Company’s Coming: At the PPIE, A Fair Share of Crime

October 15, 2015, 9:00 am

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San Francisco History Center’s ongoing exhibition, Company’s Coming: San Francisco Hosts the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, explores the ways that San Francisco locals and visitors took part in the PPIE: as sight-seers, thrill-seekers, workers, and exhibitors. Last month’s post shared the sensational lengths to which some people went just to visit the PPIE. This month, we feature several workers who spent their day-to-day lives at the Exposition, then found themselves embroiled in its fair share of crime.

The Opal Grinder and the Serapi Weaver

Like a sprawling amusement park, the Joy Zone on the eastern part of the Fairgrounds featured concessions, rides, theaters, restaurants, and controversial cultural attractions. It was quite the spot for merriment—not to mention grisliness. More than once, fairgoers and employees met injuries or death in accidents at its concessions. Sometimes, the Zone played host to outright violence and murder. Every sordid tale is documented in news clippings found in the San Francisco Police Department Detective Bureau Scrapbooks.

The portion of the Joy Zone pictured here includes the Tehuantepec Village (far right), where a shooting duel took place. View of the Zone at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition Showing the Chinese Village and the Battle of Gettysburg, Alt Nurnberg and Tehuantepec Buildings. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

According to one story published in the San Francisco Examiner, two rival suitors engaged in a shooting duel on the patio of the Tehuantepec Village on August 4, 1915. They were quarreling over Jusus Ontivens, an opal grinder at the concession. King Karlo, the “spieler” of the village, was shot in the hand as he tried to intercede.

Though the serapi weaver Francisco Moreno won Jusus’ favor, he was less lucky than his rival. Moreno was taken into custody following the incident, while Juan Hidalgo, the rejected suitor, merely walked away, with the proclamation that he had “learned about women from ‘er.” Jusus declared she was in no way to blame for what transpired.

The Examiner gives no further details about what else happened that day. But, it notes wryly, “Guests and visitors were given a few thrills when the bullets began to fly.”

This postcard shows the people of the reconstructed Mexican village at the PPIE—perhaps including Jusus Ontivens, Francisco Moreno, and King Karlo. Beautiful Court, Tehuantepec Village, Panama-Pacific International Exposition San Francisco, 1915. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

There had been worse violence, directly against a woman, a few months earlier in another part of the Zone.

The Dancing Girl and the Ticket-Taker

The 24-year-old dancer Zahia Eddie (spelled  “Zacharia” and “Eddy” in other accounts) made a living at the Russian Theater in the Joy Zone. On the evening of March 18, 1915, right before a 9:30 performance, her brother burst into the theater and ended her life.

According to an early report from the San Francisco Chronicle, Zahia’s ex-husband, Ameen Lufti, was jealous of the attention paid to her by Joseph Sasso, the proprietor of the restaurant next to the theater. Zahia and Lufti had married in Damascus, but separated several months before Zahia’s killing. They had both found employment in the Joy Zone, with Lufti working as a ticket-taker for the Mysterious Orient attraction.

The day before her murder, Lufti allegedly met Zahia’s brother in the Streets of Cairo and gave him a revolver. Isaack (also identified as “Isaac” and “Esick”) was displeased with his sister’s acquaintanceship with Sasso; he later told the police that he killed her because she wouldn’t give it up.

The Coroner’s report on Zahia Eddie’s death.  From San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner’s Records (SFH 30). San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

Isaack first attacked Sasso in the restaurant, punching him and shooting his arm in a scuffle. Isaack then went into the theater and gunned down Zahia on sight. An eyewitness told the Chronicle:

I heard a shot outside, probably in the restaurant, and then I saw Eddy come in from a side exit with a levelled revolver. He fired once at his sister without warning… The girl shrieked from the moment of his appearance and cried: ‘Don’t! Don’t!’ She crouched as the shot was fired. A man rushed in from the side door and struck Eddy’s revolver upward when Eddy attempted to fire another shot into his sister’s body. Then the shooting continued, some of the bullets going into the ceiling and walls. Our party fled into the street with the others, just as the guards rushed in.

Isaack was sentenced to nine years in prison for murder. Lufti was arrested as his accomplice, then later acquitted. How complicit was he in the death of his ex-wife? We’ll probably never be sure. In any case, it is notable that at a World’s Fair where there was much attention paid to the safety of middle-class women visitors, the safety of working-class women employees was left so vulnerable.

Coverage of Zahia Eddie’s murder takes up an entire page of an SFPD Detective Bureau Scrapbook. Note the later clippings, following up on the story, pasted onto the original report. From California Books Volume 27, San Francisco Police Department Records (SFH 61). San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

Battle at the Laguna Street Gate

Of all the stories of Fairground violence we’ve shared so far, this one may be characterized as the most epic. According to the San Francisco Examiner, a “pitched battle in which heads were broken and guns flashed” broke out just outside the Joy Zone on the evening of August 15, 1915, “when a crowd of seventy-five hoodlums forced an entrance at the Laguna street gates.”

This gateway to the Joy Zone by Fillmore Street was three blocks from the Laguna Street entrance where hoodlums clashed with Fair guards. Entrance to the Zone, near Fillmore Street, at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

After the brawl, Fair guards arrested five youths aged 17 to 19 and brought them to the Exposition station. (One of the boys was under arrest a third time for rushing the gate.) Then, as the Examiner recounts:

As soon as the desk sergeant had booked the youths, a gang of 200 men and boys reassembled within the walls bent upon rushing the guardhouse and effecting a recapture of their companions.

A flying wedge was formed. Just as it precipitated itself against the frame structure a broad-shouldered Deputy Sheriff from Sacramento county… leaped atop of the sergeant’s desk with a revolver in his hand and dared the crowd to proceed. It didn’t.

A riot call brought police aid, and that of every guard at the exposition. For an hour and a half the fireworks ceased to have any interest.

The underside of the PPIE wasn’t always about violence, though; there were other kinds of crime.

Fair guards, such as the patrolmen pictured here, had their hands full during a riot on August 15, 1915. Two Exposition Guards on a Truck at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

The Bell-Boy Bandit

Zelbert Goza, a one-time bellboy at the Exposition’s Inside Inn, was not involved in any cold-blooded shootings at the PPIE; but that isn’t to say his experience at the Fair didn’t drive him to a desperate act. Several days after losing his job on the Fairgrounds, the 27-year-old Missouri native attempted to rob the Niles State Bank in Niles, California (In a twist worthy of Joy Zone entertainment, he was captured by movie-actor cowboys filming in the area).

“I was homesick and desperate,” Goza explained after his arrest, according to the San Francisco Examiner’s news story on March 10, 1915. “I was born and lived most of my life in Missouri… Recently I went to Chicago, and after remaining there for a short time came West to see the Exposition.”

“I went to work at the Inside Inn and after making $10 lost my job,” he said. “I could get nothing to do and had no money, so I decided on the robbery.”

Zelbert Goza (right) upon his arrest for attempted bank robbery. From California Books Volume 27, San Francisco Police Department Records (SFH 61), San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library

Sadly, the Examiner notes that he was expected to go back to work in a few days. His arrest likely jeopardized his chances at immediate re-employment. Less salacious than other crimes linked to the PPIE, Goza’s is another sobering reminder of fates that befell individuals who came to San Francisco for the Fair.

Visit Company’s Coming: San Francisco Hosts the Panama-Pacific International Exposition to learn more about the wide spectrum of people who shaped and served the PPIE, left their mark on it, or were forever changed by it. The exhibition is currently on view in the Skylight Gallery, on the 6th floor of the Main Library.

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PPIE Broadside Printing Event

November 19, 2015, 5:37 pm

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The copper block from which we will be printing

The Book Arts & Special Collections Center and the San Francisco History Center present a Panama-Pacific International Exposition Centennial Broadside Printing Event in celebration of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition on Saturday, December 5th, from 2-4p.m. in the San Francisco History Center at the Main Library on the 6th floor. 

Come experience letterpress printing on the library's 1909 Albion handpress and take home a unique keepsake. This is a free event. And broadsides will be limited to the first 100 participants and will be first-come, first-served.  Our co-sponsors, the American Printing History Association's NorCal chapter, will provide printing expertise. Please join us.

Postscript: Here's the video from the day of the event. Enjoy!

San Francisco Celebrating Thanksgiving in the 1940s to the 1960s

November 25, 2015, 12:18 pm

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Here are some our favorite photographs from the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection revolving around the themes of turkeys and Thanksgiving. We narrowed in on the 1940s to the 1960s. The source of the photographs is from theSan Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue.

