December 18, 2014 by btylr | Comments Off on Winter Festival
As the semester winds down, we here at Digital Production Services hope your winter break is as enjoyable as this Russian winter festival from the early 1800s. Carl Ivanovitch Kollmann’s (1788–1846) watercolor is from a set of 29 scenes from 1817, part of the library’s Anne S. K. Brown Military collection.
November 5, 2014 by rness | Comments Off on The Battle of Borodino
Detail from Battle of Borodino. Steel engraving by J. B. Allen (1803–1876).
Just over a decade ago, a box of prints depicting French battles from 1811 and onward was selected from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection for digitization. Looking back, we see that on September 13th, 2004, a print from this box was entered into our internal tracking system, assigned the digital object ID of askb000001, and was digitized.
Peter Harrington, curator of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, explains that the engraving, by James Baylis Allen and printed by Gad and Keningale of London in 1850, is based on a large painting (4ft x 7ft) by the noted British Royal Academician, George Jones. Jones painted and exhibited numerous battle scenes throughout his career, especially those depicting the Battle of Waterloo, for which he earned the sobriquet ‘Waterloo Jones’. Here, Jones has captured a moment in the Battle of Borodino, fought in Russia on September 7th, 1812. Now part of London’s Tate Gallery collection, the original oil painting was probably commissioned by Robert Vernon and was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1829. The Tate’s display caption reads:
“The battle of Borodino was fought outside Moscow on 7 September 1812. It was the last action before Napoleon’s army entered the city on 14 September. Here, Napoleon stands in the right foreground, alongside his famous horse, Marengo. His cavalry commander, Marshal Murat, commander, is to the left. In the distance, the French attack Kutuzov’s Russian army. Their triumph was short-lived as Moscow was burned by the Russians and the French would soon endure their terrible retreat through the winter snows.”
Battle of Borodino by George Jones
The steel engraving, part of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, was executed at the behest of the proprietors of the Vernon Gallery, where the oil painting once hung, and was published in The Art Journal on August 1, 1850 (vol. 12, pg. 308).
A decade ago, we would have had difficulty imagining digitizing, cataloging, and publishing over 25,000 objects from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection. And yet, on Friday, October 31st, 2014, a 19th century sheet music series featuring lithographs of uniforms from various countries was published to the Brown Digital Repository, bringing the number of digitized Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection to 26,639.
For more information on the the works of George Jones, see Peter Harrington, ‘The Battle Paintings of George Jones, R.A. (1786-1869), Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, Vol. LXVII, Number 272, Winter 1989, pp. 239-252.
July 11, 2014 by lelgin | Comments Off on A more typical look at the camera room
Since I often concentrate on more involved or difficult setups, I thought it might be good to take a look at a setup that we are most likely to encounter at DPS on a day-to-day basis. This image shows an album of watercolors depicting the uniforms of European soldiers from 1791-1808, and represents just one of the over 25,000 digitized objects from the Prints, Drawings and Watercolors from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, one of the foremost American collections of material devoted to the history and iconography of soldiers and soldiering. This is our basic reprographic setup: our digital back is mounted on a specialized lens; and two softboxes (only one pictured) are positioned at the same angle to, and equidistant from, the shooting platform.
We have multiple ways that we can approach digitizing a bound volume. Depending on its size and condition, we have different book cradles that we can use to either provide non-invasive, gentle support to a fragile book, or to lightly press open and flatten the pages of more robust, tightly-bound items. Because this book was relatively small, and bound very loosely, I chose to simply lay it flat on the platform (which is covered in 1/2″ thick foam core) and use a foam wedge to support the opposite side of the book. To keep the foam in place, I used a covered brick placed directly behind the foam. Here, the image (from the reprographic camera’s point of view) shows that I’m photographing the back of an illustration; we generally photograph both the front and back of all our materials.
We also make sure to include a target in each image. You’ll notice I’m using a medium-sized target made by Image Science Associates here, sitting atop a thin wood block. It’s important to keep the target in focus as I move through the book, which means that the target must be the same distance from the camera as the page that I am photographing. We use a variety of tools to make sure the target and page are the same distance from the camera – foam, wood blocks, etc., – and you can see my extra, smaller target as well as additional blocks I have at the ready as I move through the pages of the book.
I should note that while this is a more typical setup, each object presents its own set of requirements to both care for the actual item but also produce the best quality, most viable digital image possible. Some are certainly more straightforward than others, and some come with surprises like folds that won’t settle or rippling pages. Our setup will start basically the same (support the object, correct focus and lighting) and then we move, with adjustments here and there, to the final product.
