Starpointe Studio

Wood Engraving Wednesday

TONY DREHFAL

Wisconsin wood engraver Tony Drehfal delights in intricate, tightly-focused, textured surfaces as demonstrated in this 17.5 x 12.7 cm (6.9 x 5 in.) print entitled Dovetail, selected by my Wisconsin colleagues Tracy Honn and Jim Moran for inclusion in the Fourth Triennial Exhibition 2020-2022 of the American American wood engravers society, the Wood Engravers’ Network (WEN). This image is from the catalog for that travelling show.

Drehfal learned wood engraving from Ann Arbor wood engraver and WEN founder Jim Horton in 2002, and after a 35-year career as a college photographer, Drehfal retired in 2015 to focus exclusively on wood engraving. He has quickly become a leader in the wood engraving community, and is a member of both WEN and its venerable British counterpart, the Society of Wood Engravers. Of his process, Drehfal writes:

Landscape and the minute details of the natural world serve as the primary inspiration of my wood engravings. Photography, drawing and engraving interweave in my creative process. I take photos often during hikes . . . near my home . . . in northern Wisconsin. Over time, recurring visual themes accumulate; birch trees, decaying stumps, knots and bark textures, and reflections in woodland ephemeral pools. I then draw and expand a theme in my sketchbook, using photos as reference. There is a point when photo references are put away and the process of drawing and wood engraving take on their own natural cadence towards a resulting print.

View other posts with engravings from the WEN Fourth Triennial Exhibition.

View more engravings by members of the Wood Engraver’s Network.

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It's Fine Press Friday!

Red Wise, a Thousand and One Nights-like fable modelled after the life of the classical Arabic poet Abu Nowas, was written by English translator and poet Edward Powys Mathers (1892–1939) was printed and published by his friend, the Irish printer and wood engraver Robert Gibbings (1889-1958) in 1926 two years after Gibbings acquired the Golden Cockerel Press. It was printed on handmade paper with Gibbings's own engravings in an edition of 500 copies. Mather was delighted with the production and wrote to Gibbings's wife Moira:

You have turned Red Wise into a really superb book; I can't tell you how pleased I am with it. And, . . . one or two people have managed to like the content already. . . .

Indeed, it was well reviewed by several publications, including the Times Literary Supplement, Bookman's Journal, and the New Statesman. The London Mercury thought otherwise, however:

Red Wise reminded me of a Beardsley hag rigged out as a fairy godmother. It is a well-done book, of slight indecency almost hidden beneath the decoration; but the mere ingenuity of the disguise shows the author has spent more time on it than is either healthy or profitable.

We haven't read the text, but we do like the wood engravings and the overall production. And it also has nice endpapers with glittery gold ink!

View more posts with engravings by Robert Gibbings.

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Wood Engraving Wednesday

RICHARD SHIRLEY SMITH

English painter, illustrator, muralist, and wood engraver Richard Shirley Smith (b. 1935) produced this engraving for the title page of a collection of poems entitled The Closed Door by British writer James Reeves (1909-1978), printed by Claire Van Vliet and Susan Johanknecht at Van Vliet's Janus Press in Newark, Vermont in an edition of 240 copies, and co-published in 1977 by Twinrocker and the Janus Press, with 75 copies for Twinrocker in Brookston, Indiana and the Janus Press and 165 for the Gruffyground Press in England.

Smith studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and continued his studies in Italy where he became interested in classical themes and Italian architecture, as reflected in this engraving. It was in Rome during the early 1960s where he taught himself wood engraving, a medium that has brought him the most attention. He writes, "My . . . years of wood engraving has been the backbone of my reputation, such as it is."

Our copy of The Closed Door is another gift from our friend Jerry Buff.

See other posts with wood engravings by Richard Shirley Smith.

View other posts with works printed by Claire Van Vliet.

Wood Engraving Wednesday

BLAIR HUGHES-STANTON

English wood engraver Blair Hughes-Stanton (1902–1981) produced 16 wood engravings for an edition of The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James (1843-1916), designed, printed, and bound in 1963 by Lewis and Dorothy Allen in an edition of 130 copies at their Allen Press in Kentfield, California. After a long career of wood engraving, painting, and fine-press publishing, especially as co-director with his wife and fellow engraver Gertrude Hermes of the Gregynog Press, Hughes-Stanton began to work with the Allens in 1955, producing five books for them from 1956 to 1973. The color wood engravings for this book were also overprinted with linocut patterns. In their 1985 The Allen Press Bibliography, the Allens write:

The sixteen illustrations printed directly from the wood in two colors are remarkable for their unique style and their subtle allegorical interpretation of the emotional problems confronting the main characters. This we believe is a perceptive interpretation of a text by an artist.