First stop for your 1950s Thanksgiving would be procuring your turkey at the Crystal Palace Market at the corner of Market and 8th Streets. There were four poultry shops in the Crystal Palace Market.

Crystal Palace Market, 1953

Although this man found a turkey in the San Francisco Bay!

Jesse M. Nichols standing with a turkey at Fort Point, Presidio, 1945

You would need to start the cooking process whether feeding your family or friends or the Army.

Cooks assigned to Fort McDowell, 1945

Newscopy from back of photograph: "And we do mean home -  say these cooks assigned to the Fort McDowell mess, where Pacific war veterans arriving at the San Francisco Port of Embarkation later in the month will eat their Thanksgiving dinner. The men in white, just a few of the 136 who operate the mess, carried turkeys, fresh vegetables, oranges, milk and butter (photographed in that order) to the Welcome Home sign that greets veterans at the ferry landing, and posed with them to let prospective guests know the Port has plenty of the victuals they've been longing for overseas."

Everyone has their special way of making the turkey delicious - with sometimes too many cooks in the kitchen. 

Governor Edmund (Pat) Brown, Mrs. Brown and grandchildren at Thanksgiving, 1963

You may have been cooking for your family or the masses.

Father Alfred Boeddeker basting Thanksgiving turkey in St. Anthony's Dining Room, 1958*

Thanksgiving traditions include setting the table properly.

Camp Fire Girls setting the table, 1949

Newscopy from back of photograph: "Thanksgiving means much more to Camp Fire Girls than a day for stuffing themselves with turkey and staying away from school. It's an opportunity to serve others, and that includes helping at home with dinner preparations. This week a group of girls had a preliminary workout in table setting and flower arrangement when they gave a dinner for their dads at the clubhouse on Arguello Boulevard. In the group were, left to right: Virginia Perryman, Carol Thompson, Katherine Hoass, Helen Cannon and Ann Graber."

Plus, learning how to carve the turkey.

Camp Fire Girls learning to carve a turkey, 1950

 

And you can always dress yourself up as a turkey!

*San Francisco fact: if you've ever wondered about Boeddeker Park in the Tenderloin - this is who the Father Alfred E. Boeddeker Park was named after in 1985 when it opened.

 

Company’s Coming: "Texting" and "Posting" from the PPIE

December 1, 2015, 10:00 am

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Imagine if San Francisco were to host today’s equivalent of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE). It’s safe to bet that many of us would be there, live-Tweeting, Instagramming, and Facebooking about it. But how did the PPIE’s visitors share their experiences in 1915?

In this blog post, we take a look at some postcards and photographs that could be thought of as early 20th century “social media” from the Fair. These examples not only hint at the differences between communication then and now; they also underscore how the PPIE, with its introduction of technology such as the first transcontinental telephone call, heralded the ways in which we communicate with each other today.

“Posting” about the PPIE

Without cellphones, visitors to the PPIE did not call, text, email or tweet family and friends with quick updates on their day’s activities. Instead, they relied on an easy and affordable form of communication: the postcard.  

Though postcard images were mass-produced (and sometimes unrelated to sender’s messages), the postcards themselves were an individual, personal format for Fairgoers to quickly record and share what they saw and did at the Exposition. We owe our glimpses into everyday people’s memories of the PPIE to gems like this one: 

  

Front and back, “1950. Half Dome in Court of Four Seasons. Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915.” San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

The postcard reads:

“Dear Friend,

Have just returned from the Exposition. Mr. Eddy played to-day. I like him better than Mr. Dobin[?]. At 3 there was a concert by Exposition Symphony Orchestra. Max Bendix of Boston conductor. It was the finest music I have ever heard. It is a perfect day[…] ”

It’s fun to imagine the emoticons that could punctuate that report!

Take a look at this next postcard, which expresses a hope to visit another exposition in 1925. The writer has obviously taken pains to fit a message into the available space. Perhaps you could use more than 140 or 160 characters in writing a postcard, but you still had to work within a character limit!

Front and back, “Y.W.C.A. Building, Pan.-Pac. Int. Exposition San Francisco, 1915.” San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

Snapchat

With a short note scribbled on the image, this postcard of the Palace of Horticulture looks a bit like pictures exchanged over the photos-sharing app Snapchat. This social media platform lets users place text on their pictures as captions and send them instantly to friends. The lines on this postcard read: “We were in this Palace yesterday. It was just grand.”

“Palace of Horticulture, Pan.-Pac. Int. Exposition San Francisco, 1915.” San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

Yet Snapchat is also unique in that it removes sent images from recipients’ phones within seconds of delivery. Its point is to leave no record of pictures shared—to keep digital photographs truly ephemeral. Contrast that with postcards, which, in addition to serving as a quick way to send messages,  were meant to be keepsakes as well. The difference illustrates  an intriguing point of difference between communication technologies in 1915 and 2015.

What if a similar exposition were held today and the San Francisco History Center hosted an exhibit about it one hundred years from now? We might not even have the technological tools to extract the 21st century digital postcards from the archives.

Instagram

As you might have inferred from the postcards above, the PPIE had no shortage of picturesque views. It’s fair to ask: If Instagram had existed contemporaneously with the PPIE, would images of the Exposition have filled up its feeds?

It’s a hypothetical question, so it can’t be definitively answered; however,  we did find a number of Exposition images that look as though they’ve been run through Instagram. The six postcards in the composite below depict the main façade of the Palace of Machinery. Note that while every pair from top to bottom shows the exact same scene, no two images side by side are exactly alike. The differences in framing, saturation, and color gradation evoke the effects achieved using Instagram’s filter editor.

“Machinery Palace in the Pan.-Pac. Int. Exposition San Francisco, 1915”; “Machinery Palace”;  “Palace of Machinery, Pan.-Pac. Int. Expo, San Francisco.” San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

Album Sharing

If postcards have parallels with texts, Snapchat, and Instagram, do they resemble Facebook in any way? In terms of album sharing, they just might.

Souvenir-makers at the Fair produced ready-to-mail postcard sets like the one shown here, which contained several different postcard views.  Each piece was attached to another and could be easily folded back into the envelope—hence earning the name “folding postcards.”

“Folding Post Card Views of the Jewel City.” San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

Although less personal than today’s individually shot-and-shared photographs, these folding postcard sets served as the publicly-shared albums of 1915.

Of course, there were also people who took their own photographs of the Fair. These included members of the California Camera Club, who often shared the images they captured as lantern slides.

Simply put, a lantern slide is a positive print of a photograph on a glass slide, viewed by means of an early kind of projector.  (An introductory blog post on lantern slides and lantern slide technology can be found on the Smithsonian Institution Archive’s website.)

It’s not hard to imagine people gathering in front of projected images, much the same way we nowhuddle around screensboth  large and small to watch slide shows or click through photo streams. It would be apt to think of lantern slides as a distant precursor to Flickr -- not only because of their similar function, but because of the photo sharing website’s name.

A lantern slide of a woman in the PPIE Joy Zone’s Streets of Cairo. “Streets of Cairo.” San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.

To explore more materials that reveal people’s memories of the Fair, visit Company’s Coming: San Francisco Hosts the Panama-Pacific International Expositionat the Main Library’s Skylight Gallery. The exhibit will be on view until December 31, 2015. Who knows? You might like it so much, you’ll take to Instagram, Snapchat, or Flickr to tell all the world about it.

Salvador Dali in San Francisco, 1941 - 1942

December 14, 2015, 12:33 pm

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Inspired by the Disney and Dali: Architects of the Imagination exhibition at the Walt Disney Family Museum, we were curious to see what we had in the archives about Dali's visits to San Francisco (since we already know what we have on Walt Disney). We decided a trip to the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue and the San Francisco Examiner Clipping Morgue would tell the story.

San Francisco Examiner clipping		on Dali

Salvador Dali and his wife, Gala, visited San Francisco in August 1941 to work on the party planning for "A Surrealistic Night in the Enchanted Forest." The costume party would benefit French and Spanish refugee artists - with Salvador Dali as the guest of honor. The party happened on September 2 in the Bali Room of Del Monte Hotel in Monterey.

Below is a photo of Salvador Dali with his wife in the Hotel St. Francis. The newscopy on the back of the photo states, "With an odd background suggestive of his paintings Salvador Dali and his wife are glimpsed during interview Hotel St. Francis. Behind him is a chair perched on top of a dress model." 

Salvador Dali & wife Gala Dali, Hotel St. Francis, August 27, 1941

The Del Monte promised "to be the mecca for a number of localites that evening." 

