New Exhibition: By Hand

By Hand: A Celebration of the Manuscript Collections of Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

January 18 – April 29, 2013

By Hand celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript with an exploration of its manuscript collections. The exhibition begins where the Yale College Library collection of early manuscripts began, with a mirror of humanity, a copy of the Speculum humanae salvationis given by Elihu Yale. It ends with the manuscripts and drafts of “Miracle of the Black Leg,” a poem written by U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey while she was a research fellow at the Beinecke Library in 2009.

Manuscript, from the Latin term “by hand,” derives from the ablative case: locational, instrumental, situated always in relation to something or someone else. Like the term, this exhibition explores the reflections of humanity in the Beinecke’s manuscript collections, presenting them as markers of the social contracts of love, creativity, need, power, that bind us into historical record even as they bind us to one another.

The exhibition ranges across the Beinecke Library manuscript collections, in an extraordinary display of the Library’s manuscript holdings, from papyri of the 2^nd century A.D. through working drafts by contemporary poets, from manuscripts in the original Yale Library to recent additions to the collections. On view are manuscripts, notes, and proof copies of works by Langston Hughes, Rachel Carson, Edith Wharton, Zora Neale Hurston, Terry Tempest Williams, James Joyce, F. T. Marinetti, Goethe, and others; the Voynich Manuscript, the Vinland Map, the Lewis and Clark expedition map and journals, the Martellus map; the last paragraphs of Thoreau’s manuscript of Walden; letters, postcards, poetry, and notes by Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Georgia O’Keeffe, Franz Kafka, Mark Twain, Erica Jong, and others; early manuscripts from a tenth-century Byzantine prayer roll, a fragment of lyric verse on papyri, the Rothschild Canticles, a fourteenth-century ivory writing tablet, and the first illuminated medieval manuscript known in a North American collection.

Avilude

Avilude, or Game of Birds, (Worcester, West & Lee, 1873) – a complete game of the card game, including the original box, and play intructions.

Featuring Beinecke

 

#22 YALE
Yale Special. Planned, edited & designed by graphic design department, Yale School of Art.

PARTICIPANTS & CONTRIBUTORS include Beinecke curators Kevin Repp and Timothy Young.

Other Yale contributors include: Jack Balkin, James Berger, Julian Bittiner, Karla Britton, Craig Buckley, Francesco Casetti, Gregory Crewdson, Glen Cummings, Sheila Levrant De Bretteville, Keller Easterling, Paul Elliman, Michael Faison, Peter Halley, Roni Horn, Matthew Jacobson, Wayne Koestenbaum, Karel Martens, Dan Michaelson, Sigi Moeslinger, Alexander Nemerov, Margaret Olin, Sarah Oppenheimer, Mark Owens, Michael Rock, Elihu Rubin, Julika Rudelius, Holly Rushmaier, Susan Sellers, Rob Storr, Masamichi Udagawa, Daniel Van Der Velden, Linda Van Deursen, Lyneise Williams, Yale Gdmfa ’11

Hot Stuff

The key card for the game of: Robert le Diable: Jeu des Mariages. France, circa 1820.

Q&A

Simple question; complicated answer.
From an unidentified card game from France, circa 1860s.

Tart, Lobster, and Pickle Herring

Playing cards from a deck of “carving cards” printed by Joseph Moxon in London, circa 1680.

Jeu des 7 Grandes Routes

Images of a 1956 card game tracing the major automobile routes around France.
Published by Editions Willeb and brought to you by the folks at British Petroleum.

The Jumble Club

The records of The Jumble Club, a group dedicated to playing whist (and *only* whist) which thrived in Glasgow, Scotland, approximately between 1799 and 1877.
The records consist of 4 ledgers containing minutes of meetings, with additional meeting minutes, inventories, insurance policy, checkbook. flyers and other related papers and ephemera.

And they came in a lovely metal coffer, complete with a set of keys, none of which fit the box lock.

Prison playing cards

A selection of handmade and delicately stencil-printed playing cards,
made by inmates of Russian prisons, ca. 1980s – 1990s.

Playing Card sample book (Irish Free State)

Another sample book, for cards produced in, and proudly representing, the Irish Free State, ca. 1936.

Playing Card sample book (Germany)

A saleman’s sample book for a line of playing cards produced in Northern Germany, circa the early 1950s.

 

Eee!-vacuation

From the “Vacuation” card game, England, ca. 1940

dos a dos a dos a dos a dos a dos a dos a dos

Back patterns for American playing cards
(from the Cary Collection)

USA3

USA167

USA10

USA9

USA21

USA6

USA2

USA7

Hearts (For Presidents’ Day)

Portrait of George Washington on a playing card, Hearts (Cary USA 204)

There’s a moon in the sky.

It’s called the moon.

ASTRONOMIA [card game] / LONDON / PUBLISHED BY F.G. MOON,

20, THREADNEEDLE STREET / 1829

in the Cary Collection of Playing Cards

Welcome!

Room 26 Cabinet of Curiosities features new acquisitions, unique documents, and visual and textual curiosities from the collections of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. This ongoing exhibition is curated by Tim Young, Associate Curator of the Modern Books and Manuscripts Collection, and Nancy Kuhl, Associate Curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature. Additional information about these and other materials in the Beinecke Library’s collections can be found at the Library’s website: http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/