Original manuscript: "New York Aquarium Extension / Handbook / Field Guide / For Visitors & Residents". 6 x 9”, six typed pages, bound in stiff boards, taped at spine, string tied, with fromt cover color illustration signed “Hajo”.
Like the brilliant work of many commercial artists, little of German immigrant Christoph’s graphic design was signed, though a large collection of his work is held by the Albany Institute of History and Art. This Aquarium prototype gives a hint of the quality of his art.
The text discusses codfish, sharks, black angel fish, (sting?) ray, tri-color rock beauty, starfish, butterfly fish, measlefish, sea-horse, trunk fish, and has 1 page of bibliographic references.
Hajo (short for Hans-Joachim Richard) Christoph came to America from his native Germany in 1925 at age 22 after a difficult early life. His father, a German Army veteran, was left penniless after World War I; his mother died of hunger and malnutrition, from which he also suffered, being confined to a sanitarium as was his sister, who contracted tuberculosis. Settled in America, having studied commercial art in Weimar Berlin, he became assistant in New York to the famous graphic designer Lucian Bernhard, then apprenticed to another German émigré artist. During that time, in partnership with his newly-wed wife, Matilda Haage, he produced this prototype design for the Aquarium. Soon after, he was hired by the Fort Orange Paper Company as a creative artist; for the next three decades, he produced designs for a host of companies with products from milk to sugar, laxatives and blankets. When he retired from the Company in the 1960s, then became a founder of the Albany Artists Group. He died in 1992 at age 89..