Salvador Dali & Mrs. Mrs. Dorothy Spreckels Dupuy, Hotel Del Monte, August 28, 1941

Newscopy on back for above photograph: "Salvador Dali, the great surrealist discusses plans with Mrs. Dorothy Spreckels Dupuy at Hotel Del Monte for his forthcoming party, 'A Night in an Enchanted Forest' which will be held in the Bali Room Tuesday night, September 2, for the benefit of the Museum of Modern Art's fund for European artists who want to come to America."

The review of the party according to the San Francisco Examiner (below). There are fantastic photographs of the party and the costumed guests in the Disney and Dali exhibition (your teaser to attend the exhibit!). Or here's a fun, short newsreel including shots of one of the guests, Bob Hope.

San Francisco Examiner clipping on Dali's A Night in an Enchanted Forest party, Sept 4, 1941

SF Examiner clipping on Dali, 1942

In January 1942 the Dalis came back to San Francisco Bay Area for Salvador to work on a portrait of Burlingame socialite Mrs. Dorothy Spreckels Dupuy McCarthy (see photo above of Dali with Dorothy). During the same visit the Ballet Russe opened the season at the Memorial Opera House featuring Dali's new ballet "Labyrinth." Below is Dali working on the portrait of Mrs. Dorothy Spreckels. (The Portrait of Dorothy Spreckels Munn was gifted to the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco in 1989.) 

In an interview Dali explains why he placed her on the dolphin (see San Francisco Examiner clipping on the right).

Salvador Dali painting portrait Mrs. Dorothy Spreckels, February 12, 1942

The photographs and clippings from 1942 document numerous events attended - with many at the Palace Hotel. 

Edmund Lymons, Salvador Dali and Gala Dali, Palace Hotel, January 22, 1942

San Francisco Examiner clipping on Salvador Dali, January 29, 1942

This was a two-year peek into Salvador Dali's life linked to San Francisco. There are many more resources at the library for one to explore including biographies, films, exhibition catalogs, art books, and catalogues raisonnes.

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The San Francisco Public Library owns the photo morgue of the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, a daily newspaper that covered the time period from the 1920s to 1965. Much of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection comes from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue. However, the morgue also includes statewide, national, and international subjects and people that have not been digitized or cataloged. When researchers order scans from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue, selections are cataloged and added to the online database.

Looking for a historical photograph of San Francisco? Try our online database first. Not there? Come visit us at the Photo Desk of the San Francisco History Center, located on the sixth floor at the Main Library. The Photo Desk hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays 10 a.m. to noon, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. You may also request photographs from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue.

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The San Francisco Examiner Clipping Morgue is from 1901 - 1987. The collection was donated by the San Francisco Examiner to the San Francisco Public Library. The clippings are stored off-site and may be requested through the San Francisco History Center reference desk by phone, email or in person.

Over 20 Years of Holiday Cards

December 30, 2015, 5:00 am

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 Holiday Card 1994-95
Domenico Maria Manni, Vita di Aldo Pio Manuzio
Venezia, 1759
Norman Clayton, printer
One Heart Press

The Book Arts & Special Collections Center and the San Francisco History Center have been sending holiday card ambassadors to printers, calligraphers, donors, and institutional colleaguesfor over twenty years. Such an auspicious anniversary seemed an appropriate time to make note of this tradition.

We have always had two priorities in the planning of our cards: feature an element from one of our collections and have them letterpress printed by a local printer. We have not always lived up to this high standard, and we even skipped a year, but mostly we have kept to our ideals.

Printers we have employed include: Zida Borcich, Norman Clayton, Peggy Gotthold and Lawrence Van Velzer, Victoria Heifner, Julie Holcomb, Eric Holub, James and Carolyn Robertson, Richard Seibert, Jack Stauffacher, and John Sullivan. A couple of times we the library's graphic designers created the cards.

We have also featured the work of calligraphers, such as, Marsha Brady, Judy Detrick, Claude Dieterich A., Thomas Ingmire, John Prestianni,Carl Rohrs, and Hermann Zapf.

The cards have always highlighted materials or artists represented in our collections. Artwork from the Robert Grabhorn Collection on the History of Printing and the Development of the Book, the Richard Harrison Collection of Calligraphy and Lettering, the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit and Humor, and the George M. Fox Collection of Early Children's Books, as well as materials from the San Francisco History Center, have inspired quite a few of them.

We hope you will enjoy the gallery of Holiday Cards below.With warm wishes to all in the New Year. 

Holiday Card 1995-96
Albius Tibullus (BC 54 - 19) quote
 John Prestianni, lettering, illlustration, design

Julie Holcomb Printers

Holiday Card 1996-97
La série no. 16 des caractères ordinaires de la Fonderie Deberny & Cie. Paris, 1894
Eric Holub, printer
Hillside Press

Holiday Card 1997-98
Thomas Carlyle quotation, Old Main Library
Dennis Letbetter, photographer
Jack Stauffacher, designer and printer
Greenwood Press

Holiday Card 1998-99
Claude Dieterich A., calligrapher

James and Carolyn Robertson, printers

Yolly Bolly Press 

Holiday Card 2000-01
Traditional Latin maxim, Claude Dieterich A., calligrapher

Peggy Gotthold and Lawrence Van Velzer, printers
Foolscap Press

Holiday Card 2001-02
Hermann Zapf, designer
Linnea Lundquist, typographer
Eric Holub, printer
Hillside Press

Holiday Postcard 2002-03
Arthur Rimbaud quotation, Alchemie du Verbe, Harrison Collection
Thomas Ingmire, calligrapher and illuminator

Kim Urbain, designer

Holiday Card 2003-04
Illustration by Uzelac from Contes Libertins de Pogge, 1956, Schmulowitz Collection
Victoria Heifner, printer
 Milkfed Press

Holiday Postcard 2004-05
Numbers, Harrison Collection
Claude Dieterich A., calligrapher

Holiday Card 2005-06
Dedicated to the memory of Friedrich Neugebauer, 1911-2005
Judy Detrick, calligraphy and typography
Eric Holub, printer
Hillside Press

Holiday Card 2006-07
In memory of Marjorie Gunst Stern, 1915-2006
Judy Detrick, calligraphy and design
Eric Holub, printer
Hillside Press

Holiday Card 2007-08
Emmy Lou Packard, Old Produce Market, 1953
San Francisco History Center
Barbara McMahan, design and typography

Holiday Card 2008-09
In memory of Tillie Olsen, 1912-2007
Marsha Brady, calligrapher
Larry Brady, typographer
Zida Borcich, Printer

Holiday Card 2009-10
Mallette Dean woodcut from Physiologus, Grabhorn Collection
Eric Holub, printer
Hillside Press

Holiday Card 2010-11
Carl Rohrs, calligrapher
Peggy Gotthold and Lawrence Van Velzer, printers

 Foolscap Press

Holiday Card 2011-12
Engraving from Mental Pleasures, 1791, Schmulowitz Collection
Richard Seibert, Printer

Holiday Card 2012-13
From Curly Locks, 1877, Fox Collection

John Sullivan, printer
Logos Graphics

 

Holiday Card 2013-14
Image from Izaak Walton, His Wallet Booke, 1885, Grabhorn Collection

John Sullivan, printer
Logos Graphics

Holiday Card 2014-15

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the PPIE

Jules Guerin, Arch of the Rising Sun, circa 1913, San Francisco History Center

Ellen Reilly, design

Holiday Card 2015-16
Valenti Angelo: Author, Illustrator, Printer, 1970, Grabhorn Collection
Dependable Letterpress, Inc.

Annual Holiday Lecture Celebrates Archy & Mehitabel

January 4, 2016, 5:00 am

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Actor Gale McNeeley (below) and archy & mehitabel,illustrated by George Herriman (above)

The Book Arts & Special Collections Center invites you to the Annual Holiday Lecture which will showcase actor and singer Gale McNeeley. His comic performance will bring to life Don Marquis’s characters archy and mehitabel in celebration of the 100th anniversary of their first appearance in print.

In case you are wondering just who or what archy and mehitabel are, let us explain. For the uninitiated, and those recently born: archy is a poetry-writing cockroach and mehitabel is Cleopatra, reborn as a cat. They were created in 1916 by the great newspaperman Don Marquis. The drawings of these characters, familiar to many, are by the brilliant cartoonist George Herriman, creator of the Krazy Kat comic strip. Gale McNeeley loves these characters and brings them to life anytime he has the chance and his timeless one-man show is a fitting tribute to the books. You’ll find over sixty volumes of Marquis’s writings, as well as books of Herriman's comic art, in the library’s Schmulowitz Collection of Wit and Humor (SCOWAH), which was founded in 1947. 