Our copy is another donation from the estate of our late friend, Dennis Bayuzick.

View more engravings by Blair Hughes-Stanton.

View other books from the collection of Dennis Bayuzick.

Wood Engraving Wednesday

SIMON BRETT

This week we bring you three wood engravings with details by the incomparable British wood engraver Simon Brett (b. 1943), illustrating poems by English writer Neville Braybrooke (1923-2001) published as Four Poems for Christmas in 1986 by Brett's own Paulinus Press in Marlborough, Wiltshire, in an edition of 250 copies signed by the poet and engraver. Our copy, another gift from the estate of our late friend Dennis Bayuzick, is one of 50 copies that includes a suite of signed engraving proofs.

In the book itself, two wood engravings are printed opposite the respective poems they illustrate and these, together with an additional one, are again printed across the center spread (shown here). Primarily a painter, Brett learned wood engraving from the noted English artist Clifford Webb (1894-1972) (view our posts on the engravings of Clifford Webb) in the early 1960s but did not turn to engraving as his primary medium until the early 1970s. Today Simon Brett is considered one of Britain's premier wood engravers.

This edition of Four Poems for Christmas was printed for the Paulinus Press by Jonathan Stephenson of the The Rocket Press on Zerkall mould-made paper using Baskerville type.

View other posts on wood engravings by Simon Brett.

View other books from the collection of Dennis Bayuzick.

Wood Engraving Wednesday

In 1994, Sebastian Carter (b. 1941) of the Rampant Lions Press in England printed a suite of original color wood engravings that the Soviet-era Russian graphic artist Anatoly Ivanovich Kalashnikov (1930-2007) had produced in response to the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. They were printed for the London publisher Primrose Academy as The Dostoyevsky Suite, with an introduction by the noted jurist, educator. bibliophile, and bookplate collector William Elliott Butler (b 1939) in an edition of 135 copies signed by Butler and Kalashnikov.

Kalishnakov is most well-known for his engravings for postage stamps and bookplates. In his early years, Kalashnikov was deeply steeped in Soviet social realism, but broke with that style in the late 1960s to produce this suite of abstract wood engravings. Butler writes:

Kalashnikov's engravings . . . were deemed to be too subjective and abstract for publication. The engravings appear here for the first time in their proper colours. The technologies available in Moscow never permitted the artist to achieve the full artistic impression which he intended. A small unnumbered edition circulated underground amongst friends. . . . the engravings quietly brought Kalashnikov a formidable reputation in the artistic and literary circles. . . . The engravings were not conceived as illustrations for Dostoyevsky's books. Rather they stand as autonomous graphic expressions inspired by those works. . . .

Our copy is another donation from the estate of our late friend Dennis Bayuzick.

View other books from the collection of Dennis Bayuzick.

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Wednesday Wood Engraving

This week we highlight a few of the 40 wood-engraved illustrations by noted Irish wood engraver and fine press publisher Robert Gibbings (1889-1959) for his 1955 publication Trumpets from Montparnasse. We hold both the British (J. M. Dent & Sons) and American (E. P. Dutton & Co.) first editions.

The one-time owner of the Golden Cockerel Press, Gibbings was a voracious traveler and travel writer. Trumpets from Montparnasse was based on his travels in France and Italy. Gibbings's narrative ranges from Île de Ré off the coast of La Rochelle, France, to Venice, and from Postino south of Naples to Paris and the Montparnasse district itself, along with a slight detour to his memory of Tahiti and his illustrations for The Discovery of Tahiti published by the Folio Society in the same year as Trumpets.

The back cover of the American edition includes a portrait of Gibbings at the engraving table. Our British edition, a gift from our friend Jerry Buff, bears the bookplate of Muriel Faulkner MacAdam, who we learned was the long-time spouse of the noted American colorimetry scientist David L. MacAdam. We don't know why we find that interesting, but we do.

View more posts related to Robert Gibbings.

