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Thank you for sharing National Library Week 2020 with us! This year, we shared highlights from Georgia O’Keeffe’s personal library. Please enjoy this 4-part series revisiting those titles.

Josiah Conder (1852-1920) was a British architect who lived, taught and worked in Japan. In 1891, Conder wrote The Flower of Japan and the Art of Floral Arrangement, and with this text, Conder was among the first to introduce the art of Japanese floral arrangement to a Western audience. This book was illustrated by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892) and Kawanabe Kyosui (1868-1935). View a copy of this book in the British Museum's Online Collections.

This copy, from Georgia O’Keeffe’s personal library, appears to have been gifted by Josiah Conder to [Arthur] Lasenby Liberty. Liberty (here spelled Lazemby) was the founder of Liberty & Co. in London and lived in Regents Park. It is not immediately clear how this book came to be in O’Keeffe’s collection.

Found inside this book a schematic drawing of flower arrangements and a sheet of typed instructions on the arrangements of flowers.

The Flowers of Japan and the Art of Floral Arrangement by Josiah Conder

Call Number: 07:04-19

Publication Date: 1891

 

 

 

            

 

                

 

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See more about O'Keeffe's gardening books in this vintage post. 

 

 

Thank you for sharing National Library Week 2020 with us! This year, we shared highlights from Georgia O’Keeffe’s personal library. Please enjoy this 4-part series revisiting those titles.

A rarer find in O’Keeffe’s personal library are children’s books – though she did own a few. A dear favorite of many is Wanda Gag’s “The Funny Thing”, published in 1929. Gag, author and illustrator, delights with a story about a man named Bobo living remotely in a cave and cooking for the surrounding animals. When a strange creature, named the Funny Thing, comes along who only eats children’s dolls, Bobo refuses and comes up with a plan to feed the Funny Thing his delicious “jum-jills” instead. 

Gag’s books are strange and surprising, and sure to entertain both kids and adults alike! Gag most popular title is Millions of Cats, read recently by Glenn Close in support of the fundraising effort savewithstories. 

 

 

 

 

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“Millions of Cats” by Wanda Gag (published by @penguinkids and @penguinrandomhouse) - read by @glennclose . THIRTY MILLION CHILDREN rely on school for food. Responding to the needs of kids during these school closures, @savethechildren and @nokidhungry have a new fund @SAVEWITHSTORIES to support food banks, and mobile meal trucks, and community feeding programs with funds to do what they do best—and also—with educational toys, books, and worksheets to make sure brains are full, as well as bellies. . If you can manage a one time gift of $10, please text SAVE to 20222. If another amount would work better for you, please visit our website—link in bio. There is no maximum and there is no minimum—together we will rise and together we can help. . Thank you and stay safe. XX #SAVEWITHSTORIES

A post shared by #SAVEWITHSTORIES (@savewithstories) on Apr 1, 2020 at 10:36am PDT

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Hartley’s collection of critical articles, Adventures in the Arts: Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville and Poets, was published in 1921 by Boni and Liveright. The copy in Georgia O’Keeffe’s personal library was gifted to O'Keeffe from Hartley in 1924. This occasion was annotated by Alfred Stieglitz inside the book, and on the box it was locoated in. View images in the Collections Online. 

Inscription from Marsden Hartley to [Georgia] O'Keeffe :

“My dear O'Keefe [sic] -. That you have ridden way beyond the references in these pages is your own perfect discovery. I hope I may be able to copy certain of your characteristics in my own work, or at least produce a similar precision of causation. You know you have in me one of your [rarest] admirers. I know of nothing like / you in modern fields of expression. It is no small thing to stand for oneself. You do it. Cordially Marsden Hartley.”

Thank you for sharing National Library Week 2020 with us! This year, we shared highlights from Georgia O’Keeffe’s personal library. Please enjoy this 4-part series revisiting those titles.

An avid reader, O’Keeffe owned several thousand books on a wide range of topics including art history and technique, health, world history, travel, dogs, gardening, and cooking. Later in life, when her eyesight became poor, she enjoyed being read to and sought out large print materials and audio books from local libraries. 

Helen and Frank Schreider’s Adventure Books

Looking to get away? While you may not be traveling much these days, there’s no better time to escape with some travel literature. O’Keeffe had numerous titles in her library on world travel. Many books were about places she visited such as Peru and Spain, and others represent an interest in worlds and lives far beyond her adobe walls.

O’Keeffe owned all three books by Helen and Frank Schreider, adventurers who were known for traveling by amphibious jeep. Once residents of Santa Fe, New Mexico, the couple made their first journey in the 1950s from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and authored their first book 20,000 Miles South: A Pan American Adventure. Working for National Geographic, they went on various assignments and expeditions around the world, writing, photographing, and filming. They produced two more books from their adventures: The Drums of Tonkin: An Adventure in Indonesia and Exploring the Amazon.