The Boston Globe ran a great preview of a big auction coming up this week in Worcester, Massachusetts. The four-day sale, beginning on Sept. 9, will disperse the collection of Andrew H. Green (pictured here), born in Worcester in 1820, but who became known as the "father of greater New York" for his achievements as a city planner and civic leader. Among the 2,000+ lots containing dolls, games, silver, paper money, stamps, coins, and paintings, are early presidential letters and a copy of Washington's will printed by Isaiah Thomas in 1800. Auctioneer R.W. Oliver has all of the catalogues online for perusal. As the article in the Globe points out, "From Green's death in 1903 until 2009, virtually none of the items had
ever been uncrated and examined. Packing boxes sealed more than a
century ago were opened only after the death last summer of Julia Green,
his great-great-grandniece and distant heiress." So these items are on the block for the first time in more than a century, if ever. It certainly fuels the fantasy that great books, documents, and collectibles are still hidden in attics, waiting for us to find them.
Bywords, according to one definition, are proverbial sayings that express some important fact of experience that is taken as true by many people. For example: had you lived in the 17th-18th centuries, and you had wanted to convey the idea that something was "absolutely correct" or "according to the rules," you might well have ended your assertion with the phrase "according to Cocker."
What "important fact of experience," "taken as true by many people," would have led you to end your assertion with this phrase?
Edward Cocker (1631-1675) was an English engraver, writing master and mathematician whose magnum opus, Cocker's Arithmetick, was published posthumously in 1677. Over the next 150 or so years, this title (which contains the earliest known use of the concept of lowest terms) educated generations of British schoolchildren. (The volume depicted below is the 33rd Edition of 1715, from the collection of Augustus De Morgan held by the Senate House Library at the University of London:)
Much of this title's popularity and influence is attributed to the fact that it excluded all demonstrations and reasoning, and confined itself to commercial questions only. It is to the presumed accuracy of Cocker in resolving commercial mathematical questions (since disputed) that the phrase "according to Cocker" arose as a byword for "absolutely correct."
Samuel Johnson carried a copy of Cocker's Arithmetick on his travels about Scotland, and the book was widely used in colonial America, not least by folks like Benjamin Franklin. It would be an interesting collecting challenge to try and obtain as many editions of this title as possible, although several editions (DNB suggests at least 112 editions may have been published altogether) do not appear to have survived in even a single copy. As a grammar schoolbook subjected to generations of hard use, this is to be expected. Makes the challenge more interesting...no?
Jonathan Shipley
Jonathan Shipley is a freelance writer living in Seattle. He’s written for the Los Angeles Times, Gather Journal, Uppercase, and many other publications.
Earlier this week, the exhibition Money on Paper opened at Princeton University. Looking at bank notes as an art form, curator of numismatics Alan Stahl puts on display several treasures, including the recently discovered bank note engraving of a grouse by John James Audubon. The 1763 New Jersey shilling seen here (printed by James Parker of Woodbridge, courtesy of Princeton University) is one of the fascinating examples of nature printing in the exhibit. According to the exhibition's website, "the most inventive printer of paper money of the time
was Benjamin Franklin, who devised a system of transferring the vein
patterns of tree leaves to printing plates to foil counterfeiters. The
Princeton exhibition includes a large selection of Franklin's
nature-print notes." Reading this prompted me to reach for a new book I recently received from Mark Batty Publishers -- Impressions of Nature: A History of Nature Printing by Roderick Cave (mbp, $85). There are several pages devoted to nature printing techniques in colonial America with examples of bank notes. Cave writes, "Franklin adopted various devices such as the use of paper incorporating flecks of mica, or pieces of coloured thread -- methods still sometimes used by securities' printers -- but in the adoption of nature printing he was unique."
Impressions of Nature is a beautiful book, brimming with full-color illustrations. Cave impressively relays the early history of nature printing, its spread through Europe, the work of major printers, and its applications in photography and graphic design. There seems to be something for everyone in this splendid volume.
Impressions of Nature is a beautiful book, brimming with full-color illustrations. Cave impressively relays the early history of nature printing, its spread through Europe, the work of major printers, and its applications in photography and graphic design. There seems to be something for everyone in this splendid volume.
