E.A. Seguy was an artist and designer active in Paris during the first three decades of the 20^th century. Very little is known about him, even his actual name and birth/death dates are in dispute. During my search for more information, I even stumbled across an odd theory that blames the confusion on the presence of not one but two E.A. Seguy’s living and working in Paris during this time period. Regardless of the mystery and speculation surrounding his life, what we do know about Seguy can be found in the design folios he left behind.

Seguy produced eleven albums of nature themed illustrations and patterns, drawing inspiration from papillons and other insects, flowers, foliage, crystals and animals. Seguy was one of few artists that successfully combined both Art Deco and Art Nouveau styles in his work. His brightly colored geometric patterns were intended to be used as inspiration for such decorative items as textiles and wallpaper.

Dover Publications reproduced Seguy’s albums in a book entitled Seguy’s Decorative Butterflies and Insects in Full Color. The publisher had this to say about Seguy: “His aim was to make available dozens of examples of extremely colorful exotic animals that had been unjustly neglected by occidental decorative artists because of their rarity in life and in illustration. It is interesting to note that Seguy, while confident that butterflies would be readily accepted, made the special plea for the other insects that were constructed like wonderful machines and were thus entitled to the same consideration as an airplane fuselage, an ocean liner or locomotive; nature was a successful industrial designer!”

While I have long admired Seguy’s bright bold colors and design aesthetic, it wasn’t until I had the chance to view his prints in person rather than reproduced in a book or on a screen, that I gained a true appreciation for how beautiful they really are.

Seguy’s albums were created using a unique printing process called pochoir, which was popular in France at the turn of the 20^th century. Pochoir is a process that utilizes the method of applying pigment to paper through the use of stencils. First, the artist created an image in watercolor or gouache. The design was then analyzed to determine the necessary colors and number of stencils needed. The stencils could be cut from any number of materials, including copper, zinc, oiled cardboard, or celluloid. The paint was applied through the stencils by brushes or pompons. The prints were produced entirely by hand assembly line style, and each one was individually examined and approved upon completion.

While simple in concept, pochoir could become quite complex in practice, with some images requiring the use of 100 or so stencils to produce a single print. The technique was regularly used to produce plates in French fashion journals as well as being used to illustrate industrial design, textile, interiors, and architecture folios.

Pochoir is thought to be a reaction to what was seen as a general debasement of machine printing technology during the time period. Jean Saudé, the individual who most influenced the pochoir technique, believed that pochoir was the only process which translated the artist’s original intent because it was entirely done by hand. Saudé considered the process to be a type of hyphen between the artist and the public. After viewing the original pochoir prints of Seguy’s work, it is easy to see exactly what Saudé was referring to. Pochoir allows for characteristics such as defined surface elevation through the use of thick paint, visible brush strokes, texture, gradation and transparent colors. When one views an original pochoir print, especially one designed by an artist of Seguy’s talent, it feels as if you are holding an original one of a kind painting in your hand. The print has a certain texture and surface quality akin to original gouache and watercolor paintings that is hard to find in other reproduction methods.

Pochoir’s popularity lasted only through the 1930’s. The characteristics that made pochoir prints so magnificent were also the medium’s eventual downfall. The pochoir process was expensive and quite labor intensive and was soon replaced by techniques such as lithography and serigraphy.

The Walter Havighurst Special Collections is home to several folios of Seguy’s work, containing the original pochoir prints. One cannot truly appreciate Seguy’s artistic talent nor the unique qualities of the pochoir printing process without the ability to view these materials first hand.

Ashley Jones
Preservation Librarian
jonesab2@miamioh.edu

“How can we explain the places where we finally land, after inexplicable journeys, long boring holidays, years of misapprehension?” – Louise Bogan, Journey Around My Room: The Autobiography of Louise Bogan.

Louise Bogan was a distinguished American poet and the poetry editor at the New Yorker from 1931-1969.  Once part of the library holdings of Western College, the working library of Louise Bogan is now housed in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections.  Though portions of her personal papers can be found at both Amherst College and Princeton University, Bogan’s personal book collection is here at Miami.  Approximately 2,000 volumes, the collection includes many annotated review copies of the works of her contemporaries, as well as her general poetry and literary criticism collections.  