Wood Engraving Wednesday

JOHN LAWRENCE

Once again we turn to the fanciful engravings of English illustrator and wood engraver John Lawrence (b. 1933), this time from a small (4.25" x 3") 1992 Folio Society edition of Robert Browning's version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, printed at The Bath Press in Bath, England on Fabriano Ingres laid paper. The engravings themselves are only 3" x 2", but they are vivid and richly detailed.

John Lawrence, whose career spans nearly 70 years, is one of England's most-respected living wood engravers. He has illustrated well over 200 books and has taught his craft at the Brighton School of Art, Camberwell School of Art, and Cambridge School of Art from the 1960s to 2010. He has influenced generations of noted contemporary wood engravers, and was himself a student of Gertrude Hermes (view some wood engravings by Hermes we have posted).

Our copy of the Folio Society's Pied Piper is yet another donation from the estate of our late friend and colleague Dennis Bayuzick. The book was originally bound in full moire silk by Hunter and Foulis, but our copy was specially rebound in 2001 by English bookbinder Stephen Conway (see below).

View more posts with wood engravings by John Lawrence.

View other illustrations for the Pied Piper by Kate Greenaway and Sarah Chamberlain.

View other books from the collection of Dennis Bayuzick.

Wood Engraving Wednesday

This week we take small departure from wood engraving into the world of the wood cut (wood engravings are made with engravings tools on the end grain of a hardwood, while wood cuts use carving tools on the long grain of usually softer woods). New Jersey wood cut artist Michael Dal Cerro (b. 1953) recently donated his 1992 artists book Small World Alphabet, printed by Chris Stern (1951-2007) at his Grey Spider Press in Seattle, Washington in a limited edition of 75 copies signed by the artist, to UWM Special Collections.

The book is an abecedarium illustrating the outsized impact our species has had on our small blue planet. We were so taken by Dal Cerro's pointedly satirical graphics that we thought we'd showcase some of the prints on this day usually reserved for wood engravings.

View more posts with woodcuts.

Milestone Monday

On this day, June 5 in 1919, the noted American children's author and illustrator Richard Scarry was born in Boston Massachusetts. In the course of his career, Scarry produced over 300 books with total sales of over 100 million worldwide. He his most well-known for his booksabout Busytown, with its population of anthropomorphic animals. The series was even adapted into an animated series, The Busy World of Richard Scarry, which aired on Showtime from 1993 to 1997, with reruns on Nickelodeon in the late 1990s.

We represent Scarry on his birthday with our copy of The Great Pie Robbery, published by Random House in 1969. The story begins with cherry pies being robbed from Ma Dog's Bakery in Busytown. But never fear, detectives Sam Cat and Dudley Pig are on the case!

In 1972, Scarry and his wife moved to Switzerland, purchasing a chalet in Gstaad, where Scarry died in 1994.

View another post on Scarry's The Great Pie Robbery.

View more posts from our Historical Curriculum Collection.

It’s Fine Press Friday

This week we are sharing images from the second volume of The Ingenious Gentleman: Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes Saavendra, illustrated with 25 wood engravings by Catalan painter and illustrator Enric C. Ricart and printed for the members of the Limited Editions Club (LEC) by the Catalan printing house Oliva de Vilanova, in Barcelona in 1933. Read more about this publication in our post on volume one from last week.

This book was set in Ibarra type printed on paper hand-made by Guarro of Barcelona from Linen rag. The binding is red buckram stamped in gold with boards wrapped in a yellow and brown pattern inspired by old Andalusian tile. This copy is one of an edition of 1500 copies signed by the artist, and was gifted to Special Collections by the estate of long-standing LEC member Austin Fredric Lutter of Waukesha, Wisconsin.

View more Limited Edition Club posts.

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A Bodily Autonomy Decorative Sunday

These gorgeous posters are a selection of work from Our Bodies Our Resistance, published by the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative in 2023 in an edition of 150. The collection was curated by Molly Fair, a multidisciplinary artist, member of Justseeds, and a librarian (huzzah!). The thirteen risograph prints, cover sheet, and colophon were printed at Cowboy Press in Richmond, VA. They come wrapped in green hanky, screen-printed by Mary Tremonte at Lavender Estero in Pittsburg, PA. The green bandana is a symbol of the Marea Verde (“Green Wave” or “Green Tide”) an abortion rights movement that began in Argentina in the early 2000s and has since swept across Latin America. The design for the hanky was “cut from one piece of paper” by artist Devon Cohen, and “uplifts grizzly bears and three plants – tansy, rue, and pennyroyal – that have documented use over the centuries as abortifacients” (from the colophon). 

