American Decorated Publishers’ Bindings1872-1929Volume 3

Sarah Wyman WhitmanEgypt by Martin Brimmer

Houghton, Mifflin and CompanyThe Riverside Press, Cambridge

1892

American Decorated Publishers’ Bindings1872-1929

Collected and Described by Richard Minsky

Volume 3The Third Exhibition

Stockport, New York

Richard Minsky2010

©2010 Richard Minsky

Margaret ArmstrongSeymour BallThomas Watson BallAlbert D. BlashfieldFranklin BoothPaul BransomAlfred BrennanTom BrowneCharles Livingston BullJay ChambersHarry CiminoEvelyn W. ClarkThomas Maitland ClelandEarl Stetson CrawfordWilliam Mather CrockerClyde E. DarrThe Cx DesignerThe Decorative DesignersMargaret EckersonGeorge Wharton EdwardsAdam EmpieGeorge Allan EnglandCharles Buckles FallsWalter W. FawcettWalter C. GreenoughDan Sayre GrosbeckBertram Grosvenor GoodhueFrederick W. GookinF. C. GordonFrederic W. GoudyAlberta HallGeorge Hawley HallowellTheodore Brown HapgoodMabel HarlowStuart Hay

Frank HazenplugEdward Stratton HollowayGeorge W. HoodL. B. HumphreyAdrian IorioWilliam James JordanRockwell KentF. R. KimbroughFrederick LowenheimBlanche McManus MansfieldHarry B. MatthewsAlice C. MorseFlorence Pearl (England) NosworthyMarion L. PeabodyVictor PerardMary E. PhillipsMaurice B. PrendergastHoward PyleAmy RandEthel ReedLouis J. RheadAmy RichardsRome K. RichardsonRachel RobinsonBruce RogersAmy M. SackerJulius A. SchweinfurthFrank Berkeley SmithW. E. B. StarkweatherBertha StuartLee ThayerPaul VerburgSarah Wyman WhitmanF. C. Yohn

� AMERICAN DECORATED PUBLISHERS’ BINDINGS 1872-1929

FROM DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI TO SARAH WYMAN WHITMAN

Sarah Wyman Whitman is represented in this exhibition with some of her most important cover art. We have her first known design from 1880, on the Verses of Susan Coolidge [left], issued in Boston by Roberts Brothers. The style is derived from Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s 1865 design for Atalanta in Calydon, which was used by Houghton on the 1878 issue of Bayard Taylor’s Prince Deukalion [featured in the Second Exhibition, catalog pp. 2 and 88, reproduced to the right for convenience].

Gullans and Espey chose this 1880 SWW design as the first modern American binding in their 1979 essay, “American Trade Bindings and Their Designers, 1880-1915” and noted: “The effect may appear a trifle anemic today, but in the context of its time it was explosive.” 1

Our three variant copies, in cream cloth (made to imitate vellum, like Deukalion), in teal, and in green, have “VERSES” at the top of the spine and “1880” at the bottom in gold. The size and styling of the spine type changed after the first edition, which was in slightly larger format [left]. The title had to fit on a narrower spine, as the paper was thinner on each subsequent printing, with the 1883 edition being substantially compressed.

In 1891 Hawthorne’s Our Old Home was issued by The Riverside Press in a 2-volume limited edition, with 250 copies printed on Riverside Press watermarked paper, in a vellum binding with SWW design. The same design was used on the Houghton Holiday Edition that year, issued in red and in green silk, in a green paper dust jacket with a different design. Our copy is green, with most of the dust jacket intact, and is in the original titled slipcase. The three medal-lions of Verses have morphed into flowers, and the sense of the overlapping medallions is kept with the leaves and vines in the background. Rossetti’s 1865 design showed movement from the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic to Arts and Crafts, with a Japanese influence (see also the first catalog, p. 1). In 1891 Whitman adds just a touch of Art Nouveau [details below].

A featured work in this exhibition is her 1892 cover on Egypt by Martin Brimmer. A striking, elegant design, we are fortunate to have the gold-stamped vellum and brown-stamped suede variants.

