Ernest Nister (1841–1906) was a German publisher and printer of movable books for children and paper ephemera such as

greeting cards A greeting card is a piece of card stock, usually with an illustration or photo, made of high quality paper featuring an expression of friendship or other sentiment. Although greeting cards are usually given on special occasions such as birthdays ...

, post cards and

calendars A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a ph ...

. He was born in

Darmstadt, Germany Darmstadt () is a city in the state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the fourth largest city in the state of Hesse ...

and later had an office in London. He refined the techniques used in the design of "magic windows", "dissolving picture" and pop-up books, publishing them from his firm in

Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...

, a toy-making center of the 19th century.

Types of books

Although not the first to invent pop-up books, he was the first to invent ''automatic'' pop-up books. Before Nister, pop-ups had to be manually maneuvered into an upright position. " Pop-up books" is a term sometimes applied to other

movable books The term pop-up book is often applied to any book with three-dimensional pages, although it is properly the umbrella term for movable book, pop-ups, tunnel books, transformations, volvelles, flaps, pull-tabs, pop-outs, pull-downs, and more, each ...

, volvelles, tunnel books, pull tabs, and other varied forms of

paper engineering Paper engineering is a branch of engineering that deals with the usage of physical science (e.g. chemistry and physics) and life sciences (e.g. biology and biochemistry) in conjunction with mathematics as applied to the converting of raw materia ...

; similar techniques such as die cutting and embossing are often also used in

. Children's books with movable parts are subject to the play of children and may not work properly after heavy use. Older mechanical books in library or personal collections can be preserved by professional conservators. The older original first edition books by Ernest Nister can be found in antiquarian book stores and the

archives An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...

of Library rare book collections.

Editing

It is not known exactly how much of his own drawing he contributed to the illustrations of the books he edited and printed, but he would sometimes remove an artist's name and replace it with his own.

Louis Wain Louis William Wain (5 August 1860 – 4 July 1939) was an English artist best known for his drawings, which consistently featured anthropomorphized large-eyed cats and kittens. Later in life, he was confined to mental institutions and struggl ...

, known for his anthropomorphic cats, was one of the illustrators who worked for Nister. In 1894,

Beatrix Potter Helen Beatrix Potter (, 28 July 186622 December 1943) was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist, and conservationist. She is best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as '' The Tale of Peter Rabbit'', which was ...

sold a series of verses and illustrations to Nister for his ''Changing Pictures'' series.

Marketing

In addition to the German books, an English version was produced for Nister's London office and an American version, working with Edward Payson Dutton, for

Dutton Publishing E. P. Dutton was an American book publishing company. It was founded as a book retailer in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1852 by Edward Payson Dutton. Since 1986, it has been an imprint of Penguin Group. Creator Edward Payson Dutton (January 4, ...

, his American publisher. Vintage

chromolithograph Chromolithography is a method for making multi-colour prints. This type of colour printing stemmed from the process of lithography, and includes all types of lithography that are printed in colour. When chromolithography is used to reproduce ...

ically printed postcards of

Father Christmas Father Christmas is the traditional English name for the personification of Christmas. Although now known as a Christmas gift-bringer, and typically considered to be synonymous with Santa Claus, he was originally part of a much older and unrela ...

by Nister are now sold on

Etsy Etsy, Inc. is an American e-commerce company focused on handmade or vintage items and craft supplies. These items fall under a wide range of categories, including jewelry, bags, clothing, home décor and furniture, toys, art, as well as craft ...

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...

, AbeBooks and

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became ...

References

External links

Catalog of Posterstamps

— instruction regarding use of the

Library of Congress Subject Heading The Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) comprise a thesaurus (information retrieval), thesaurus (in the information science sense, a controlled vocabulary) of subject headings, maintained by the United States Library of Congress, for use in ...

for current acquisitions * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nister, Ernest 1841 births 1906 deaths German publishers (people) Pop-up book artists