Shown here are annotations in Bogan’s copy of E.E. Cummings’ 95 published in 1958.  The collection also includes first editions of Bogan’s own poetry, including a copy of her 1968 collection, The Blue Estuaries: Poems 1923-1968, inscribed to her daughter Maidie.

April is National Poetry Month and what better time to explore the wonderful world of poetry.  The Bogan collection is cataloged and available to researchers.

Kimberly Tully
Special Collections Librarian

Coming up next month is National Library Week (April 8-14) and one of the things we in the library community always observe during that week is the importance of intellectual freedom and the ongoing fight against censorship. But there is a corollary in the art world that provides the subtext for our current exhibits in the Special Collections exhibit gallery.

Just as writers face the possibility of censorship, visual artists face similar efforts to control or constrain their work. The Russian artists featured in our Avant-Garde and Innocence exhibit supported the Bolshevik revolution only to find the Soviet government establishing the parameters of “acceptable” art. Unable to work within those narrowly defined limits, they emigrated to the West in order to pursue their artistic dreams, supporting themselves as illustrators of children’s books.

Our newest exhibit features a more recent example. Peter Sís, born in Czechoslovakia, became a filmmaker who, while working for the Czech government in the U.S., took the opportunity to seek asylum here in the 1980’s. A conversation with Maurice Sendak led to his transformation into first an illustrator and then an author of children’s books, many of which also speak to adults. In fact his most recent work is a beautifully illustrated fable for adults, based on a 12^th century Islamic poem, The Conference of the Birds. Along the way he has collected just about every award available in the field, and our exhibit of a selection of his works features many award winners.

As a sidelight on our Sís exhibit I pulled the few but important examples of 20^th century Czechoslovakian children’s literature we have in the King Collection, our major collection of historic children’s literature. In the course of researching the authors and illustrators of these titles I saw the familiar story repeated again and again: artists and writers fighting against the repressive constraints of totalitarian governments that, whether fascist or communist, feared the free expression of artistic vision.

Peter Sís, who just this week received the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration, will present the annual May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture, “Reading in the Dark,” here at Miami on Wednesday, April 4, at 7 p.m. in Hall Auditorium. This lecture is held in a different venue every year, and Miami’s selection for 2012 is the result of a creative coalition of partners, including the University Libraries, put together by Dr. Brenda Dales in the Department of Teacher Education.

Tickets for the lecture are free but must be reserved by contacting the Miami University Box Office. Following the lecture in Hall there will be a reception in King 320, and a book signing in Special Collections. The exhibit gallery will be open for viewing, and while you wait to have Mr. Sis sign your book you can enjoy seeing what an artist can achieve when imagination, vision and technique are allowed to run free.

Elizabeth Brice
Assistant Dean for Technical Services and
Head, Special Collections & Archives

I read Flatland so many years ago that I don’t remember most of the details of the story. I do remember that I was captivated by the idea of a two-dimensional world inhabited by geometric figures and their struggle to comprehend worlds of one-dimensional and three-dimensional beings. The story was narrated by A Square, which also happened to be the pseudonym that Edwin Abbott Abbott used to disguise his identity when he published this satire on class and social problems in 19th century Britain. Flatland has been in print continuously since it was first published in 1884. One book publisher referred to Flatland as a precursor of modern science fiction. Special Collections has a first edition copy of this book. We also have a flat copy, our Arion Press edition.

In 1980 Arion Press published Flatland in an accordion-fold format of 56 folded panels. The book is bound in aluminum covers and is housed in an aluminum frame with a hinged top that closes with a clasp. The title is stamped on the covers in black. This edition was limited to 275 hand-numbered copies, of which our copy is 72. The introduction was written by Ray Bradbury and he has signed and numbered the book. The illustrations and 10 mounted die-cut panels were done by the printer, Andrew Hoyem, based on designs by the author. Hoyem signed the Colophon.

