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4/23/2009

Etched into history
New Rice University Press book offers artwork, history

FROM RICE NEWS STAFF REPORTS

To accompany its latest title, "The New York Etching Club Minutes," Rice University Press has made the art from its pages available in the form of photo prints, posters, mugs and note cards. The book itself is the story of the New York Etching Club -- one of the earliest groups to embrace the then-new art form of etching -- told through the group's meeting minutes and artworks from 1877 through 1893.

The culmination of nearly 10 years’ research, the book is more than the reproduction of an important art-historical document. The author, Stephen Fredericks, infuses the minutes with more than 100 illustrations, including photographs of the artists, reproductions of their works and reproductions of catalogs and other publications of the day. Fredericks arranged the illustrations in historical order, so that a given year’s minutes also include work by the etching club’s members done in that year. As a result, the reader can see the development of members’ skills and techniques, and the growing sophistication of the surrounding community of collectors and critics, as the artists ply and refine their craft.

"In this enlightening study, Stephen Fredericks brings to life the little-documented revival of etching that flourished in the United States during the last quarter of the 19th century," said Roberta Waddell, curator of prints emerita for the New York Public Library. "In his excellent introduction and in his annual summaries of the club's activities, he explores concerns that continue in various guises to engage artists today, among them the issue of the ‘original’ versus the ‘reproductive’ print and the role of the commercial print publisher."

The original 21 members of the New York Etching Club were all established artists -- painters, photographers, architects, designers and others known for their commercial trade work in engraving, lithography and mezzotint.

Fredericks is an artist printmaker who lives and works in New York City. He is the founder of both the New York Society of Etchers and the New York Etcher’s Press. His work, which has been widely exhibited, can be found in many collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Print Research Foundation, the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, the New York Public Library, the U.S. Library of Congress and the Chongqing Museum of Art in China. 

About the press

In 2007, Rice University Press (RUP) returned from a decadelong hiatus to explore models of peer-reviewed scholarship for the 21st century. The technology, developed by Rice University’s Connexions program, offers authors a way to exploit RUP's dual publications platform to craft new forms of dynamic scholarly argument. Its titles range from print-only through simultaneous print and online editions that are more or less identical to print versions, with online counterparts that are far more robust and that can include multimedia elements. RUP titles are viewable in their entirety online for free and available for purchase in print form through RUP's print-on-demand partner, QOOP Inc.

In certain ways, Rice's digital press operates just as a traditional press does. Manuscripts are evaluated, peer-reviewed, edited and resubmitted for final approval to an editorial board of prominent scholars. But after that, accepted manuscripts are run through Connexions for publication on the Internet and automatic formatting for print publication. The publications model is designed to make publication of quality scholarship affordable no matter how small the market for a given title.

For more information, please visit http://rup.rice.edu or contact Fred Moody, editor-in-chief, at fred.moody@rice.edu.