Cover art for The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel, 1940

The Book Arts & Special Collections Center has been celebrating the holiday season with an Annual Holiday Lecture since 1995. The lectures have highlighted a fascinating array of local experts in the book and lettering arts including Jonathan Aaron, Sandro Berra, Alisa Golden, Alastair Johnston, James Keenan, Peter Koch, David Mostardi, Carl Rohrs, Rob Saunders, Patricia Wakida, Kathy Walkup, and Karen Zukor. Last year we hosted Dan Cohen’s talk about the Digital Public Library of America.

This year, we’ve chosen to celebrate both the library’s SCOWAH collection and the 100th anniversary of archy and mehitabel’s debut appearance in the New York Evening Sun. Please join us.

Gale McNeeley on stage

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

6 p.m.

Koret Auditorium, Main Library, Lower Level

San Francisco Public Library

100 Larkin Street  

5th Annual Valentine Broadside Printing Event

January 14, 2016, 5:00 am

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Celebrate Letterpress, Valentines, & the 100th Anniversary of archy & mehitabel

The Book Arts & Special Collections Center presents the 5th Annual Valentine Broadside Printing Event on Saturday, February 6th, 2-4 p.m., in the San Francisco History Center, on the 6th Floor of the Main Library. You are invited to experience letterpress printing on the library’s 1909 Albion handpress and take home a unique keepsake for your sweetheart. 

Book cover, the lives and times of archy and mehitabel, circa 1940

We’ll be printing an image which celebrates both Valentine’s Day and the 100th anniversary of archy and mehitabel’s first appearance in Don Marquis’ Sun Dial column in the New York Evening Sun. If you are wondering just who or what archy and mehitabel are, let us explain. For the uninitiated, and those recently born: archy is a poetry-writing cockroach and mehitabel is Cleopatra, reborn as a cat. They were created in 1916, by the great newspaperman Don Marquis. The drawings of these characters, familiar to many, are by the brilliant cartoonist George Herriman, creator of the Krazy Kat comic strip. You’ll find over sixty volumes of Marquis’s writings, as well as books of Herriman’s comic art, in the library’s Schmulowitz Collection of Wit and Humor (SCOWAH) which was founded in 1947. 

Join us as we celebrate archy and mehitabel’s anniversary, sixty-nine years of the Schmulowitz Collection, and, of course, Valentine’s Day. Our co-sponsors, the American Printing History Association’s NorCal Chapter, will assist. Here's a peek at last year's event.

Everyone is welcome, but broadsides will be limited to the first 100 people.

---

Guest Bloggers Leah Virsik and Sarah Heady: Small Press Collaborators

February 7, 2016, 5:00 am

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Tatted Insertion (2014)

It started two summers ago, in the sweltering attic of a Nebraskan farmhouse. Poet Sarah Heady was rooting through boxes of yellowed and brittle Comfort magazines from the 1910s and 1920s, transfixed by articles on cooking, crafting, and perfecting the female self.

In some ways, it appeared that nothing much had changed over the past hundred years: 21st century ladies’ magazines still prescribe how one can be alluring yet maternal, youthful yet responsible. But you’d be hard pressed to find one that speaks in the coded language of lace-making instructions:

[...]4 ds., join to last p. in first ring, 3 ds., p., 2 ds., p., 2 ds., p., 3 ds., p., 4 ds., draw, third ring like second[...]

--or one that espouses the pseudoscience of breast enlargement through calisthenics:

Stand erect, heels together, feet apart. Raise arms until on a level with the shoulders, elbows stiff, hands on a line with the chin. Now, without bending elbows, throw arms vigorously back, keeping still on a line with the shoulder, apparently trying to make the hands meet the back of the shoulders. Repeat ten or fifteen times. This adds to the size of the bust.

 

Tatted Insertion (2014), interior

As Sarah later found out, Comfort was published in Augusta, Maine between 1888 and 1942 and aimed at rural housewives across America; its tagline was “The Key to Happiness and Success in Over a Million Farm Homes.” At that moment on the dusty attic floor, however, she just snapped some photos of the magazines’ most intriguing bits, knowing she would later mine them for poetic material.

That fall, in Truong Tran’s MFA poetry workshop at San Francisco State University, Sarah attempted to use the found language from Comfort for a prompt that dictated the following constraints:

1) tell a lie
2) contradict yourself
3) include numbers
4) at least 11 words per line
5) everything has to be inorganic (nothing "natural")

The resulting poem, “Tatted Insertion,” begins with an original contradiction and proceeds to braid together those two sets of female-oriented instructions: how to increase the bust and how to make lace with a particular technique called tatting, in which thread is repeatedly knotted using a shuttle or a needle:

This is not how to make lace: stand erect, heels together,

tie the ends of two colors with ecru, make clover leaf

by 4 doubles (4 ds.), picot (p.), 3 ds., p., 2 ds., slump over,

feet apart, raise arms until on a level with the shoulders,

p., 2 ds., p., 3 ds., p., 4 ds., draw, begin second ring, close up,

elbows stiff, hands on a line with the chin. Now, without bending

elbows, 4 ds., join to last p. in first ring, 3 ds., p., 2 ds., p., 2 ds.,

throw arms vigorously back, keeping still on a line with the shoulder [...]

 

Final forms specified by the tatting instructions.

Each year, San Francisco State’s College of Liberal and Creative Arts invites one MFA poet and one MFA printmaker to collaborate on the production of a letterpress-printed broadside or small book of original writing and images. Now entering its fourth year, the interdisciplinary project is facilitated by the Department of Creative Writing and the Department of Art with the goal of providing a model for successful and vibrant intermedia collaboration. Graduate students gain valuable experience in designing and producing an original letterpress publication, presenting the work to other graduate and undergraduate students, and exhibiting the work at the Artery gallery in SF State’s Fine Arts building.

It was in this way, in the spring of 2014, that Sarah met artist Leah Virsik and the real magic happened. Mario Laplante, professor in printmaking, served as the project’s faculty advisor, providing creative and logistical guidance. A major aspect of the project is teaching emerging artists how to approach the collaborative process itself. In order to shore up the matchmaking that had already taken place, Mario suggested that Leah and Sarah spend some time creatively bonding and getting to know each other’s working style.

Based on their shared interest in time-based constraints and found materials, Leah and Sarah decided to create a series of timed collage experiments. Each had five minutes to “respond” to the other’s work before relinquishing it for further alteration. This was a practice in letting go of one’s individual creative output and trusting that the sum of a collaboration is greater than its parts. The collaging process, which unfolded over the course of the semester, did in fact facilitate a rich creative relationship rooted in trust.

And as it turned out, Sarah and Leah’s creative interests and practices were more aligned than they could have predicted. Sarah’s process of taking found texts and stitching them together into something new closely paralleled Leah’s own visual practice of cutting up found clothing, rendering it nonfunctional, and transforming it into something altogether different. As a fiber artist, Leah was already interested in tatting and would later make the connection between the step-by-step patterns inherent in both tatting and bookbinding.

Like tatting itself, coptic accordion binding is a repetitive procedure with thread.

  

These serendipitous crossovers enabled an exploratory design process for the artist’s book Tatted Insertion. Leah realized that a tight relationship between image and word would generate the most satisfying reading experience. With help from local and far-flung tatting experts, she followed the poem’s step-by-step instructions and created lace pieces which she then ran through the press in a process called pressure printing. The book deciphers the code of the tatting pattern by translating the 3D process into a 2D representation: the instructional text is mirrored by the physical process unfolding (or, more accurately, coming together) before the reader’s eyes.

Final tatted forms as plates for pressure printing, with resulting print.

At two by six inches, the finished book fits into the palm of one’s hand, creating an intimate reading experience. Sarah and Leah chose a horizontal coptic accordion binding and isolated each line of the poem on its own page to suggest the ordered nature of an instruction set. In between, illustrated pages without text encourage the reader to pause and slow down.

 

Pages without text add breathing room to the poem and showcase the tatting process.

Following her collaboration with Sarah, Leah was encouraged to think more about her own creative process, the heart of which entails taking scissors to secondhand clothing. As a constraint, she forces herself to use the entire garment, thereby accepting every part of the whole. In the intimate process of cutting, a type of exposure occurs: clothing that once concealed now reveals its own structure, component parts, flaws, and hidden truths. Her work has expanded to become more participatory--for example, an installation that prompts the viewer to walk through pathways lined with denim strips. She has also uncovered a deep enjoyment of writing and an interest in language itself.  Continuing to work with these metaphors of interiority and exteriority, she feels installation is analogous to the experience of immersing oneself in a book.

