Author Archives: Suzanne Reller

Update on William Morris Project

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By Lilia Walsh

A wood-engraved portrait of Morris by John Depol, from the book William Morris Master-Printer by Frank Colebrook

A wood-engraved portrait of Morris by John Depol, from the book William Morris Master-Printer by Frank Colebrook.

William Morris was a designer of stained glass, tapestries, wallpaper, chintzes, furniture, books, and typefaces. He was also a preservationist, socialist, poet, novelist, lecturer, calligrapher, translator of classic Icelandic and early English sagas, and founder of the Kelmscott press. He was born in 1834, and died at 62 in 1896, due to (according to his physician); “simply being William Morris, and having done more work than most ten men.” Morris became involved with socialist causes in the late 1870s. He found it impossible to separate esthetic issues from social and political ones, to him social reform was simply an extension of his arts and crafts production. Continue reading →

From Bremerhaven to the West End: The Papers of Arthur Herndon

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By Katherine Krueger

One of the best parts of being a College-Conservatory of Music student working in the Archives & Rare Books Library is learning about the history of UC, in particular CCM. The personal papers of tenor Arthur Herndon, one of the first African Americans to receive a bachelor’s degree from the College Conservatory of Music (1961), have now been processed and are available in the ARB library. Mr. Herndon was born in Cincinnati’s West End in 1932 and received his early musical training in school and church choirs. In 1946 at the age of 14, Mr. Herndon made his performance debut singing the role of the wren in Gabriel Pierne’s St Francis of Assisi in the Cincinnati May Festival.  Continue reading →

New University Archives Collection Documents Implementation of UC's Master Plan

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By Janice Schulz

There have been many times in the past thirty years when the campus community swore that “UC” actually stood for “Under Construction.” Indeed, since the Campus Master Plan was developed in 1991 with the planning assistance of San Francisco design firm Hargreaves Associates, we have been dodging orange cones, construction tape, and dirt piles in the quest for a campus that would enhance the educational value of the University.

The UC unit responsible for carrying out the Master Plan and for managing the physical environment of the University is the office of Planning+Design+Construction. Headed by the University Architect, Planning+Design+Construction handles capital and renovation projects, space management, environmental graphics, sustainability, real estate, and construction for all UC campuses. Continue reading →

T. M. Berry Project: The 1949 Election

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By Laura Laugle

It seems that smear campaigns fueled by fictitious rumors are nothing new to politics. Of course, most have known this to be true for quite some time. In fact, politicians in ancient Greece began pulling the proverbial wool about five minutes after the words demos and cratos were combined, but here we have one more piece of evidence to add to the already mountainous pile.

Headline - "Berry Asks $100,000 for Red Tag Continue reading →

Frank Lloyd Wright on Suicide Watch!

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By Kevin Grace

Well, not really.  One of the great things about working with archives is finding a jewel now and then that casts a light on an event or situation, or illuminates more fully the character of someone famous.  The letter you see here provides one of those glimmering moments.  In the Archives & Rare Books Library, we hold the records and documents of the Contemporary Arts Center, a great institution and a prime exhibitor of modern art in the United States.  In fact, it was founded in 1939 as the Modern Art Society, and its exhibitions over the decades have featured groundbreaking and provocative art from Moholy-Nage and the Bauhaus movement to Jasper Johns and Jim Dine.  The controversial showing of Robert Mapplethorpe’s photographs in 1990 still draws worldwide research and attention. Continue reading →

T. M. Berry Project: 'Stumble upon' Sleuthing

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By Laura Laugle

“Hey, look what I found!” I’ve been saying that an awful lot lately. I can’t help it; I keep coming across interesting and sometimes funny items of historical significance. In the past two weeks I’ve found photos of Berry with Martin Luther King, a letter with an authentic signature from W. E. B. DuBois, photographs of Donald Rumsfeld from 1969, and a frankly terrifying copy of Enquirer Magazine from 1972 which contains both an advertisement for a red shag bedspread and a photo of Burt Reynolds lying on a bearskin rug, clad only in a smile and a strategically placed hand. Luckily for me, not all Telegram to Berry from White Housediscoveries are quite so… errr… revealing. Continue reading →

50 Minutes-1 Book

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By Kevin Grace

Cover of the Moser BibleThe next 50 Minutes-1 Book lunchtime talk in the Archives & Rare Books Library will be Thursday, February 24, in the Schott Seminar Room, 814 Blegen Library at 12:00 noon.

January’s gathering to talk about anthropodermic bindings was well-attended and a lot of fun.  This month the topic is the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible, a masterpiece of book design and illustration by Barry Moser.  Moser is recognized as one of the foremost bookwrights in the world and his Bible, completed in 1999, is arguably one of the most beautiful books ever printed.  Here in ARB, Moser’s edition is often used by classes in book history, graphic design, art history, English literature, and religion. Continue reading →

T. M. BERRY PROJECT: MYSTERY SOLVED!

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Written by Laura Laugle

Click image to see a larger version

Ever since finding the photo below I’ve been attempting to find its origin. As I stated in my previous blog post, Hmmm…, the photo was found in an envelope with other, non-related pictures from the collection. Not too long after posting the picture on the blog, I received a tip from the Berry family that the King photo and the JFK photo I posted along with it may have been taken while Berry was at the White House at the invitation of President Kennedy on June 21, 1963. Looking through Kennedy’s diaries for that time, I found that the meeting Berry attended was specifically for lawyers, so King probably wasn’t present. There was however another meeting listed in Kennedy’s diary for June 22 which Dr. King did attend. It is therefore very possible that Berry and King could have had overlapping visits to the White House and met in that context. Continue reading →

Mick and Mack Discovery

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Written by Lilia Walsh

Recently, my job as student assistant in the Archives and Rare Books Library has led me to begin an inventory of all of the UC student newspapers in the collection. While trying to find when the title of the newspaper changed names from University News to The Bearcat in the 1900s, I stumbled across a humorous and perplexing cartoon featuring one of the marble lions which now stand in front of the McMicken building: Mick and Mack.

The cartoon, from the October 22nd, 1919 issue, is titled “Freshmen, Profit by Experience.” It depicts two freshmen pledging “never again” and standing in front of Mick or Mack, which has stripes across its body and a brush and bottle of acid paint remover at its feet.

Mick and Mack Continue reading →

The Archives & Rare Books Library makes the student bucket list!

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Written by Kevin Grace

See  http://www.newsrecord.org/living/college-living/pre-grad-bucket-list-race-begins-1.2444785.

Beyond the unusual however (and that includes a ghost and the jawbone of an ass), we’re the go-to place for UC history and everything associated with it,  along with primary source material in urban studies, local history, rare books, German-Americana, local government records and a wealth of other collections.  Come to us for help in doing your course-assigned research or ideas on how to make that paper really stand out for the best grade.  With our resources we can help students become critical thinkers.  For more information, go to http://www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/arb/index.html.