In Nomine Patris: A 1590 Illustrated Edition of the “Dietenberger” Bible

by walnutts Posted on March 22, 2012

Pictured here is an exceptionally rare and fantastic, original 1590 edition of the illustrated German-language “Dietenberger Bible,” one of three Catholic Counter-Reformation bibles, and the first of the German translations. This fantastic, 16th-century bible is complete and intact, bound in its original pigskin with elaborate, blind-stamped images of the saints. It was recently acquired from the library archives of a New York State monastery where it has resided for 100+ years, and from which it was recently obtained along with a number of other fantastic, 16th through 18th century volumes, which we will be offering on our eBay page over the next few weeks.

The bible offered here is titled “Bibell. Das ist, Alle Bücher Alts und News Testaments, nach Alter in Christlicher Kyrchen gehabter Translation trewlich verteutscht, und mit vielen heilsamen Annotaten erleucht, Durch D. Johann Dietenberger. Jetzt an vielen orten corrigiert, und gebessert, mit schönen kunstreichen figuren geziert, und fleissiger dann je vorhin außgangen.” (Commonly referred to as the “Dietenberger Bible,” translated by Johann Dietenberger. Published at Cologne by Arnold Quentel, 1790. It contains 1200 pages, including 139 woodcuts, 99 multi-line and many small initials, and 2 woodcut vignettes.

The so-called “Dietenberger Bible” is one of three Catholic Counter-Reformation bibles that can be understood as a response to the then-emerging New International Version. The German translation by Johann Dietenberger of the Old and New Testament was the first fully Catholic Bible of the Reformation period. From its first appearance in 1534 through the 18th Century, at least 58 editions were published (see BBKL, 1, 1296). John Dietenberger (c. 1475-1537) was a Dominican Order prior and later professor of theology in Mainz (see NDB 3, 667 et seq.). In 1534, the first edition of his translation of the bible was published. Dietenberger added comments on the chapters of the Old Testament and gave it summary headings. The present bible comes from the highly-regarded printing house Quentel in Cologne (see ADB 27, 37 ff.).

Johann Dietenberger (c. 1475 – September 4, 1537) was a German Catholic scholastic theologian. Born at Frankfurt-am-Main, he was educated in his native city, and joined the Dominican Order. On June 3, 1511, he registered at Cologne as a theological student. Three years later, on September 23, 1514, he was admitted to the licentiate, and the next year, after some time spent at Heidelberg and Mainz, he received the doctor’s degree. Towards the end of 1517, Dietenberger was appointed Regens studiorum and interpreter of Thomas Aquinas at Trier, where he opened his lectures on January 27, 1518. In the meantime, he had been elected (1516) prior of his convent at Frankfurt, and retained this office until 1526, when he became prior at Koblenz. In 1530, Dietenberger attended the Diet of Augsburg and was chosen as a member of the committee of twenty Catholic theologians selected at the meeting of June 27th, and presided over by Johann Eck, to draw up a refutation of the Protestant Confession. At about the same time, he received the appointment of general inquisitor for the Dioceses of Mainz and Cologne. His last years, from 1532, were devoted to teaching theology and exegesis in the Academy of Mainz.

In preparing the “Dietenberger Bible” the author used freely the New Testament of Emser (1527), of whom Martin Luther was wont to say that “he had ploughed with his heifers;” he used likewise other translations compiled in pre-Reformation times, and so did Luther. He was well acquainted with the versions of Luther and of Leo Jud, and used them to improve his own.

For more information, please see our eBay listing.

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Fascinations: P.T. Barnum Commissioned Currier & Ives Lithograph of “Siamese Twins” Chang and Eng Bunker

by walnutts Posted on March 20, 2012

Picture above is a very rare and wonderful, 1860 Currier & Ives stone lithograph advertising print for P. T. Barnum’s American Museum. The print features Barnum’s Premier Sideshow / Circus Freaks / Human Oddities Exhibit “Chang and Eng,” the original “Siamese Twins.”

