Beautiful Books!
Beautiful Books!
If you cast your eye around the Avenir Foundation Room and the beautiful bookcases within it, you may notice the varied tones of rich brown that dominate the color palette. The books in this room were mostly produced before 1812 and were either printed with basic paper wrappers or bound in leather-covered boards. Within the next fifty years, as printing technologies exploded, so too did binding options. Wide-ranging colors for cheaper cloth and paper covers began to infiltrate the market, as shown by the rainbow array to the left.
But other options for color were also possible—a fun, patterned end-paper perhaps to make your wares stand out? Or maybe a chromolithographed image on a cover that’s been die-cut to appeal to the children’s market? As printing industries evolved, color and joy played an important role in how books were produced and sold.
Full list of citations here.
Robert Southey, The Life of Nelson. London: David Bogue, [1854]. [Catalog Record]
Naughty Girl’s & Boy’s Magic Transformations. [New York]: McLoughlin Brothers, [ca. 1882?]. [Catalog Record]
Little Froggie Green. New York: Saalfield Publishing Co., 1905. [Catalog Record]
E. Elephant, Esq. Showman. [New York]: McLoughlin Bros., [1894]. [Catalog Record]
The combination of the stately portraiture trends of the 18th and 19th centuries with the long exposure times of early cameras tended to result in images that were not only black and white, but straight-faced and rather stiff. It’s easy to read this through our modern sensibilities as a bit of a dour scene. But the world, even the boring bits, was lived in a riot of color. The past, after all, was full of vibrancy and visual delights that we hope you will continue to explore and celebrate through the Clements Library’s collections.
