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MOVABLE AND MECHANICAL BOOKS FROM THE BRENDA FORMAN COLLECTION
Greeting card with movable doll. Nineteenth century.
This fragile hand-painted card is an early example of a movable. Its text addresses the little charming doll figure as "Dear simpering, fascinating Miss." She does indeed simper and fascinate as her billowing blue skirts move stiffly and she peeks out from under her tiny bonnet.
Delcourt, Pierre. Les Amis de Polichinelle. Paris: A. Capendu, [1890s].
We see Madame Polichinelle dressed to the nines, and yet we are not deceived. Bright colors, rich materials, a fluttering fan, a wig, and glasses do not a lady make.
As is true of all these early books, the movable elements are simple and fragile. The "living pictures" in this work confine their mechanics to the back-and-forth motion of the seesaw and the rocking horse. Each scene strongly conveys and comments on a privileged nineteenth-century lifestyle in which the children are dressed elegantly, Christmas is bountiful, and Mother and Father watch over their family in loving embrace.
La Bella y el Monstruo. Barcelona: Manen, 1951
This Spanish tableau of "Beauty and the Beast" condenses the story to fit into two panels. The monster turns into a prince in a blink of the eye, and the happy ending appears almost before the story has started. Unlike the sentimental prettiness of German and English illustrations, the Spanish drawings are bolder and the colors more vivid.
This book is the fourteenth annual published by Raphael Tuck. It combines a number of stories, poems, and illustrations with "come to life" pictures.
Kubasta, Voitech. Robinson Crusoe. [Prague]: Artia; London: Bancroft, [1960s].
Voitech Kubasta brought the pop-up to new creative and physical heights. His vivid drawings enlivens Robinson Crusoe's tropical island and promises adventure and excitement in a colorful dramatic world.
Hale, Kathleen, illus. Puss in Boots. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951.
Houghton Mifflin published this book as part of its "peep-show" series. It provides a 360-degree carousel world composed of layered scenes in which Puss can cleverly maneuver and engineer a happy ending. The stage format of the tableau invites children to script, direct, and add to the fairytale.
Deans New Dress Book: Rose Merton the Little Orphan. London: Dean, [1860].
Every cliche of a nineteenth-century heroine's life finds its way into this book. Rose Merton, virtuous and trusting orphan, overcomes all manner of adversity after being tricked from her aunt's house and kidnapped by gypsies. The book conveys her various hardships and triumphs by using different kinds of fabric in her dress. For example, as her fortunes sink, her pretty pink and white skirt gets exchanged for a plaid rag. The use of real cloth and ribbon is a rare novelty effect.
The Speaking Picture Book: A New Picture Book with Characteristical Voices. N.p.: T. B., [1880s].
This remarkable piece, almost a century and a quarter old, still produces its full range of sounds when the operator pulls the knob and string mechanisms along the book's back edge. Each sound accompanies an illustration, giving life to goats, cuckoos, and cows.
In the study of male anatomy, each foldout panel shows a particular system in the human body. The book emphasizes each of these systems at the expense of the whole. We get no sense of how the blood, muscles, nerves, and organs work together. The male lacks any specific genitalia and reproductive organs, but his head opens nicely to reveal the brain behind that well-coiffed cranium.
On loan from Karen Van Lengen.
In contrast to her male counterpart, this female model of anatomy highlights reproduction. One set of foldout panels depicts a child in the womb, while the rest of the large-scale images show circulatory, nervous, digestive, and musculature systems. The editor of the series seemed to feel no particular need to demonstrate the presence of any gray matter behind this woman's sweet facade with her demurely dropped eyes.
On loan from Karen Van Lengen.
Apian, Peter. Cosmographicus Liber Petri Apiani Mathematici Studiose Collectus. Landshutae: Impensis P. Apiani, 1524. From the Tracy W. McGregor Library of American History.
This is the first edition of Peter Apianus' Cosmographia, a theoretical work on geography. The book is one of the first to take advantage of insights gleaned from the discovery of the New World, while its volvelles (revolving wheels) are early instances of the use of movable parts in a printed volume. The operator can use these wheels to make geographical calculations.
The use of foldouts and layered flaps of paper to depict anatomy started with Andreas Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, published in Basel in 1543. Unlike that predecessor, the nineteenth-century anatomy books in this section show a more complete understanding of the workings of the human body. However, they also reveal their cultural context-the man stands naked and the woman wears a discreet wrap.
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