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Wood Engraving Wednesday
This week we present more prints by the legendary American wood engraver John DePol (1913-2004), this time as illustrations for a collection of poems by the English translator and poet Walter Shewring,Later Verses and Earlier, printed letterpress in 1988 in an edition of 150 copies at Neil Shaver’s Yellow Barn Press in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Shaver handset the 14 pt. Joanna type with Perpetua Titling, and printed the edition on dampened Frankfurt Cream paper. Of DePol, Shaver writes:
John DePol ranks today as one of America’s top wood engravers… . Since the 1930′s John DePol has been capturing little corners of our world with the engraver’s burin. Small churches in France, the back alleys of Ireland, the aging buildings of New York, all have been frozen in time with serene, sometimes dramatic, skill. He is sensitive to atmosphere and the romantic age of things, the mood of changing seasons and the images of history. His is the perfect talent for the Shewring verse.
Our copy of Later Verses and Earlier is a gift from our friend Jerry Buff.
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Wood Engraving Wednesday
J. J. LANKES
Julius John Lankes (1884-1960) was an American illustrator, wood engraver, and woodcut artist. Influenced by the Arts & Crafts movement, Lankes helped elevate wood relief prints to a fine art, executing over 1300 prints in his career. One of the last books he illustrated with wood engravings was Wisconsin author and publisher August Derleth’sCountry Poems, shown here, printed in Iowa City by Carroll Coleman at his Prairie Press in 1956. Coleman printed the text in Bulmer Roman and Original Oldstyle Italic types. Our copy is a gift from our friend Jerry Buff.
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It’s Fine Press Friday!
On this Fine Press Friday we present some pages from Will Bradley’s design and printing of Stephen Crane’sWar is Kind, published in New York by Frederick A. Stokes in 1899. Printed on dark grey paper, this is the only edition of Crane’s second collection of poems, published a year before his death.
An artist, illustrator, filmmaker, printer, and type designer, Will Bradley (1868-1962) was one of the foremost American graphic designers of the 20th century, and this work is one of the most visually-memorable American trade publications of the 1890s. Although Bradley’s style exhibits many of the hallmarks of Art Nouveau, his aesthetic was also strongly influenced by the Arts & Crafts movement. Often criticized as an American knock-off of Aubrey Beardsley, Bradley’s early style was already well-established before Beardsley’s popularity in the mid-1890s.
Our copy of War is Kind is yet another gift from our friend Jerry Buff.
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Wood Engraving Wednesday
PAUL NASH
This week we present original wood engravings by English painter and wood engraver Paul Nash (1889-1946) from the 1928 Golden Cockerel Press edition of Jules Tellier’s 1887 story Abd-er-Rhaman in Paradise, printed in an edition of 400 copies. While he is remembered mainly as a painter, Nash was also an accomplished wood engraver and was an early and prominent of the Society of Wood Engravers, of which his younger brother John was one of the ten founding members.
Abd-er-Rhaman in Paradise was printed during the period when the Golden Cockerel Press was owned by another prominent English wood engraver, Robert Gibbings, another of the ten founding members of the Society of Wood Engravers. Gibbings could have easily illustrated this book himself, but as Roderick CaveandSarah Manson point out in their definitive A History of the Golden Cockerel Press 1920-1960,
… for him to commission Paul Nash to illustrate Tellier’s story was brilliant. Abd-er-Rhaman (1928) was splendidly successful. The reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement didn’t like the engravings, saying it would ‘probably appeal more to the devotees of the most “advanced” form of this art than to more old-fashioned persons,’ but now Nash’s illustrations seem just right.
Our copy is another gift from our friend Jerry Buff.
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Typography Tuesday
Last week we presented wood engravings by the English-American artist Nora S. Unwin (1907-1982) from Joseph; the King James Version of a Well-loved Tale, arranged with an introduction by her friend and frequent collaborator Elizabeth Yates, and printed and bound by the Plimpton Press in 1947 for Alfred A. Knopf in America and the Ryerson Press in Canada.
Today we present Unwin’s fine wood-engraved historiated initials for the chapter openings of the book. The initials mesh well with the solid stateliness and deep color of Stanley Morison’s Poliphilus typeface (released by Monotype in 1923), and integrates uniformly with Unwin’s engraved illustrations, creating a harmonious and holistic presentation to the entire production. This copy is another gift from our friend and benefactor Jerry Buff.
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Wood Engraving Wednesday
NORA S. UNWIN
English-American artist Nora S. Unwin (1907-1982) is remembered most as a prolific children’s book illustrator and author. Her illustrations for her American friend and collaborator Elizabeth Yates’sAmos Fortune, Free Man won the 1951 Newbery Medal. However, Unwin, who was a member of the renowned publishing family of Allen & Unwin, was also a highly-accomplished wood engraver, having received her training at Leon Underwood’s prestigious London art school, the Kingston School of Art, and finally the Royal College of Art where she received a diploma in design in 1932. She met her lifelong friend Elizabeth Yates in England in 1937 and followed her back to America in 1946, where she remained for the rest of her life, illustrating well over 100 books and writing and illustrating twelve books of her own.
The engravings shown here are from Joseph; the King James Version of a Well-loved Tale, arranged with an introduction by Elizabeth Yates, and printed and bound by the Plimpton Press in 1947 for Alfred A. Knopf in America and the Ryerson Press in Canada. Our copy is another gift from our friend Jerry Buff.
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