Creating with Printing Materials

1969 translation of a 1968 German teaching guide. I find the credits confusingly Germanic, but here goes. Author is Lothar Kampmann, acknowledging work by students of the Ruhr Advanced Teachers' Training College, Dortmund Section. That acknowledgement apparently applies to a section illustrating techniques, some used in succession to create complex prints. The book also credits illustrations from other printed sources, along with a school in Trantenroth, Bochum (also the Ruhr), the Kothe-Marxmeier School (the source of at least some of the student work reproduced, it would seem).

When introducing a variety of techniques, authorial outlook is sometimes philosophical.

It starts with fingermarks
We see our children's first printing achievements on wallpaper and windowpanes, in magazines and books: their fingermarks. They are greasy or black with dirt Sometimes jam makes them coloured. They may be annoying to the housewife, but technically they are genuine poducts of printing. The young artist merely has to be guided on to the right lines.

Dirt and jam make way to colour. The little cups of the poster-paint box are ideal as the first inking pads. Since the tip of the thumb and the fingertips are of different sizes, we already have various sizes of block available for finger painting.

This is not by any means a technique only for infants' schools. Masters as eminent as Pablo Picasso have repeatedly made use of fingerprinting in lithography.

...

The whole hand, too is a suitable block. The print of a single hand can be extended with a print of the edge of the hand, the single whole fingers, or the fingertips. Or 'many hands' are used for printing.

Such handprints are known from the very early days of man. Neanderthal and Lascaux man used earth-coloured handprints in their cave paintings. One can rightly regard the fingerprint as the beginning of printing both for the individual and the human race.

In the sample work by students, ages range from nine to the teens. Some of this looks pretty sophisticated to me.

'Two Figures' (girl, 16). Paper print of patterns cut out of cartridge paper. Water colours.

Mostly, students observed their surroundings.

'In Port' (boy, 11). Grey-tone lino-cut.

'View of the Town through Scaffolding' (boy, 14). A lino-cut in which shape and white-line printing are combined.

'Industrial Landscape' (boy, 15). Two-colour roller print, brown and black block-printing ink.

'My Daddy is a Miner' (girl, 9). Print-through from a glass plate. All accidental features are reproduced.

Images suggests the region's heavy industry was still very evident in the 1960s. Now, notes wiki, Dortmund

...is known as Westphalia's "green metropolis". Nearly half the municipal territory consists of waterways, woodland, agriculture and green spaces with spacious parks... This stands in a stark contrast with nearly a hundred years of extensive coal mining and steel milling in the past.

Gritty though the area may have been at the time of this publication, that didn't stop the author from finding this merited a stern finger wag.

'Bicycles Outside the Playground' (boy, 14). Print-through monotype.
This is not how they should be left, blocking the entrance.

Industrial landscapes may have changed, but this 12-year old girl's lino-cut observes a scene that remains familiar (and pretty much universal).

'After a day's work, only Mummy has to carry on'

You Say, "To-Mah-To"...

And I say, "All of Japan will agree with you"...

To-mah-to...
The name of the vegetable (or fruit?) in Japanese, and the pronunciation of the syllables that decorate this baby T-shirt.

Yesterday was the fourth Sunday in June, so the day of the local Japanese community's annual flea market. I didn't really need a baby T-shirt, but at $.25, the design was too adorable to resist. I'm hoping it will fit a neighbor's one-and-a-half year old, so I can take pictures of him wearing it as he toddles by. He is a fast one, but maybe I can manage to get a rear view—

Two labels sewn inside the collar—

Another item I couldn't manage to resist—

This truly is using your noggin!

There are always giveaway piles, too. I picked up some home-maker magazines—

"Heart and Hand" (above, left) is devoted to recipes and crafts. Here are directions for making gift envelopes from decorative papers—

I like the inexplicable prop here; this hand-made envelope will be just the thing for storing your Blue Eagle tickets!

More seriously, it's interesting how this real artifact can become a context-free prop in a Japanese magazine illustration. I can't find any background, but the image shows tickets printed "In full compliance"—

Globe [?] Ticket Company, Los Angeles
(According to teeny and partly blurred font in magazine image)

The L.A. event may have been held under of the auspices of the Federal Theatre Project, which promoted public performances throughout the country. The Library of Congress's FTP collection includes photos; posters for plays and other public performances are in the WPA poster collection. Though I've seen lots of archival images, I've never come across tickets that from one of these long-ago events.

It's history that is all but lost to popular knowledge. And a depressing, if unsurprising, thing: never try searching "NRA" without adding, Great Depression.

THE PLAIN MAN'S GUIDE TO WINE

1961. From the front matter—

TO HIS FRIENDS, AND, AS HE MAY NOW SAY,
    HIS COLLEAGUES OF THE JURADE OF ST.
     EMILION THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY
                            DEDICATED
  BY THE AUTHOR, RAYMOND POSTGATE,
       CHANCELIER D'AMBASSADE POUR
                LA GRANDE BRETAGNE

That's the only illustration. Even so, I'm always fascinated by such period books that present fine dining and wining as topics of potential interest to anyone, not an elite. Though it's also depressing to see the degree of literacy exhibited, from the vantage point of a time when even basic literacy is not evident in most spheres.

