

images that haunt us
Hanscom achieved her luminous and daring visionary allegorical tableaux style through sophisticated manipulation of her photographs including combination printing and painting directly on the glass plate negatives. The delicate gravures are printed on tissue and tipped into the book which is notable for its Arts-and-Crafts design, the subjects (both nudes and artists of the time like Joachim Miller, George Sterling and George W. James).
The first edition was printed on at least two different types of tissue, one limp and thin, and the other stiff and parchment-like. Dodge published many subsequent editions with Hanscom’s photographic illustrations, in at least three smaller sizes, all with halftones, sometimes in color. In a 1912 edition, Blanch Cumming, another San Francisco photographer, was inexplicably also credited, although no additional illustrations appeared. In 1906, the San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed Hanscom’s entire studio, including her Rubaiyat negatives. A decade later she provided similarly dreamy illustrations for an edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, but her Rubaiyat images represent most of Hanscom’s print legacy, as her silver prints are rare. [quoted from the Art of the Photogravure]
Publications of The Rubāīyāt of Omar Khayyām available online:
The Rubaiyát of Omar Kháyyám, 1905. Published by Dodge Publishing Co. Scanned by Getty Research Institute
The Rubaiyát of Omar Kháyyám, 1905. Published by Dodge Publishing Co. Scanned by University of California Libraries
The Rubaiyát of Omar Kháyyám, 1914. Published by Dodge Publishing Co. “Popular Edition“. Scanned by Getty Research Institute
The Rubaiyát of Omar Kháyyám, 1905. Published by Dodge Publishing Co. Plates on the Art of Photogravure
The Rubāīyāt of Omar Khayyām, 1912. New York : Dodge Publishing Co. Scanned by Cornell University Library, on Hathitrust
Sipprell was born on Halloween, 1885, in Tillsonburg, Ontario, Canada. In 1895 (after her father’s death), she and her mother moved from Canada to Buffalo. In the early 1900s, Buffalo was a center of the pictorialism. Sipprell became one of the foremost practitioners of pictorial photography in the United States. She produced autochromes and platinum, bromoil, gum, and carbon prints; won awards in exhibitions; and had her work published in magazines in the United States and Europe.
As a portrait photographer, Sipprell sought to convey a sense of the whole person and what made each unique. […] In 1915, Sipprell, then thirty, moved to New York City with Jessica E. Beers, with whom she lived until 1923. She opened a photographic studio in Greenwich Village and eventually became a contract photographer for the Ethical Culture School, where Beers was a principal.
A Russian immigrant, Irina Khrabroff, was first her student and later her traveling companion, close friend, and business manager. As a student, Khrabroff spent her winters living with Sipprell and Beers in New York City. In 1923, when Khrabroff married, Beers moved out of the apartment, but Sipprell continued living there with Khrabroff and her husband until 1933.
[…] It is not clear whether or not Sipprell’s relationships were sexual or even romantic, yet their length and stability, and the evidence of the memorial marker, indicate an extraordinary level of commitment. [Quoted from lgbtq encyclopedia: Sipprell, Clara Estelle (1885-1975) by Tee A. Corinne]