THE MESSAGE
BELOW IS ONLY INTENDED FOR SUBSCRIBERS AND ADVISORS OF
American Decorated Publishers' Bindings, 1872-1929
Please do not forward or
post a link to this page
| October
14, 2005
Dear Subscribers and Advisors, There is a new field of the database (Field 11, or column "K" in Excel) titled "Variants." I've moved most of the books with variants of the same design into that field of the primary listing. These copies may have the same design on different cloth, a different color for some or all of the design, etc. We are now back down to 400 records, which is where we would like to keep it.
Kipling, Rudyard. The Jungle Book. Ills. by Maurice and Edward Detmold. New York: The Century Co., 1913. Light turquoise, moss green and gold on olive green cloth. [unsigned, John Lehner attributes it to Frank Hazanplug] It really is a wonderful work of art, with the figures in the forest silhouetted by the golden sunlight streaming through the trees. There is a little camera flash glare near the top of the image, but the photo gives a better sense of this book's feeling than a scan does. While you are in the I-M section of the catalog, take a look at the unusual embossed-grain cloth on: Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. The Song of Hiawatha. Philadelphia: Henry Altemus, n.d. ©1898. White flat-weave cloth stamped in gold and printed gold and multicolor embossed-texture floral cloth (reference copy).  Today's
mystery book is:
Crockett, S.R. The Silver Skull. Ills. G. Grenville Manton New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, n.d. ©1901. John Lehner suggests it's an unsigned early G.W. Hood. However, if we look at Phillpotts The River (1902), which we also were thinking of as Hood, they are quite different in style. The River seems to have more in common with The Jungle Book, and both those remind us of Maxfield Parrish.
If you haven't yet read the essay section on "Trees and the Picture Plane," please take a look at it-- the above three will be added to it. Also take another look at C. B. Falls design on Crockett's Strong Mac--we just added a variant with brighter colors on different cloth and gold title on the spine.All these designs are indebted to Will Bradley's 1894 cover for Edmund Gosse's In Russet and Silver. Also new this week is: Read, Opie. Bolanyo. Illus. & decorations by Charles Francis Browne. Chicago: Way & Williams, 1897. Printed by Blakely Printing Company in May, 1897. [Maxfield Parrish, stated on copyright page]
It is unusual to have the illustrator and cover designer identified on the copyright page. This design is often referred to as the first Maxfield Parrish cover art. There may have been others before this that are not signed or otherwise identified, and appear to be stylistically Parrish, but this is the first one of certain attribution. As always, your comments, corrections and suggestions are encouraged! Click
here to go to the passcode entry page of the Subscribers' Website If you have lost your code or have trouble logging on, let me know and I'll get you back in.
|
Once
again thanks go to John Lehner, who was in a bookstore in Oregon and
found us a nice copy of:
This
is the problem of attribution with cover designs. If the artist is
not identified, then we need to look at who was working for which
publisher that year, which is not always clear. As soon as a
new approach to design appeared, other artists used it. 
