark Fellow, Gregory Mackie, when he came to present his lecture Not By Oscar Wilde: Literary Forgery and Authorial Performance.  This lecture was a part of the Clark Quarterly lecture series.  Details about the lecture and upcoming Clark Quarterly lectures can be seen here.

Below is a gallery of images from the event – a great time was had by all.

Person of the Week: Cataloging/Archives Intern Daniella Aquino

From Nina Schneider, Head Cataloger

This week we focus on Daniella Aquino, the second intern in our 30-week program. Graduating summa cum laude with a B.A. in Anthropology from Cal State Fullerton, Daniella will be working on our extensive collection of Hannah More materials. More (1745-1833) was smart and well-educated. Early in her career as a writer and teacher she was friendly with Garrick, Johnson, Montagu, and others in the blue-stocking clubs. More later settled for a life of religious and societal reform, setting up Sunday schools, writing and publishing numerous moral pamphlets, as well as helping create the Religious Tract Society in 1799. The Clark owns many hundreds of More’s publications, published as the Cheap Repository Tracts and at the time selling for about a penny. Most of these tracts were printed on inexpensive paper, in two columns with a woodcut illustration on the first page. Each story included a moral lesson that proved so popular that each pamphlet was produced in thousands of copies.

 

Daniella will focus on these tracts, many of which have been languishing uncataloged for years, while also cataloging More’s correspondence. Daniella’s experience working as a Parish Secretary for Saint Columban Catholic Church in Garden Grove, as well as her research experience in anthropology will enable her to put More’s work into the cultural and religious milieu of the long 18th-century in England, as well as glean lessons that can be used in her coursework and portfolio.

As she explains:

Through the MLIS program at UCLA, I have worked with rare books, special collections and archival materials. This hands-on work has inspired me to share this experience with others. In January, I began researching ways in which primary sources and rare materials can be used in K-12 education. Over the summer, I participated in a collaborative project involving local archivists, librarians, and elementary educators, exploring ways that primary source materials may be utilized in schools to promote inquiry and develop critical thinking skills. I want to incorporate my work at the Clark by developing a project that could be implemented into an elementary program.  The challenge will be making the highly abstract and theoretical materials in the Hannah More collection relevant and understandable to young children, and I am excited to see how this project will evolve. With my experience here in a special collections setting, I also hope to explore different ways of promoting greater collaboration between libraries, repositories and educators.

By cataloging individual letters, processing larger archival collections, and collectively cataloging printed tracts, Daniella will have the chance to make decisions about how and why materials are cataloged in a variety of ways. Her ability to read music and her fluency in Spanish are advantages for the rare materials cataloger and her goal of working in a special collections library or in a museum are certainly aided by these skills.

The next time you visit the Clark, please take a moment to welcome Daniella Aquino and Gloria Gonzalez. We are very glad they are here!