Erik Nitsche Graphic Design

Swiss-born American graphic designer, Erik Nitsche (1908-1998) had a prolific ~60 year career working across the advertising, printing and publishing industries.

An acknowledged founding modernist, Nitsche came to prominence in the 1950s, despite his reserved nature, with the production of abstract semi-futurist technical illustrations and posters for the General Dynamics corporation. This was no mere graphics job. It was more along the lines of repackaging military hardware development and the emerging nuclear industry as a sponsor of peace. Life is not without contradictions [see here].

In the 1960s Nitsche turned to book production with a memorable series on the history of science and technology - an illustration driven 12 volume set that was printed in multiple languages and sold 2 million copies. A more ambitious 20-volume history of music followed which included contemporized historical engravings.

In addition to these significant achievements there is a vast legacy of work including 300 album cover designs and illustrations for an array of magazine and corporate clients. There was a move towards more realistic illustration/design work in his later years. Despite having been elected to the New York Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame not long before his death, Nitsche and his design output are not widely known and there is no devoted website. If anything, I'm likely understating the extent both of his output and influence.

That this post and the great majority of the above images are here at all is due entirely to the admiration that Derick and Katie have for Erik Nitsche's work. They have a collection of his book and album designs and in an ongoing project, they've uploaded a number of items to flickr and also to the BustBright site (high res. available). Both links are worth following as I haven't posted everything available.

• Typotheque have an excellent article from 1999 by Steven Heller - 'The Reluctant Modernist'.
• Short biography at The Art Directors Club (head for hall of fame/laureates 1996)
• The final image above comes from a page which has the largest number of Nitsche works available. These tend towards his later realist output and also includes stamp designs.
• The 3rd last image above comes from here [see also this composite (and the adjacent Nitsche submarine nautilus].
• The 2nd last image above was made from a set of half a dozen Nitsche images at this site.
• Galerie un deux trois have 6 works, including my fave - I'd be happy to have that as a poster.
• General Dynamics remain happy with the image projected by Nitsche.

Schäffer's Insects

'Abhandlungen von Insecten' (~1760-1770) by Jacob Christian Schäffer (Schaeffer) is online in its entirety at Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg. [NYPL has a few of these plates with the full details about the nature of the insects but in german]

Previously I posted details from this series.

Schäffer was something of a polymath, publishing important works on mycology (with some of the first hand coloured book illustrations), ornithology, optics and prism making and most famously perhaps, his treatises on papermaking experiments using various organic fibre products prompted by a shortage of rags. [And: the 'first' washing machine publication (with images) which I believe was framed as fictitious letters by a woman about clothes washing - I wonder if his papermaking exploits gave rise to this 'invention'?] He was also curator of a renowned wunderkammer.

I can't find any site where Schäffer's work have been gathered together so here are a few links touching one way or another on his interests/publications: i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi, vii, viii, ix.

Musei Capitolini

Erudite Florentine scholar Giovanni Gaetano Bottari (1689-1775) was a scientist and theologian but is best remembered for his contributions to a wide range of historical art publications. He went to Rome in 1750 where he was appointed by Pope Benedict XIV as custodian of the Vatican Library.

The images here (click for full size versions) come from a 4-volume set from ~1755, 'Musei Capitolini' which were (pretty obviously) a catalogue of the sculptural holdings of the Capitoline Museums of Rome - a group of art and archaeological repositories atop the Capitoline Hill in Rome. The majority of the engravings appear to be from ancient Roman sculptures but there are occasional items from ancient Greece and Egypt.

• This 'Musei Capitolini' series is but one from a large collection of digitized ancient architecture/art history works in the Stichwerke website of Universität zu Köln. There is a lot in here to browse (note the 'Weitere seiten' - next page - button at the bottom of each thumbnail page). I haven't really begun to look through the collection myself, although I'm sure to return.
  
• Monumenta Rariora (in english)- I stumbled across this site which again, I've hardly skimmed, but it has engravings of rare monuments, funnily enough. [landing page]
• Capitoline Museums at Wikipedia.
• Musei Capitolini homepage.
• Giovanni Gaetano Bottari at Wikipedia (french) (translation)
• A link I've been hanging onto for a long time: 'Baroque Rome in the etchings of Giuseppe Vasi' - a mentor of Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
• Previously: Classical Piranesi (there was a maltranslated mention somewhere of Bottari being a collaborator on something with Piranesi - possibly the work linked in this entry); Visualizing Rome.
• My thanks to misteraitch and Florian.