Jasper Goodykoontz (1855–1882) was a classic Victorian American male, albeit one who was full of incredible amounts of arcane information, and who possessed enormous patience and stamina. His yearly almanac, Goodykoontz’s Perpetual Calendar and General Reference Manual, was not unlike many other similar books of general useful household info that were published during the Victorian era. However, his almanac had one rather extraordinary quirk that really makes it stand out from the rest: it was completely hand-rendered—every single letter!
This spread I show you gives you a simple example that is more entertaining than many of the spreads. It’s a collection of popular epitaphs one could use when burying their loved ones and relatives. You could simply pick any of those suggested here and be in the most practical and tasteful levels of culture. It was even organized by categories of dead folks: infants, parents, sisters, brothers, Christians, miscellaneous. All very practical and useful. The bulk of the book is full of almanac-style astronomical information (the cycles of the moon, the tides, etc.) and endless dictionaries of popular phrases for business and the like. Most of the pages are not as loose and empty as these two I show you. Most of the pages are densely packed with tiny tiny TINY little lettering squishing into every available space allowed (or not). It’s a rather small book (6″ × 8″, about ¾″ thick, 320 pages), but a very, very crammed-full book. It’s extraordinary to look at, but almost impossible to read.
The thing that really boggles my mind is that, even though in 1895 the full panoply of lithography, letterpress, etching, hot lead and cold foundry typography, etc. was easily available (in fact the entire printing industry was at its zenith of craftsman skill and sophistication), Jasper Goodykoontz still sat down and drew this all with his own two hands. He claims at the front of the book to have personally drawn every square inch of it! Just the typographic endeavor must have taken him years. As far as I can tell, although much of the book utilizes what appear to be stock dingbats and decorative devices available to the entire printing biz, he even hand-drew those as well (example: the ‘In the Cemetery’ cartouche at the top of the first page). He may use a similar design on many pages in a row, but upon close examination you can see every one of them is tightly rendered and hand-drawn uniquely. This book is an extraordinary achievement of diligence and skill and madness.
I think ol’ Jasper must have been some sort of professional engraver at some point. It’s the only thing I can imagine would give him the skill and technology to do this. Old-style engraving meant taking the fine cutting tools and hand chisels of the engraving trade directly to the surface of polished steel plates and carving (scratching, really) imagery into that surface (in reverse, no less. Think of that lettering!) There are no errors, typos or sneezing allowed. Everything is done directly to its one original and only size (there was no real technology for reproductions in other sizes, short of using a pan-o-graph device with a router on it). So every square inch of this was done this teeny tiny. How on Earth did he do it? And how did he do it every YEAR until 1919?
We’ve lost so many skills with the advent of advanced technology. One of the marvels of exploring history is the constant shock of encountering things like this book of (otherwise really rather useless) knowledge. The idea that somebody actually COULD create something like this by hand is really something to think about. But, the thought that somebody actually DID!?! Well, it’s inconceivable today, especially to our spoiled lazy dull minds. I swear I’ll never whine about how difficult something is to do ever again.
One of the things that I’ve always liked about Art Deco is the early classic DIY aspects of it. The origins of the style began in the Art Nouveau/Arts & Crafts movement of handwork, a style that was a back-to-nature revolt against the mighty mechanized Industrial Revolution and the high style of that devouring beast, Victoriana.
Victorian style was the very first Industrial style. All that decorative metal trim work, and intricate architectural details and ornamental printed patterning, and even the lace and heavy brocade cloth would not have been possible if not for the new machines revolutionizing production of everything. The fact that this same industrial mechanization was borne on the backs of a virtual slave labor class meant nothing to the still monarchical social structure.
The Arts and Crafts movement was the visual record of a return to human control of production. The idea that the natural world should be celebrated with the proper humanistic approach of ‘handmade’ was a direct middle finger to the Victorian style. The finely crafted, delicate curves of Art Nouveau came right on the heels of this movement, focusing on even more detail, with the addition of whimsy and nature-inspired ornamentation. It’s no wonder that the Psychedelic movement in the 1960s, flipping its finger to the modern industrial world of the early postwar period, would find inspiration in the Art Nouveau style. It was “like attracting like.”
Human history intervened at the height of the graceful, flowing Art Nouveau style. A series of archeological discoveries (especially of note were the unearthing of Tutankhamen’s tomb and the excavation of the Mayan civilization’s ruins) revealed an early fascination with geometric style and visual language that became a new Exotica and a “primitive” revivalism fad.
Combine that new love of geometric shapes with the horrors of WWI (the first mechanized war) in Europe, and the derisive anti-machine critical parody of mechanization of the radical politicized Dadaists and the even more radical socially politicized Constructivists, and the dream world of the early Surrealists, and you get, well… Art Deco: a snarky celebratory “rebirth” of the machine in the craft world. Strange but true. Art Deco was sorta snarky—especially at first.
True to form, as the capitalist exploitation machine of the popular manufacturers of style and fashion always do, they erased meaning from the inspiration and went strictly for shallow taste and even shallower decoration. Within ten years Art Deco was THE industrial style of America and (especially) Europe. A complete breakdown of inspiration and intent. It became a hipster pop style. And it was easy to fake. Cheap, too.
The result was a huge turf of sign painters and commercial artists catering to the taste of the times by trying their hand at doing Art Deco, too.
This cover is from a guide book of the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair (“A Century of Progress”). It’s a great example of what I’m talking about. It’s entirely hand-drawn (in the Arts & Crafts tradition), which would on the surface seem to contradict the “machine-inspired” nature of Art Deco. But it’s undeniably classical Art Deco style—the anti-Nature machined style so popular at the time. What could be a better style for the Century of Progress exhibition showing off our wonderful new machine world?
The movie Metropolis had already bombed at the box office and disappeared from recent memory and the industrial world was gearing up to crank out a million bad Bakelite pieces of jewelry for sale in Woolworth’s and every commercial artist in America was pulling out their straight edges and compasses for the onslaught of machine style to come. But, this little captured moment of handmade “machine fake” style is still my favorite Art Deco piece of all.
There’s no clue inside the booklet as to who might have done this artwork. It was all completely anonymous, it seems. Even though we designers were the cutting edge of so much of this popular style, we seldom got credit or authorship for the work. The “industrialized” system of laws that existed back then even went so far as to deny authorship of our own artwork—a system still reinforced by copyright laws today (specifically the “work for hire” clause). Basically America seems to have a monstrous love/hate relationship with graphic design. We all want it and wear it and copy it, but we hate to give proper dues to the folks who actually dream it up.