One outcome of Sarah’s work on Tatted Insertion is that it helped shape her next major project, a full-length book of poems entitled (what else?) Comfort. Like Tatted Insertion, Comfort draws on found language from the eponymous magazine, but goes further to braid various poetic forms into a single long poem that investigates the meaning of settlement and self for women on the prairie. The book has a feeling of spaciousness that reflects the wide open landscape of the Great Plains, an approach cultivated by working with negative space in Tatted Insertion.

Both artists are deeply grateful for the opportunity to collaborate because the bookmaking process gave them so much more than a finished piece. They continue to share the frustrations and joys of their respective media and find that poetry and visual art have more in common than one might suppose; collaborating with an artist outside of one’s discipline can illuminate the creative process that binds all artists together and deepen one’s understanding of one’s own work.

Even under the “time-based constraint” of life’s busyness, Leah and Sarah still manage to carve out tiny pockets of time to bounce ideas off one another and share inspiration. A sustained collaborative relationship is a deeply satisfying and fortifying ingredient in an artist’s practice, no matter the medium. And sometimes, as with an aesthetic constraint, the richest results arrive in the smallest containers.

Faculty advisor Mario Laplante with Leah Virsik, Sarah Heady, and the finished books.

Tatted Insertion is the second publication to come out of the cross-departmental collaboration at San Francisco State. It was recently added to the Grabhorn Collection in the Book Arts & Special Collections Centerat the San Francisco Public Library where you can ask to see the actual item. In 2013, poet Carolyn Ho and artist Nif Hodgson collaborated on Cranewhich is also in the Grabhorn Collection. 2015’s offering is a book called Found Objects by poet Patricia Creedy and artist Bronwyn Dexter.

You can learn more about Leah Virsik and Sarah Heady at their respective websites. More images of Tatted Insertion are here, and their collage series entitled The Enduring Questions is here.

******

The staff of the Book Arts & Special Collections Center welcomes donations to its collection and congratulates Leah, Sarah, and Mario on their collaboration. 

It Came from the (Photo) Morgue! Happy Birthday, Mr. Lincoln!

February 12, 2016, 11:00 am

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"ABE LINCOLN" IN A NEW ROLE

February 2, 1924
New York... George Billings, who plays the role of "Abraham Lincoln" in the dramatic photoplay of the Great Emacipator's life, is shown here as the leader of Dan Gregory's Orchestra. Songs of the present day were played in comparison with the songs that were popular in the days of '61.
[P63 BILLINGS, GEORGE A.]

Don't forget, the Main and all branches of the San Francisco Public Library will be closed on Monday, February 15, 2016 for Presidents' Day.

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The San Francisco Public Library owns the photo morgue of the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, a daily newspaper that covered the time period from the 1920s to 1965. Much of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection comes from theSan Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue. However, the morgue also includes statewide, national, and international subjects and people that have not been digitized or cataloged. When researchers order scans from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue,selections are cataloged and added to the online database.

Looking for a historical photograph of San Francisco? Try our online database first. Not there? Come visit us at the Photo Desk of the San Francisco History Center, located on the sixth floor at the Main Library. The Photo Desk hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays 10 a.m. to noon, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. You may also request photographs from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue.

Jitneys!, or The Sharing Economy of 1915

February 16, 2016, 11:00 am

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These days a regular person can use their personal car to make a few bucks (maybe even enough to live in San Francisco) by shuttling passengers around the city using Uber, Lyft or Sidecar. In turn, their passengers don't have to wait around for a taxi that might never come or get on a crowded bus that's standing room only. It's all part of the new "sharing economy." It may seem like a radical new idea, but San Francisco has seen this all before.

From Electric Railway Journal v.65, no.7

In late-1914, owners of small cars in Los Angeles began competing with the city's electric railway and a brand new bus system by taking passengers around the city. Passengers paid 5¢ - or a "jitney" - for a ride. Thus the cars, and eventually buses, became known as "jitneys".

The jitney craze soon took over other cities and San Francisco was no exception. By January 1915 there were already 1,000 jitneys operating in The City. By the time the Panama-Pacific International Exposition was in full-swing, there were 2,000 jitneys on the roads shuttling people to and from the fair. The jitney seemed like it would be a perfect match for San Francisco. Charlie Chaplin set his film "A Jitney Elopement" in San Francisco, highlighting Golden Gate Park and the Great Highway near the end of the movie. And the song "Father Is Driving A Jitney Bus" was published by Buell Music Co. of San Francisco.

The lyrics:

O'Grady 'phoned to me
In great perplexity
That the times are getting harder ev'ry day
And said with moans and sighs
That he must economize,
Cut out the booze and throw his pipe away;

Now I want it understood,
That with me the times are good,
And the same is true with all the family,
If this should cause surprise
Just let me put you wise
And tell how Fortune came to smile on me:

(chorus)

Father is driving a Jitney bus from the station to the park,
And soon I know he'll be a millionaire,
The stove in the kitchen has been ignored,
Dear mother is renting a "Can't Afford" [*]
For a half a dime she'll take you anywhere;
Sister has left the department store to become a Jitney Queen,
Her little car is winning great renown;
O, the bank account is getting fat,
For Pa and Ma and sister Hat,
Since the Jitney bus has come to bless our town.

When Father whizzes by
You'll hear the people cry
"O, Mister Maxwell let us ride with you!"
They come from far and near
The Jitney bust to cheer
To trolley-car they bid a fond adieu;

Now it only cost five cents,
To ride from hence to thence,
So the merry little Jitneys roll along,
Then come an take a ride
With your sweetheart by your side
Strike up the band and sing the Jitney Song:

(repeat chorus)

[* a "Can't Afford" seems to be referencing another automotive song: "You Can't Afford to Marry if You Can't Afford a Ford."]

from VF. SF. JITNEYS. (SFPL)

But by 1916, jitneys were coming under attack by the streetcar lines as well as the city's lawmakers. The Jitney Bus Ordinance, passed in August 1916, limited the number of jitney drivers in San Francisco to 700 and forbade jitneys on Market Street from Fremont to 6th Street between the hours of 10:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Outraged, the Jitney Operators' Union tried to fight the new law with an amendment on the November 1916 ballot, reminding voters "What the Jit Has Done For San Francisco" with quips such as "The jitneys have cut down strap-hanging" and "[Jitneys] Have made the automobile a servant of the plain people instead of a toy of the rich." But they couldn't save the jitneys. In January 1917, the Guardian Casualty and Guarantee Company declared that it would no longer insure jitneys for the Jitney Operators' Union. With the loss of insurance and the Market Street traffic ordinances, jitney drivership began to drop. In August of 1916, jitney licenses were down to 868, and in January of 1917, only 542 drivers were listed.

A few jitneys carried on in San Francisco through the years. The price was no longer a nickle, but the jitney was still deemed "the poor man's taxi." In 1968, most jitneys were on Mission Street and charged 20 cents to 22nd Street and 30 cents to the county line. Since 1997, there has been only one jitney operating in San Francisco. It takes passengers between Market and 4th Streets and Caltrain.

For more about jitneys, the San Francisco History Center on the 6th Floor of the Main Library has these items to study:

• Vertical files - SF. JITNEYS
• Subject cards - SF. JITNEYS
• San Francisco Examiner newspaper clippings - JITNEYS
• San Francisco sheet music - "Father Is Driving  A Jitney Bus"
• Periodicals - The Jitney News

And from the Magazine and Newspaper department on the 5th Floor of the Main Library ask to see the Electric Railway Journal for the article "The Jitney-Bus Competition". Vol. 65, No. 7 (February 13, 1915.) [*This item is in storage and may require 24-hour notice.]

Happy 100th Birthday, Mayor Joseph L. Alioto!

February 18, 2016, 10:45 am

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"North Beach Boy Makes Good" March 20, 1937. SFPL

The San Francisco History Center presents an exhibit honoring former mayor Joseph L. Alioto.

Joseph Lawrence Alioto was born on February 12, 1916 in San Francisco's North Beach district. His father was a Sicilian immigrant and owned a fish processing company. His mother was a San Francisco native. Joe attended Sacred Heart High School, St. Mary's College in Moraga, and Catholic University Law School in Washington, D.C.

In 1967, Alioto staged a 56-day campaign and was easily elected San Francisco's 36th mayor, becoming the City's third Democratic chief executive officer in 60 years. Described as articulate and sophisticated, with a great rapport, the popular and colorful mayor served two terms (from 1968 to 1976) during a time of political and social unrest.

