An Original Oz

[click to enlarge images - some minor cosmetic blemishes have been removed from all of them]


William Wallace Denslow (1856-1915) attended art and design schools in New York City and published his first illustrations in 'Hearth and Home' at the age of eighteen. For the next twenty five years he plied his trade all over the country, supplying magazine, newspaper, advertising and book illustrations to a wide variety of publications, and he was a well known poster artist by the mid-1890s.


For a few years Denslow worked part-time for Elbert Hubbard at the Roycroft Arts Community in East Aurora, New York State, where his humorous social and political cartoons graced the community newspaper, 'The Philistine'. He also provided drawings for the limited edition hand bound Roycroft books for which he trained local women to colour the illustrations. By this stage, Denslow was well known for including a hippocampus (seahorse) as part of his signature and the symbol was variously adapted as seals and watermarks and became synonymous with the Roycroft stable of handcrafted goods.

In 1898 Denslow supplied a couple of illustrations for inclusion in a privately published book ('By the Candelabra's Glare') by an acquaintance, L.Frank Baum. They collaborated more closely the following year for Baum's 'Father Goose: His Book'. This was Denslow's first foray into childrens book illustrations and both author and illustrator were adamant that the book should be printed in colour which required that they pay for the printing costs themselves. It proved to be the best selling childrens book of the year and no doubt provided the capital, momentum and confidence to repeat the process the following year.

'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' was an innovative book not least because of the twenty four full colour plates and myriad monochromatic illustrations in which the colour changed according to the location in the story (Kansas = grey, Emerald City = green and so on). With the illustrative vignettes often encroaching on the text area, the type was cleverly printed over the top of the coloured images. Such elaborate printing techniques again required that Baum and Denslow fund the printing costs and the book was published by George M Hill and Company of Chicago and New York in 1900 for $1.50 per copy. It was apparently successful.


Each of the books in which Baum and Denslow collaborated was held in joint copyright and it was probably inevitable that these two successful and strongly individual types would end up having royalty conflicts. Denslow published magazine and book illustrations featuring characters from the Goose and Oz books without Baum's knowledge. The partnership ultimately ended over a dispute about the division of spoils from the Broadway musical of Oz in 1902. Denslow continued to produce many successful childrens books and with the fortune amassed from this and his previous work with Baum, he bought an island near Bermuda and installed himself as King, under the hippocampus flag.

• 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' is online in its entirety at the Library of Congress [Rare Book and Special Collections Division].
• 'The Wizard of Oz - An American Fairy Tale' exhibition site at the Library of Congress.
• 'The Man Behind the Man Behind Oz: W. W. Denslow at 150' by Michael Patrick Hearn at the American Institute for Graphic Arts (AIGA).
• WW Denslow - The Seahorse Design (Dard Hunter Studios).
• 'Back to Oz' by Cecelia Goodnow (Seattle PI, 2001).
• The webpage of the Roycrofters and The Roycroft Community 1894-1938.
• The International Wizard of Oz Club Resources - I found the chronology particularly interesting.
• In a collectible sense, The Wizard of Oz is an industry unto itself: see Bookride's recent review of first edition pricings and 'Oz Book First Editions: How to Identify', an ebay guide.
• ADDIT (2013): A first edition of 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' (signed by LF Baum & signed with little drawing by WW Denslow) is expected to fetch up to $120K at auction. [internet archive version for posterity]

Manuscript Decoration

Plimpton MS 296 from the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University (part of the Digital Scriptorium).

This Spanish parchment manual for calligraphers/copyists was made between 1500 and 1515. Unfortunately, that is all the information available. Twelve of the thirty one pages have been digitised (eleven are shown above).

While looking around fruitlessly for further information, I came across a site put together by the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University in Budapest - Medieval Manuscript Manual (available in four languages). It's a basic overview of manuscript production (types, techniques, inks, typology etc) aimed at a non-professional audience and includes a useful glossary.

American Civil War Envelopes

'Death to Traitors'
E. Cogan
"Soldier figures, hanged men and American flags make up the phrase 'Death to Traitors'."




'Devil and whiskey'
"Devil sitting hunched over a whiskey barrel holding a flag."




'Secession Whiskey'
D. Murphy's Son
"A giant goblet being hovered over by a skeleton. Inside the goblet is a pudgy, drunk (sleeping?) person. White envelope with brown ink. Image on left side.
One dose warranted to kill, at 40 rods."




'Secession as a dragon'
William Ridenburgh
"A knight wearing the American shield fights a dragon labeled 'secession'."




'Secession Web - "Walk into my parlor," says the Spider to the Fly.'
D. Murphy's son, printer
"Davis as a spider catching the secession states in his web strung from the American flag. There is a skull and cross bones on his spider back and he is dripping blood and clutching Virginia. "





'The Rebel States'
Reagles & Co., copyright holder
The devil holds the state seals of Mississippi and Florida and a Confederate flag.