The piece measures 9 ¾” by 13 7/8″ (including visible margins on all sides) and is framed for display in a simple, period, gold gilt surface wooden frame (overall size of framed display is 11 7/8″ by 14 7/8″). The image features a central, full-figured portrait of the conjoined twins surrounded by smaller, vignette images of scenes depicting the Twins in various daily activities. Included are views of Chang and Eng plowing a field, playing musical instruments, chopping down a tree, hunting, fishing, rowing a boat and driving a carriage. Also included are portraits of each man’s wife with their young children.
The text below the images reads “’Chang’ and ‘Eng’ / The World Renowned United Siamese Twins. / Now Exhibiting At Barnum’s American Museum, New York.” The lithograph is copyright 1860 by the publishers and lithographers, Currier & Ives.

Born in Siam (now Thailand) in 1811, Eng and Chang Bunker were connected at the chest by a five-inch-wide band of flesh. The location of this connection suggested to some doctors and other observers that the brothers shared a heart or some respiratory functions. These medical assumptions would later be proven wrong. In fact, it is believed that the brothers were xiphopagus twins, meaning they were joined only by a small piece of cartilage located at the sternum. The only organs fused were their livers, but each twin had a complete liver that could function independently. By careful practice, they were able to stretch their connective tissue enough for that they could stand side-by-side, rather than facing each other. This is what gave the “iconic” Siamese Twin look, where perception leads us to believe they are joined at the side, and which is the common depiction of this affliction. It is believed that separating Chang and Eng would have been very easy, even for the medical technology available at the time.

According to their biography, the twins shared relatively “normal” boyhoods in Siam, running and playing with other children, doing chores, and helping to support their parents and siblings by gathering and selling duck eggs in their small village. Later, as teenagers, the twins left Siam and began a career traveling with two agents, Robert Hunter and Abel Coffin.

Eng and Chang earned money by giving lectures and demonstrations throughout the United States, Canada, South America, and Europe. In fact, entries in their travel-expense journal document that they visited the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in October, 1834. In their far-flung travels, Eng and Chang became such popular celebrities during the 1830′s that their promotion as “Siamese twins” were terms that were universally employed to describe connected or conjoined twins.

By the late 1830′s, Eng and Chang grew tired of all their traveling, opting then to settle in North Carolina. There, the brothers married two sisters, Adelaide and Sarah Yates of Wilkes County. The sisters were of European ancestry and were neither twins nor connected themselves. The couples were married in 1843, and would ultimately produce 21 children between the two families.

Although they had minimal dealings with P. T. Barnum, the master showman displayed a wax figure of the twins in the American Museum in the 1840s, published a pamphlet on their lives in 1853, and publicly associated himself with the brothers. With large families to support, Chang and Eng returned to show business in 1860, agreeing to a six-week engagement at Barnum’s American Museum. This lithograph was issued to promote that appearance and was likely commissioned of Currier & Ives by P.T. Barnum himself. After suffering financial loses during the Civil War, the brothers again agreed to a European tour sponsored by Barnum in 1868, but these were the only times that they were in any way associated with P.T. Barnum.

Eng and Chang died in January 1874, at the age of 63. Chang preceded Eng in death by about two and a half hours. An autopsy indicated that Chang died of a blood clot in the brain; and, at the time, Eng’s demise was attributed, understandably, to shock.

 

Posted in 19th Century, American Art, Collectibles: Printing, Daredevils Deviants and Circus Folk | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Walnutts FAQ’s: Hey, Can I Get A Copy Of That?

by walnutts Posted on March 13, 2012

Q. I was looking through your auction items and found one that really interested me! However, it was way out of my price range/already sold by the time I was ready to bid. Now that the auction is over, I was just wondering if I could get a copy of that manuscript/map/photo you posted? Could you do that?

