Early stamp pads were awful - the inks used were terrifically smelly. The pads themselves were made of gelatin which degenerated into a gooey mess during hot weather. They drew insects like bees to honey.
Stamp pad pioneer B.G. Volger was a buffalo-robe salesman when he chanced to encounter, on a train, in 1880, a fellow named Baumgarten, whose sideline was making stamp pads. Baumgarten poured gelatin into tin boxes, impregnated the gelatin with dyestuff, and covered it with fabric.Resourceful Baumgarten is said to have checked out of hotels taking sheets from the bed with him which he thriftily tore into sheets and used as pad coverings. In 1884 Volger entered the business, creating the Excelsior stamp pad, two felts and a blotter on a wooden base covered with nainsook (a fine, soft muslin type of cloth). His pads were typically vile smelling, but in 1908, after five years of experimenting, he perfected a formula for quick-drying, non-smear ink and eliminated the awful odour characteristic of early pads.
Two others wre in the vanguard of stamp pad manufacturing. In 1881, R.A. Stewart purchased the patent for gelatin self-inking pads and was the first to make them commercially available. His wife laboriously made pads in her kitchen. Alonzo Woodruff, cousin of James Orton Woodruff (probable inventor of the rubber stamp) started the Superb Stamp Pad Company in 1891 and devoted years to perfecting a variety of well-known stamp pads.
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One of the first to integrate the rubber stamp in works of art was German artist/poet Kurt Schwitters, who dubbed his art activities "Mertz" (from a scrap of paper with the word KOMMERTZ used in one of his early collages. "Mertz" applies to the bulk of Scwitters work, and not exclusively to the peices incorporating rubber stamps. As early as 191 he created "Merz rubber stamp drawings", which were an amalgam of pasted bits of paper, drawings and stamp impressions made with common, functional stamps that bore phrases such as BELEGEXEMPLAR (Review Copy) and BEZAHLT (Paid). A hefty art tome entitled "Kurt Scwitters" written by Werner Schmalenbach shows four examples of Schwiter's works containing rubber stamp impressions. Probably the first book of rubber stamp works was Schwiter's "Sturm Bilderbuch IV" published in Berlin in 1920, which contains fifteen poems and fifteen rubber stamp drawings.
An article in the Special Catalogue Edition of La Mamelle's "FRONT" written by Ken Freidman and Georg M. Gugelberger, dates the introduction of the stamp into contemporary art to Ben Vautier's use of a rubber stamp (LART CEST) in his works in 1949.
Both German artist Dieter Roth and French artist Arman began using stamps heavily in their works in the 1950's. From the late 1950's onward the number of artists and writers using stamps in their works expanded tremendously and the range of works widened to include not only hand-stamped. limited edition books and prints but scupltures, paintings, and multiples as well. In 1968, Multiples. Inc (New York) published a project called "Stamped Indelibly" containig work by such other well known artists such as Marisol, Oldenburgh, Warhol Indiana and others.
Much of the stamp activity in the 1960's stemmed from the Fluxus movement, a loose-knit international avant group somewhat Dada in spirit, whose participantsincluded Joseph Bueys, Robert Filliou, Kken Freidman, Dick Higgins, Yoko Ono and Ben Vautier. Freidman and Vautier are said to have published in 1966 the first multiple to include rubber stamps as physical objects. Published by Fluxus, it was called "Fluxpost Kit" and contained stamps by both artists. Even a partial listing of artists involved with stamp activities during the last several decades is a long one: Charles Amirkhanian, Anna Banana, George Brecht, Fletcher Coop, Herve Fischer, Bill Gaglione, J H Kochman, Carol Law, Emmet Williams, and on. And then, of course, is Saul Steinberg.
Stienberg's work frequently appears in The New Yorker Magazine, and has incorporated rubber stamps into his work for years, sometimes stamped in ink, sometimes in oil paint. A major Steinberg exhibition organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art contained numerous peices dotted with the rubber stamps Steinberg considers personal. Since little has been written on rubber stamps and the artist, two books are especially important to know about. According to the Freidman/Gugelberger article in FRONT, Czech artist J H Kocman's book "Stamp Activity", published in a limited, thirty-edition copy in 1972, was "the first true anthology of stamps and their use by artists". Herve Fischer's book "Art et Communication Marginale, Tampons d'artistes" was published by Editions (Paris) in 1974., devotes almost two hundred pages to whole stamp works or selections from artist's collections. In most cases, brief biographical information about the artist is also supplied. |
