America Looks to the Future: An Unusual Early American Perpetual Calendar
Calendar for the Nineteenth Century.
Philadelphia: [1801].
Price: $1,500.00
About the item
Small circular engraved broadside, engraved by Draper. Approx. 3 1/2 inches in diameter. America Looks to the Future: An Unusual Early American Perpetual Calendar. Inlaid into a larger sheet at a later date. Shaw-Shoemaker 269.
Item #319639
The Explanation running arount the outer border of the lower portion of the Calendar details its use: "Intersect the Column of the Month by the circle in which the Year stands & the Day you there find, look for under October which day of the week with those on the right hand , will stand over such Days of the Month as falls on them." The Explanation continues with how to determine days of the month using the calendar in the previous century and into the 20th century.
A January 14, 1802 review in the Philadelphia Gazette extolls its virtues: "...I am induced to think that sufficient justice can hardly be done to the ingenuity of this little production: The Author has modestly called it a Calendar for the 19th Century, while it is, in fact, a Calendar for twenty-one centuries ... It will shew [sic] in what day of the week an event in history occurred ... This Calendar is, handsomely executed on copperplate ... when framed, its figure and beauty will entitle it to a station in the parlour, as well as counting house." The review further reveals that the Calendar was being sold for $.25 and was also being marketed as a hat maker's label.
Just a few days prior to that review Mandeville had taken the liberty of sending his Calendar to President Thomas Jefferson, writing to him on January 9, 1802: "Permit me the honor to present to you ... a Calendar for the Nineteenth Century to which I have recently given publicity -- Should I learn that in your estimation I have combined usefulness with originality and comeliness, I shall be highly gratified...". According to Philadelphia Directories from the period, David Mandeville lived at North Sixth Street in Philadelphia in 1801 and 1802 and worked as an “accomptant” and clerk in the Bank of the United States. The broadside is engraved by John Draper; a former apprentice to Robert Scot, he engraved for Dobson's Encyclopedia and was an early American banknote engraver.
Very rare, with only three examples recorded by Shaw and Shoemaker (American Antiquarian Society, New York Public Library and Massachusetts Historical Society). The AAS example with a variant spelling of the word Calendar ("Calender") and with the engraver's name below the outer circle, suggesting two issues.
