The Old Print Gallery will be participating in this year’s Antiques in Alexandria, held at The Waterford in Springfield, VA. The show was founded in 1996 by Alexandrians who wished to have exquisite antiques readily available for purchase, to further a deep appreciation for antiques, and to raise funds to help their community. Every year since, over 100 volunteers have helped plan and produce a show with nationally known exhibitors from across the country featuring a wide array of fine American, English, Oriental and Continental furniture, silver, porcelain, rugs, paintings, jewelry, clocks, folk art, garden furniture, and other decorative arts.

We will be exhibiting many of our fine antique prints- Currier and Ives, historical prints and portraits, antique maps of the region, and more! Be sure to stop by our booth to look at our Thornton botanical prints and Audubon elephant folio prints. We will also have our original 1792 DC city plan by Andrew Ellicott on view- a spectacular piece of DC history.

Antiques in Alexandria will be held in Springfield, VA at The Waterford. The Waterford is located at 6715 Commerce Street, at the intersection of I-95 and Franconia Rd. Below is a map for visitors. Tickets cost $15/person and include entry for all three days and a show brochure. For show tickets, directions, or more information, please visit the Antiques in Alexandria website.

Today we have a new P/P post, featuring two prints by contemporary artist Michael DiCerbo and  20th century artist Edward Glannon.

Michael Di Cerbo was born in Paterson, New Jersey and studied at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He has had many one artist shows since 1975 and is listed in numerous artists’ directories including Who’s Who in American Art.  Di Cerbo is a past president of the Society of American Graphic Artists (SAGA) and is a member of Artists Equity, Boston Printmakers, Print Consortium, and Audubon Artists.  His prints have been exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad. Di Cerbo has received many awards including Presentation Print, Print Club of Albany, 2001; Beveled Edge Award, SAGA, 1998; Silver Medal Award, Audubon Artists 1994: Profile Award, Manhattan Arts Magazine, 1992. Known for his prints of cityscapes, Michael draws much of his inspiration from the concrete, steel, and glass of the modern American city. His new prints, however, are more pastoral, with expansive skies and harmonious blocks of color.

For more than sixty years, Edward Glannon was facinated with the American landscape. “I grew up in a deep and narrow Pennsylvania valley,” Glannon wrote in the journal he maintained from the time he was a young man, “and I learned to love the poetry of the earth and the music of landscapes. It has motivated me all my life.” While he was an experienced and devoted painter, Glannon began lithography in his sixties.  Using a old nineteenth century press and antique printing stones, Glannon printed all editions himself in his studio. His lithographs, like his oils and watercolors, reflect his continuing veneration for the American landscape.

Image on Left: Bird Against Sky by Edward Glannon. Lithograph, 1976. Ed. 27.

Image on Right: Mayo Mist by Michael Di Cerbo. A la poupee – five colors, etching, aquatint, and drypoint, 2011.

Today we are highlighting a great and scarce series of chromolithographs from Svenska Folket (translated: Swedish Customs) by Onkel Adam. The collection was published by Alber Bonnier in Stockholm, circa 1860. The lithographs were done by the very talented printmaker Em. Baerentzen, who worked out of Copenhagen during the nineteenth century.

This wonderful series is subtitled, in English, “The Swedish People, Their Customs and Manners in Pictures and Legends.” The series included 12 images, all titled in Swedish, German and English, show people at such everyday trades and activities, such as bear-hunting, logging, attending church and enjoying a country fair.  Five additional plates exist in only Swedish. The Old Print Gallery is lucky to have 7 chromolithographs from this series.

The process of lithography is based on the mutual antipathy of oil and water. To make a lithograph, the artist uses an oily or greasy crayon to draw on a flat, ground limestone. The surface of the stone is flooded with water, which is repelled by the greasy areas, and covers only the areas where the drawing isn’t. Printers ink, which is oil-based, is applied to the stone with a roller and it, in turn, sticks only to the greasy sections. The stone is then covered with a sheet of paper and run through a high-pressure press to make the print. A chromolithograph, which these prints are, is another term for a color lithograph. The artist involves a large number of lithographic stones, to allow for a complex color separation. The term is often used to describe late nineteenth-century color lithographs, which were printed to emulate or reproduce paintings for the general public.

Below are our seven chromolithographs from Svenska Folket. 

Timmerflottning. Timber-Floating.

Bevaringscossar. Young Conscripts.

Slipstensbrott. (Orsa, Dalarne). The Grindstone Quarries.

Linberedning. Flaxdressing.

Ljustring. (Blekinge). Fish-Spearing.

Oxdrift. (Smaland). Drove of Oxen.

Bjornjact (Jemtland). The Bear Hunt.

(Double-click to enlarge). Prints featured can be viewed and purchased here.