The panels for Flatland unfold to a length of 33 feet with text printed on each side, making this a 66 foot long book. Each panel of the book is 7 by 14 inches. Hoyem’s design is a creative expression of the plane of existence for the two dimensional story that Abbot tells. I am intrigued by this book every time I have the opportunity to look at it.

Arion Press was founded in San Francisco in 1974 by Andrew Hoyem and has been called the Nation’s leading publisher of fine-press books. They have printed 93 books to date, mostly by letterpress. The illustrations are often original prints by significant artists. Special Collections has a number of books published by Arion Press, including works by Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, Jim Dine, and William Shakespeare, to name a few. Check the library catalog for a more complete listing of books by Arion Press in our collections.

Jim Bricker
Senior Library Technician

There are many diverse collections of materials found within the Walter Havighurst Special Collections. One such collection, The Edgar and Faith King Juvenile Literature Collection is home to over 10,000 children’s books, toys and games, and magazines printed from the seventeenth century through the 1900s. This collection is a rich source of children’s books, both old classics and “new” discoveries.

During a cataloging project I happened upon one such discovery. Maurice Boutet de Monvel was a French painter and illustrator born in Orléans in 1851. Boutet de Monvel began his artistic career as an academic painter in the Salon style and studied under such notable artists as Alexandre Cabanel, Gustave Boulanger, Jules Joseph Lefevre, and Carolus Duran. While he did receive some attention for several of his paintings, it wasn’t until Boutet de Monvel made the switch to illustration that he found real popularity. The evolution of his delicate and whimsical style is best described in his own words:

“Of course, I found out directly that I could not put in the mass of little things which I had elaborated on my canvasses. Gradually, through a process of elimination and selection, I came to put in only what was necessary to give the character. I sought in every little figure, every group, the essence, and worked for that alone. [I searched for what] we may call the soul, the spirit of the object represented… This is the lesson taught me by the necessity of expressing much with the thin, encircling line of the pen.”

Boutet de Monvel illustrated several song books for children, including Vielles Chansons et Rondes pour les Petits Enfants (Old Songs and Rounds for Small Children) in 1883 and Chansons de France pour les Petits Français (Songs of France for Little French People) in 1884.

In 1895 Boutet de Monvel published an illustrated history of Joan of Arc, largely regarded as his finest work. The illustrations found in Joan of Arc are at once charming and somber. In order to capture the serious subject matter, Boutet de Monvel used a muted color palette that he described as “…not color, really, it is the impression, the suggestion of color…”

Having already been familiar with such classic illustrators as Arthur Rackham, Kate Greenaway, Walter Crane, and Maxfield Parish, stumbling upon someone “new” is always exciting. What made this discovery even more exciting for me was the nature of the materials I was cataloging. Not only does the Walter Havighurst Special Collections hold many of the titles illustrated by Boutet de Monvel, but we also hold several portfolios of what look to be page proofs and plates of the illustrations found within those titles.

Having myself a background in illustration it is always a treat to get a closer look at the illustration, printing and publishing process a book goes through. Many of the page proofs include hand coloring, handwritten notations, and hand placed text. You can see in the first example various stages for the vignette found on the cover of La Civilité Puérile et Honnête; the simple black and white line drawing, a hand colored proof with notations, and finally the finished illustration as it appears on the cover of the 1887 publication.

The second example, again from La Civilité Puérile et Honnête shows a proof with hand written notations and a hand lettered heading pasted into place, alongside the illustration as it appears in the finished publication.

The 1880’s to the 1920’s is considered to be a period of unprecedented excellence in book and magazine illustration. Many illustrators thrived during this period, including but not limited to Howard Pyle, Beatrix Potter, Aubrey Beardsley, Kay Nielsen, and N.C. Wyeth, as well as those illustrators mentioned above. The Walter Havighurst Special Collections King Collection is home to many examples of the remarkable work that was produced during this golden age of illustration. We hope that you stop by and see what other artistic treasures we have to offer.

Ashley Jones
Preservation Librarian