Category: book publishers

Bernardino del Boca

The Artwork of Bernardino del Boca

Born in the Piedmont commune of Crodo in August of 1919, Bernardino del Boca was an Italian painter, illustrator, and educator. Although best known for his book illustrations, he co-founded the publisher “L’età dell’Acquario (The Age of Aquarius)” and was the director of and contributor to its journal of the same name. Del Boca’s artwork had a crucial impact on the New Age and Theosophical movements in Italy during the 1970s. 

Bernardino del Boca was the son of Giacomo del Boca and Rosa Silvestri, parents of noble lineage who owned the Fonte Rossa mountain springs and spa in Crodo. He was introduced to Spiritualism and Theosophy at an early age by a related princess of the noble Hungarian Esterházy family who took him on several trips throughout Europe. While in the French city of Nice, del Boca met Princess Djavidan Hanem of Egypt who suggested he keep a journal. His early spiritual and genealogical interests combined with his writings became a crucial component of his future artistic production.

In 1921, del Boca and his family moved to Novara where he received his initial education. Although skilled in drawing, he did not excel in other subjects. In 1932, del Boca was given the opportunity to enter the Institut le Rosey, a renowned international boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland. At the school, he became became friends with roommates Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who later became Shah of Iran, and Ananda Mahidol, the future monarch of Siam (Thailand).

 In June of 1935, Bernardino del Boca enrolled at the Brera Art High School in Milan, an extension of the Accademia della Belle Arti di Brera whose teachers taught at both locations. Among his teachers were figurative painter and printmaker Felice Casorati and modernist Neoclassical painter Achille Funi. Del Boca graduated in 1939 and, in the same year, had his first solo exhibition. Two years later, he held an exhibition in Domodossola and was a participant at the Thirteenth Exposition of Figurative Arts of the Fascist Unions held in Turin. 

Called into military duty during the Second World War, del Boca served in Verona and later in Florence. He left Italy in 1946 and relocated in Siam (Thailand) where he lived first in Singapore and then Bangkok as a portraitist. Returning to Singapore in 1947, he worked as an architect and interior designer. In October of that year, del Boca received his second Buddhist initiation at the Temple of Han  on the Linga Archipelago’s island of Nawa Sangga. In a collaboration with artist Robin A. Kilroy, he held an exhibition in September of 1948 at the Queen Victoria Memorial in Penang. “Nightly Face”, del Boca’s first novel was published in 1948; his second novel “Nawa Sangga” was published in the following year. 

After holding the position of honorary consul in Singapore, Bernardino del Boca returned to Italy in 1949. Two years later, he took part in a collective exhibition at the Broletto di Novara, a medieval architectural structure in the city’s center. Del Boca returned to teaching while continuing to paint, write and lecture. He became the president of the theosophical group “Besant-Arundal”, a position del Boca held for forty years. After serving as a member of Italy’s National Institute for Geographic Research and Cartographic Studies, del Boca published a university-level anthropology manual for students entitled “Sotia dell’Antropologia” in 1964. 

Del Boca, in a collaboration with Theosophist and publisher Edoardo Bresci, founded the journal “L’Età dell’Acquario- Rivista Sperimentale del Nuovo Piano di Coscienza (The Age of Aquarius- Experimental Journal of the New Plane of Consciousness)” in 1970. During the next seven years, he would publish four more works including the 1971 “La Dimensione Umana (The Human Dimension)” and “La Quarta Dimensione (The Fourth Dimension)” in 1977. After his retirement from teaching in 1978, del Boca relocated to Piedmont. 

During the 1980s, Bernardino del Boca attempted to create a series of Aquarian communities he called Villaggi Verde, or Green Villages. In 1986, he relocated to the first and only village that was completed, the Villaggi Verde of San Germano di Cavallirio. In addition to publishing two more works, “Il Servizio” and “Un Paese de Amare”, del Boca organized collective trips to southern and eastern Asia, gave lectures, edited and contributed to “L’Età dell’Acquario”, and organized conferences.

