Ben Franklin, woodcutter on TV

 

Earlier this week I caught the two part Benjamin Franklin series on PBS, the latest project from Ken Burns.  I have enjoyed his work in the past, as I did this one.  My parents wanted to make sure they saw it, so they recorded it on the DVR at the same time as we watched it.   I knew a bit about him already, so there were no true surprises, but some things served as reminders.  I knew that Franklin was from a large family, grew up poor, and was largely self taught.  He first achieved fame for his Poor Richard's Almanac, later through experiments learned most of what we knew of electricity, and with that knowledge, invented the lightning rod, a major invention of that era.  (like Jefferson, he was knowledgeable in many areas and invented many practical devices)  Later still, he was a driving force behind American independence, contributing to both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Along the way, he was a key individual in getting financing for the American revolution, due to extensive efforts in European diplomacy.  The most famous American of that era, despite only a few years of formal education.  Like Lincoln down the road, educated himself to the top of many fields, and donated what he achieved to the betterment of mankind.  (he also had many lesser, if not low, qualities and habits as well, but we'll ignore those for now)

As I watched these two episodes, one thing I noticed was a large number of graphic black and white images, not identified during the show, but to me looking like woodcut or linocut, or maybe wood engraving, or possibly black and white drawn art meant to look like a print.  Especially in the first episode.   As someone who has cut a lot of blocks, and looked at a lot of prints, I know what relief printing looks like.  Making it more likely to be print than drawing was that Franklin was a printer, an experience and skill that he maintained for much of his life.  His first real job was being an apprentice printer to his brother, who had a print shop there in his hometown of Boston.  He later ran away from that, but started his own print shop in Philadelphia, which eventually led to his first fame, along with greatly assisting his education, building his muscles (carrying around trays of lead type have an effect on the body), plus providing a steady income.  When the pandemic raged last year, Molly and I still had access to our studio and could use it, even as some other tenants of the building were shut down.  At least part of this was Nichole's interpretation of "essential workers," but I guess we can give some credit to Franklin as well.  No one was more essential to our Revolution than he was, and he got his start as a printer.

But that didn't solve the question of these graphic images used so prominently in this video series.  Took advantage of a few hours of empty house to look at the first episode again, but I couldn't find any credits for those images, except maybe some very long and very small names of important contributors.   In any case, impossible to read.  Went to the internet. I have long said that all the information known to man is out there on the internet, you just have to know where to look and what questions to ask.  (just a few days ago, my father and I were looking at a first season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and two bridge officers struggled to find information about a past incident, that would pop up in a one question internet search today, but this episode aired a few years before the world wide web was invented, so I guess I can't blame them) And I had to ask a lot of questions.  Nothing about it on the PBS website, no reference on IMDB, and the above image was found in online reviews of the series, but no credit given.  A bunch of Google searches turned up nothing, until I asked about woodcuts.  Should have known it would come down to that.

Eventually, searches of "Benjamin Franklin", "PBS", and "woodcut" somehow led me to Charles Turzak, who was an artist/printmaker active in the early/mid 20th century, who did a woodcut novel about Ben Franklin back in the mid-1930's.  The images I found look like the ones I saw on the television show, so I'm guessing that this is where they came from.  (I'm still not positive about the image at the top of this blog post, it's from a review of the Ken Burns series, but there is no credit for who did it, so I'll just hope it's Turzak.)  I don't know the size of the original image.  It was mentioned that his Franklin book had about 85 images, more than some of Masereel's novels, less than others.  On the other hand, it's nowhere close to the 366 prints that were part of my Fourth of July series/book, so I have this on the guy.  Tom mentioned he still tells people about that series, so maybe no one has ever taken on such a large series.  The whole thing is up on the web for anyone interested in seeing the whole set, at woodcutyear.blogspot.com.