Her integration of Arts & Crafts with Art Nouveau continued, seen here in the 1899 cover for Tiverton Tales [right]. Thanks to Sue Allen for discovering via correspondence that SWW based the central motif for this on a design by Margaret La Farge, the unmarried daughter of Whitman’s mentor, artist John La Farge.

1 In Jean Peters, Collectible Books, Bowker, 1979, p 37.

Versesby Susan Coolidge

Roberts Brothers, 1880

Prince Deukalionby Bayard Taylor

Houghton, Osgood, 1878

Our Old Homeby Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Riverside Press, 1891 [left]and Houghton Holiday Edition, 1891

Detail of the dust jacketHoughton Holiday Edition, 1891

John La Farge played an important role as inspiration to American book cover designers. A leader in the integration of fine and decora-tive art, as well as being a book illustrator, he knew and taught several of the younger cover artists, including Alice C. Morse and Margaret Armstrong as well as Sarah Whitman.

SPLIT FOUNTAIN 15

IN A CLASS OF ITS OWN

The unsigned 1912 cover on The House of a Thousand Welcomes [p. 67] is unlike any other in the three exhibitions, and shows what can be done by a great designer with just one color. The word “The” in the title is a powerful graphic element that interacts masterfully with the deep-perspective street scene, never allowing the viewer’s eye to rest. The style of the dominating letter T suggests it may be by Will Bradley, who was doing work for John Lane then. It is not listed in Anthony Bambace’s bibliography, but that could be due to its scarcity. Only one copy shows in WorldCat.

Dwellers in the Hillsby Melville D. Post

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1901

The Redemption of Kenneth Galt

by Will N. HarbenHarper, 1909

[DD?]

SPLIT FOUNTAIN

This exhibition includes the earliest split-fountain cover we have had, Hans Breitman’s Ballads (1897), which uses a blend from cream to tan for the panel background and for the character’s jacket and shoes.

Five of the covers use fountain blends in the sky to create a sunset or sunrise. Dreamland (1901) has a sunset that blends from light blue to orange, in a dreamlike scene that reflects the theme of the title. The same year a black-stamped line drawing of a horseman in the cloth color is silhouetted against a sunset with a cream to orange fountain blend above a gold title on Dwellers in the Hills. A similar color scheme is used in 1906 for the cover of In Tamal Land.

The 1909 binding on The Backwoodsmen uses a blue, yellow and orange blend behind three men sitting and smoking pipes near dusk. The same year a blue to yellow blend in the sky of The Redemption of Kenneth Galt looks more like a sunrise than a sunset.

See also In the Oregon Country [p. 5], Dwellers in the Mist [p. 20], and the dust jacket on Seed [p. 12].

The Backwoodsmen by Charles G.D. Roberts

Macmillan, 1909[DD?]

In Tamal Landby Helen Bingham

Caulkins, ©1906

Hans Breitmann’s Balladsby Charles Godfrey Leland

David McKay, ©1897

Dreamlandby Julie M. Lippmann

Penn, 1901

2� AMERICAN DECORATED PUBLISHERS’ BINDINGS 1872-1929

There is some mystery surrounding this design on Maurice Hewlett’s Pan and the Young Shepherd (John Lane, 1898). The monogram is likely William Snelling Hadaway. He emigrated from the USA to Britain about 1897. The enigma is why this is such a scarce book cover.

Hewlett bibliographer Percy Muir, who had access to the best collections of first editions of the author’s works, had not seen one, and only notes “Copies are known to exist with a design of Pan on the side.” 1 Whether it was originally intended for the first edition and then suppressed after a few proof copies were made is specula-tion. We know it was early and that the author liked it enough to give as an impor-tant gift. One other copy I have located is in the collection of Mark Samuels Lasner, whose e-mail to me says, “My copy of the Pan-cover was inscribed by Hewlett to Arthur Conan Doyle on 1� November 1898.” Our copy is unmarked. Muir originally had identified the publication date as December, 1898, but in the Corrigenda corrects that to November, which suggests that this was the earliest design.