After living a productive life as a Theosophist, anthropology scholar, illustrator and painter as well as an advocate for sexual liberation, Bernardino del Boca died on the ninth of December in 2001 at the age of eighty-two in the hospital at Borgomanero, Novara. His artistic production was, for the most part, neglected until the 1960s when the “visionary” aspect of his art was analyzed for the first time. During his lifetime, del Boca rarely exhibited his work. Only through a series of recent publications, conferences, and posthumous exhibitions, particularly those held at the Foundation Bernardino del Boca in 2015 and 2017, have del Boca’s artworks been thoroughly studied and promoted.

Notes: Author and researcher Elisa Rolle has an article about Bernardino del Boca on her Queer Places website that examines his work as a pioneer of the sexual and homosexual liberation movement in Italy. The article also discusses his book“Long Night in Singapore” that won the 1951 Gastaldi National Award but caused a scandal: http://www.elisarolle.com/queerplaces/a-b-ce/Bernardino%20del%20Boca.html

A more extensive biographical article on Bernardino del Boca that delves more deeply into the theosophical aspects of his art can be found on the World Religions and Spirituality Project site: https://wrldrels.org/2021/05/20/bernardino-del-boca/

The Fondazione Bernardino del Boca site is located at: https://www.fondazionebernardinodelboca.it

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Bernardino del Boca with Cat”, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Inset Image: Bernardino del Boca,, “La Quatro Dimensione, L’Evoluzione della Coscienza”, Original Publication 1977, , L’Età dell’Acquario 1995 Edition

Third Insert Image: Bernardino del Boca, “Sviatovida”, circa 1970, Fondazione Bernardino del Boca

Fourth Insert Image: Bernardino del Baco, “La Dimensione Umana”, Original Publication 1975, New Edition by Fondazione Bernardino del Boca

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Bernardino del Boca”, Gelatin Silver Print

Charles de Sousy Ricketts

The Artwork of Charles de Sousy Ricketts

Born in Geneva in October of 1866, Charles de Sousy Ricketts was a versatile British illustrator, author and printer known for his work as a book designer, typographer, and designer of theatrical sets and costume. He was the only son of Charles Robert Ricketts, a Royal Navy veteran and amateur painter, and Héléne Cornélie de Sousy, daughter of the Marquis de Sousy. Ricketts spent his formative years mainly in France and received his education through his governesses. 

After the death of his mother in 1880, Charles Ricketts relocated with his father to London where, considered too frail for school, he became largely self-educated through reading and visiting museums. In 1882, Ricketts entered the City and Guilds of London Art School where he apprenticed to wood-engraver Charles Roberts. Later that year, his father died and he became dependent on the modest support of his paternal grandfather. On his sixteenth birthday, he met his lifelong partner Charles Haslewood Shannon, a fellow student three years his senior who was studying painting and lithography. The two men lived together in both a personal and professional partnership until Ricketts’s death.

After finishing their studies, Ricketts became a commercial and magazine illustrator; Shannon took a teaching post at London’s newly founded Croyton School of Art. In 1888, Ricketts took possession of painter James Whistler’s former house, The Vale, in Chelsea which soon became a gathering place of contemporary artists. Starting in 1889 until its final issue in 1897, Ricketts and Shannon produced “The Dial”, a journal of poetry, prose, and English Pre-Raphaelite and French Symbolist illustrations. This portfolio became a major publication of the Aesthetic Movement. 

Charles Ricketts, in collaboration with Shannon, illustrated their close friend Oscar Wilde’s 1891 ”A House of Pomegranates” and the 1894 “The Sphinx”. Ricketts and Shannon worked together on the type and illustrations for editions of “Daphnis and Chloe” in 1893 and “Hero and Leander” in 1894. After initially running a small press, they founded London’s Vale Press in 1896 which published more than seventy-five books including a thirty-nine volume edition of Shakespeare’s work. Ricketts designed illustrations as wells fonts, initials, and borders specific to Vale Press. He also executed woodcut illustrations of Art Nouveau design and androgynous figures for their publications. After a 1904 fire at their printer Ballantyne Press destroyed their engraving woodcuts, Ricketts and Shannon made the decision to abandon publishing; Ricketts destroyed all the typefaces he had designed for Vale Press.

