Every year on April Fool's Day, life at the library resonates with more than the usual pranks. To match the spirit of the day, we open our themed exhibition of the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor. For two months in the Skylight Gallery on the 6th floor, the public is invited to view selections from an extraordinary range of printed humor from around the world. This year's show is dedicated to the travel adventures of the founder of this collection, Nat Schmulowitz, who, through his journeys, collected a wide range of books, periodicals, and ephemera over a forty-year period in the first half of the twentieth century.
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| Image: Detail, itinerary for Nat Schmulowitz. Nat Schmulowitz Scrapbook (1926). Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor, SFPL. |
They whirled through the cultural centers and antiquities of Europe: from the coast of France, continuing through Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Poland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and finally ending up in England. In his correspondence, Nat charted his adventures as a naïve first-time traveler abroad. He reported on weather conditions, modes of transportation, cultural highlights and low-life, curiosities and wonders, the smart set and the impoverished. A keen observer of the human condition, Nat was an engaging traveler, striking up friendships with people he met along the way.
He was fascinated with Paris bookshops. In a small shop on a side street in an unnamed arrondissement, he bought a volume of Poggio’s Facetiae (1879). The bibliographic chase that would consume him for the rest of his life had just begun.
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| Image: Detail, R.M.S. Andania postcard. Nat Schmulowitz Scrapbook (1926). Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor, SFPL |
San Francisco attorney and bibliophile Nat Schmulowitz made his first grand tour of Europe eight years after World War I. He was enthusiastic about the world outside his city, and in 1926, the world was momentarily at peace. Nat’s three-month tour took him and his family from San Francisco to New York by train; from there, they sailed aboard the R.M.S. Andania to Cherbourg, France.
They whirled through the cultural centers and antiquities of Europe: from the coast of France, continuing through Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Poland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and finally ending up in England. In his correspondence, Nat charted his adventures as a naïve first-time traveler abroad. He reported on weather conditions, modes of transportation, cultural highlights and low-life, curiosities and wonders, the smart set and the impoverished. A keen observer of the human condition, Nat was an engaging traveler, striking up friendships with people he met along the way.
He was fascinated with Paris bookshops. In a small shop on a side street in an unnamed arrondissement, he bought a volume of Poggio’s Facetiae (1879). The bibliographic chase that would consume him for the rest of his life had just begun.
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| Poggio Bracciolini. Facetiae (1879). Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor, SFPL. |
Nat’s subsequent trips abroad occurred after World War II. He continued to document his travels throughout the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe again in four separate trips (1950, 1954, 1957, and 1959). Each country visited was another opportunity to hunt for humorous materials: bookshop labels and handwritten dates of acquisition may be found on thousands of Nat's books, marking his destinations. What emerges is the sensibility of a twentieth-century collector-- a man aware of the fragility of the world, whose love for, and insistence on, the value of humor drove his obsession to collect. Determined to preserve a precious mark of our humanity, Nat Schmulowitz believed that “without humor the world is doomed.”
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| Image: Nat's travel scrapbooks and correspondence (1926). Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor, SFPL. |
On April 1, 1947, he gave his beloved collection of ninety-three jest books to the San Francisco Public Library and thereafter faithfully continued to add to the library’s new wit and humor collection through ongoing donations, sometimes at the rate of one hundred books per month.
This exhibition draws on the rich international collection of this fervent bibliophile. Travel journals, scrapbooks, postcards, and other ephemera are partnered with the humor books that Nat discovered as he made his way around the world. We see Nat’s journeys through the items he collected, and they provide extraordinary documentation of the force of humor and the role it plays on the world stage. In some instances, these books and ephemera reflect a determination to live in spite of the politics of rage and our inhumanity. A diversity of languages and dialects shows the breadth of Nat’s travels and his accomplishments in representing and preserving the world’s humor.
Located in the Book Arts & Special Collections Center, the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor (SCOWAH) contains 450 years of published humor: over 22,000 books, 250 periodical titles, electronic media and ephemera in thirty-five languages, along with the personal papers of Nat Schmulowitz. In keeping with his philosophy and the mission of this public library, the Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor is open to everyone.
The annual SCOWAH exhibition is a tribute to Nat Schmulowitz’s generosity and lifelong interest in the San Francisco Public Library. A gallery of images from the exhibition may be viewed on our Flickr page. The exhibition continues through May 31.
The annual SCOWAH exhibition is a tribute to Nat Schmulowitz’s generosity and lifelong interest in the San Francisco Public Library. A gallery of images from the exhibition may be viewed on our Flickr page. The exhibition continues through May 31.
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| Image: Passport, Nat Schmulowitz. Nat Schmulowitz Scrapbook (1926). Schmulowitz Collection of Wit & Humor, SFPL |
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