June 26, 2014 by btylr | Comments Off on The Accordion Player
The month of June was designated National Accordion Awareness Month in 1989, which makes 2014 its 25th anniversary. Highlighted below is a pen and wash sketch drawn by Horace Day (1909–1984) during World War II, part of the Brown University Library’s Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection. The Brown Digital Repository currently features over 130 of Day’s artworks.
“Accordion Player” by Horace Day
June 12, 2014 by rness | Comments Off on Images of the Great War
Over 25,000 prints, drawings, and watercolors from the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection have been digitized and added to the Brown Digital Repository, a portion of which feature World War I subject matter. Events surrounding the centennial of World War I (1914-1919) mean that some of this artwork will be displayed in public exhibitions. In April, an exhibit titled “Images of the Great War: The European Offensives – 1914-1916, World War I Prints and Drawings from the Anne S.K. Brown University Library” opened at the President Woodrow Wilson House in Washington D.C. The exhibit presents multiple perspectives on the war, and was co-curated by Peter Harrington, curator of the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, and Stephanie Daugherty, curator at the President Woodrow Wilson House. Peter Harrington feels that the significance of the thirty-five prints and drawings on exhibit is that “they offer an interesting contrast between those produced for the home front, often for commercial purposes, and the images created by the soldiers themselves.” Among the prints created for commercial purposes is this colored plate after the Dutch propaganda cartoonist Louis Raemaekers, depicting three French infantrymen guarded by a German soldier. The image was published in London for the British Weekly “Land and Water” and can be viewed in The “Land & Water” edition of Raemaekers’ cartoons.
Read more about the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection prints highlighted in the exhibit (on view through August, 2014) here and on the Brown University Library News blog.
French Prisoners of War, c. 1914-1915. Louis Raemaekers.
February 7, 2014 by btylr | 7 Comments
Porcelain figures originally commissioned by John Nicholas Brown II (1900–1979) are currently on exhibit at the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. library through April 25, 2014. Brown II was a civilian-status Lieutenant Colonel, Special Cultural Advisor for Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) in Europe toward the end of World War II — as well as husband to collector Anne Seddon Kinsolving Brown, the founder of the Library’s military art collection (a substantial part of which has been digitized for online viewing). While the 21 porcelains currently on display in the library were not salvaged works per se, they were commissioned by Brown in 1945 while he was a “monuments man” in Europe.
Thanks to a movie opening on February 7, 2014, directed by George Clooney and loosely based on historical accounts, the “monuments men” have been making a resurgence in both popular media and the cultural heritage community: from features in the New York Times (re: monuments women, as well), to educational reference resources showcasing the retrieved artworks (Scholars Resource set featuring 111 salvaged works), to recent commentaries by associated museums (“In the Footsteps of the Monuments Men: Traces from the Archives at the Metropolitan Museum”).
The image shown below, a porcelain commissioned by John Nicholas Brown II in late 1945 while serving with MFAA, was taken by Digital Production Services for the library’s exhibition publicity. Curator Peter Harrington describes the context of its commission:
While John Nicholas Brown was working with the allied forces in Germany in 1945 reporting on stolen art works, he visited the factory at Nymphenburg in Bavaria and ordered 21 porcelain figures for his wife, Anne S. K. Brown. Subsequent additions to this set came from the Dresden porcelain factory. Today these porcelains form a unique segment of the foremost American collection devoted to the history and iconography of soldiers and soldiering.
August 30, 2013 by btylr | Comments Off on Civil War General Hawkins’ sword to return to Annmary Brown Memorial
As announced earlier this summer in a Brown University press release and on the Library News blog, a silver Tiffany presentation sword once owned by General Rush Hawkins (Annmary Brown Memorial benefactor, 1831–1920) is returning to Brown. The sword was stolen from Brown sometime during the 1970s, and subsequently switched ownership at least four times.
Shown below are two portraits of a young Rush Hawkins: a 1863 engraving by John Chester Buttre based on a photo by Mathew Brady (click image below for a zoomable image view), and a 1860 portrait by Jacob D. Blondel currently housed in the Annmary Brown Memorial building (photographed by DPS for a Memorial promotional brochure).
Hawkins by Buttre/Brady
Hawkins portrait by Blondel
Cabinets in the front section of the Annmary Brown Memorial, pictured below, showcase swords from the Cyril and Harriet Mazansky British Sword Collection, part of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection.
Swords from the Cyril and Harriet Mazansky British Sword Collection (Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection). Photo: Lindsay Elgin.
Swords from the Cyril and Harriet Mazansky British Sword Collection (Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection). Photo: Lindsay Elgin.
The Library will officially celebrate the return of Hawkins’ presentation sword on November 7, 2013 at 3:00 p.m., at the Annmary Brown Memorial. The event will feature brief presentations, a performance by the Higher Keys (Brown’s oldest co-ed a cappella group), and refreshments.