'Recruits wanted for the brave southern army - good pay, (in Confederate Bonds ) and good quarters, (in a horn.)'
D. Murphy's Son
"A dog and a monkey dressed in Confederate uniforms. The dog plays a drum. The monkey has a sword drawn and a flag showing stripes and skull and crossbones tied to his tail."




'The Southern Vulture "hard up".'
D. Murphy's Son
"Confederate soldier with rooster's head entering a pawn shop carrying a bail of cotton."




'Running the blockade'
"Man riding on the tail of an alligator with a crate labeled 'For New Orleans and a market'."




'A Confederated Chicken after the Cock of the Walk, (Uncle Sam.) gets done with him.'
William Ridenburgh
"A chicken missing most of its feathers with a small sword suspended from it's body."




'A "Horse Marine" of the C.S.A.'
William Ridenburgh
"A plump figure with a naval hat on sits atop a wooden horse with a spyglass in his hand."




'A southern gorrilla, (guerilla)'
New-York Union Envelope Depot
"Gorilla (?) dressed in uniform with Confederate hat."
'Oh! for a nigger, and Oh! for a whip;
Oh! for a cocktail, and Oh! for a nip;
Oh! for a shot at old Greeley and Beecher;
Oh! for a crack at a Yankee school-teacher;
Oh! for a captain, and Oh! for a ship;
Oh! for a cargo of niggers each trip,
and so he kept oh-ing for all he had not,
not contented with owing for all that he'd got.'




'An eminent southern clergyman, during an eloquent discourse is wonderfully assisted in finding scriptural authority of secession and treason, and the divine ordination of slavery.'
"Clergyman at the pulpit with bible on it with the devil standing beside him. Each has one hand on the open bible."




'An ASS-sault from a "Masked" Battery'
J Magee




'To Cure Rebellion - This is the Pill that will Cure or Kill'




'Champion prize envelope, Lincoln & Davis in 5 rounds. 5th Round. '
J.H. Tingley, publisher.
"Lincoln stands inside "the champion belt" beside a pyramid labeled with all states. Outside the ring, four men, labeled east, west, north and south, waive hats. Flag, Liberty and eagle above. Cream envelope with black ink. Image covers sheet. Lincoln: You shall all have my impartial, constitutional and humble protection!"

"The printed envelope came into use in America in 1840 and was first used for advertising or satirical purposes. In the 1850s to 1860s 'corner cards,' with printing applied in the upper left-hand side of the front of the envelope, were common. By the onset of the Civil War, printed envelopes were already in use as a propaganda medium. Lithography was the main mode of printing used for envelopes, especially for colored designs. Printed envelopes were sold either as a single item or with matching paper."

The above Civil War envelopes come from the New York Historical Society collection - 490 images are available (click 'List items' top right).

Other collections - quite a bit of repetition, but they each have their merits:

• Roosevelt Civil War Collection at Georgetown University (370 envelopes online).
• Civil War Covers: A Digital Collection at Connecticut Historical Society (~75).
• Indiana State Library Civil War Envelopes (68).

I was hoping to find a descriptive essay that covered the printing, illustration and propaganda elements in something of a self contained nutshell (and maybe it's still out there) but there are various strands of interest through this lot:

• Guide to the Patriotic Envelope Collection at Georgetown University.
• 'The Civil War: Civil-War-era envelopes open a window to popular literature and patriotic culture' by Mark Wetherington at The Filson Historical Society.
• From the National Postal Museum: excerpts from a 1995 article by Vernon Stroupe.
• Also from the National Postal Museum: 'Envelopes in the Machine Age' by Nancy Pope.
• Smithsonian Magazine: 'Pushing the Envelope' by Michael Kernan.
• And, despite being only very tangentially related to the images above, it's worth reposting 'Revolution in Print - Graphics in Nineteenth Century America' from Common Place, which was included among an avalanche of links from a few days ago.

Theatrum Virtutum

As the titlepage above suggests, 'Theatrum Virtutum' (The Theatre of Virtues) was something of a homage to the learned and widely respected catholic bishop and papal envoy during the Counter-Reformation, Stanislaus Hosius (1504-1579).

"He did more for the preservation of the Catholic religion in Poland than all the other Polish bishops combined. He was withal, a man of prayer, mortification, and great liberality towards the poor. Both clergy and laity looked upon him as a saint."

I presume this (latin) sketch album by Tomasz Treter from ~1588 was the draft for an engraved publication under the same title that was released soon after. Most information online is in Polish, a language which is as easily understood in the original as it is in the resultant gobbledegook from online translation. I daresay I would have passed over this work if it were in the published form, but there is something elegant about the ink and wash drawings that caught my eye. All the text is very neat and there is an index laying out the location of all the virtues in the (60-odd) pictures; no doubt it was a presentation album, although the 19th century bookplates don't provide any assistance.

• 'Theatrum virtutum ac meritorum D[omini] Stanislai Hosii S[anctae] R[omanae] E[cclesiae] presb[iteri] card[inalis], , maiori penitentiarii et episcopi Varmiensis' is online at the wonderful National Digital Library of Poland (note the thumbnail icon up the top).
• A small amount of information in english about a recent translation of the work into Polish.