Archivist of the Year Award to be Presented jointly to Palestinian and Israeli Archivists

The Scone Foundation seventh annual Archivist of the Year Award will be awarded jointly to Dr. Yehoshua Freundlich, the Israeli State Archivist, and Mr. Khader Salameh of the Al-Aqsa Library and Muslim Museum. Both will attend the ceremony on January 25 at the CUNY Graduate Center.

This annual award recognizes an archivist who has made a contribution to his or her profession or who has provided support to scholars conducting research in history and biography.

As part of the program, which is open to the public, Professor Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, Columbia University and Dr. David N. Myers, Director, UCLA Center for Jewish Studies will discuss “History and Memory”. Dr. Merav Mack of the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute will introduce the award winners.

“Although this program in honoring the archivist profession is non-political,” commented Stanley Cohen, the President of the Scone Foundation, “when dealing with the Mid-East, politics often intrudes. And as two distinct narratives of the conflict have developed, one hopes that focusing on archival material rather than collective memory may serve to reduce the divergence between the two narratives.”

Dr Freundlich has served for many years as the general editor of the series, “Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel'; he has also edited studies on the Jewish Agency and lectured on the relations between the U.N. and Israel. He joined the Israel State Archives in 1974 and was appointed State Archivist in 2006. He was born in Israel and educated at the Hebrew University with a major in the Modern History of Israel. He also earned a PhD studying diplomatic history of the Zionist Organization 1945-1948.

Mr. Salameh has served as director of the Islamic Museum and director of the al-Aqsa Mosque library for over two decades. He has published several catalogs on Arabic manuscripts, not only at the al-Aqsa library, but at private foundations as well. Mr. Salameh has played an important role and has lectured on the importance of digitization of archives. Among his publications is a monograph: “A General Survey of Christians in Jerusalem through the Shari'ah Court Registers.” He was previously employed in the Hebrew University Library and worked as a librarian in Saudi Arabia and as a teacher in Libya. A PhD candidate in Ottoman History he holds a Masters degree from Hebrew University.

Both honorees have taken part in the Endangered Archives Programme sponsored by the British Library, which has carried out a survey of the archives and libraries of Jerusalem, under the direction of Mr. Graham Shaw and Dr. Merav Mack. Dr. Mack, a research fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, with a PhD in medieval history from Cambridge University, will moderate the discussion at the awards ceremony.

Previous recipients of The Scone Foundation’s Archivist of the Year Award have included John Taylor (National Archives), Sheryl Vogt (Richard B. Russell Archives), Jackie Kavanagh (BBC), Dr. David Sutton (Reading University), Dr. Saad Eskander (Iraqi National Library and Archives), and Dr. Conrad Crane, (U.S. Army Military History Institute). Stanley Cohen, President of the Foundation, established the Archivist of the Year award when he realized that there were no programs to recognize outstanding archivists.

Boxborough Paper Show Under New Management

David Bornstein of Bornstein Shows and Tina Bruno of Flamingo Eventz, LLC are pleased to announce that an agreement has been reached between the two organizations for Flamingo to assume management of the well known Boxborough Paper Shows.

Held at the well-known Boxborough Holiday Inn at 242 Adams Place, Boxborough, MA 01719, the shows will now be known as “Paper Town – The Paper, Book & Advertising Collectibles Shows”, and will be held starting January 24, 2010. Prominent exhibitors from across the Northeast will gather to present an outstanding array of fine, rare & unusual old books, maps, postcards, autographs, prints, posters, advertising, old toys, and much, much more. Collectors, dealers, and decorators alike all flock to these wonderful events for the best selection, wonderful finds, and rare treasures found only here.

According to Mr. Bornstein “...We and Flamingo have been friendly competitors as well as personal friends for a number of years. As circumstances changed recently in our business the logical move was to work with folks who know us and respect what we have accomplished. This is the right thing to do for all concerned.”

According to Ms. Bruno, “...Dealers and Customers will notice little visible change with this transfer other than the modified name and our logo. The Bornsteins have put a lot of time and effort into making these shows successful and we plan to run them with an eye to that strong tradition and history. We will be adding our own unique brand of advertising and promotion” she continued, “with just a touch of pink for Flamingo branding”.

Both Ms. Bruno & Mr. Bornstein have stated their desire for a seamless transfer of management, and that they will work as a team at the first show to ensure there are few bumps in that road.

