News & Announcements – Page 29 – Special Collections and Archives at the University of Iowa

“New” Incunables Arrive in Special Collections

If you have been following any of our social media feeds over the past few days, you may have noticed photos popping up of newly-acquired incunables. So, what’s going on here? First, some background:

Incunables are books printed in Europe during the fifteenth century, between 1450 and 1501, examples of the earliest printed books. The incunabula period is the focus of a great deal of study—the development of printing, and how it affected the design, distribution, and reception of books, remains central to our understanding of book history.

Here at Iowa, we have long held a respectable collection of incunabula, and these books are frequently called for in classes and exhibitions. In recent years, these books have been examined extensively by Tim Barrett for his study of early papermaking, and Iowa is also home to the Atlas of Early Printing, an interactive overview of the spread and development of printing in Europe. The UI Center for the Book continues to pass along the art and craft of letterpress printmaking that first flourished in the incunabula period.

Our recent acquisitions are an attempt to add examples of books and subjects in the incunabula period that we have not had previously. This collection development has been made possible due to the support of the University Libraries acquisitions fund and the Libraries’ Collection Management Committee.

Special Collections Librarian Pat Olson took charge of this opportunity and identified an outstanding mix of possibilities that enhance our collection in many ways. Among these dozen new titles is the first illustrated edition of Dante printed in Venice. Until now, our incunables largely represented just a single language: Latin. The occasional ancient Greek was the only exception. Our new Dante, however, is in Italian, and so it’s one of our first incunables printed in a vernacular language. The other, also just acquired, is Monte dell’orazione, a private devotional text intended specifically for women. The copy we just acquired is particularly notable for retaining the very rare illustrated wrapper—or to risk oversimplification, the original illustrated paperback binding.

We filled one of our more significant gaps with the acquisition of our first 15th-century Bible, and in an early pigskin binding to boot. Another first for us is our first Spanish incunable, a book of music printed in red and black at Seville in 1494. We purchased our first 15^th-century edition of Ovid, too, here in its original leather-covered wooden boards and retaining its original brass furniture. Early science has been another sparsely covered subject for us, so we acquired a lavishly illustrated astrological text. (NB: What passed for science in the 1400s may not pass for science today.) We also acquired a rather crude dialogue intended for children and the less sophisticated—a rare survival, insofar as such texts were less commonly printed and more commonly read to pieces.

In all cases, we sought books in early (if not original) bindings. Given the serious interest in early papermaking here at Iowa, we made it a point to pursue books with untrimmed leaves, which serve as uncommon witnesses to original paper sizes. We searched for books with valuable marginalia, interesting provenance, and varying degrees of decoration by hand. Most of these books do have early marginalia, an invaluable resource to support the growing scholarship on the history of reading. Perhaps the most remarkable in terms of provenance is a sammelband (multiple books bound together) printed by the famous scholar-printer Johann Amerbach. Our copy is not just a well preserved example of a 15^th-century sammelband, but it contains an inscription noting its donation to a local monastery by the printer himself. As far as textual decoration is concerned, these new acquisitions run the gamut from crude DIY initials to professionally executed penwork and illumination.

There really is something for everyone, and we can’t wait to share them. Once they have been catalogued and properly housed, these books may be viewed by request in our reading room during regular hours. And keep an eye out for an announcement coming at a later date of an opportunity to view these new acquisitions in person, while learning about how incunables are being studied today.

New Evidence Confirms 1973 Movement to Rename the Field House for the Allman Brothers Band

New at the UI Archives: 1970s-era posters for events at Hancher Auditorium, the Iowa Memorial Union and the UI Fieldhouse. For a brief but intense time in 1973 and ’74 there was a move afoot to rename the Field House for the Allman Brothers Band, which had a memorable gig there on Nov. 9, 1973. The posters are evidence of this unofficial, ill-fated, but totally sincere effort. CUE, the Commission for University Entertainment, was a student organization that encouraged the campaign. Many thanks to Tim Meier of the Hancher Auditorium office for arranging for transfer of these materials to the Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives.