Today we have a new P/P post, featuring two architectural-themed prints. Our older print is  from 19th century architect John Plaw’s “Sketches for Houses, Villas, and Rural Houses”. The prints in this book feature country homes and their floor plan, offering a great visual contrast between the exact and meticulous lines of an architectural plan, and the unique manifestations and personality of a lived-in home.  In our contemporary piece by Steven Yamin, the  two blend together, with a punchy neon color palette and stark grid-lines.

Image on Left: Plate 7 (House with Floor Plan) by John Plaw. Published by J. Taylor, London. Aquatint with original hand color, 1800.

Image on Right: Project #77 by Steven Yamin. Handcolored etching, drypoint, mezzotint, and aquatint, 1983.

(Double-click on image to view larger).

Find these great gifts (and many others) on our website here: Red Hot, Rosa Bifera Macrocarpa, Le Plan de Paris, and Duet. They are also available in our Georgetown gallery.

Today we have a new P/P post, featuring two yachting prints. The older print,  is a chromolithograph, after a famous painting by Frederick S. Cozzens. It is plate XXII in ” American Yachts.” The more recent print is by early 20th century artist Richard Florsheim. The print we feature of his, Moored Boats, is an artist proof, printed before the  full edition of 250. It was published by Associated American Artists, a gallery and publishing house founded in 1935 by Reeves Lewenthal. Associated American Artists was founded to bring art to the middle class in post-depression era America, and featured many of the great 20th century Regionalist printmakers- Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and Peggy Bacon, to name a few.

Image on Left: In Down East Waters- Boston Bay. By Frederick S. Lozzens. Engraved by Armstrong & Co. Published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, NY. Chromolithograph, 1884.

Image on Right: Moored Boats. By Richard Florsheim. Published by Associated American Artists. Lithograph, 1961.

Below is a sampling of the new prints we have in the gallery, but the best way to see our always- growing collection is to stop by our Georgetown shop. Additionally, you can view these new acquisitions on our website here.

Bruce Waldman- “I think of my work as dealing much more with the turbulence of my emotions than about technique, process, or any intellectual method or idea. I use the techniques that I have learned as tools only. Whether I am doing a figure, a landscape or still-life, I am viewing from inside my body; and usually the image is speaking more about my feelings than about the objects I’m depicting.”

Linda Adato- “I start the image abstractly from the geometries of things around me, their configuration of line, form, shadow, etc. In the journey from drawing to final print, I do not so much execute the initial idea as I develop it in the course of the intaglio process. I am sometimes surprised by the “realistic” image.”

Takumune Ishiguro- “To draw a picture is to express myself. The motif of my work comes from ‘Nature’ – vitality created from nature, hue, shape, air, smell, etc. It is not the motif created systematically, but the motif created naturally that is put on my canvas, not directly but through the filter of ‘myself’.  Etching has many attractive expressions such as lines or areas caused by corrosion and unplanned occurrences.  A completed work is a mirror of myself.”

Masaaki Noda- “I like to express the inner and outer worlds of nature for pictorial dynamism. They radiate energy and originate either from the tellurian or the celestial world: perpetual motion which embraces abstraction through the potential and momentum of its intrinsic energy of nature. 

Alan Petrulis-  ”Technique has never been more than a means to an end for me. I have no compulsion to follow rules, show off my expertise, or do something new for its own sake. Having worked in many mediums both new and old I feel most comfortable creating simple line etchings by a method that has changed little over the past four hundred years. “

Richard Sloat- “Woodcut and etching have been my field of creation. Both these forms of prints exude a visual clarity and depth of feeling. We, in viewing them, are tied into the visual world at an essential level, an affirmation of our own life’s journey.”

Robert Birmelin-  ”It is not unusual to find that a relative or friend’s memory of a past event clashes with one’s own. Indeed, how often do two witnesses to the same crime contradict one another as to what really occurred? As an artist, I found myself seeking a visual structure that would be an active metaphor for such a state of mind – a structure continuous and spatially rich that initially seems to offer an uncomplicated, expected orientation and then self subverts, challenging the observer to recognize the claims of another equally visually insistent counter-reading. Our minds are restless, making choices, fluctuating between possibilities as we strive to interpret, to judge between contending truths. These paintings live in mid-thought, in the space of that uncertainty – an all too familiar space in a world of bewildering choice.”

Our more recent print is from contemporary NY-based artist Emily Trueblood. The Old Print Gallery held a three month long show of Emily Trueblood’s work in the fall of 2011.

Image on Left: Morning Snow on Bamboo, Japan. (A).  By Lilian May Miller. Color woodcut, 1920.

Image on Right: Snowy Tree by Emily Trueblood. Two-block linocut, 1996.