John M. Carrera - Pictorial Websters Pocket Dictionary

PICTORIAL WEBSTERS Pocket Dictionary G. & C. MERRIAM DICTIONARY ENGRAVINGS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY PRINTED ALPHABETICALLY AS A SOURCE FOR CREATIVITY IN THE HUMAN BRAIN JOHN M. CARRERA AUTHOR, COMPOSER, PRINTER Text copyright 2012 by John M. Carrera Original edition of Pictorial Websters 2007 by John M. Carrera All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher. ISBN: 978-1-4521-1910-6 The Library of Congress has previously cataloged this title under ISBN: 978-1-4521-0164-4 Cover Design and Typesetting by Eloise Leigh Chronicle Books LLC 680 Second Street San Francisco, CA 94107

In the summer of 1995, while poking around my grandmothers stone farmhouse, I found a tattered 1898 Websters International Dictionary under my grandfathers favorite reading chair. The disintegrating sheepskin covers were detached and a number of browned and brittle sections were falling out from the back of the book. The loose pages revealed an eighty-page section devoted entirely to the illustrations of the dictionary: a stunning array of odd and wonderful animals and machines printed by categories. The fantastic variety of subjects was matched only by the detail and variety of engraving techniques. Shortly before discovering that fateful Websters , I had completed a collaborative artists book for an exhibit at the Dibner Library at the Smithsonian Institution that grappled with questions of the origin of ideas.

I realized a book filled with disparate images, such as those from the Websters , could be an artistic experiment to test my hypothesis on the origin of creativity: that new ideas arise from the recombinations of old ideas. It would also be an important and beautiful visual reference. That fall I embarked on a ten-year odyssey that culminated in a book called Pictorial Websters ; printed by hand on a letterpress from the original engravings and bound by hand and sold to institutions and collectors for $3,500. I then worked with Chronicle Books to make Pictorial Websters: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities which was a perfected version of the same book with additional essays written about the engravers and the history of dictionary illustration in America. This was printed and bound as a pleasing volume with a cover price of $35.00. But the editors at Chronicle Books felt that the public might still want something more affordable and accessible.

When I was approached about making a pocket sized, version of Pictorial Websters I bristled. The book is what it is. Ive spent over a decade of my life on this project already, I thought. Then I saw the dummy of the book the great designers at Chronicle had in mind and it was like the experience I had when I first saw the engravings in their dusty cases in the dark, cool basement of the Sterling Library at Yale University. I was immediately smitten with the size and heft of the little book. I carried it around with me in my back pocket and pulled it out whenever I could to admire it.

I started laying images within the pages and realized the smaller-sized book would challenge me to create an even more powerful distillation of the book. And I started thinking: Who says I got it right the first time, anyway? And wouldnt it be fun to try another way of organizing the images? I remembered the very first dummy I made for the book was closer to this same size. Yes, small is beautiful. Good design is elemental. Although fewer in number than in Pictorial Websters , the engravings in this work are reproduced from the nineteenth-century engravings used in Websters Dictionaries printed by the G. & C.

Merriam Co. (George and Charles Merriam bought the rights to the official Websters in 1847, four years after Noah Webster died.) These engravings were borrowed from the 10,000 plus engravings and their exact metal duplicates called electrotypes held by the Arts of the Book Collection at Yale University. Wood engravings are created through a reduction process on the end-grain of boxwood using sharp little tools called burins. Boxwood is soft, but has incredibly dense grain, which allows for great detail. To print the engravings, ink is rolled onto the carved block then that block is pressed into the paper. The images in the book span two distinctive eras in American wood engraving.

Black Line engravings, also called American Style, are made by making or transferring a line drawing directly onto the face of the boxwood. Then, using variously shaped burins, the engraver carves away all the wood except for the lines of the drawing. Well-known engraver, John Andrew, was hired to make the engravings for the 1859 and 1864 Websters . What is forgotten today is that each line in Black Line engravings was imbued with meaning. As Hiram Merrill, an apprentice in John Andrews shop, explained: [W]ood engraving was held within limits established by tradition: a certain kind of line for skies, another for flesh, hair, foliage, drapery, water, rocks, foreground, background, etc., all with meaning and beauty in themselves. Once a line was cut it must not be modified in any way, and such a thing as cutting across the lines was regarded with horror. By the time the International Dictionary was printed in 1890, the New School of engraving was ubiquitous in America.

Notable for its use of photographic methods to transfer images, the New School engravings have a more scientific and clinical feel to them. The old horror of cutting across the line is gone, as the emphasis of the New School was not line but tone. After Websters New International Dictionary was published in 1909, the engraving process was abandoned. Images that were new to the 1934 Websters New International Dictionary , Second Edition and the 1961 Websters Third New International Dictionary were printed from mounted copper plates made from line drawings. These later cuts make an interesting contrast to the wood engravings, not only for their content but also for their style and execution. The key following this introduction explains the letters that accompany each image indicating in which dictionary each engraving originally appeared.

The Pocket Pictorial Websters can be enjoyed as a Portable Wonder Cabinet of Nineteenth-Century America. It is filled with both the factual and the fantastic. Like a surrealists collection of fabulous objects, collected to prompt the unconscious flow of ideas, this book may be used to unlock your own innermost thoughts or help spark your imagination. Humans instinctively look for connections between proximal objects. When you study a page, your brain immediately starts finding commonalities to find some way to link the various objects. The thread that connects them is often something new that you have never before considered.

The farther removed two things are, the wilder the thread that connects them, but often the more powerful the idea. Because, truly, everything in the universe is connected somehow: its just a question of figuring out the connection. When the reader opens a page of this book to an image for which he or she has a particular association, that engraving may start as the focus of the page. Then, by associating unknown images into the context of the known one, that page will begin to develop a story. The titles are supplied to give names and subtext to the images. The numbers create a numerical tag, a tether to a deeper order of the universe.

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