Special Collections News

The Multifarious Mr. Darwin

Northwestern University presents an exhibit exploring "The Multifarious Mr. Darwin", in honor of the sesquicentenary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, the bicentenary of Darwin's birth, and in conjunction with the "One Book One Northwestern" selection of The Reluctant Mr. Darwin by David Quammen. The exhibit features books and other materials not only from the McCormick Library of Special Collections, but from other libraries on the Evanston campus, from the Galter Health Sciences Library, and from the collections of the Field Museum of Natural History and of the Chicago Botanic Garden.The exhibit highlights Charles Darwin's antecedents and influences, his life and the development of his ideas, and reactions and responses to his scientific work. The exhibit will be displayed until December 23, 2008.

La Porte des Rêves: Art Nouveau Splendor

The McCormick Library of Special Collections is pleased to announce the acquisition of an iconic illustrated Art Nouveau book, the Symbolist writer Marcel Schwob's La Porte des Rêves. Published in Paris in 1899, this book of macabre tales was illustrated by Georges de Feure, a protégé of Siegfried Bing, the great entrepreneur of Art Nouveau and Japanese art in late 19th and early 20th century France. De Feure was responsible for the decoration of one of the rooms in Bing's pavilion at the 1900 Paris Exposition, and also achieved success as a furniture designer. One of 220 copies, the book is illustrated throughout and features a hand-colored triptych frontispiece, the "doors" of which open to reveal a marvelous hidden image.

This open window motif is echoed in our copy's splendid molded leather binding, the front panel of which shows a sleepwalker opening a pair of French windows, allowing entrance to a horde of grotesque imps and demons -- the "gate of dreams" of the book's title. The rear panel and spine are also decorated with mysterious spectral faces and the flowing sinuous lines so characteristic of Art Nouveau. The binding, believed to have been created by Louis Deze, is an astonishing tour de force: a haunting, alluring talisman, like a rubbed bronze tablet discovered under water in a dream.

1933: An Exhibit Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Deering Library

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of our beautiful Deering Library, we have selected a diverse cross-sectional representation of materials from some of the discrete collections held within the McCormick Library of Special Collections, all of which are united by a common thread: they were published or otherwise created in 1933, the year the Deering Library opened.

Exhibited items range from material from Chicago’s Century of Progress exposition, which opened in 1933, to books, prints and ephemera from our outstanding collection of 20th century European art movements including French and Czech Surrealist and Italian Futurist pieces.

From our Dublin Gate Theatre Archive we show photographs, production books, a scrapbook, and an original costume sketch by Gate co-founder Micheál Mac Liammóir relating to their 1933 production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Our Graphic Arts and Private Press collections are represented with artists such as Rockwell Kent, and include original layout designs by Bruce Rogers for the title page of a 1933 edition of Aesop’s Fables.

In 1933 the global economic Depression was at its nadir – in the United States 1 in 4 workers was unemployed. This disastrous economic situation paved the way for certain radical political changes, and in January of that year - the same month Deering Library first opened its doors - both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler assumed command of their respective nations. Materials from our Roosevelt and Political Pamphlet collections, among others, illustrate the political scene.

It was in these troubled times that our purposely anachronistic Collegiate Gothic-style building was created. Indeed it was in part because of the dire economic climate that the skilled craftsmen necessary to carve the oak and stone that grace both the interior and exterior of James Gamble Rogers’s building were available and affordable. The generous gift of the descendents and relations of Charles Deering, after whom the library is named, could not have been better timed. As it was when it opened in 1933, the Deering Library remains a space of serene and inspiring solace, a space which now serves as a frame for items which, sometimes surprisingly, were born in its same year.

9th Century Carolingian Manuscript Discovery

McCormick Library staff member Sigrid Perry consulted Robert E. Lerner Professor of History and Peter B. Ritzma Professor in the Humanities about the vellum manuscript binding on a 16th century book from the library’s Johann Schulze collection, which was purchased by Northwestern in 1869. He agreed that the leaf displaying fragments of two psalms which was used to bind the book was written in an early Latin medieval script. He sent a digital image of the leaf to three expert paleographers, including two in Germany. Independently, all three scholars agreed that the manuscript leaf was a good example of texts written in the second quarter of the ninth century. In other words, it probably originated in the reign of Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious, or perhaps even in the reign of Charlemagne (d. 814) himself. In fact, they believed the script to have been produced at the island monastery of Reichenau on the Lake of Constance in southwestern Germany because certain letters were formed in a style distinct to the monks of that scriptorium. One scholar asked if the text which was bound with the manuscript was printed in Basel since many of the manuscripts from this monastery were used by 16th century Basel printers. The book was indeed printed there. After the invention of moveable type in 1450, printing books on paper became the practice, and old manuscripts were often cut apart to be used as binding materials. Some medieval texts are known only by the compilation of such fragments from various bindings.

How rare is a twelve hundred year old manuscript binding? Only a few libraries in North America have fragments of manuscripts this old, and the one here is in good condition, well-protected in a custom-made box. Modern handwriting really began in Charlemagne’s era, known as the Carolingian period, and clear, legible scripts developed from this alphabet. The discovery that we have a sample of handwriting from the dawn of modern European civilization has generated excitement among library staff, faculty and students.

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