Special Collections Department
FOUR DECADES OF LIBRARY SUPPORT
THE ARTS
The University of Delaware Library's collection encompasses all periods and styles of fine, decorative, and applied arts. It is particularly strong in works on painting technique and instruction, the decorative arts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, architecture, and the book arts. The collection supports University research in art, art history, and the University of Delaware/Winterthur programs in American Material Culture and Art Conservation.
Included in the fine arts collection are early works such as Joachim von Sandrart's L'Academia todesca della architectura, sculptura & pittura (1675-79), the first French edition of Leonardo da Vinci's Traitté de la peinture (1651), and technical essays such as William Faithorne's The Art of Graveling, and Etching (1662). There is a superb collection of material on art instruction from the eighteenth and nineteenth century such as Gabriel Smith's The School of Art, or, Most Compleat Drawing-book Extant (1765), and A Series of Progressive Lessons, Intended to Elucidate the Art of Flower Painting in Water Colours (1818). Special Collections also holds a small, but significant collection of original artwork, including a group of watercolors by George and Robert Cruikshank. Among the art-related manuscript collections are the extensive Lloyd Goodrich and Edith Havens Goodrich-Albert Pinkham Ryder Archive, and collections pertaining to Jack B. Yeats, Gertrude Kasebier, Rockwell Kent, and the Futurist Movement.
Architectural holdings range from early works such as Peter Paul Rubens's architectural pattern book Palazzi...di Genova (1708) and Vincenzo Scamozzi's L'idea della architettura universale (1615) to important American works such as Asher Benjamin's The Country Builder's Assistant (1797) and A. J. Davis's Rural Residences (1837). A group of original architectural drawings in ink and watercolor by Henry Holland (circa 1786) depict English country houses. Archival collections relating to Delaware and Philadelphia architects include Collins and Autenrieth, Charles A. Rubicam, C. E. Rahn, and E. William Martin.
The decorative arts collection is especially strong in furniture design including Thomas Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director (1762), Thomas Sheraton's The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Drawing-book (1794), and J. Stokes's The Cabinet-Maker and Upholsterer's Companion (1852). Special Collections also holds a large collection of trade catalogs for furniture, hardware, and decorative items from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.
The book arts collection, which is also discussed in the section on the History of Books and Printing, contains many fine examples of illustration and colorplate books. Outstanding examples by the finest nineteenth-century color printers including Owen Jones, George Baxter, and Henry Noel Humphreys are in the collection. Many contemporary artists books and fine press books contain original prints by artists such as Leonard Baskin, Jim Dine, and Richard Diebenkorn.
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Vincenzo Scamozzi, 1552-1616. Discorsi sopra l'antichità di Roma di Vicenzo Scamozzi, architetto Vicentino: con XL tauole in rame. In Venetia: Appresso Francesco Ziletti, 1582. Vincenzo Scamozzi, a leading architect of the Veneto region of Italy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, wrote a series of treatises on the theory and practice of architecture in Europe. Discourses on Roman Architecture shows the ruins of Rome which were visible during the late sixteenth century. The images show that the Colosseum, the Forum, and other sites were used as places of leisure activity, not just seen as artistic monuments. |
William Richards, fl.1730-1763.
The Compleat Penman. London: Sold by the Author; Also by J. Wilcox in the Strand.. .ca. 1738.
Identified as "Master of the Boarding School in Ratcliff Highway London," Richards includes samples of writing by various penmen as well as his own work. A page of the Greek alphabet is signed "Caslon script." Authorities believe that this could be the work of the famous typographic firm and, if so, is the only known example of Caslon's work to appear in a copybook.
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Asher Benjamin, 1773-1845. The Country Builder's Assistant. Greenfield, Mass.: Thomas Dickman, 1797. Benjamin's handbook was the first American architectural book not derived entirely from foreign sources. His intent was to present current architectural information in a form suited to the particular characteristics of American building. The Country Builder's Assistant brings together the "science" of the carpenter and the "art" of the architect in a form usable by both builders and clients. |
Samuel Prout, 1783-1852.
Rudiments of Landscape in Progressive Studies, Drawn and Etched in Imitation of Chalk. London: R. Ackermann, 1813.
The popularity of watercolor painting in early nineteeth-century England led to the publication of numerous drawing books for amateur painters. Rudiments of Landscape includes both engravings and hand-colored aquatints and shows the painting process from the chalk sketch to the finished watercolor painting.
Francis Nicholson.
Six Views of Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire. London: Pubd. & sold by Rodwell and Martin, printed at C. Hullmandel's Lithographic Establishment, ca.1820.
Frances Nicholson (1753-1844) was among the first English artists to make use of the newly invented lithographic printing process. Nicholson, called the "Father of Watercolor Painting" for his ability to produce a depth of tone and variety of shade and color in landscape painting, worked on this book with Charles Hullmandel, also a watercolor painter, who first brought the lithographic process from Germany to England.
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Josef Albers, 1888-1976. Formulation, Articulation. New York: Abrams, 1972. Josef Albers (1888-1976) was a painter, printmaker, sculptor, poet, teacher, and theoretician of art. His work at the Bauhaus and later at Black Mountain College and Yale University was influencial in both the Color Field and Op Art movements. Formulation, Articulation includes one hundred and twenty-seven serigraphs or silk screened prints based on geometric design and complex relationships of color. In the prints, Albers explores the effects of perception, such as the illusion of movement and the interaction of adjacent colors. |
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Jim Dine, 1935- The Temple of Flora: Twenty-eight Drypoint-engravings. San Francisco: Arion Press, 1984. This opulent work combines engravings by one of America's most important modern printmakers with poetry by such well-known authors as Robert Pinsky, Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. The Temple of Flora was inspired by Robert Thornton's 1807 work of the same title, which is considered to be the most lavish botanical book of the nineteenth century. |
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