Earliest Known Simon Estes Recording – Now Streaming!

Following up from our earlier announcement about the donation and digitization of the earliest known Simon Estes recording, the clip is now streaming!

Read about the original donation and the March 17th concert where Simon Estes was presented with a copy of the recording.

Soloist: Simon Estes , Corrine Semler

Performance by the Old Gold Singers

Hi-Tran Recording Co., Cedar Rapids, IA in 1959 or 1960

I Got Plenty o’Nuttin’ from the musical Porgy and Bess. Music by George Gershwin, lyrics by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin.

via I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’. <– Click this link to hear the recording!

1878 Dante: Smallest Movable Type

This is the first of a long string of announcements of new acquisitions that we will be announcing, so follow our blog to hear all the latest!

Tiny is the only word to describe this 58mm volume La divina commedia di Dante. This is the second smallest edition of Dante ever printed and is notable for using the smallest movable type ever cast. It was printed in Milan in 1878 by Ulrico Hoepli.

If you want to test your eyesight, stop by to give this one a try.

One Week Only! Introduction to Book History Class Exhibition

The Introduction to Book History course taught by Gregory Prickman, Head of Special Collections & University Archives, curated this exhibition as a group to showcase their research. This week only it will remain on display outside Special Collections & University Archives’ reading room on the 3rd floor of the Main Libary. Stop by to see a remarkable selection of books, highlighting interesting research from students from a range of departments including the Center for the Book, the School of Library and Information Science, Art, English and more.

Manuscript Mystery Solved

It’s kind of like History’s Mysteries meets Antiques Roadshow. There’s an item that’s been lying in your collection for years, possibly decades, patiently awaiting investigation. What exactly is this thing? Then one day—maybe on a quiet Friday afternoon—you suddenly have the urge to dig into it.

That’s what happened here in Special Collections. A medieval manuscript leaf, for whatever reason, had evaded description these last few decades. This warrants a friendly reminder to all book-loving sleuths: you need not be a medieval manuscripts expert to solve such a puzzle (though it sure would help). Sometimes all it takes is a little resourcefulness, an educated hunch, and a bit of luck.

Our leaf turned out to be from De vita contemplativa, a fifth-century theological treatise by Julianus Pomerius. Determining the text of a particular leaf is often easy, requiring little more than Googling a short passage from the text in question. Identifying where and when it was made is the tricky part, but fortune was on our side: this particular manuscript was written on paper.

Medieval manuscripts were predominantly written on vellum (or parchment, but we’ll overlook the distinction for now). Paper wasn’t produced in Europe until the twelfth century, and its importation didn’t begin much earlier. What’s more, to an inexpert eye such as mine, the script appeared Carolingian—the standard book hand developed for the copying of texts during Charlemagne’s reign. While Charlemagne died in 814, this book hand—called Carolingian minuscule, or Caroline minuscule—continued to be used throughout Christendom. But just as paper was growing more common in Europe, the Carolingian script was yielding to the Gothic hand that would soon dominate manuscript production. It seemed unlikely, then, to have a true Carolingian manuscript on paper.

Near the end of the fourteenth century, however, Italian humanists revived Carolingian minuscule. Mistaking the Carolingian manuscripts for original Roman texts, these humanists began copying their favorite classical works in what they believed was their original form. This revived form of Carolingian minuscule has become known as humanistic script. It was commonly used throughout Italy (and later throughout Europe) until the printing of books largely obviated the need to copy them by hand.

And just like that, we came to the likely conclusion that our manuscript was probably made in Italy during the 15^th century.

After consulting a couple of manuscript censuses, we learned that a 15^th-century Italian copy—on paper—had once been in the private collection of Ernst Detterer, a Chicago typographer and later the inaugural custodian of the Newberry Library’s John M. Wing Foundation. Given the scarcity of copies on paper, and our geographic proximity to Chicago, this all seemed rather coincidental.

