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Journeys of the Imagination

"Grand Panorama of the Great Exhibition of All Nations". Illustrated London News
1851.
Friends of the Library Fund, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum Library

This item on display during the following part(s) of the exhibition:

Created as a commemorative for the 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations held in London (commonly known as the Crystal Palace exhibition), this 29-foot scroll depicts the interior scenes and pavilions of the fair. Developed by the staff of the Illustrated London News, the engraved images convey the grandeur and expanse of this unique historic event, which inspired the United States and other European countries to mount their own international expositions. View enlarged images from this item: Image 1

Published between 1839 and 1935, this highly influential serial helped disseminate French design throughout Europe and America. Each issue of Le garde meuble contained nine plates illustrating the latest in interiors and furniture. Because of the quality of the plates, designers were able to replicate intricate details and patterns.

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Pictures from catalogs help in restoration of objects and in the design of period rooms.

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A more artistic version of the travel guidebook, this volume consists of beautifully colored illustrations with no textual information except for poems accompanying each scene.

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While intended for children, souvenir publications from international expositions record the world view of a period by documenting technological advances, industrial achievements, and popular entertainment.

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The Smithsonian Libraries Horticulture Collection, strong in 19th-century landscape design and garden practice, is augmented by garden furniture and other items related to the florist’s trade. Smithsonian horticulturists maintain period gardens and complementary plantings around every museum.

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Josef Albers, the German-born American painter, graphic artist, and teacher, became chairman of the Yale University Department of Design in 1950 and taught there until 1958. His treatise on color theory, Interaction of Color, influenced painters of the 1960s and is a major tool of teaching art throughout the world.

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GIF 2 comprises mounted prints, mixed media works, photocopies, and a photograph, covered in brown paper and contained in a wooden slip case by Michael Zeffertt, with bronze animal hooves by Guy du Toit attached to front and back. This volume creatively gathers original artworks, signed and numbered by 18 artists, into a book representing modern African art. It is housed in the Warren M. Robbins Library, National Museum of African Art, one of the world’s most comprehensive reference collections dealing with contemporary African artists.

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This standard history of the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition was presented as a limited edition to fair officials and sponsors. Supplemented with 100 folio prints, among them signed etchings and photogravures, it is both a record of the fair and a fine example of chromolithography, or color printing. Such publications record the world view of a period by documenting technological advances, industrial achievements, and popular entertainment.

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Italian designer Galli Bibiena employed intricate systems of perspective to create dramatic illusionary theater sets and festival decorations for the royal families of Austria and Germany. In Architetture, he documents the ostentatious styles of the period with 50 engravings of altars, palace interiors, and theater sets, many of them for religious festivals in Vienna.

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Around 1918, Blossfeldt used a microscopic lens to make detailed photographs of plant forms against a stark background. Stripped of their naturalistic quality, the plants appeared to be man-made cast-iron forms. The creation of this book coincided with the birth of the Bauhaus school of design, which emulated machine-like forms and stripped objects of ornamentation that did not contribute to their function.

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Chromolithography, a color printing technique of the mid-to-late 1800s, often resembles an oil painting or watercolor. This Boston Rubber Shoe Company catalog used chromolithographs to great effect. To illustrate the variety and appropriateness of its boots for different outdoorsmen, the Boston Rubber Shoe Company depicted them on fishermen, hunters, and loggers. In another approach, similar to today’s life-style advertising, the company pictured young women out in nature or paired proper Bostonians on rainy days with famous city landmarks, such as the Boston Public Library.

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The Italian painter Francesco Clemente lives and works in New York, Rome, and Madras. He drew his 85 pastels in 1980 in Pondicherry on the southeast coast of India. They are reproduced in their original size and tipped onto handmade paper. The limited-edition book was made in Adiyar, Madras, by Kalakshetra Press. The collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Library support Smithsonian researchers who present modern art and contemporary artists to the public.

