Eight Interesting Aspects: Narragansett Bay and the Invention of Rhode Island - Andrew Middleton
Enter Andrew's first DOT story here. Enter Andrew's second DOT story here.Hidden in this British invasion map is the history of a state's founding identity.As of August 2024, Andrew Middleton has owned the Map Center, the oldest map store on the East Coast, for nine months, on his quest to introduce cartography enthusiasts to a new generation of maps. You can visit Andrew at the Map Center at 545 Pawtucket Ave, Pawtucket, Rhode Island and at https://www.mapcenter.com/. Andrew Middleton - DOT story - Eight Interesting Aspects - Narragansett Bay and the Invention of Rhode Island - 8/8/24Andrew Middleton - DOT story - Eight Interesting Aspects - The Myths of Rhode Island - 8/8/24
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French Posters / Jules Cheret - Rich Breiman Collection - Curated by Gabrielle Ly
April 2024 - Born in 1836 to a family of artisans, Jules Cheret is known today as the father of modern lithography. His artistic influence began at an early age: his father was a typographer. Due to his family’s poverty, Cheret was apprenticed to a lithographer at the age of 13. He eventually invented color lithography as it exists today, transforming dull prints into veritable rainbows of color.Surprisingly, Cheret’s only formal art training was a single course at the Ecole Nationale de Dessin in Paris. He eventually moved to London, England to study photography and design from 1859 to 1866. His experience and exposure to further lithography techniques inspired him to establish his lithography firm in Paris in 1866. Eugene Rimmel, a perfume manufacturer, funded Cheret’s firm after hiring him to create packaging. Cheret imported the lithography machines from London as they did not exist in France yet.Cheret created his first poster in 1858, commissioned for the operetta Orpheus in the Underworld in London. At first, his posters only used three colors, made from three overlapping prints in the lithographic process. (He also influenced artists such as Henri de Toulous-Lautrec who used the same process of color lithography.)The artist was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government in 1890 for his contributions to the arts. He designed over a thousand posters for different venues and performances. Cheret passed away at the age of 96 in 1932, having retired to the French Riviera in Nice, France.The term “Cherettes” was coined to describe how Cheret portrayed women in his posters. In contradiction to his time, he depicted women not as puritans or prostitutes but as lively and elegant, free and bold individuals. They appeared as individuals with their own lives and desires, making some call Cheret a pioneer in female liberation.Over time, his style evolved. With “Cherettes” taking the center focus, his compositions became more dynamic and typography-heavy. His posters, influenced by Rococo painters and Japanese woodblock prints, featured simplified backgrounds, flanked by glowing colors and textures. His work elevated lithography to an art form and became popular as it portrayed the gaiety of the time.VOICE NOTE TRANSCRIPT:Jules Cheret, 1836 to 1932, was the pioneer of color lithography and invented a new way of printing color.He started his artistic journey at 13 as an apprentice to a lithographer. Surprisingly, he barely had any formal art training, having taken only one formal course at the Ecole Nationale de Dessin in Paris. He moved to London to study photography and design from 1859 to 1866, later moving back to Paris to open his own firm. His firm was originally funded by a perfume manufacturer who loved Cheret’s design. Cheret imported his lithography machines from London as they did not exist in France at the time. He was known for his poster designs and prints, often printing his and other artists’ works at his print shop Imprimere Chaix in Paris during the Belle Epoque era. This generation of artists ushered in a more colorful period in printed works. He released a collection of 250 prints called the Les Maitres de l'Affiche. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Ch%C3%A9retkeyword: richbreiman
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Report of the Cruise of the Steamer Corwin in the Arctic Ocean - 1885
I became aware of this book after reading Hampton Side's amazing book, In the Kingdom of Ice, which tells the story of the 1880's De Long expedition of the Jeanette to the North Pole. As a part of the Jeanette story, Sides tells the story of the Corwin, which had a famous crew member, John Muir, who later wrote a book called The Cruise of the Corwin. This exhibit is an official report of one of the cruises of the Corwin, in 1885, led by Michael A. Healy, although it was not the same cruise during which Muir was a crew member, in 1881. However, in that 1881 cruise, whose purpose was to find the De Long expedition, Healy was in command and Muir was one of the crew. keyword: 19thCentury
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Harmony Masks Conflict: The Mediterranean in the Medieval Islamic Imagination - Karen Pinto
Professor Karen Pinto has spent three decades at the forefront of the study of Islamic cartographic history. Her first book, Medieval Islamic Maps: An Exploration, came out in 2016, and she is currently working on a second, focusing on Islamic maps of the Mediterranean. Today, she is an Associate Scholar in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder."When I was a graduate student at Columbia in 1991, my professor, the late but incredibly great Olivia Remie Constable (1961-2014), suggested that I write a seminar paper on the medieval Muslim geographers. That sent me to the dark recessed of the Islamic history and geography collection on the 11th floor of the Butler Library. There I, literally, tripped over Konrad Miller’s late 1920’s extensive 6 volume: Mappae Arabicae: Arabische Welt und Länderkarten des 9–13. Jahrunderts. (6 vols. Stuttgart, 1926–1931) black and white reprints of hundreds of medieval Islamic maps hidden in Oriental manuscripts hitherto little known in the western history of cartography world.Miller’s dusty, crumbling black-and-white reprints of medieval Islamic maps of the Mediterranean, formed the basis of my first major work on the subject: “Ṣūrat Baḥr al-Rūm: The Mediterranean in the Medieval Muslim Cartographical Imagination,” my MA Essay at Columbia U that went on to win SSRC’s 1992 Ibn Khaldun Prize. That experience led, in turn, to a life-long obsession and hunt for maps scattered in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscript libraries worldwide that resulted in her first book on Islamic maps of the world in “Medieval Islamic Maps: An Introduction” (Chicago, 2016) and a collection of some three thousand images of maps, many not reprinted.
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