Drawing of Hall Mark Quirk Quality
date: label: Date made
content: ca 1900
name: label: graphic artist
content: Quirk, Nicholas J.
notes: label: Description
content: This original artwork in pencil, ink, and wash was created for a printed piece advertising the services of Chicago wood engraver Nicholas J. Quirk about 1900. The design, including a wood block, engraving tools, and a woodpecker as a symbol of the trade, was modified for use as a logo by the Brotherhood of Engravers in 1902.
label: Description
content: The Quirk Collection represents a significant body of work by N. J. Quirk (1863–1940) and his son Nicholas Paul Quirk (1898–1983), together with numerous business cards and specimen sheets from their fellow wood engravers and printing concerns, mostly in the midwestern United States, but also from Canada and Japan. Engraved wood blocks, electrotype plates, photographs, original artwork, proofs, prints, brochures, catalogs and other examples of commercial illustration and wood engraving, plus associated reference material, are included. Subjects represented include portraits (including six Presidents, Joseph Conrad, and Charles Lindbergh), machinery, jewelry, maritime and military work, holiday offerings, and printing trade and union-related items. Most of the 454 catalogued items date from the 1880s up through the 1970s.
label: Description
content: Evidence in the collection suggests that Nicholas J. Quirk worked as superintendent of the wood-engraving department of Henderson-Achert Lithography Company in Cincinnati and had his own business there as Quirk & Co., before moving to Chicago in the 1890s. He had his own business at several Chicago addresses and worked for the Globe Engraving and Electrotype Company and the Hawtin Engraving Company. Around 1900 he styled himself as a "marine illustrator." Nicholas Paul Quirk spent his entire working life in Chicago, first with his father and later at the Zacher Engraving Company, where wood engraver Judith Jaidinger Szesko also worked during the 1960s. Mrs Szesko donated the Quirk Collection to NMAH in 1996.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Illinois, Chicago
label: Associated Place
content: United States: Illinois, Chicago
topic: label: Subject
content: Printing
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Graphic Arts
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content: Advertising
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content: Work
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1996.0197.031
label: catalog number
content: 1996.0197.031
label: accession number
content: 1996.0197
objectType: label: Object Name
content: drawing
label: Object Type
content: photographs
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: ink (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 25.5 cm x 18.2 cm; 10 1/16 in x 7 3/16 in