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The colorful work of Walter Crane, a designer and illustrator of the British Arts and Crafts movement, combines fine design with practical lessons for children presented in an amusing way. Crane believed he could teach children about good design by incorporating the latest styles in his imaginative books for young people. He eagerly promoted the publication of inexpensive softcover picture books that a growing literate middle class could afford. In A Romance of the Three Rs, which Crane wrote for his young son Lionel, a boy has many adventures as he journeys around the world in his quest to learn how to read and write.

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Albrecht Dürer was intensely interested in mathematics and its relation to art theory. In 1525, the famous German artist published his work on the basic mathematics he felt an artist should know, including the construction of curves, polygons, bird’s-eye and profile elevations, and polyhedra. The Smithsonian Libraries’ copy is the 1535 Latin translation. Dürer’s theoretical work was widely studied for centuries afterwards.

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Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, principal architect for the Austrian court, developed residences, theaters, and churches in a Baroque style that soon found imitators throughout the Habsburg empire. In the Entwurff, he attempted the first comparative history of the world's major structures from antiquity to the 1700s, including plans and elevations from ancient Greece and Rome. Fischer was among the earliest writers to describe and illustrate non-Western structures from the Middle and Far East, for which he used Nieuhof's travel guide (on view in the "Journeys over Land and Sea" section of the exhibition) as one source of information. Fischer’s overview of a number of ornamental styles inspired design revivals in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

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Grant Thorburn, born in Scotland in 1773, arrived in New York in 1794 at age 21. He was a nail-maker and sold novelties and hardware in the city, but when he found that his best sales were for flowers in pots, he turned to the seed business. His was probably the first American business of importance to sell stock seeds. The 1822 Thorburn catalog was the first seed book in America to be issued in pamphlet form and the first to include illustrations.

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One of many technical works on 19th-century craftsmanship in the Smithsonian Libraries collections, this volume contains hand-painted illustrations of various wood grains along with descriptions of how to achieve this effect with paint. It was written for craftsmen, architects, and interior designers, and the spattered and stained illustrations in this copy show heavy use in the workshop. This book is from the collection of furniture conservator Robert D. Mussey, Jr.

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In this remarkable book, Dutch-born artist Sjoerd Hofstra showed himself to be a master of paper construction by creating highly dramatic pop-ups, including a revolving door and a cascade of rooftops. They Pair Off Hurriedly is a reinterpretation of Manhattan Transfer, John Dos Passos’s 1925 novel which captured the hustle and bustle of daily life in New York City. Hofstra incorporated Dos Passos’s text within printed pages that resemble architectural drawings, so that the viewer feels as if he or she were reading a blueprint.

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Produced as a commemorative for members of the Kyoto Art Society, this book presents 16 Japanese interiors that contain implements required for 16 traditional activities, including a poetry contest, coming-of-age ritual, and green-tea (sencha) gathering. Filled with distinctive Japanese patterns and details, the hand-colored woodblock illustrations depict decorative lacquered pieces, costumes, and furnishings. An extraordinarily beautiful object in its own right, the book provides a fascinating look at Japanese culture.

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Showing clients a product in a memorable or eye-catching manner is one of the most effective marketing techniques. Clever designers devised ways to incorporate samples into product literature.

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Frances Theodora Parsons started taking walks in the countryside after the death of her first husband. These strolls inspired her most popular book, How to Know the Wildflowers (1893). According to Season is a collection of the author’s articles for the New York Tribune. This special copy of the first edition contains nine original watercolor sketches by an unknown artist.

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The Prince nursery on Long Island was the first major commercial nursery in the United States and the largest and most important American nursery of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Many of the shrubs and flowers collected from the Lewis and Clark expeditions were sent to the Prince nursery for propagation and distribution. The nursery also trained most of the early plantsmen in the United States.