With the help of colleagues at the Newberry Library and the University of Colorado, Boulder, we were able to confirm that our leaf did in fact come from that very same Detterer manuscript—more information than we had ever hoped to uncover.

The underlying tragedy, of course, is that the other twenty-eight leaves are scattered across the country, if not the planet. Three, for example, reside at Boulder. It’s a fate befallen many medieval manuscripts, which were commonly sold or otherwise distributed leaf by leaf at a time when the ethics of the practice were a bit murkier. When in Detterer’s collection, the manuscript was unbound, which mustn’t have helped to suppress the urge to separate the leaves. It’s unlikely that all twenty-nine leaves will ever be reunited. The best we can do is to keep our little piece of it safe and secure, to document its history, and to share it with all of you.

Earliest Known Simon Estes Recording Restored

Dec1997_IowaAlumniQuarterly_0030 — Simon Estes and the Old Gold Singers – Courtesy UI Alumni Association

This story starts in 1959 when a UI undergraduate student from Centerville, IA, named Simon Estes auditioned for, and joined, the Old Gold Singers, a university chorus made up of non-music majors. The Old Gold Singers was a new organization, formed just two years before. It quickly established itself as a highly-talented goodwill ambassador of the University, thanks in no small part to Simon Estes’ rich baritone voice.

The University Archives had no recordings of the singers from those early seasons until only recently. In 2010, UI alumnus James Crook, a professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, donated to the archives a set of phonograph disks featuring the troupe. Mr. Crook was a founding member of the Old Gold Singers and participated in its first three seasons. Mr. Estes, a classmate of Crook’s, went on to an acclaimed operatic and solo vocal career, after completing his UI degree and studies at the Julliard School. He has performed with the New York Metropolitan Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and throughout Europe in a career spanning over 50 years.

Among the phonograph records that Mr. Crook donated is one featuring Mr. Estes as a soloist during his first season with the Old Gold Singers, while a sophomore. The rare recording was made in a Cedar Rapids recording studio in 1959 or 1960, and playing it on a turntable more than 50 years later yielded a lot of scratches and pops with the music. Still, it was a valuable addition to the archives, believed to be the earliest-known recording of a young singer at the dawn of a remarkable and distinguished career.

The UI Libraries’ Preservation Department cleaned the record thoroughly and shipped it to the Media Preserve, a Pittsburgh firm specializing in recovery of audiovisual recordings. There, staff produced a digitally-reformatted version of the recording, one that sounds as good as new. The University Archives now has a digital copy of this rare recording, along with the original phonograph disk.

But the story doesn’t end there. On Sunday, March 17, Mr. Estes performed in Osage, Iowa, at a special dedication program recognizing that community’s new Krapek Family Fine Arts Center. The program was also part of his Roots and Wings tour in which he hopes to eventually perform in each of Iowa’s 99 counties. High school choruses from Osage and nearby Riceville and St. Ansgar also performed with Mr. Estes that afternoon.

Following the performance, UI Archivist David McCartney, representing the UI Libraries, presented Mr. Estes with a CD copy of the recording, housed in a case made for the occasion by staff in the Conservation Lab. The audience of over 600 also heard a one-minute excerpt, featuring a 21-year-old Mr. Estes singing a selection from “Porgy and Bess,” a number he coincidentally sang earlier in the afternoon as part of the program.

The UI Libraries’ Department of Special Collections and University Archives is pleased to honor Mr. Estes and to preserve an early and important part of his outstanding career.

Rusty, Rustebar, Rust E. Barron

Photo of Rusty Hevelin — Photo by William S. Higgins

The James L. “Rusty” Hevelin Collection of Pulps, Fanzines, and Science Fiction Books in the Special Collections of the University of Iowa Library is a manifestation of fandom, a subculture of shared interest, networking, and activity that grows up around almost any subject. Fandom demands more of its participants than merely liking something; they must become involved. Science Fiction fandom is unique because of its heavy influence on the shaping of the literary genre that spawned it. This post looks at two early examples of Rusty Hevelin’s fan activity as a writer for fanzines.