Beginning in the early 1900s, Ricketts placed his focus on painting and sculpture. He had a deep knowledge of earlier painters and was particularly influenced by the works of the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau and the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix. Among Ricketts’s many paintings are the 1904 “Betrayal of Christ”, the 1911 “The Death of Don Juan”, “Bacchus in India” painted in 1913, “Jepthah’s Daughter” painted in 1924, and the 1915 “Montezuma”, now at the Manchester Art Gallery. Over the course of his career, Ricketts produced about twenty sculptures among which are “Silence”, a memorial to his friend Oscar Wilde, and two bronze works entitled “Paolo and Francesca” and “Orpheus and Eurydice”.

From 1906 to his death, Charles Ricketts was a celebrated theatrical set and costume designer. His first commission was for a private production of s double billing of Oscar Wilde’s plays, “Salome” and “A Florentine Tragedy”, at King’s Hall in Covent Garden. In 1907, he designed costumes and stage sets for Aeschylus’s “The Persians” also performed at King’s Hall. During the early 1900s, Ricketts designed both costume and sets for many commercial theater productions including Hugo Hofmannsthal’s “Electra” in 1908, “King Lear” at the Haymarket in 1909, and two of Bernard Shaw’s plays, “The Dark Lady of the Sonnets” in 1910 and “Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress” in 1918.

After World War One, Ricketts continued his theatrical design with Shaw’s “Saint Joan” at the New Theater in 1924, “Henry VIII” at the Empire Theater in 1925 and “Macbeth” at the Princess Theater in 1926. He also designed costumes and sets  for the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company’s 1926 production of “The Mikado” at the Savoy Theater. Most of Ricketts’s designs for “The Mikado” were retained by other designers of the company for more than fifty years. Ricketts final theater designs were for the 1931 production of Ferdinand Bruckner’s “Elizabeth of England” preformed at London’s Cambridge Theater and a production of Donald Tovey’s opera “The Bride of Dionysus” staged posthumously in Edinburgh after Ricketts’s death.

As a writer, Charles Ricketts published two monographs on art as well as essays and articles  on a wide range of subjects for publications. Using the pen-name of Jean Paul Raymond, he wrote and designed two collections of short stories published in 1928 and 1933. Under the same pen-name, Ricketts wrote the 1932 “Recollections of Oscar Wilde”, an extremely personal memoir that was published after Ricketts’s death. Ricketts’s last years were were greatly effected by Charles Shannon’s serious fall and resulting permanent brain damage. The strain of the situation with the addition of overwork to finance the household contributed to the decline of Ricketts’s health and ultimately his death.

Charles de Sousy Ricketts died suddenly at age sixty-five from coronary heart disease on the 7th of October in 1931 at the Regent’s Park house. He was cremated and his ashes partly scattered in London’s Richmond Park, and the remainder buried at Arolo, Lake Maggiore in Italy. Charles Shannon outlived him by six years and died in March of 1937.

Note: The New York Public Library’s assistant curator Julie Carlsen, along with Henry W. and Albert A. Berg of the English and American Literature Collection, have written an interesting article on Ricketts and Shannon’s designs for the bindings of Oscar Wilde’s work published by Vale Press. The article can be found at: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2021/10/12/publishers-bindings-oscar-wilde-charles-shannon-charles-ricketts

Top Insert Image: George Charles Beresford, “Charles de Sousy Ricketts”, October 1903, Sepia-Toned Platinotype Print, 15.5 x 10.7 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Second Insert Image: Charles de Sousy Ricketts, Page from Ricketts’s “The Prado and Its Masterpieces”, 1923, Published by E.P. Dutton and Company, New York, Private Collection

Third Insert Image: Charles de Sousy Ricketts, Illustration and Text from Michael Field’s “The Race of Leaves”, 1901, Woodcut, The Ballantyne Press, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: George Charles Beresford, “Charles Haslewood Shannon and Charles de Sousy Ricketts”, October 1903, Modern Print from Original Negative, 11 x 15.7 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Calendar: March 8

Year: Day to Day Men: March 8

Center Stage

The eighth of March in 1761 marks the birth date of Count Jan Potocki, a Polish nobleman, linguist, ethnologist, traveller and author of the Polish Age of Enlightenment.

