File:SB-04-056-source-1.png

Summary

Description

The Chimpanzee and the Boa Constrictor. A boa forms a frame around a fable and its moral, with its head below and tail wrapped around a chimpanzee above. The snake, spots, monkey, surrounding frame, typography, fable, moral and printed cry POLICE!! match the scrapbook. POLICE!! is already present in this independent printed witness. This source observation does not authorize altering the scrapbook transcription or its existing editorial note. The outer mounting-paper edge is excluded; the whole printed composition is retained.

A printed cutting catalogued by the museum as 1878, illustrated by Frederick Stuart Church. The same composition is independently confirmed in G. Washington Æsop's Fables (New York: The World, 35 Park Row, 1878), printed p. 11. The book title is dated 1878; its copyright notice is dated 1877. The catalogue status is Research in Progress. The museum date and the matching book do not prove the first publication or the physical source copy used for the scrapbook cutting. The engraver is not securely identified here.

Compared directly with H. P. Blavatsky's Scrapbooks, volume 4, page 56, item 4. The scrapbook image, text, handwriting and existing editorial notes remain a separate witness.

Source

Photograph supplied by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. Accession number 1938-57-1070-212; media identifier CHSDM-57301_01-000001. Credit line: Bequest of Erskine Hewitt. Medium in the official record: Printed in black ink on paper. This is the natural colour of the photographed paper, not a hand-coloured version.

• Museum object record.
• Persistent object identifier.
• Persistent identifier of this exact media view.
• Complete high-resolution museum photograph used for this crop.

The saved official Smithsonian Open Access record, captured on 29 October 2026, specifies CC0 for both this media view and its metadata. The current object-page check on 2 November 2026 encountered a request-verification screen and was not bypassed. No current successful catalogue read is claimed; the complete historical official record is retained in the research dossier.

Thank you to Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum for preserving this material and freely providing its original photographs and Open Access metadata.

File and processing

PNG, 1426 × 2256 pixels, RGB. Retained complete source JPEG: 4508 × 5418 pixels, 12993381 bytes, SHA-256 e87d79a0de083fb77a71cd2cad248fb325fee7140053b01b12dcd94f6a623a08.

Crop from (1210, 1300)–(2700, 3620). One bicubic alignment correction of 0.654326 degrees counterclockwise, measured from the long printed horizontal picture-frame rule. Final trim (32, 32)–(1458, 2288); right and bottom bounds are exclusive. No added canvas is included. The complete relevant illustration, its printed frame and any caption within this crop are retained. Original paper colour, marks, show-through and engraved details are preserved. No enlargement, colour or tonal correction, sharpening, retouching or reconstruction was applied. PNG compression is lossless; the original source itself is JPEG. The complete source remains linked above.

Rights

The saved official Smithsonian Open Access record marks this media view and metadata CC0. The underlying nineteenth-century printed illustration is public-domain historical material. The museum’s attribution, accession and credit line are retained above.