A.  We have a policy of not supplying copies of photographs or manuscript material that we are selling at auction. We feel that it is only fair to reserve the publication and distribution rights for the high bidder, as often it is of significant value to them. We will gladly pass along your request to the purchaser, and (as has happened in many cases) it is likely that he or she will oblige your request- we do feel, however, that that decision is up to the new owner.

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The Way We Were: Important 1846 Folding Pocket Map of Texas, Oregon, and California by S. Augustus Mitchell

by walnutts Posted on March 2, 2012

Above is an image of the historically important, separately bound, 1846 Folding Pocket Map of Texas, Oregon & California by S. Augustus Mitchell. This important map of the newly annexed State of Texas and the soon to be acquired Territories of the Western United States, is fully titled in the cartouche: “A New Map of Texas, Oregon and California With the Regions Adjoining Compiled From the Most recent Authorities Philadelphia, 1846. Published by S. Augustus Mitchell.” It is marked at the lower left with the passage, “Entered According to Act of Congress in the Year 1845 by H.N. Burroughs in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.” The map measures approximately 21” by 22 1/2”, and was contained in a leather bound “Pocket Guide” titled “Accompaniment to Mitchell’s New Map of Texas, Oregon and California with the Regions Adjoining. Philadelphia, 1846. Published by S. Augustus Mitchell.”

Pictured here is the 1st edition of this important map of the Western United States, which, with its accompanying Emigrant’s Guide, has been widely and frequently praised as the most accurate and current information then available in separate cartographic form for the regions shown. According to the accompanying Volume, “The chief authorities from which the map is compiled, are the Congressional Map of Texas, 1844, Kennedy’s Map of Texas by Arrowsmith, Mitchell’s Map of Texas, Ward’s Map of Mexico, Frémont’s Map of his explorations in Oregon, California, &c., 1842, 1843, 1844, Map of Lewis and Clarke’s tour, Major Long’s tour to the Rocky Mountains, Nicollet and Frémont’s exploration of the country between the Mississippi and Missouri, the Congressional Map of the Indian territory, and Mitchell’s Map of the United States.”

The map shows in detail the western portion of the U.S. to the Pacific, with the Indian Territory, Missouri Territory, Iowa, and portions of the states of Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Wisconsin, as well as northern Mexico and part of British Columbia, illustrating in detail the trans-Mississippi region at a time when war was imminent with Mexico.

Great attention has been given to Texas, and the map includes a VERY early depiction of Texas as a state of the Union, complete with all its extravagant territorial claims, including a Panhandle that stretches aggressively north to the 42nd parallel and a border on the Rio Grande River. This map has been updated, however, to show Texas divided into counties instead of empresario grants.

For those contemplating the journey West, the Oregon Road and the Santa Fe Trails from Independence, Missouri, are shown, and a table of distances between Westport and Oregon City is printed. Yet, even with these advances, the map also makes clear the vast stretches of Old Mexico and the West that remain unknown and unexplored. Much of California and the rest of the West is portrayed as basically featureless; “California” occupies the entire area of modern-day California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado.

Much of the information the map lacks, is supplied by the accompanying guide, which discusses Texas, Oregon Territory, California, Iowa, Indian Territory, and Missouri Territory, with the majority of the text devoted to the first three. Some of the remarks about Californians are astounding in several respects, even for the time:

“Descended from the old Spaniards, they are unfortunately found to have all their vices, without a proper share of their virtues…. Their amusements are cock-fighting, bull and bear-baiting, and dancing…always accompanied with excessive drinking…. The female portion of the community are ignorant, degraded, and the slaves of their husbands…. The Indians of Upper California are indolent and pusillanimous…they are all extremely filthy in their habits.” (pp. 28-29)

On the other hand, Texas, the success of which Mitchell clearly wishes to promote, is made to sound like an earthly paradise. Oregon, which Mitchell wants the United States to incorporate, is also described favorably at great length. By contrast, the Missouri Territory is only briefly touched upon, in an almost dismissive manner.

If you are interested in learning more about this item, please see our eBay listing.