Some of the posters are also available as digital download here, for use in organizing work under an Attribution NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. Check out our photo captions for artist attributions.

Featuring art by Devon Cohen, Alec Dunn, Molly Fair, Sarah Farahat, Christeen Francis, Sanya Hyland, Kill Joy, Josh MacPhee, Fernando Martí, Andrea Narno, Saiyare Refaei, Jessica Sabogal, Meredith Stern, and Mary Tremonte.

60% of the proceeds of this portfolio will be donated to the National Network of Abortion Funds’ Collective Power Fund. This fund redistributes “direct abortion funding to 28 member abortion funds across more than 20 states. Funding is concentrated in the South and Midwest, where it’s often hardest to get an abortion. The Collective Power Fund supports the cost of an abortion, transportation to a clinic, childcare. lodging, and abortion doula support.”

-https://justseeds.org/product/our-bodies-our-resistance-portfolio/

Check out more Decorative Sunday posts here.

A Bucolic Epic

Within the vast library of Roman poetry, with their stories of heroes, gods, and love, there stands a work that is deceptively simple. Virgil is famed as one of the greatest Roman poets of the Imperial age, having composed a set of three long-form poems. The second of these was the Georgics which was written ca. 30 BCE over the course of eight years while Virgil was living in Naples. When assessing Virgil’s reputation and the common subjects of Roman literature during this time, one might expect the Georgics to be about great people and events. This is not the case, as this poem’s primary purpose is to serve as a kind of agricultural manual.

Of the several editions of the Georgics found in Special Collections, the most recent is this 1952 Limited Editions Club production, using a translation by the 17th-century English poet and translator John Dryden, printed by Giovanni Mardersteig at Officina Bodoni with original wood engravings by Bruno Bramanti in a limited edition of 1500 copies signed by the engraver and printer.

The Georgics consists of four books, each focusing on a different aspect of farming and husbandry, with the most well-known being the fourth book on bee keeping. While this poetry is very functional and tells contemporary readers much about Roman agricultural techniques, many readers study the work for the themes that are found between the lines. The Georgics at many points is used as a conduit for touching upon political, historical, and philosophical subjects. Using activities such as harvesting and horse breaking, Virgil expresses his ideas about military conquest, societal structures, and plagues to name a few.  

Although most his fame comes from his final epic poem the Aeneid, the Georgics shows how masterful Virgil was at connecting the workings of the world to abstract ideas and conveying those ideas through his writings.  

View more of my Classics posts.

Shakespeare Weekend

Shakespeare’s historical tragedy, Richard the Second, is volume eighteen of the thirty-seven volume The Comedies Histories & Tragedies of William Shakespeare, published by the Limited Editions Club (LEC) from 1939-1940. The play is believed to have been first produced in 1595, and printed in 1597 in quarto under the title, The tragedie of King Richard the second. It was printed in the folio of 1623. 

The Scottish engraver, painter, illustrator Agnes Miller Parker illustrated Richard the Second with six gorgeous wood engravings. Her eye for composition and ability to render engravings are exceptional. Her portrayal of light cast onto intricately patterned fabrics is most impressive. On illustrating Shakespeare Parker says: 

To Illustrate Shakespeare is rather a serious business. For that matter there are many pitfalls to be avoided in illustrating any play…. The illustrator… must not try to compete with the producer or actor. Nor must [they] interfere too much with the reader’s freedom to react to the words by creating a picture which will destroy the reader’s secret joy of creating [their] own mind pictures. 

I set out primarily to create well balanced designs, which would be engraved as well as I knew how. I did my utmost with the reference at my disposal, to bring [the costumes] into their period. I am sure that Shakespeare himself would not judge me too harshly if this aspect of my designs does not entirely satisfy the experts, probably divided amongst themselves, for I feel he was not a stickler for their kind of accuracy.

All volumes in the set were printed in an edition of 1950 copies at the Press of A. Colish, and each was illustrated by a different artist, but the unifying factor is that all volumes were designed by famed book and type designer Bruce Rogers and edited by the British theatre professional and Shakespeare specialist Herbert Farjeon. Our copy is number 1113, the number for long-standing LEC member Austin Fredric Lutter of Waukesha, Wisconsin.

View more posts with wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker.

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View more posts with wood engravings!