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Published in collaboration with the Kuru Art Project, Qauqaua is a rendition of a Naro folk tale and the first book to be published in Naro and English. Part of the folklore of Botswana, the story is mythically connected to rock engravings that are said to be the footprints of Qauqaua. It combines the quality of the artist’s object with a folk tale similar to earlier exploration narratives. The book was hand-printed in a limited edition of 100 plus 20 artists’ proofs; the Smithsonian Libraries copy is numbered 52 of 100.

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Essentially a device to show prospective clients how he could transform their grounds, Observations embodies Repton’s theories about creating formal landscapes for English country estates. In this work, he supplied "before" and "after" views; the viewer lifts a paper flap to see the dramatically transformed garden.

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In Japan’s late Edo period (1603 -1867), guidebooks called meisho zue were widely published. Each contained detailed descriptions of places to visit, including Shinto shrines, Buddhist temples, and famous views.

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Sears shipped the components for 49,500 "kit-houses" in 15 years, providing middle-class Americans with good residential design at affordable prices. Buyers selected their dream house from the scores of models presented in Sears’ "Honor Bilt" catalogs. For historians, details of house design, such as the breakfast nook, and slogans, such as "Where women spend 2/3 of every day should be modern and bright," are important records of American domestic life.

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These two plates illustrating realistic depictions of butter-flies (left) and their transformation into abstract forms and ornamental patterns (right) were part of a pattern book intended to inspire designers, especially those specializing in wall coverings and textiles. Séguy achieved the exceptional vibrancy and color of the book’s 20-some plates by using pochoir stencils.

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One of the most effective marketing methods is to show clients a product in a memorable or eye-catching manner. Clever designers devised ways to incorporate samples into product literature. These examples include a colorful cover sunburst of lacquer strips, pen points and their corresponding signature styles, and colored threads indicating dye lots.

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One of the most effective marketing methods is to show clients a product in a memorable or eye-catching manner. Clever designers devised ways to incorporate samples into product literature. These examples include a colorful cover sunburst of lacquer strips, pen points and their corresponding signature styles, and colored threads indicating dye lots.

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The brothers André and Paul Vera, designers in the Art Moderne style, here present their concepts for very formal gardens emphasizing clarity, harmony, distinctive proportions, and bold color. Their plans encompassed gardens of various sizes and purposes, such as a trellised garden and gardens for beekeeping and fruit cultivation. While their ideas were in direct contrast to the curvilinear Art Nouveau designs of the day, they were very much in keeping with some theories of Le Corbusier, the Machine Age architect who was then developing his formal aesthetic. However, the use of woodblock prints for the illustrations gives this book a handcrafted feel.

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Vredeman de Vries, a Dutch painter and architect, wrote and illustrated what became one of the major guidebooks on perspective for designers, painters, and architects. Perspective had been a part of the education of such professionals since the Renaissance. The book includes a number of scenes and projections employing one- and multi-point perspective. These were essential demonstrations for artists of the day, including the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), who was said to have a copy in his library.

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Shipbuilders and marine engineers William Doxford and Sons developed the opposed piston marine oil engine. To illustrate its unusual operation, the firm devised this paper-and-board model with movable pistons and levers.

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The Yokohama Nursery, with offices in New York and Japan, was one of the largest suppliers of Japanese plants and bulbs to the Western nursery trade. With pochoir stencil illustrations presenting the vivid colors of leaves so effectively, the nursery’s export catalogs created much of the early U.S. interest in Japanese maples. Seed catalogs are a resource for Smithsonian horticulturists who design and maintain the museums’ period gardens and complementary plantings. The Smithsonian Libraries’ horticulture collection is particularly strong in 19th-century landscape design and garden practice.

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Traveling in Italy in the 1820s, Zahn recorded ornamental patterns at Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as the interiors of the 16th-century Palazzo Del Te in Mantua designed by Giuliano Romano. He published Ornamente, with its copious examples of classical, medieval, and Renaissance ornament, to educate designers in the neoclassical and Renaissance styles.

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