A new finding aid to the Robert Gibbings collection at the Clark is now available via the OAC.  Gibbings (1889-1958) was an Irish author and artist best known for his wood engravings. He bought and ran the Golden Cockerel Press in Berkshire, England from 1924-1933. During and after World War II he wrote and illustrated…

Architect Robert D. Farquhar is famous in the Los Angeles area for designing a number of notable buildings, including the California Club, the Fenyes Mansion in Pasadena, and the Canfield-Moreno Estate in Silverlake.  He also designed multiple buildings for William Andrews Clark, Jr., including this library, the Alice McManus Clark Library (now Clark Administration Building)…

In 1923, Mr. Clark purchased a set of promptbooks made by actor Lark Taylor, documenting the Shakespearean productions of Julia Marlowe and E.H. Sothern in which Taylor took part.  Until last year, however, these volumes had never been cataloged.  (Oops!)  Now however, they are cataloged and discoverable through UCLA’s online library catalog and via the…

In 2008, the Clark Library purchased both the library and archive of the Savage-Armstrong family of County Antrim, Northern Ireland, a collection that contains a wide variety of material collected and produced by George Francis Savage-Armstrong (1845-1906), his children and other various family members. George’s brother, Edmund John Armstrong, was a promising poet before his…

The Clark collections hold a number of manuscript cookbooks, most of them compiled in the 17th and 18th centuries.  The item of the week this week, though, is a much more recent work, written around 1915 by Harriet Burlingame Mink (1879-1967). A part of our Montana Collection, the cookbook was donated by UCLA archivist and…

A new finding aid for a small Frederic Goudy collection is now available via the OAC.  The Clark’s Frederic W. Goudy Collection includes materials related to and honoring the career this prolific typeface designer.  Goudy created over 120 type styles including University of California Old Style, exclusively for use by the University of California Press,…

The keepsake below is one of many printed for members of the Zamorano and Roxburghe Clubs — two Californian clubs of bibliophiles who hold joint biennial meetings alternating between Northern and Southern California.  Individuals well known to UCLA and the printing community have been and continue to be members, including Ward Ritchie, Lawrence Clark Powell,…

Russell Maret is a New York letterpress printer who trained in California before setting up his own business. His recent books have been extraordinary, but his newest one, Aethelwold, Etc. (2009) goes beyond extraordinary to magnificent. At heart an alphabet book, it is gorgeously swamped in color and highly imaginative renderings of the 26 letters,…