Rusty was a science fiction fan from his teen years in the late 1930’s until his death in 2011. He participated in all aspects of fandom, including fan groups (LASFS, and PSFS), fanzines (H-1661, StefNews, Nebula, Aliquot, Badly, etc.), conventions, as a fan, “huckster” (“dealer” in fan lingo), and organizer, and avid collecting.

In 1941, when he was nineteen, Rusty hitchhiked from L.A. to Denver to attend Denvention I, the third Worldcon, or World Science Fiction Convention. He wrote a report of the convention afterwards (as “Rustebar”) for the September 1941 issue of The Fantasite, a zine Phil Bronson edited for the Minneapolis Fantasy Society.

After Denvention I, Rusty moved to Philadelphia where he joined Robert A. Madle and Jack Agnew on the editorial staff of Fantascience Digest. In the November-December 1941 issue, he began a column titled,“Coventry,” (under another pseudonym, “Rust E. Barron”) devoted to the contrary opinions of “rebels and individualists.”

When America entered WWII, Rusty joined the Marines and served in the Pacific as a meteorologist. He continued his fannish activity during the war, which couldn’t have been easy. We will bring you more about Rusty and his collection in the months to come. Please follow along online as it’s unpacked: http://hevelincollection.tumblr.com/

Iowa City Meteor in 1875

Last night a meteorite slammed into the Russian countryside, as captured in many videos and photographs. 138 years ago in 1875, nearly to the day, a very similar event occurred in Iowa, when a meteorite disintegrated almost directly above Iowa City. It was documented by C.W. Irish, a local surveyor and astronomer. These images are from a document he published, An Account of the Detonating Meteor of February 12, 1875, printed by the Daily Press Job Printing Office on Dubuque St. in Iowa City. He wrote, “the length of the train was variously estimated…from seven to twelve miles, as seen from Iowa City. From three to five minutes after the meteor had flashed out of sight, observers near to the south end of its path heard an intensely loud and crashing explosion, that seemed to come from the point in the sky where they first saw it.”

Kelmscott Proof Among Our Recent Acquisitions

Ask three different people why we remember William Morris, and you just might get three different answers. The social activist might mention his work in leftist politics. The designer might recall—with varying degrees of affection—his vivid wallpapers. The literature professor might quote a few lines of verse from the man who, upon the death of Tennyson, politely refused his country’s Poet Laureateship.

Those of us in special collections, however, best remember William Morris for his pioneering work with the Kelmscott Press. And pioneering is just the word. Morris bemoaned the state of bookmaking in Victorian England. (To be sure, he bemoaned just about anything made by machine.) Put off by the industrialization of book production, he returned to the roots of his craft, adopting as role models some of Europe’s earliest and greatest printers, and even tapping into the manuscript tradition that preceded them. His books were produced entirely by hand. In bucking the machine-made trend, Morris founded what has come to be called the fine press movement.

As you might imagine, Morris was a meticulous printer. Lucky for us, Special Collections recently acquired a rare witness to his attention to detail: twenty-two pages of proofs for his Poems by the Way. A proof is a copy of a text run off the press before the first printing intended for publication. Printers and authors would review the proofs and make needed changes. In this case, William Morris was both printer and author. Poems by the Way was only the second book to come off his Kelmscott Press, and the first in which he used both black and red ink.

Some changes aren’t surprising: a typo corrected, an ampersand spelled out. Others betray a much more careful attention to detail. Compare, for example, the decorative initials below. The letter used in the proof (on the left) and that used in the published version (on the right) are remarkably similar. But to a craftsman like Morris, those nuances were the difference between a good book and a great book. Subtle though they are, the changes we see between the proof and the published text offer a rare glimpse into the process behind some of Morris’s earliest book design.