Dealer and Customer inquiries should be directed to Flamingo Eventz, P.O. Box l57, Rochester, NH 03866, via telephone to (603) 509-2639, via e-mail to FlamingoEventz@metrocast.net, and via the Web to www.FlamingoEventz.com.

The Donald & Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson at the Grolier Club

To commemorate the 300^th anniversary of the birth of Dr. Samuel Johnson, a broad selection of highlights from the world’s finest collection of Johnsoniana will be on view at the Grolier Club until February 6, 2010. “A Monument More Durable Than Brass,” an exhibition of items drawn from the Donald & Mary Hyde Collection of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Houghton Library, Harvard University, surveys the remarkable collection of Johnsoniana assembled over sixty years by the legendary American collector Mary Hyde Eccles, initially in collaboration with her first husband Donald F. Hyde and later with encouragement and support of her second husband, David, Viscount Eccles. Their efforts resulted in the premier collection on the life and work of Samuel Johnson, and that of his circle of associates in eighteenth-century Great Britain.

To this day Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) remains a larger than life figure, one whose influence on his time was as monumental as his legacy is enduring. That he outlived his own century is due to his multi-faceted achievements as a biographer, editor, essayist, literary critic, lexicographer, and poet. Dr. Johnson is widely known for his Dictionary (1755), but was a writer of the first order in a dazzling variety of genres: poetry, drama, literary criticism, biography, and the essay. As recorded in Boswell’s Life (1791), Johnson was eighteenth-century London’s greatest conversationalist, and surrounded himself with many of the leading lights of his age, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, and Edmund Burke.

The Hyde Collection contains copies of virtually all of Johnson’s published works, more than half of his surviving letters, authorial manuscripts, works of art, and personal artifacts. It likewise documents the life and work of many of Johnson’s friends, particularly James Boswell and Hester Thrale Piozzi, and indeed the whole of the period now known as the Age of Johnson. Comprised of some 4,000 volumes, approximately 5,500 letters and manuscripts, and more than 5,000 prints, drawings, and works of art, the Hyde Collection paints a broad yet detailed picture of 18^th-century English literature and culture.

Highlights of the exhibition will include: A fanciful portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), depicting Johnson as a thoughtful and melancholy infant; a rare surviving leaf from the manuscript for Johnson’s landmark The Dictionary of the English Language; Johnson’s own silver teapot, by John Parker and Edward Wakelin. As a devoted tea-drinker, it was one of Johnson’s most prized possessions; The only surviving letter from Johnson to his wife Elizabeth, or “Tetty”, who died when Johnson was 42 years old; a suppressed passage from James Boswell’s Life of Johnson, revealing Johnson’s surprising views on marital infidelity; and a 1784 portrait of Johnson by Josiah Wedgwood & Sons, in that company’s iconic blue and white Jasperware.

Accompanied by a copiously illustrated catalogue (available for purchase onsite at the Grolier Club), which includes essays on Johnson’s literary durability and on Donald and Mary Hyde’s life as collectors, “A Monument More Durable Than Brass” pays tribute to a great literary icon and to a remarkably generous woman who devoted her life to collecting an astonishing array of books, manuscripts, prints, and other rare artifacts relating to his life and times. Three centuries after his birth, Johnson continues to be the subject of intense scholarly examination, and the Hyde Collection provides an enduring monument to his genius.

The Hours of Catherine of Cleves

The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, a fifteenth-century Dutch manuscript that is among the most beautiful and sophisticated illuminated works ever created, is the subject of a major exhibition at The Morgan Library & Museum, from January 22 through May 2, 2010. Titled Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, the show includes nearly a hundred individual pages from the lavishly painted manuscript, which has been disbound for this special occasion.

The title of the exhibition derives from the dramatic juxtaposition of numerous demonic creatures “lurking” within the pages of a book that is otherwise filled with devotional prayers. Catherine, an important dutchess involved in an epic dynastic political battle for much of her life, hoped to use prayer to avoid eternal damnation to the realm of the demons so vividly portrayed. The exhibition is supplemented with illuminated works by both predecessors and contemporaries of the book’s anonymous artist, known to art historians as the “Master of Catherine of Cleves.”

Around 1440, Catherine, dutchess of Guelders and countess of Zutphen, commissioned an illustrated book with devotions that she could pray throughout the day. Textually rich, in addition to the traditional Hours of the Virgin and Office of the Dead, it contains unusual prayers for the Hours of every day of the week, complemented with an appropriate votive Mass. The book also features an unusually rich suite of fifty-seven Suffrages, or petitions to individual saints.

