Fantastical Portraits of Engravers, Illustrators, & Binders

| 1 Comment

Leonard Baskin (1922-2000), Icones Librorum Artifices: Being Actual, Putative, Fugative & Fantastical Portraits of Engravers, Illustrators & Binders (Leeds, Mass.: Gehenna Press, 1988). Composition and presswork are by Arthur Larson. Copy 36 of 40. Graphic Arts Collection (GAX) Oversize Z232.G2956 B37 1988f

baskin4
baskin

Leonard Baskin established the Gehenna imprint in 1942, while he was a student at the Yale School of Art. Some people name Icones Librorum Artifices as one of the Gehenna masterpieces. The volume offers thirty-two portraits drawn by Baskin and printed by D. R. Wakefield, along with biographical text written by Baskin and imaginatively set in Arrighi and Centaur type. The subjects of the portraits are both real and imagined, well known and unheard of, including men and women from the last five centuries.

baskin2
baskin3
baskin5
baskin6

1 Comment

An interesting set of pages shown here--not the usual suspects. The van de Passe page and the Beardsley page were two of my favorites to set. The Inglis page was special and noticeably different from most of the other 32 pages. I think it was the last one Leonard Baskin had me set.

N.B. K Howat assisted me in the setting of some of the pages