Posted in 19th Century, American West, Collectibles: Printing, Maps | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Comic Icon: Never-Before-Seen 1896 Candy Container Featuring R. F. Outcault’s “The Yellow Kid”

by walnutts Posted on February 29, 2012

Pictured above is what is believed to be a previously cataloged, circa 1896 Richard Outcault “Yellow Kid” Wax Head Full Figure Doll Candy Container (click here for a history of the evolution of the Yellow Kid). Extensive research has been unable to discover another example of this early, newspaper comics character having surfaced, nor any mention of the container in the extensive references pertaining to Yellow Kid Collectibles.

The Yellow Kid was the name of a lead comic strip character that ran from 1895 to 1898 in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World, and later in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal. Created and drawn by Richard F. Outcault in a strip entitled Hogan’s Alley (and later under other names as well), it was one of the first Sunday supplement comic strips in an American newspaper. The Yellow Kid is also famous for its connection to the coining of the term “yellow journalism.”

Mickey Dugan, better known as The Yellow Kid, was a bald, snaggle-toothed boy who wore an over-sized yellow nightshirt, and hung around in a slum alley typical of certain areas of squalor that existed in turn of the 19th to 20th century in New York City. Hogan’s Alley was filled with equally odd characters, mostly other children. With a goofy grin, the Kid habitually spoke in a ragged, peculiar ghetto slang, which was printed on his shirt, a device meant to lampoon advertising billboards.

This apparently previously unknown Yellow Kid Candy Container features the Yellow Kid doll seated with a large drum between his legs. The delicate, thin paperboard drum is covered with an even more delicate, yellow crepe paper, and the top and sides of the drum slide off the base revealing the container which held the candy. The Yellow Kid doll/figure features a wax head, wax hands, and some type of papier-mâché composition shoes. His torso is solid and appears to be contiguous with his head. It is also likely made of wax. He wears a stiff, cloth nightshirt or tunic that appears to have originally been off-white in color (though possibly a light yellow), but is now mostly a dark brown. It appears that he may have originally worn a small hat (there is a small hole in his head and a small ring around the hole that appears to be a “shadow” of where a hat may have been.

The candy container measures approximately 4” tall to the top of the seated Yellow Kid’s wax head, and 4” by 4” at the base (measured from the soles of the Kid’s shoes to his upright back and across his widely spread legs). The drum shaped paper container itself measures approx. 2” tall and 2” in diameter across the head of the drum.

Although the candy container is not marked in any way, there is absolutely no doubt that this is the Yellow Kid – besides his trademark, floor length nightshirt/tunic and the fact that he is “beating the drum,” the figure’s wax head distinctly shows the characteristics of Outcault’s comic creation. This includes two large front teeth (the Kid was often called “snaggle-toothed”), very large ears that are perpendicular to his head, and the trademark Yellow Kid “goofy grin.”

While the cloth nightshirt of the Yellow Kid is complete and intact, it has been stained a uniform, dark brown color (all of the nightshirt except the arms and the top of the back), and there are blotches of a similar brown color on the sides of the Drum. It appears to us that the original candy contained in the Drum melted or deteriorated in some way and caused this staining. The pattern of blotches on the sides of the Drum actually give it the “look” of an “animal skin” surface which, in truth, is quite attractive (although not original). The fact that the body of the Yellow Kid’s Nightshirt is quite uniformly stained dark brown and the arms remain light, creates a rather appealing look also (again, however, not original).

While we were able to uncover a number of very rare and highly desirable wax head doll candy containers from the late 19th century, we have found no mention in any of the references, nor any online references, to a Yellow Kid Candy Container such as the one offered here. We believe that it may, in fact, be a previously unknown Yellow Kid item and perhaps the only known example. Any information regarding the rarity and/or manufacturer of this fantastic Yellow Kid Candy Container would be greatly appreciated!!!

If you are interested in learning more about this item, please see our eBay listing.

Posted in 19th Century, Americana, Collectibles: Advertising, Collectibles: Toys | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment