JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

This is the front cover of an impossibly-thin work on social contract and cooperation among the working classes.  It was written by a very well-known German (from Stuttgart) liberal social reformer named Victor Aime Huber (1800-1869) and related some of his observations on the conditions of workers during a trip to England and which was published in 1851 in Berlin.  I am going to scoot along on this one and not comment on Huber’s social or economic work because I just don’t know anything about it (at least tonight)–all I wanted to do was comment on the beautiful found-art cover for the none-page pamphlet.  Non-representational beauty won’t be discovered in the art world for another sixty years or, otherwise sturdy construction of color and drifting text might have been considered artistic.  I like it quite a bit for its design–as well as for the very deep and swirling nature of the blue paper wrapper.  

(Ueber Association mit besonderer Beziehung auf England. 4. Vortrag, veranstaltet von dem Centralverein fiir das Wohl der arbeitenden Klassen, Berlin, 1851.)