The Three Marys, Edwin Austin Abbey, circa 1906–11

Self Portrait with Spread Fingers, 1909, Egon Schiele

It’s Fine Press Friday!

This week we present pages from the 1927 Golden Cockerel Press edition of The True Historie of Lucian the Samosatenian, printed in an edition of 275 copies in both Greek and English, with an early 17th-century English translation by Francis Hickes (1566-1631) and original wood engravings by Robert Gibbings, who was also the owner of the Golden Cockerel Press from 1924 to 1933. This was the first of the Press’s large-scale publications with illustrations by Gibbings. The main text block in English is set in 14-pt. Caslon, with the Greek text, composed at the Oxford University Press, and/or Gibbings’s engravings wrapped around in smaller blocks on three sides.

Book historians Roderick Cave and Sarah Manson note that of the seventy-or-so publications produced by the press during the Gibbings era, eighteen were illustrated by Gibbings himself, and they consider The True Historie to be among the top-five finest productions of the press, and “among the foremost English Illustrated books of the twentieth century.” The press crew for this production was quite seasoned, and had been with the Press since the first owner Hal Taylor hired them in the early 1920s. These included the compositors Frank Young and Harry Gibbs, and the master printer Albert Cooper. Young and Cooper quit the press when it was sold to Christopher Sanford in 1933, but Gibbs remained with the press, moving to the Chiswick Press in London where Sanford had transferred all of the press’s compositing and printing work.

Our copy of True Historie is another gem from the Jerry Buff donation.

View more posts related to the work of Robert Gibbings.

View more posts about the Golden Cockerel Press.

Three drawings of Venus, labeled “Marvel of the World (Birth of Venus),”  “Venus’ looking glass,” and “Rose of Heaven,” from the album The Flower Book by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

British, 1882-1898

watercolor touched with gold on paper

Lilies of the Valley, Hyacinth, and Lilies, from the series Flora’s Feast by Walter Crane, published by Koch & Palm

color lithograph on card stock

Jason and his Teacher

Maxfield Parrish

1.Study for nymphs finding the head of Orpheus by John William Waterhouse  (English, 1849–1917)

2.Orpheus, 1875 by Gustave-Claude-Étienne Courtois (French, 1853–1923)

3.The Lyre of Orpheus, 1898 by Alexandre Séon (French, 1855–1917)