Joseph Alioto campaigning for mayor. [n.d.] SFPL

Mayor Alioto is credited with creating jobs and transforming the skyline with the construction of the Transamerica Pyramid and the Embarcadero Center. The entire city was developed; the India Basin industrial park and Diamond Heights neighborhood were born. The mayor revealed plans for Yerba Buena Center and the waterfront, and envisioned Market Street as a fashionable thoroughfare transformed with brick sidewalks and trees. He dedicated BART in 1972, but turned down the governor's idea of extending the Embarcadero Freeway. He also helped preserve the Crystal Springs watershed open space area south of San Francisco and arranged for public access to Crissy Field.

Along with these accomplishments, Angela Alioto said her father would be remembered as a coalition builder. His minority appointments included the first African American deputy mayor and first Latino, first Asian American, and second African American to the Board of Supervisors.

After leaving City Hall in 1976, Alioto returned to his anti-trust law practice. He died two weeks short of his 82nd birthday in 1998, in his beloved city of San Francisco.

Mayor Joseph Alioto walking with wife Angelina (R) and daughter Angela. [1967] SFPL

The exhibit will be on view in the San Francisco History Center on the 6th Floor of the Main Library until Monday, February 22, 2016.

The Joseph L. Alioto mayoral papers are available for research at the San Francisco History Center.

Guest Blogger: Abby Smith Rumsey - Memory is About the Future

March 9, 2016, 11:00 am

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Abby Smith Rumsey

The San Francisco History Center is pleased to present Abby Smith Rumsey, author of When We are No More: How Digital Memory is Shaping the Future. She will discuss her book on Thursday, March 17, 2016, 6:00pm in the Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room at the Main Libary.

Abby Smith Rumsey is an historian, focusing on how ideas and information technologies shape perceptions of history, time, and of personal and cultural identity. She served as director of the Scholarly Communication Institute at the University of Virginia, and has advised universities and their research libraries on strategies to integrate digital information resources into existing collections and services.

In anticipation of her visit to the San Francisco Main Library, Abby Smith Rumsey has written a guest blog post for the San Francisco History Center's blog.


INTO THE FUTURE

In the 1990s, those of us working in history centers, libraries, archives, and museums all knew digital technologies would profoundly affect the future of our institutions. But how? It was impossible to know. I was at the Library of Congress at the time. We were digitizing our collections onto CD-ROMs. Tech companies were selling gold CD-ROMS as the optimal preservation format, the one to last for the ages. Regrettably, the playback machines they require did not. This was before Mosaic, before the World Wide Web, before search engines, e-books, social media, wireless connectivity, Big Data, and smart phones. I don’t recall anyone at the time predicting they were in our future, any more than the inventors of the ENIAC believed that computers would one day be a phone, a camera, a music system, a book reader, and a calculator—and fit in a shirt pocket.

Digital storage from days of yore.

Libraries are often called memory institutions. But memories serve not the past, but the future. The real job of history centers and libraries is to look forward into the future to anticipate what information circulating today will be of value to people 50 or 100 years from now. That job was easier when we were using ink-on-paper technologies that can last for 100 years or more. Then historians and librarians had the luxury of assessing value over long periods of time. Kept at reasonably steady temperature and humidity, letters, journals, and photographs can rest easy in boxes in the proverbial attic a long time, long enough to pass the test of time that sorts the trivial or redundant from the significant and unique.

Today, webpages last an average of 100 days. Not only is the opportunity for assessing digital content’s value vanishingly small, but there is too much to sort through. Digital is the default mode of recording and getting access to everything, from videos (today’s home movies shared with the world), to blogs and Facebook updates (today’s diaries, journals, letters, and postcards to friends), to interactive maps, reference books, and so forth. Does that mean that history centers and libraries face obsolescence?

The answer is no. On the contrary, they are more valuable than ever. But that doesn’t mean that their transition to the digital age is simple, a matter merely of passive evolution, guaranteed to happen and guaranteed to have a happy ending.

Some of the digital collections of the San Francisco History Center.

There is no doubt that local and regional libraries will be richer in content than ever because the Internet allows distributed, networked collecting. The new model of the library in the digital age is one of deeper networks of cooperation with other libraries, to cope with the scale of digital information being produced. Best of all, the new-model digital library will rely on ever deeper networks of community members, individuals and groups, to identify and collect digital materials important to them. These collectors can then be networked through the library to other communities. SFPL can collaborate with local organizations, such as the Internet Archive, and also the Digital Public Library of America with national and international reach. All it takes is community participation. The greater the community participation, the greater the access to truly diverse cultures now and into the future.

It Came from the Photo Morgue! Happy St. Patrick's Day!

March 17, 2016, 10:00 am

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ST. PATRICK'S DAY IN S.F.

Ruth Belmont....Helen Miller....Grace Smith....Jerry Ferrairi

March 14, 1934
[P53 BELMONT, A-Z]

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The San Francisco Public Library owns the photo morgue of the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin, a daily newspaper that covered the time period from the 1920s to 1965. Much of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection comes from theSan Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue. However, the morgue also includes statewide, national, and international subjects and people that have not been digitized or cataloged. When researchers order scans from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue,selections are cataloged and added to the online database.

Looking for a historical photograph of San Francisco? Try our online database first. Not there? Come visit us at the Photo Desk of the San Francisco History Center, located on the sixth floor at the Main Library. The Photo Desk hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturdays 10 a.m. to noon, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. You may also request photographs from the San Francisco News-Call Bulletin Photo Morgue.

ANIMAL HOUSE: ANTHROPOMORPHIC SELECTIONS FROM THE SCHMULOWITZ COLLECTION OF WIT & HUMOR

April 1, 2016, 4:00 pm

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The term "anthropomorphism" was coined sometime in the nineteenth century, although artists have conveyed human characteristics to animals for centuries. The annals of anthropomorphic humor are riddled with the names of the great comic artists, as well as the lesser knowns. Here we find J.J. Grandville's reptilian caricatures, popular in France and the continent. In the early twentieth century, we have the genius of T.S. Sullivant and Heinrich Kley, whose comic hippos, and dancing elephants and alligators inspired Walt Disney; George Herriman's Krazy Kat; Walt Kelly's possum from the Okefenokee Swamp; Jean de Brunhoff's Babar the King; Munro Leaf's Ferdinand the Bull; Dr. Seuss and his pile of turtles, cats in hats, and that elephant!

A literary device first appearing in nineteenth century political pamphlets, news sheets, and comic almanacs, as well as magazines of humor and satire, anthropomorphic or humanized animals and objects are now part of the twenty-first century commonplace. The gradual movement away from the publication of moralizing children's books toward the shaping of books with more entertainment value is reflected in this exhibition.

Many people grew up enjoying the comics section of the newspaper, a significant literacy tool as well as popular entertainment. For San Francisco Bay Area readers, at least eight strips featuring humanized animals currently appear in our local newspapers. But remember our excitement as we dipped into the comics pages for our daily dose of Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts; King Aroo; the Get Fuzzy gang; Earl and Mooch, a couple of Mutts; Sherman's Lagoon; and cows creating outlandish disturbances in The Far Side?

In nursery rhymes, fairy tales and children's books, in political humor and in a wide assortment of international cartoons and comics, we recognize ourselves as we celebrate the mischievous antics of anthropomorphic animals. Join the fun with Animal House: Anthropomorphic Selections from the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor, an exhibition showcasing animals behaving like humans, and spotlighting comic artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

RELATED PROGRAMS

Thursdays at Noon Films: Yackety Yak: Animals Talk Back

April 7: Wallace and Gromit double feature: A Grand Day Out and Curse of the Were-Rabbit

April 14: The Adventures of Milo and Otis

April 21: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

April 28: Ponyo

Koret Auditorium, Main Library, Lower Level

Nat Schmulowitz was a San Francisco attorney, civic leader, and humanitarian. Born in New York City on March 29, 1889, he moved to San Francisco with his family when he was nine years old. After graduating from Lowell High School in 1906, he earned his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1910, and went on to receive his law degree from Hastings Collection of the Law two years later.

Although he specialized in probate and corporate law, Nat Schmulowitz achieved a national reputation in 1921 with his successful defense of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, in one of the most sensational murder trials of the 1920s. When Gavin McNab died in 1927, Mr. Schmulowitz became senior partner in the firm of McNab, Schmulowitz, Sommer & Wyman.

A confirmed bibliophile, Nat Schmulowitz was appointed to the San Francisco Library Commission for seven years; he served as president of that body in 1944. On April 1, 1947, he presented ninety-three jest books to the Library, including an edition of the Hundred Merry Tales, the first step toward the establishment of a research collection of wit and humor.