1 Muir, pp. 13 and 37.

CHECKLIST 25

[Anonymous]. The Highroad / Being the Autobiography of an Ambitious Mother. Chicago: Herbert S. Stone & Company, 190�. Green flat-grain cloth stamped in light green drawing of a road leading to a white sun on the horizon; white titles on cover and spine. Highroad is one word on the title page, two on the cover. [lib] 19.7 x 12.2 [Hazenplug, Frank, unsigned. K305]

Aesop. Aesop’s Fables. Illustrations by J. M. Condé. New York: Moffat, Yard & Company, 1905, November. Green cloth stamped in orange, dark green and cream with robed character, lion, wolf, lamb, rabbit and pelican; white title with orange illustration credit on cover and spine. 22.7 x 15.5 [DD]

Allen, Frank Waller. The Lovers of Skye. Illustrated by W. B. King. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, n.d., ©1913. Olive-gray cloth blind-stamped with a circular vignette of a cabin atop a seaside cliff, gold title on cover and spine. [lib] 17.9 x 12 [Crawford, Earl Stetson, signed with a crowned C]

Allen, Grant. Kalee’s Shrine. Frontispiece by Parkhurst. New York: New Amsterdam Book Company, n.d., n.c. (1897?). Green flat-grain cloth stamped with dark green and gold fruit tree; dark green title on cover and spine. [lib] 17.3 x 11.8 [signed S in a circle, unknown]

CHECKLIST OF 300 DESIGNS

�8 AMERICAN DECORATED PUBLISHERS’ BINDINGS 1872-1929

Faris, John T. The Romance of the Rivers. Illustrated with photographs. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1927, First Edition. Dark blue cloth stamped in bright and matte gold scene of a sailing ship on a river; gold titles on cover and spine, vignette of river in a shield on spine. Another First Edition in brown cloth with the same design stamped in black, in a paper dust jacket printed in black with blue halftone illustration of a river scene that wraps from front to spine. 22.5 x 15.1 [DD?, unsigned, attribution by John Lehner]

Farnham, Mateel Howe. Wild Beauty. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1930. Pebble-grained teal cloth stamped in blind with swirling design; red~orange titles on cover and spine. 19.3 x 13.5

Farnol, Jeffery. My Lady Caprice. Illustrations by Charlotte Weber Ditzler, decorations by Theodore B. Hapgood. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1907, October. Textured green cloth stamped in gold with a symmetrical design surrounding an oval paper onlay of a woman taken from the frontispiece. [lib] 22.2 x 13.5 [Hapgood, Theodore B., signed T B H]

Field. Eugene. The Holy Cross. Decorated initials by Louis J. Rhead. Chicago: Stone & Kimball, 1893, October (colophon), first impression, issued December. Blue cloth stamped in gold and silver pattern of wreaths and crosses, gold and silver line borders, silver title, same on both covers; gold title and silver decorations on spine. 8 pp. publishers’ catalog at end. [17 x 11.2 [Rhead, Louis J., unsigned, K8]

CHECKLIST �9

Figyelmessy, Elisa Haldeman. Two Boys in the Tropics. Illustrated. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1910, October. Turquoise~gray cloth stamped with dark green and gold stylized jumping dolphins silhouetted by sun on horizon, butterfly, and two parrot heads; blue circular printed paper onlay with palm trees; red title outlined in green; similar designs on spine. [lib] 19.6 x 13.3

Flynt, Josiah. The Little Brother. Frontispiece. New York: The Century Co., 1902, March. Green flat-weave cloth stamped in green, dark green and gold Art Nouveau vignette border for title and vignette of trees and sunrise/set; gold title on spine with panel decorations matching the cover style. 19.9 x 13.3 [Clark, Evelyn W., signed EWC]

Foster, Nancy K.. Not of Her Race. Frontispiece photo-graph of El Molino. Boston: Richard G. Badger; The Gorham Press, 1911. Yellow cloth stamped in midnight blue, orange, cream and silver with a shawl hung on the border, orange title on cover and spine. 19.2 x 13.3

Friedman, I. K. [Isaak Kahn]. Poor People. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company; The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1900. Gray cloth stamped in black and orange view through window of a silhou-etted skyline, the title in black on the windowshade, with a heart. 19.1 x 13 [signed BW-T]

104 AMERICAN DECORATED PUBLISHERS’ BINDINGS 1872-1929

For more information on this book or to order one of the editions,

please visit minsky.com.