Following his dedication, Postgate cites a poem in Latin, by Canon Walter Map. This translation follows—

It is my proposed aim to die in an inn; let wine be placed to the lips of the dying man, so that, when they come. The chorus of angels may say: 'God be kind to this drinker.'

The translation is presumably Postgate's own, though he adds this exegesis—

The translation does not do justice to the Latin of this agreeable poem. Propostium, for example, has an intentionally formal character: 'this is the proposition,' it says, as if the matter were put before a meeting and the Canon were looking round for a seconder.... Observe, too, how, being a Prebendary of St. Paul's as well as a Canon, the author writes chori, choruses; for you or me, perhaps, one brisk cherub will suffice, but as an escort to heaven he knows he is entitled to at least two ranks of angels. He was chaplain to Henry II and aware of his importance. He unwisely added other verses to these; they are of no importance.

Dated it may be, and getting to the punch lines takes a little reading on. Still, I can't help but enjoy an occasional serving of this style.

These are the contents of chapter 1—

THE ELEMENTS

Simplicity of wine-drinking — Falsehoods of the Wine Snob — 'Drink what you like' — Smoking — List of chief varieties of wine — Apéritifs, table wines, dessert wines — Temperature of wine, shaking of wine, wine with food — The vintages that matter — Glasses — How to taste wine — The minimum of knowledge on a postcard.

The "post card" is closest the book comes to having a second illustration.

Water All Around

Withdrawn school library book, found on the public library sales reject-overflow cart—

1959 (first ed.)

Science explained simply and entertainingly, with charming illustrations by Bernice Myers.

Sometimes the water vapor itself, high up in the air, freezes instead of condensing into water droplets.
The frozen water vapor falls.
We have snow

...water sometimes flows up!

This was part of a series by the same authors and illustrator (Electricity/Friction/Gravity/Light/Sounds... All Around). Fishink has samples of other books in the series. Like "Water," the rest of the series used B&W and two-tone illustrations. The link also has some wonderful, more colorful illustrations from other books, and those apparently are more typical of Myers' work. Elsewhere, Eric Sturdevant has illustrations from some French titles.

Fishink proprietor Craig adds—

I did get in touch with Bernice who told me that she was flattered to be featured on my blog. How great is that !! She also mentioned that the work you see above [All Around series], helped her to pass a test for a Ford Foundation Scholarship, where she learnt enough to go for a specially created college degree. Some 60 books later and she's still working !

That was in 2012; it seems she's still at work, though she doesn't have a web presence herself. Just fans posting stuff; according to this, she turned 90 last April. I do find that I recognize her son from his jazz writing.

She often collaborated with her husband, Lou Myers. He died at 90 in 2005, continuing to work until nearly the end. The Times' obit is fascinating in its details of Lou's life and career, apart from childrens' books.

The couple lived for years in Paris, and their collaboration is an intriguing one. A jacket image from Studevant's blog—

Childrens' books, 1959, and roles that were (to say the least) gendered... Although, if Mother was stuck in the kitchen while Father had the fun...

... Ms. Myers managed to slip in a hint about Mother's physical and emotional state...

Minutes-A-Day

New year; new library shop discards...

An old abandoned resolution?

1983

Packing Up

And taking the show down the road.

Parlez-vous?

Among the free books on the shelf this year, a 1949 textbook.

Authors:

Sadly, water damage has warped the book and its classic end papers. In front, La France—

The map highlights each province's sights and production agricole—

In back—

Illustrations include many photos, with captions often adding the author's deux centimes worth.

Fishermen along the Seine don't have much hope of catching fish, but they enjoy the rest and the scenery.

Louis XVI in full splendor. A little less splendor might have saved his neck.

Author-illustrator Huebener apparently took the photos and wrote the captions. Their humor is of a piece with the cartoons he clearly relished drawing to illustrate lessons.

In this textbook, a jolly time seems usually to have been had.

Les élèves quittent l'école.

Something seemed familiar about this author's credentials and tone. Sure, the silly jokes reminded me of favorite teachers who took a similar approach; decades later, I still remember material via corny jokes cracked by those clever teachers. There was something else I couldn't quite put my finger on, not until starting to re-read Kate Simon's memoir, A Wider World. In the 1920s Simon had defied her immigrant father to attend a New York high school. Writing sixty years later, Simon found that,  English and music aside, she had no memory of most classes and teachers. Two German teachers were exceptions, and one of them was

... Dr. Huebner, who became one of the heads of language studies in the city's schools later on... [He] was beautiful, as precisely featured as a Gothic carving, but unlike those dour saints and knights, he smiled a lot, teaching us a good deal of German by way of songs and simpleminded jokes. So we sang and laughed and earned high Regents' Exam scores for Dr. Huebner.

The French textbook gives a good idea of that pedagogical approach. Even so, at least one student remained unimpressed by the good doctor's efforts.