In his diligent search for humorous materials, Nat Schmulowitz combed bookshops around the world. He faithfully continued to add to the collection through donations, sometimes at the rate of one hundred books per month. The Library formally dedicated a room to house SCOWAH on November 30, 1950. The collection has grown to over 22,000 volumes, and includes periodicals and audio-visual materials, making it one of the most significant collections of its kind in a public library.

Nat's sister, Kay Schmulowitz, was a great friend of the Library who carried on the tradition established by Nat. She was his amanuensis, law office manager, and traveled the world with Nat, supporting his bibliophilic interests. After his death in 1966, she generously continued to donate books, periodicals, and funds for the enrichment of the collection, and in honor of her brother's memory. Kay died in 1984, and will be remembered as a happy sidekick to a remarkable legacy of wit, humor, and folklore.

Nat Schmulowitz emphasized that "Without humor we are doomed." It is with his motto in mind that the Book Arts & Special Collections Center has, for more than fifty years, presented the Annual Wit & Humor Exhibition, based on materials in the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit and Humor. A living tribute to Nat's generosity and lifelong interest in the San Francisco Public Library.

The collection is open to everyone with an interest in humor, from the merely curious to the researcher and scholar. The Marjorie G. and Carl W. Stern Book Arts & Special Collections Center is open seven days a week.

---

May 17, 1900: Happy Birthday Robert Grabhorn!

May 13, 2016, 5:00 am

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Robert Grabhorn Birthday Broadside, 1962, Grabhorn Ephemera collection   Book Arts & Special Collections

May 17th was Robert Grabhorn's birthday. To commemorate the day, here's a peek at what might be my favorite piece of ephemera from the Grabhorn Collection. It's a birthday broadside, printed by the Grace Hoper Press, for his 62nd birthday, complete with three dimensional elements. If you look closely, you'll see the bills in his right hand and the "catalogue of rare & expensive type books" in his left. Was the one going to finance the other? And isn't the catan especially nice touch? But the birthday-boy doesn't look very happy, does he? Neither does the cat for that matter.

Robert Grabhorn Birthday Broadside detail, 1962, Grabhorn Ephemera collection Book Arts & Special Collections

Above is a detail of the tiny 3-D Catalogue of Rare & Expensive Type Books which Robert is holding in his left hand. Inside, perhaps there is a list of all of their fine publications...

Robert Grabhorn Birthday Broadside detail, 1962, Grabhorn Ephemera collection Book Arts & Special Collections

Above, is a detail of some of his bills from I. Magnin, The White House, and a drugstore, which he is holding in his right hand.

Robert Grabhorn Birthday Broadside detail, 1962, Grabhorn Ephemera collection Book Arts & Special Collections

At the bottom, a detail of the Grace Hoper Press's printer's mark. The design was inspired by the James Joyce story The Ondt & the GraceHoper and a Native American design found in a New Mexican wood block cutter's book. Apparently Robert and Jane enjoyed reading Joyce aloud. What a terrific birthday card.

If you want to read more about Robert Grabhorn, you might be interested in the oral history which Ruth Teiser did with him. Here is the link to Teiser's interview with Sherwood and Katharine Grover about the Grabhorn and Grace Hoper presses. And here is a link to Alastair Johnston's articleon Robert's personallibrary, which forms the core of our Grabhorn Collection: reading itwould be a great way to acknowledge the day and to learn more about this library collection.

Jane and Robert Grabhorn, Vertical Files, Book Arts & Special Collections

Above, is a photo of Robert and Jane looking quite happy and surrounded by work in the shop. 

Happy Birthday Bob!

Driven By Fear - A Guest Blog Post by Dr. Guenter Risse

May 26, 2016, 11:00 am

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On Thursday, June 2, the San Francisco History Center is pleased to present Guenter Risse, author of Driven By Fear: Epidemics and Isolation in San Francisco's House of Pestilence. He will be talking about his book and his research in the Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room in the Lower Level of the Main Library at 6:00p.m.

As a preview to his talk, Dr. Guenter Risse has written a guest blog post for the SF History Center's blog:

Since its inception, America has exhibited an exaggerated sense of vulnerability and fear with respect to the introduction of foreign diseases through visitors and immigrants. Blaming such arriving others for the appearance and transmission of sickness remains a common national practice, particularly fueling the fires of xenophobia and racism. The danger of contagion lurks everywhere; endangering our anxious lives in spite of ubiquitous sanitary measures. Delving into the spectrum of emotions that drove Americans to harsh measures like segregation and isolation is illustrative. Fed by psychological, ideological, and pragmatic urges, these efforts succeeded in stereotyping and scapegoating victims of disease.

With the Gold Rush, people migrating from many parts of the country and the world flocked to San Francisco, freely sharing their ambitions and health burdens in a rapidly expanding urban environment. Outbreaks of infectious disease, notably smallpox, syphilis, leprosy and plague, threatened the burgeoning population and jeopardized trade, prompting local authorities to seek social distancing through traditional protective measures including quarantines and isolation facilities. To this day, an aggressive public health policy has arbitrarily dictated the spatial boundaries of diseased and stigmatized bodies considered threats to society. According to Charles V. Chapin, a prominent 19tth century American public health authority, pest houses were deemed “essential” not only for the control of infectious diseases but also for “the welfare of both community and the patients who were institutionalized.”

San Francisco Pesthouse Annex, San Francisco Call, January 3, 1896.

Anticipating a cholera epidemic in 1850, San Francisco quickly built its first pest house, a temporary shack situated north of the area that would become Chinatown. Transferred to a distant location on a Potrero Nuevo hillside in the 1860s, the San Francisco Pesthouse became a temporary destination for local smallpox sufferers, forcefully removed from their homes to prevent further spread of the disease. A decade later, this establishment added a cottage, otherwise known as a “lock hospital,” for housing Chinese suffering from advanced stages of venereal disease. With the appearance of leprosy in the early 1870s, the San Francisco Pesthouse also started to receive a veritable “colony” of sufferers of this disease in spite of repeated efforts to return them to Hawaii and China. During a brief outbreak of bubonic plague after the 1906 earthquake, another tent in the compound collected individuals suspected of harboring this frequently fatal disease. By the late 1910s all infectious cases started to be rerouted and hospitalized at a new isolation pavilion of the San Francisco General Hospital. Finally, in March 1923, remaining inmates suffering from leprosy were finally transferred to the federal public health service facility in Carville, Louisiana, prompting the final closure and destruction of San Francisco’s most dreaded institution.

Practically erased from the historical record, this important establishment arose within a political climate strongly dominated by xenophobia and racism. Since the local authorities chose to protect the city's reputation as a haven for health restoration, the almost invisible institutional trajectory of its isolation facllity occurred outside the metropolis in an environment of want and despair. Since the Black Death, so-called lazarettos or pest houses have historically exposed some of the most coercive qualities of state power. Ultimately, the San Francisco Pesthouse story aims to reclaim people and events hitherto ignored while offering valuable comparisons with American reactions to AIDS, SARS, and more recently Ebola fever. Historical case studies can serve as cautionary tales, particularly in an era in which our government attempts to nationalize and militarize sanitary measures to achieve “bio preparedness” in the event of natural or terrorist-inspired contagion.

Unlike my previous work (Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco's Chinatown) about the plague in Chinatown between 1900 and 1904, researching this topic at San Francisco Public Library posed special challenges because of a lack of institutional records, including administrative and medical information. Those who wish to peruse my earlier research materials employed in the study of plague will find several binders with background documentation collected with the support of a National Library of Medicine grant. The Guenter B. Risse Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco's Chinatown Research Files, donated to the San Francisco History Center, include chronologies, English translations from Chinatown’s contemporary newspaper, the Chung Sai Yat Po or Chinese Western Daily, as well as correspondence between members of the US Marine Hospital Service stationed in Washington DC and San Francisco.

HBC 44: Hand Bookbinders of California’s Annual Members’ Exhibition

June 15, 2016, 5:00 am

≫ Next: HBC 44: Tom Conroy's HAMLET

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The Marjorie G. and Carl W. Stern Book Arts & Special Collections Center presents the Hand Bookbinders of California's Annual Members’ Exhibition, to celebrate the group’s forty-fourth year. The exhibition opens on Saturday, June 18^th, at 2pm, at the San Francisco Public Library’s Skylight Gallery, Sixth Floor, Main Library. The exhibition continues through September 3rd. There will be two docent-led tours of the exhibition on Thursday, June 23^rd and Thursday, July 7^th at 10 a.m.

