Specimens of Fancy Turning Executed on the Hand or Foot Lathe with Geometric, Oval, and Eccentric Chucks and Elliptical Cutting Frame by [WOOLSEY, E. J.] - 1869

Philadelphia: H. C. Baird, 1869. Square 8vo. (8 5/8 x 7 1/4 inches). Title, plus 2pp. Explanation. 30 mounted albumen photographs. Publisher's green cloth, covers bordered in blind, upper cover titled in gilt, yellow endpapers Extraordinary proto-Modernist work of delicate abstract beauty and a very rare early American photographically illustrated book. "The accompanying specimens of turning on the lathe are photographic copies of the originals, executed on a scale one-third larger than the copies ... These figures were cut on the lathe by a delicate pointed tool kept in position by guides, and pressed at the back by a fine spiral spring, which tool can be drawn back at any moment by the turner ... The object I originally intended was to illustrate the curves that the lathe was capable of producing, by cutting out figures on a glass plate covered with collodion, and one of the following figures with a white ground is printed from a plate so operated upon. The same figure is photographed on a black ground. The collodion, however, tears under the action of the tool, and this defect is corrected by using the blackened card process and then by photographing the card" (Explanation). The Explanation is signed with the initials E.J.W. of Lenox, Massachusetts and has been ascribed to Woolsely, a noted landowner in the town. This early photographically illustrated book is a wonderful example of proto-modernism, with the resulting exquisite images unintentionally becoming works of art. Furthermore, this is an incredibly early example of the concept of scratching directly onto photographic paper to create a work of art, much in the style of today's popular contemporary artist Marco Breuer. For this reason, copies of this work reside in the famed collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (54.636.1) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (98.537).