The manuscript is equally rich visually: it contains 157 (originally 168) miniatures. They reveal colorful landscapes, and detailed domestic interiors. For example, in the miniature of the Holy Family at Work, Joseph planes a board and the Virgin Mary weaves while the infant Jesus takes his first steps in a walker. Throughout the miniatures are the meticulously depicted buildings, textiles, furniture, jewelry, and even fish—painted over silver foil. Many miniatures comprise long, elaborate cycles of iconographic and theological complexity. One such cycle includes eight miniatures about the legend of the True Cross, including rare illustrations of Adam on His Deathbed Dispatching his Son Seth to Paradise, Seth Planting a Branch from the Tree of Mercy in the Mounth of the Dead Adam, and, in the concluding scene, Miracles at the Pool of Bethesda.

The Hours of Catherine of Cleves is also famous for its innovative borders, no two of which are alike. Some depict such everyday activities as milking cows, churning butter, and baking bread. Still others are filled with butterflies, mussels, coins, fishnets, bird traps, flowers, vegetables, fruits, and even pretzels.

The Master of Catherine of Cleves is considered the finest and most original illuminator of the northern Netherlands. His is a balanced, almost classic style, with equal attention granted to naturalistic representation and overall harmony of composition and color. His interest in the realistic representation of light and textures derives from such predecessors as Jan Van Eyck and Robert Campin. His attraction to genre and everyday objects—was to flower in Dutch still-life painting during the seventeenth century

Catherine of Cleves is known for two things: the magnificent illuminated manuscript that bears her name and the huge political battle she waged against her husband, Arnold of Egmond.

Catherine (1417-1476), the great-great-aunt of Henry VIII’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, was involved in politics from an early age. At the age of six years she was betrothed, purely for dynastic and political reasons, to Arnold of Egmond, duke of Guelders and count of Zutphen (1410-1473). The marriage took place when Catherine was thirteen, in 1430. Although she bore her husband six children over the course of the next ten years, the marriage was not a happy one. In 1440 Catherine refused to live with her husband; she took up residence in castles in Nijmegren and Lobith.

Debt-ridden and involved in costly wars, Arnold was not the most successful of rulers. Eventually, Catherine and her only living son, Adolf, imprisoned Arnold and forced him to cede the throne to his son. Anarchy ensued and the familial conflict became international, resulting in Arnold securing his freedom in 1471. He regained his title and with new support from the famed Charles the Bold, duke of Burgandy, threw his son, Adolf, in prison. Arnold, however, died two years later, in 1473; he was followed by Catherine in 1476 and Adolf in 1477.

More visitors & higher sales reported for the Chelsea Antiquarian Book Fair

Increased visitor numbers and strong sales across the board made this year’s Chelsea fair (November 6 & 7) a success for its exhibitors and the organisers, the Antiquarian Booksellers Association (ABA).

The Antiquarian Book Fair at Chelsea featured 75 UK and international exhibitors. The event was attended by a record number of visitors, 1,390 in total, which was 12% more than last year.

Looking at sales results after the fair, the ABA reported an increase in sales to the trade by 13% and to private clients by 22%. These came mainly from the UK but were also to Russian, US, Canadian and European buyers with an interest in English as well as foreign books.

The fair is well known for its breathtaking range of rare books, prints, atlases, maps, photographs, ephemera, letters and manuscripts. Conveniently located in its central London venue, the Chelsea Old Town Hall, this year the fair also accommodated a loan exhibition by the London Library, which celebrated Edward Fitzgerald’s first publication of the magnificent 11^th century Persian poem, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

The majority of booksellers confirmed that there was a good mix of private, academic and trade buyers. Patrick Martin of Martin’s Bookshop, Kent, reported his busiest fair in four years with more than 30 individual sales this year. Justin Croft sold a very rare copy of Domenico Angelo’s The School of Fencing with a general explanation of the principal attitudes and positions peculiar to the art, published in London in 1787, undoubtedly one of the highlights of the fair. Emma Doyle of Peter Harrington reported, as many dealers did, strong sales on Friday, increasingly to private clients. The exhibiting German dealers confirmed London again as a key market place in the international book buying scene.

Roger Treglown, Chairman of the Chelsea fair said “I am thrilled about the good results for our exhibitors and members of the association. It is encouraging that sales were significantly up on last year and that we have increased visitor numbers. It gives a confident message to the trade.” For more information call +44(0)75 007 86679.

