Art Libraries Society of North America 31^st Annual Conference
Wyndham Baltimore Inner Harbor, Baltimore, Maryland - March 20-26, 2003

WORKSHOP 2:  Looking at Pictures: How to Identify Illustrations in Books  

Over 60 people attended the two workshops called Looking at Pictures: How to Identify Illustrations in Books.  The first was held on the afternoon of Friday, 21 March 2003, and the second was Saturday morning, 22 March.  Amy Navratil Ciccone, University of Southern California, organized and introduced both sessions.

The workshop speaker was Dr. Donald H. Cresswell, owner of the Philadelphia Print Shop (http://www.philaprintshop.com).  He has an extensive background of working with rare books, including serving as rare book librarian at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte and is the author of The American Revolution in Drawings and Prints: A Checklist of 1765-1790 Graphics in the Library of Congress (1975).

In order to clearly demonstrate the various print processes which can be found in illustrated books, Dr. Cresswell brought a large selection of individual prints pf various types.  He went into substantial detail about how each type of print was made, including some of the less familiar such as tintstone and stipple. 

Among the issues he discussed were using catalogues raisonnés, such as the one  for Winslow Homer  (by Barbara Gelman, 1969),  to determine sources that published Homer’s wood engravings.  Although extremely helpful for scholars and librarians, these books can also be used by thieves to identify targets. There was a fair amount of discussion about the problems of identifying prints in the library and security for them.

Print terminology can be fraught with problems.  Dr. Cresswell defined three types of prints thusly: 

·        Original, or fine art print:  An original print for which the artist had direct contact with the image

·        Reproductive print, which can also be an engraving after a painting:  A print which has been re-engraved, and may differ in size from the original

·        Commercial print:  Prints commissioned by the artist in large quantities (sometimes in multiple editions)

An engaging speaker, Dr. Cresswell gave a clear introduction to some of the problems facing art librarians in recognizing books and journals which contain original prints, and what to do about them. 

He included a brief bibliography, of which the three most important books were:

• Gascoigne, Bamber.  How to identify prints (1986, 1998).   (o.p.)
• Griffiths, Anthony.  Prints and printmaking: An introduction to the history and techniques (1996).  Still in print.
• Holman, Louis.  The graphic processes: Intaglio, relief, planographic (1926). Each description is accompanied by an original print.  Very difficult to find, and expensive.

Amy Navratil Ciccone
University of Southern California