Born into an aristocratic family that owned vast estates across Poland, Jan Potocki was educated in the Swiss cities of Geneva and Lausanne. He frequently visited the Paris salons and toured Europe before returning to Poland in 1778. As a soldier, Potocki served twice in the Polish Army, first in 1778 with the Austrian army during the War of the Bavarian Succession, and later in 1779 as a military engineer. 

During his extensive travels across Europe, Asia and North Africa, Potocki as an early pioneer of travel literature documented prevailing customs, active wars, revolutions, and cultural awakenings. He was also one of the first ethnologists with his studies of early Slavic peoples from a linguistic and historical perspective. Fascinated with the occult, Potocki studied ancient cultures, secret societies and their rituals. As a member of the Polish Parliament, he participated in the Great Sejm, whose aim was to restore the sovereignty and reform the Commonwealth, both economically and politically. 

In 1790, Jan Potocki became the first person in Poland to fly in a hot air balloon when he accompanied French aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard on an ascent over Warsaw, an exploit that brought him public acclaim. After a period in France, he established in1788 a Warsaw publishing house, Drukamia Wolna (Free Press), and printed  pamphlets and newspapers advocating for social reforms. Potocki also established Warsaw’s first free reading room. 

Potocki’s most famous literary work, originally written in French, is the framed-tale “Manuscrit Trouvé à Saragosse (The Manuscript Found in Saragossa)”. A framed-tale is a literary technique that serves as a companion piece to a story within a story; the introductory or main narrative sets the stage for either a second narrative or a set of shorter stories. Potocki’s novel is a collection of intertwining stories of Romani, thieves, inquisitors, princesses and the brave but foolhardy hero, the infantry guard Alphonse van Worden. The stories cover the wide range of Potocki’s interests: the gothic, the erotic, the historical and the supernatural. 

The initial work of “Manuscrit Trouvé à Saragosse” were published in 1805 apart from the rest of the novel; the stories comprising the Gypsy chief’s tale were added later in 1810. Written incrementally, its final form was never exactly completed at the time of Potocki’s death.  Sections of the original French version were lost but have been back-translated into the French from a Polish translation by Edmund Chojecki in 1847. In 1965, director Wojciech Has adapted the novel into a Polish-language black and white film “The Saragossa Manuscript”, that was admired by many 1960s counterculture figures such as Jerry Garcia, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. 

Jan Potocki married twice and had five children; both marriages were the subjects of scandalous rumors, the first ended in divorce. In 1812, he retired, disillusioned and in poor health, to his estate in Uladivka in present-day Ukraine. Potocki worked on his novel during the last years of his life. Suffering from depression and clinical lycanthropy (believing he could transform into a werewolf), he committed suicide on the twenty-third of December in 1815 by shooting himself with a silver bullet blessed by his local Catholic priest. 

For his contributions to Poland, Jan Potocki was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, the highest award of merit for the Republic of Poland. He also awarded a knighthood in the Order of Saint Stanislaus, 1st Class, as well as the Imperial Order of Saint Prince Vladimir, 1st Class, the highest award for continuous civil and military service. 

Calendar: March 6

Year: Day to Day Men: March 6

Embossed in Every Song

The sixth of March in 1665 marks the publishing of the first journal in the world exclusively devoted to science. Published under the name “Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society”, this journal of natural philosophy, the equivalent of what is today science, is also the world’s longest published scientific journal. 

The first issue of “Transactions”, printed in London, was edited and published by the Royal Society’s first secretary Henry Oldenberg. The Society had resolved that the council’s minutes be composed by the secretary and printed on the first Monday of every month; any tracts published were to be revised before publication and became the property of the Royal Society. Oldenberg printed the journal at his own personal expense and was allowed by the society to retain any resulting profits. He published one hundred-thirty six issues of the “Transactions” with no financial gain except the cost of rent on his house.

