The Special Collections Research Center has made some important acquisitions this past year that may be of interest and use to the department. Some highlights from the original announcement:
Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, New Haven, 1963.
The Interaction of Color by Josef Albers (1888-1976) consists of a set of silk-screened prints that demonstrate how the eye perceives color differently when set next to other colors. A leading figure in the Bauhaus, Albers was an influential teacher, writer, painter, and color theorist and taught industrial design at SU in the 1950s.
Bernhard of Clairvaux, [Works], Paris, 1508.
This volume contains the works of Bernard of Clairvaux, a French abbot and major leader in the establishment of the Cistercian monastic order. This unique item, printed in 1508 by Jehan Petit, one of the official publishers at the University of Paris, documents the slow evolution of the book from the medieval codex to the Renaissance print.
Alexander von Humboldt, Geognostische und physikalische Erinnerungen, Stuttgart/Tübingen, 1853.
Intended to be the first part of a whole series of geological, volcanological and physical publications, this first edition of the great German polymath’s description of Mexican and Andean volcanoes and the accompanying atlas are a milestone of 19th century scholarship. The tinted views of the atlas offer stunning examples of scientific pre-photography documentation practices.
John Fleming Gould Papers
American painter, illustrator, and art instructor John Fleming Gould’s (1906-1996) illustrations appeared in the Saturday Evening Post as well as pulp publications such as Adventure Trails, Dime Detective Magazine, and War Birds, while his fine art pieces often portray historical subjects and the Hudson River Valley area.
Jantzen Swimwear Photographs
This album of 111 silver gelatin prints highlights the Jantzen Knitting Mills swimwear line from 1937-1943. In the early 20th century, the company was on the forefront of tighter-fitting, elastic, and less-cumbersome designs that allowed their wearers to swim more comfortably than earlier fashions of bathing dress and were similar to ones glamorized by starlets in Hollywood.
WPA Transcription Discs
From the mid-1930s to the early 1940s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Music Project routinely sent these transcription discs with original programming to radio stations around the country. Commissioned expressly for the WPA, programming includes standards from the classical and operatic repertoires, jazz ensemble works, choral music, and traditional American folk music and spirituals. All phonodiscs in the collection will be digitized in the Belfer Audio Archive and made available online for public access.