Regional Chapters > Southern California > Color Explosion
February 19, 2010
Curator's tour of Color Explosion:
Nineteenth Century American
Lithography from the Jay T. Last Collection
Huntington Library, Arts Collections, and Botanical Gardens
1151 Oxford Road,
San Marino, California 91108
On Friday, February 19th, 2010, an enthusiastic group of 14 gathered at the Huntington Library for an exhibition tour of Color Explosion: 19th-Century American Lithography from the Jay T. Last Collection. Led by the curator, David Mihaly, our members and their guests were able to see a portion of one of the largest collections of 19th-century color lithography in the United States. Jay T. Last, founder of Fairchild Semiconductor Corp., is also an independent scholar of the history of lithography. His interest in this field began in the 1970's when he first started collecting fruit crate labels, but quickly developed to a collection of over 135,000 objects. The exhibition, which closed the following Monday, featured more than 250 items that were on public view for the first time. The prints included advertising posters for items such as bath soap, flower seeds, railroads, hair tonic, and coffee; art prints, calendars, children's books, product labels, sales catalogs, some with ingenious methods of built-in displays, sheet music, maps, toys, and trade cards. The International Printing Museum in Carson, California, loaned out a 19th-century lithographic press as part of the exhibition. Mr. Mihaly also included photographs, showing the step-by-step process of preparing the lithography stone and transferring the image onto it, so visitors could appreciate what is involved in creating these mass-produced pieces of art.
The tour began with a background on Mr. Last, and how he became interested in collecting lithographic specimens. It began with a purchase of some orange-crate labels at a flea market and burgeoned into a remarkable collection. He continues to add to the collection, buying both the collection- and individual item level, much the same way as Henry Huntington. Remarkably, there are approximately 130,000 items and very few duplicates; about 40% of the collection comprises unique examples.
David Mihaly explained to us that the 300 items in the exhibition are arranged categorically and were chosen to show both the history and development of color lithography in the United States in the early half of the 19th-century. The exhibition has examples of works printed on the eastern seaboard, but quickly moves to examples printed on the West Coast and California. Color was first applied by hand to lithographic prints in 1821 with book illustrations and sheet music covers being the most common items. But in the span of twenty years, techniques were developed to create full color prints, and the industry exploded. 1860 was the first time a photo lithograph was used to illustrate an article in a newspaper, but the technique wasn’t picked up again until 1880. Another common practice was to recycle images that illustrated natural disasters and military battles. The Mexican American War was the first military action to be visually documented with color lithography, and when the Ohio River flooded in 1883, and again in 1884, the same image was used to show the destruction. As Mihaly pointed out, the print is of a chaotic street scene in Cincinnati, with people fleeing the high water and rescue boats picking up victims. The storefronts that line the street where all this action is taking place have billboards and signs advertising their products. These lithographic posters were most likely sponsored by actual merchants and, and in a clever advertising campaign, the depicted businesses were real.
In early posters and other lithographs, the name of the lithographer was printed on the item, with no mention of the artist or designer, but that changed in 1890 when well-known artists were commissioned to design advertising posters or create art prints. At that point, the name of the lithographer could no longer be found on the piece. Mihaly explained that research on these prints is made even more difficult by the fact that so many printshops, along with their records, were destroyed in fires – a common danger in 19th-century warehouses.
The collection is open to researchers who wish to study the techniques or history of these lithographs in more details. We are very grateful to David Mihaly and the Huntington Library for a fabulous and in-depth tour of these wonderful items.
—Nina M. Schneider, Program Chair
Left to right: David Mihaly (curator), Nina Schneider, Ethan Lipton, Mike Druyen, Vicke Selk, Kitty Maryatt, Pall Bohne, Barbara Hauser, Maurice Hauser.
Elected to their first term, at our annual general meeting held January 28, were Robert McCamant, President; James P. Ascher, VP for Publications; Casey Smith, VP for Membership; and Charles Cuykendall Carter, Secretary. Re-elected to a second term were Kitty Maryatt, VP for Programs; and David Goodrich, Treasurer. Trustees Amelia Hugill-Fontanel and Richard Ring will serve until January 2013.
The American Printing History Association welcomes proposals for its 2012 annual conference. “At the Crossroads: Living Letterform Traditions” at Columbia College Chicago, Center for Book and Paper Arts, October 12–13, 2012. Proposals are due by March 15. Full details are available in PDF.
Our annual general meeting will be held at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday January 28, 2012 in the Trustees’ Room on the second floor of the New York Public Library, 5th Avenue at 42nd Street in Manhattan. In addition to Association business, our annual meeting is a chance to meet fellow members from around the country, to network, and to hear some important speakers. (Our meeting marks the end of “Bibliography Week” in New York, when similar groups hold their annual meetings and this year includes a major exhibition on printing at the Grolier Club; more information online grolierclub.org. APHA’s meeting is free and open to non-members (except for voting), so please invite friends interested in printing, books, publishing, and type. Read the President's Letter.
The Fall 2011 issue of the APHA Newsletter comprises of reports from the annual conference including panels, Pamela Smith's keynote address, Gwido Zlatkes's Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship talk, the SoCal chapter book fair, a tour of the Stuart Collection of outdoor sculpture at UCSD and a list of new APHA members. Download the Newsletter in PDF form.
Kitty Maryatt reports on the first-ever conference book fair. Read all about it.
Many numbers are available to APHA members for a limited time at the bargain rate of $8 for the first issue, $6 for each additional; $15 for double issues. Learn more at printinghistory.org/sale.
Details and application for the 2012 Mark Samuels Lasner Fellowship
in Printing History are now online.
Thanks to the generosity of several APHA Southern California Chapter members, the Southern California Chapter has conducted its first-ever student membership drawing.
To celebrate the start of 2011, the complete listing of Printing History's contents have been put back online. See the contents (and a few select articles) from the Original Series, or a complete listing of the New Series. See something you like? Download the Back Issue Order Form.