About this Item
368 x 264 mm. (14 1/2 x 10 3/8"). Two volumes. Publisher's original black stained vellum by Sangorski and Sutcliffe (stamped-signed to lower pastedown), upper covers with gilt-lettered title and author, raised bands, spines similarly gilt, top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Two large vignettes and 10 BOLDLY EXPRESSIONISTIC ENGRAVED PLATES, the vignettes and six of the plates by Blair Hughes-Stanton, the other four by Gertrude Hermes. Front pastedowns with the wood-engraved "Woman looking through foliage" bookplate of Samuel Kahn designed, cut, and SIGNED IN PENCIL BY ERIC GILL (in volume I), and with book label of "Effemar." Ransom, p. 6; Hughes-Stanton 4. For the bookplate: Engravings of Eric Gill P907. Spines slightly (and differently) sunned, just a hint of rubbing to extremities and soiling to boards. A FINE COPY INTERNALLY--especially clean, fresh, and bright, with vast margins and intensely rich impressions of the plates. This is an appealing copy of one of the two or three most handsome products of the Cresset Press, with the bonus of a signed bookplate by famed typographer and engraver Eric Gill. For this majestic "Pilgrim's Progress," as for other publications, Cresset employed as printer the Shakespeare Head Press, directed at Stratford-on-Avon by Bernard Henry Newdigate, probably the most important person in private press printing between the wars. The artists represented here, Blair Hughes-Stanton (1902-81) and Gertrude Hermes (1901-83), both studied at the school of Leon Underwood at Hammersmith. They were still in their twenties when they executed these sophisticated, expressive woodcuts, and both went on to have long and productive careers as avant-garde artists. In her book on her father's work, Penelope Hughes-Stanton says that the present production "was perhaps the first real test of the two young artists' ability to harness their rampant expressionism and fit it into the restricting reins of a letterpress production." Newdigate pressured them to make their art look more like that of Gill's, but they resisted and successfully established their distinctive personal styles. The names of the plates here give a sense of the drama involved: "The Valley of the Shadow of Death," "The River of God," "The Pilgrims Cross the River of Death," "The Slough of Despond," "The Fight between Grim and Great-Heart," and so on. A special feature of this copy is that it offers a wood engraving by Gill in the form of the elegant "Woman looking through foliage" bookplate created for British collector Samuel Kahn in 1936. Gill (1882-1940) created 55 bookplates between 1922 and 1939, many of these simple labels featuring his beautiful lettering. This example is an ornate design in Gill's mature style, with delicate hatching, subtle shading, and a sense of movement and seeking. NO. 41 OF 195 COPIES on handmade paper (and 10 copies on vellum).
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