By Adrienne Rusinko
August brings the wind down of the summer, but stickers are still going strong! A limited run of stickers are now available at Special Collections Firestone, Special Collections Mudd, and the Princeton University Library (PUL) Makerspace.
Études & idées de Décoration Moderne / Claudius Denis, 2004-0010F, Graphic Arts
Claudius Denis (1878-1947) was a painter and engraver from Lyon, France. During World War I, while mobilized with France’s mountain infantry, the Chasseurs Alpins, Denis was captured by the Germans. He drew often while imprisoned. The German soldiers asked him for portraits and sketches. He was repatriated to France due to a severe infection from an injury he sustained during his capture, and after his return, he was able to make a comfortable living selling the art he created while imprisoned. In 1920, he took a job as an art teacher in Paris, which provided him time to paint.
During the 1920s, he began working with manufacturers to produce designs for textiles and wallpaper. It was during this time that he published Études & idées de Décoration Moderne, an Art Nouveau study comprised of 33 plates of floral-inspired designs. This sticker is his interpretation of the cyclamen plant, known more commonly in English as the sowbread or swinebread.
The Lobster’s Voyage to the Brazils, 3723 Eng 18, Cotsen Children’s Library
This deluged duel is an illustration from the children’s book The Lobster’s Voyage to the Brazils, written by an unknown author. This short tale, which is primarily a vehicle for a borderline-unbearable amount of early 19th-century fish puns, details the adventures of a lobster making his way to Brazil and the various creatures he encounters on the way.
When our lobster protagonist finally arrives at his promised land, he is immediately pulled from the water and passed to the ship’s chef, who plans to boil him in water. The lobster “receives soon his warrant of grace, / and with shouts is proclaime’d the first King1 of his race.” Fortunately, for those of us not intimately familiar with early 1800s fisherman slang, the footnote lets us in on the joke:
- King of the Lobsters. A species of Lobster well known by that honorable denomination. ↩︎
Monarchy or No Monarchy in England / William Lilly, 14432.586.2, Rare Books
17th-century astrologist William Lilly published Monarchy or No Monarchy in England in 1651, which contained a series of prophecies about the country. Though it accurately predicted several outcomes of the English Civil War, it is most known for the 19 “hieroglyphs” at the back of the volume, a series of woodcut images, including one that seemingly prophesied the 1665 Great Fire of London. The accuracy of this prediction was so alarming that he was summoned to a Parliamentary Committee in 1666 under suspicion that he had set the fire himself to give credence to his prediction, and was accused of sedition. Fortunately for Lilly, he had had several friends in high places, and he was able to argue that he had not accurately predicted the date, and was released.
The celestial sticker comes from the last image, which depicts the sun, the moon, and several cherubs over four trumpeting angels. Lilly’s images were intended to be coded in several layers of symbolism, but this likely represents the fourth of seven trumpets from the Book of Revelation, wherein a third of the sun, the moon, and the stars are darkened.
Decalcomania is a limited monthly release of stickers made available at Special Collections Firestone, Special Collections Mudd, and the PUL Makerspace. All images are selected from materials held by Special Collections. Check out the Special Collections website for information about visiting our reading rooms.
Did we run out of your favorite sticker? Do you want to make your own? Head over to the PUL Makerspace! Design your own or reprint a Decalcomania sticker using the cutting machines.
Digital images of some of the materials in Special Collections can be found in the catalog and finding aids. Our blogs and Digital PUL have collection highlights.
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