Radii &
The Rufus Grider Publishing Project
Beginning in October of 2009, in a process to continue until at least 2012, this website will be constantly expanded and updated in an effort to build awareness and interest in the work of Rufus Alexander Grider (born 1817 in Lititz, Pennsylvania; died 1900 in Canajoharie, New York, where he had lived since 1883). He was remarkable in many modest yet startling ways -- not least, in his prolific outpouring of documentary art and research.
During 18 final years spent in active discovery of his adopted geographic and historic Mohawk Valley setting, Grider produced a staggering range and volume of original and often unique work -- decorative and detailed studies of historically significant sites, landscapes and objects assembled in an ambitious series of hand written and illustrated scrapbooks.
To date, virtually none of his work has been published in the comprehensive way he had envisioned. It is the goal of this website and related facsimile books, essays, ephemera and a biography now in production, to introduce Rufus Grider to a broad audience. Please check back often, as new materials will be added on a weekly basis.
Alice Smith Duncan, editor & publisher,
Radii & Rufus Grider Publishing, Llc.
Clockwise from photo above:
A signed photo portrait of
Rufus Grider, circa 1885, from one of the nine Grider scrap-books held by the New York State Library, Division of Special Collections; a watercolor and ink views of Fort Plain, NY from the collection of the Van Alstyne Homestead Society, Canajoharie, NY; a watercolor detail of a Moravian star, by an unknown Pennsylvanian folk artist in the collections of the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, PA; a typical Grider signature; a Mohawk Valley historic landscape; a scrapbook title page; detail of a powderhorn illustration from Grider’s landmark study of 500 18th century powderhorns, in the collections of the New-York Historical Society; a watercolor and botanical study from Grider’s first 1888 scrapbook of Mohawk Valley scenes, showing the c. 1749 Van Alstyne House in Canajoharie..
Welcome to the work and world of a remarkable 19th-century artist & historian, Rufus A. Grider
