The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

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Washington Irving’s ghost story is illustrated by Frederick Simpson Coburn for an 1899 edition, with page decorations by celebrated book designer Margaret Armstrong. Coburn’s gloomy plates don’t look so good in this scanned copy but he also produced the many spot illustrations that run through the book. See the rest of the pages here.

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Continue reading “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

Amy Sacker, book designer

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Manders: A Tale of Paris (1899) by Elwyn Barron.

Amy Sacker (1872–1965) was an American book designer, illustrator and bookplate artist, one of a number of female designers and illustrators whose careers began in the last years of the 19th century. I’ve mentioned before how women struggled at this time for acceptance in the male-dominated spheres of painting and sculpture. Those who insisted on pursuing an artistic career were encouraged to concentrate their impulses in the decorative arts with the result that women are a lot more visible in the illustration and design of this period. (See this earlier post about Margaret Armstrong, and these pages at Princeton University Library about women printers, binders and book designers.)

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The Kindred of the Wild (1902) by Charles G. D. Roberts.

The cover above is from the Amy Sacker website which features information about Ms Sacker’s bookbindings, illustrations and bookplate designs. A recent post here mentioned the Troutsdale Press collection of Amy Sacker bookplates from which the two examples below are taken. These often show people in Renaissance or medieval garb drawn in a style reminiscent of Walter Crane. More of them can be seen at the Internet Archive while the University of North Carolina archive has 120 examples of her cover designs.

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Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The book covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
Troutsdale Press bookplates
Margaret Armstrong book designs

Assorted peacocks

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I have a peacock-heavy piece of art out next month so with that grasping for spurious relevance here’s a few more peacock discoveries.

Antoine Helbert‘s untitled peacock man is one of a number of striking portraits turning humans into birds. Via Chateau Thombeau.

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Peacock styles, Anchor Buggy Co. (1897) at the Library of Congress.

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Margaret Armstrong book designs

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Millionaire Households and their Domestic Economy (1903).

More Art Nouveau cover designs, this time by celebrated American designer Margaret Armstrong (1867–1944) whose life and work is documented here. The University of Rochester has examples of her work, as does the Atheneum of Philadelphia and the University of Alabama’s Publisher’s Bindings pages, the latter being an incredible resource for 19th and 20th century cover designs.

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The Golden Key (1926).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The book covers archive