AVANT-GARDE BOOK DESIGN: E McKnight-Kauffer (1890-1954) was a fantastic designer and graphic artist who was American-born, but worked in Britain for most of his career. His book jackets designs reveal his interest in photomontage in the 1930s: the integration of photography, colour and typography. In a 1937 article in Architecture Review, he argued that techniques of photography “have revealed new and astonishing experience for the eye and the imagination … The quick registration that the camera can give should be used as part of modern decoration.” McKnight Kauffer designed a number of books for Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press, including most notably this celebrated cover for ‘Quack Quack’ (1935). The book expressed Woolf’s views on Mussolini and his Fascist ambitions, with a title suggesting barnyard sounds of the orating Hitler and Mussolini. He matched photographs of the Hawaiian war god Kukailimoku with his bulging eyes to those of the gesticulating dictators. Alongside, here is the more classical lithographed design for LH Myers ‘Strange Glory’ (1935) - Myers was an American author who was the father of the artist EQ Nicholson (and himself a friend of many artists). Thirdly, the design for HG Wells’ ‘Man who could work Miracles’ (1936) for Dennis Cohen’s Cresset press. This again features photomontage: a dramatic close-up of the head of Michelangelo’s statue of Moses which alludes to the content of the text, rather than illustrating it. These covers are from my collection of 1930s dust-jackets. There’s a new book out on McKnight Kauffer’s designs, which I’m keen to get soon to put all this in context. #emcknightkauffer #design #hogarthpress #leonardwoolf #leomyers #lhmyers #photomontage #bookstagram #book #coverart #illustration #dustjacket #bibliophile #libre #booklover #books #booksbooksbooks (at Brighton and Hove) https://www.instagram.com/p/CKGWoLdl-_R/?igshid=ebbl7ney50h5