The Hand Bookbinders of California

On March 17, 1972 the Hand Bookbinders of California was established at an informal meeting in the Washington Street home of Mr. Gale Herrick. Officers named were Mr. Herrick, President; Miss Sheila Casey, Secretary-Treasurer; and Mrs. Peter Fahey, Membership Committee Chairman.

The Hand Bookbinders of California have organized exhibitions of members’ work ever since. The first, which opened in November 1973, featured 50 books, which were displayed in the front windows of John Howell Books at 434 Post Street, near Union Square. The annual exhibits continued to be hosted by Howell’s over the next ten years (except for a break in 1977) when this revered book shop closed its doors. HBC has organized other shows, most notably the major international exhibition Hand Bookbinding Today, An International Art, which opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in March 1978 and was documented in a catalog designed by Jack Stauffacher.

The annual members’ exhibitions have been hosted by various institutions since the mid-1980s and have been a regular feature at the San Francisco Public Library for many years. This year’s exhibition includes the work of over forty members and presents a wide variety of both traditional and innovative approaches to the concept, structure, and construction of the book.The objects range in size from miniscule to mammoth, from gold-tooled leather bindings to artist’s books which redefine the notion of a “book.”

The Hand Bookbinders of California (HBC) was founded by Bay Area bookbinders and collectors to provide a forum in which to share and promote their interest in books and bookbinding.For forty-four years, the group has created a venue for the exchange of ideas and techniques, fostered public appreciation of the art of design binding, exhibited the work of its members, and encouraged students in order to keep alive a Bay Area tradition of fine binding which dates to the nineteenth century.The group now includes nearly 200 book lovers and artists from all over the country and its scope has expanded to include professionals, amateurs, and students of conservation, box making, fine printing, artist’s books, papermaking and decoration, calligraphy, printmaking, and writing.Membership in the Hand Bookbinders of California is open to anyone. They meet monthly, sponsor bookbinding workshops and classes, and publish The Gold Leaf, a biannual journal.

Before the HBC: The Bookbinders Guild of California

Traditional book arts flourished in late nineteenth-century San Francisco, where the printing industry had long been especially vigorous. In early 1902, the Bookbinders Guild of California was established by booksellers Morgan Shepard and Paul Elder. Early members included Phoebe Hearst, Octavia Holden, Lucinda Butler, and Rosa Taussig. Seventy-two members of the Guild exhibited in the windows of the Elder and Shepard Bookshop in their first members’ exhibit later that year. That show featured work by Douglas Cockerell, Roger de Coverly, and T.J. Cobden Sanderson. The Bookbinders' Guild of California disappeared sometime before the 1906 earthquake and fire. When San Francisco bookbinders regrouped around 1908, it was as the California Members of the New York-based Guild of Book Workers. 

With the founding of the Book Club of California in 1912, the arts of fine printing and fine binding, already encouraged and supported by many, were now institutionally and formally recognized. Belle McMurty Young, one of the founding members of the Book Club, was an active teacher of hand bookbinding. She had learned the craft from Octavia Holden, a founding member of the Bookbinders' Guild of California. 

A second organization of San Francisco binders, now named the California Bookbinders' Guild, was established around 1927, again with Octavia Holden as the key figure. The group hosted its fifth annual members’ exhibition in 1933 but then disappeared from the record. The major international bookbinding exhibition, at the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939, was entitled Fine Bookbindings Exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, was organized by Peter Fahey without a sponsoring bookbinders’ organization.

The Tradition

Today, several generations later, the Hand Bookbinders of California carry on this venerated tradition, passing on the craft, one teacher and one student at a time. The San Francisco Public Library is pleased to partner with the Hand Bookbinders of California. We honor the collecting of, caring for, and making of books. And together, we pay tribute to this extraordinary lineage of practitioners of the traditional book arts. 

Many thanks to Tom Conroy for his research assistance. 

Images from Marmerpapier by Geert Van Daal, (1980). Grabhorn Collection, San Francisco Public Library

HBC 44: Tom Conroy's HAMLET

July 11, 2016, 5:00 am

≫ Next: Guest Blogger - Dominic Riley: A New Design Binding for an Old Book

≪ Previous: HBC 44: Hand Bookbinders of California’s Annual Members’ Exhibition

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Tom Conroy

Berkeley, California

William Shakespeare.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

New York: Knickerbocker Leather & Novelty Co., n.d.

7.6 x 5.3 x 1.3 cm.

Washed and gelatin-sized. Herringbone sewing on tawed goatskin thongs. Tracing cloth spine liner, pasteboards, tight backed. Laced-in linen backbead headbands, overembrodered with scarlet silk. Full scarlet Russell’s Oasis goatskin, blind and gold tooling.

Bound in 1986, but not previously exhibited. This was one of the first books I washed by myself, and one of the first where I used medieval structures for modern binding, but it was difficult to shelve. Once the notion of a nest of boxes presented itself they seemed to create themselves, over a period of three or four months; then the Muse departed as quietly as it had arrived, leaving the outer box of the main series untitled. A separate series of three enclosures (not exhibited) contains binding fragments, and the assemblage also includes a series of four-flap folders (not exhibited) as used by various rare book libraries in the 1980s; someday I will make one box to hold the entire assemblage.

Making the nest of boxes had the charm of naughtiness: almost all of them are styles that are not approved of by conservators, although old examples are often wonders of craftsmanship and have protected their books admirably. Also, it includes many scraps of material too small for other use but too good to throw away.

1). Molded fireproof pull-off case. Terracotta Harmatan goatskin, scarlet Oasis on throat.

2). Slipcase with chemise. Olive Oasis goatskin, chemise lined with paper marbled by Daniela Lang, sided with paper marbled by Richard J. Wolfe.

3). Traditional drop spine box (false solander case). Ochre Oasis goatskin with green onlays; gold and blind tooling. Lined with French marbled paper.

4). Oriental style four-flap portfolio. Tan bookcloth, jigsaw catch covered with tan goatskin, lined with yellow silk brocade, pegs of Honduras rosewood.

5). Reversed slipcase. Double false spines of undyed Harmatan goatskin, labels of green and gold goatskin, paper marbled by Daniela Lang on head and tail edges to mimic book edges. The call number is the proper Dewey number for Hamlet.

6). Library of Congress standard rare book box without portfolio. Off-white bookcloth lined with synthetic woven felt.

See Conroy's HAMLET in person, at the Hand Bookbinders of California's Annual Members Exhibition which will be on display through September 3rd in the Skylight Gallery on the 6th floor of the Main Library.

Guest Blogger - Dominic Riley: A New Design Binding for an Old Book

July 22, 2016, 1:04 pm

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San Francisco Old and New Grabhorn Press, 1939 Design binding by Dominic Riley

 

 

This is a marvelous book, printed by the famous San Francisco Grabhorn Press, and I assume it was brought out partly to celebrate the building of the Bay Bridge, as the first illustration in the book is of the new bridge.

The book was given to me a few years ago by my friend and colleague Margaret Johnson, a stalwart of the bookbinding community here in San Francisco, with a view to creating a special binding for it.

The project was a joint venture. Margaret gave me a budget, and asked me to produce a binding for twice that amount. The reason was clear, and fitting: knowing that the San Francisco Public Library had for some time now wanted to have a binding of mine, but since they have a limited budget, she suggested that the finished binding would be a gift to SFPL from both of us.

It has been a joy to work on: this lovely book from this City’s iconic press, and it is a tribute from me to an institution which has for over twenty years provided me with endless help, as a research library offering much guidance and advice, support for my teaching here, and as a bastion of fine binding on the West Coast.

My design came from a simple sketch I made of some of the buildings referred to in the book: the Palace of Fine Arts, the ‘Painted Ladies’, the Coit Tower, City Hall and the Ferry Building. And towering above them all, the new Bridge.

The binding is a gift to the city from myself and Margaret, two transplants who have over the years made this fabulous city home.

                 

Our guest blogger is design binder Dominic Riley. Dominic studied with bookbinder Paul Delrue and at the London College of Printing. He was a long-time resident of California before his return to Great Britain, where he teaches and designs book bindings. He is the recipient of the Mansfield Medal in Design Binding (2007) and was awarded  the Sir Paul Getty Bodleian Bookbinding Prize (2013). He was elected a Fellow of the Design Binders and is past-president of the Hand Bookbinders of California. Dominic starred with the wonderful local box maker John Demerritt in the library program "The Book Boys," which may be viewed on the Library's YouTube channel.

Dominic's design binding is on view with bookbindings from the Book Arts & Special Collections Center, a companion exhibit to the Hand Bookbinders of California Members Exhibition, through September 3. In the Skylight Gallery, 6th floor, Main Library.