Edgar Allan Poe Print - 1880 Woodcut From The Ultima Thule Daguerreotype - Straight Up - No Chaser

Treasures from THE LITERATURE COLLECTION at The Willing Mind. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 18 x 24, and consciously formatted to work with a standard size store bought frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

Edgar Allen Poe, Ultima Thule

Edgar Allen Poe, engraved on wood in 1880 by Timothy Cole, based on the 'Ultima Thule' Daguerreotype of Poe by Masury and Hartshorn, Rhode Island, 1848.

I can tell you about Poe until I'm blue in the face, but the bottom line is Poe is a delightful read, a real moment in our history and the crucible for a whole genre of literature. Your local library has at least one copy of his stories so dammit, borrow it and have some fun. Scary fun!

My personal Poe twist is an odd one. Philadelphia was to be the scene for a Bicentennial celebration equal to the massive 1876 Centennial in Fairmount Park. Problem was, various political factions wanted the biggest piece of pie in its conception and realization of this fabulous money pit to be. As time roared forward and no progress was being made, the Federal Government said "Fine. You knuckleheads can't get it together, so here are just a few buckets of dough to spread around and fix up a few things, so we don't look like poop to the rest of the world."

I believe that was pretty close to the actual wording.

So a pavilion was built for the Liberty Bell (love the bell!) and Ben Franklin's house was rethought and his museum was built, and all sorts of small and medium projects did actually happen, just no giganticus wolrd's fair sort of thing, which we deserved but didn't get.

One of the small projects was fixing up the Edgar Allen Poe House. The restoration contractor did a fairly good job, but far from a magnificent one. Seems that Richard Gimbel, son of the founder of Gimbel's department store, was swept up in the Poe collecting mania of the Post Poe era, and had the wherewithal to indulge his collecting passions.

Gimbel spent like le petite roi, but quietly, and amassed an unabashedly amazing collection of Poe material, wrapping it all up by buying the boarding house where Poe lived for a time just off of Spring Garden Street. This is the house that was granted a little of the Bicentennial monies being tossed about, though the collection itself is now house in the Rare Book Department at the Philadelphia Free Library, known officially as the Colonel Richard A. Gimbel Collection of Edgar Allan Poe Materials.

My father was an architect with Vincent Kling's 1950s mega firm, left that for private practice in the countryside in the 60s, eventually returning to the city for a job as senior architect for The City in the 70s. He found out when the grounds of the Poe House were about to be partially covered with a thick concrete slab and suggested we go and dig up the privy. Its location had shown up on a site survey, but in the tradition of contractors digging in historic sites on deadlines, the decision was quickly and quietly made to slab it and move on rather than risk a delay. Gee, thanks visionary builders!. Anyway, not grasping all the nuances of all that, the dig made sense to me! So me and my parents and half of my myriad siblings went with tools aplenty on a Sunday when no one was paying attention and got to work.

Let's just say... we're good at other things. The slab was poured on Monday.

When they had the official opening just for the officials, the contractor sought to distract the gathered mucky mucks who otherwise might have been critical of his adequate restoration with what was, to this day, the most lusciously laid out spread of delicacies I've ever seen. Who would notice that some baseboards met in a haphazard way in the corners when there we a pair of massive silverplate tourines of bubbling creamed crab at either end of 20 feet of decadent munchie splendor?

I remember strolling in wearing weathered bib overalls, an A shirt, a red bandana over very long hair and wire rim aviators, all of probably 18 years. The well dressed crowd was making small talk while hovering around that table like kids playing musical chairs. No one wanted to be gauche enough to be the first to pick anything off that still life, but nobody was making eye contact with each other while chatting. All eyes were lining up where their harpoons would land first. It was a glorious tension.

Since I was not dressed for the role of disinterested city leader, I strolled up to the table, wrenched off a hunk of some truly hearty bread and dipped it right into the best jersey blue crab you've ever tasted. The crowd, who had all forgone lunch and arrived famished, descended like piranhas in a National Geographic special.

Oh, the arm flailing madness! The tearing horror! The lust and gluttony!

Poe, you were there... you were there...

• Handmade item
• Materials: Art stock enhanced matte paper, archival ink
• Made to order
• Only ships within United States.

SHIPPING

All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT? Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!

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A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.