Doings at the Morgan

Visionary and nonconformist William Blake (1757-1827) is a singular figure in the history of Western art and literature; a poet, painter, and printmaker. Ambitiously creative, Blake had an abiding interest in theology and philosophy, which, during the age of revolution, inspired thoroughly original and personal investigations into the state of man and his soul. In his lifetime Blake was best known as an engraver; he was later recognized for his innovations across many other disciplines.

In the Morgan’s first exhibition devoted to Blake in two decades, former director Charles Ryskamp and curators Anna Lou Ashby and Cara Denison have assembled many of Blake’s most spectacular watercolors, prints, and illuminated books of poetry to dramatically underscore his genius and enduring influence. William Blake’s World; “A New Heaven is Begun” —the subtitle a quote from Blake referring to the significance of his date of birth—is on view until January 3, 2010.

The show includes more than 100 works and among the many highlights are two major series of watercolors, rarely displayed in their entirety. The twenty-one watercolors for Blake’s seminal illustrations for the Book of Job—considered one of his greatest works and revealing his personal engagement with biblical texts—were created about 1805-10, also on view are twelve drawings illustrating John Milton’s poems L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, executed about 1816-20. Both series were undertaken for Blake’s principal patron, Thomas Butts.

The son of a London habedasher and a religious dissenter, Blake studied the Bible privately with his family. He was educated at home and well read as an adult. The intellectual curiosity was coupled with a keen perception of the political and social world, finding expression in his artistic independence as well as the complex mythology he constructed in response to the age of revolution in which he lived. This mythology centered around the figure of “Urizen,” an authoritarian, kinglike figure who represents rulers both sacred and profane, with whom other characters representing independence and artistic creativity must interact.

Blake was trained as an engraver. His skill was often applied to reproducing designs of his fellow students and teachers at the Royal Academy. Blake engraved his own works as well, and painted for Academy shows, wrote poetry, and engraved illustrations for books issued by the radical publisher Joseph Johnson. He was also active within the Soho/Covent Garden artistic community. Although Blake explored many artistic disciplines, he continued to work throughout his life in the medium for which he was trained, engraving.

As a result of a dream conversation with his dead brother Robert in 1787, Blake developed a new method of engraving relief plates. By using a special coating for copper plates, he was able to combine reverse script with illustrative details. With this inventive technique, he created Songs of Innocence in 1789 and embarked on a major productive period that saw the creation of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790), Visions of the Daughter of Albion (1793), Continental Prophecies: America (1793), Europe (1794), and the Song of Los (1795). While living in Lambeth in the 1790s—across the river but still within walking distance of the artistic and literary center of London—he created small runs of the illuminated books, which were printed on speculation or for a few patrons.

In addition to the superlative watercolor series—twenty-one illustrations to the Book of Job and twelve designs illustrating Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso —other important drawings are on display, including Fire (ca. 1805), which addresses the subject of war. The more fully expressed Continental Prophecies, a series of three illuminated books, further showcase Blake’s talents as a visual artist and his passionate interest in politics.

Blake’s fame as a poet is seen in his fair copy of ballads known as The Pickering Manuscript, named after its early owner and publisher. Giving voice to Blake’s well-known poem “Auguries of Innocence,” found in the manuscript, is the actor Jeremy Irons, who has also recorded the shorter poem, “Tyger.” These can be heard on a gallery listening station and on the Morgan’s Web site.

Blake supported himself with his engravings, and a selection of his prints—many of which are extremely rare impressions—documents this important aspect of his production. A magnificent example of Blake’s largest print, touched with watercolor by the artist, depicts Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims. With this work the artist hoped for commercial success, something he was unable to secure in his lifetime.

Among Blake’s crowning achievements as visual artist and poet are his illuminated books, such as Songs of Innocence and of Experience; Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul (ca. 1794). These works, which also showcase his exceptional technical skills, reflect medieval manuscript illumination and the interrelationship between word and image. Also on view is the only dated copy of Blake’s dramatic The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

Shedding light on the artistic milieu surrounding Blake are a number of works by friends and contemporaries, including drawings by younger artists such as John Linnell (1792-1882) and members of a group that assembled around Blake and called themselves the Ancients. Also represented are works by painters such as Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) and Henry Fuseli (1741-1825). For more information call (212) 685-0008.