The “Transactions” was a well-regulated scientific journal. At its inception, regulation in the form of registering the author and date, peer review, dissemination and archiving published articles were all implemented. Oldenberg envisioned the published journal as a collective notebook between scientists to examine new ideas and discoveries. Issue number one contained articles on the improvement of optic glasses, the first report on Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, new whale fishing in the Bermudas, and chemist Robert Boyle’s article “Experimental History of Cold”. 

Although many readers saw the journal as the official periodical of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenberg always claimed that “Transactions” was entirely his sole enterprise. From this understanding, Oldenberg retained the prospect of financial gain and credibility by association, and the Royal Society enjoyed communicating advances in science without being directly responsible for its content. It should be understood that at this time in England, publications were heavily regulated and the idea of a free press did not exist. The first English newspaper, The London Gazette, at its appearance in November of 1665 was still an official organ of the government.

In 1752, the Royal Society took control of the “Philosophical Transactions” and, as such, published it for the sole use and benefit of the society. The journal was financed through membership’s subscriptions and was edited by the society’s Committee of Papers. Although the society’s secretaries were responsible for management decisions such as printing and distribution, editorial control was done through the Committee of Papers’s weekly meetings. Records were kept regarding the authors, the source of the work, and the date the scientific paper was presented to the committee. 

Over the years, controls on membership to the Royal Society as well as the articles published in its journal became stricter. Both a more limited membership to protect the society’s reputation and a stricter peer review of articles were established. In 1887, the “Transactions” journal was separated into two categories, physical science and biological science. Sectional committees were established to cover mathematics, botany, zoology, physiology, geology as well as chemistry and physics. From 1896, authors were expected to present manuscripts in a standardized format and style; typed papers were later required to reduce errors in and speed up the process of printing.

Today “Transactions” is an established, world-wide scientific journal with about eighty-per cent of its peer-reviewed articles coming from non-United Kingdom authors. The editing is accomplished through a large professional in-house staff with a group of research Fellows assigned for each category of science. The role of the Committee of Papers was abolished and two Fellows now act as journal editors assisted by associate editors from each category. In 1997, the “Transactions” began to be published online. Articles throughout its history have included Isaac Newton’s “New Theory about Light and Colors”, Michael Faraday’s “Experimental Relations of Gold and Other Metals to Light” and Alan Turing’s 1952 “On the Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis”, among others. 

Calendar: February 1

Year: Day to Day Men: February 1

A Pose for Spring

February 1st of 1884 marks the publishing of volume one of “The Oxford English Dictionary”, designed to provide an inventory of English words in use since the mid-twelfth century. The ten-volume set was not completely published until April of 1928. The definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary, mostly in order of historical occurrence, are illustrated with approximately two-million four-hundred thousand quotations from English-language literature and records. 

In 1857, London’s Philological Society suggested the publication of the dictionary and the collection of materials quickly followed. With the appointment of Scottish lexicographer Sir James Murray as editor in chief, editorial work began in 1879. Murray, during his time as editor, was responsible for approximately half of the dictionary. This included all entries from the letter a through d, h through k, and all entries in the letters k,o,p and t.  Three more editors succeeded Murray during the course of the printing: British philologist and lexicographer Henry Bradley, Scottish language and literature professor William Alexander Craigie, and Charles Talbut Onions who became an Oxford lecturer and held the post of Fellow Librarian.

The original inventory of English words was entitled “A New English Dictionary on Historical Principals”, a twelve volume set with a one volume supplement. The 1884-1928 ten-volume edition “The Oxford English Dictionary”, initially edited by Murray and others, was the corrected and updated revision of the original set. In 1933, “The Oxford English Dictionary” was reissued again as a twelve volume set accompanied by a one volume supplement. A four-volume “Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary” that treated new words in English use, was printed between 1972 and 1986.

The second full edition of “The Oxford English Dictionary”, known as OED2, was published in 1989 by the Oxford University Press. Two more volumes of additions were added in 1993 and 1997, and work was begun on a complete revision of the entire body of work for a projected third edition.