Printing Kate Greenaway: the Color Wood Blocks of Edmund Evans

Cotsen 32262

Above is the half-title illustration from Kate Greenaway’s collection of children’s poetry Marigold Garden (London; New York: G. Routledge and sons, [1885]). “Printed in Colours” by Edmund Evans, the book is full of excellent examples of color wood engraved illustrations. Sometimes referred to as chromoxylography (from the ancient Greek roots for “color-wood-writing”), color wood engraving was one of the most popular forms of color printing during the 19th Century. A variety of wood engraving, using an engraver’s burin to cut relief images against the grain of a hard wood block, color wood engraving employed multiple blocks to make color images: often employing one block per color.

Rare Books PZ8.3.G75 Mar3, title-page.

Yet examples of the actual blocks used for this once ubiquitous process are few and far between. Perhaps this is because contemporary printers didn’t value the blocks after their job was done (namely printing illustrations). Wood engraving blocks were often used or reused so much (for different editions of some work or even shared across different publications) that they wore down or broke over time; becoming utterly useless for printing. Others were simply discarded or re-purposed (probably burned) after a print job was completed so that they wouldn’t take up valuable space in a print shop.

But as historical artifacts, wood blocks (and other printing surfaces like lithographic stone or intaglio plates) can be extremely informative about the history of the book, revealing more about the process involved than the finished product (i.e. books) can show us. Cotsen is lucky enough to have the original color wood blocks for the half-title illustration of Marigold Garden. Besides being beautiful objects in their own right, the blocks elucidate aspects of the production of Marigold Garden that have up till now, been otherwise unknown or unrevealed.

Cotsen 32262. Each block measures only about 3 x 2 x 1 inches.

As primary sources the blocks illustrate the color wood engraving process. They give us a first hand glimpse into Evans’s methods and style showing, through comparison, how he designed and layered blocks in order build a multi colored image. With close scrutinization of both the blocks and the resulting illustration we can discern the block printing order with more certainty (from lightest to darkest): pink, yellow, orange, green, blue, and black (the “key block” for printing the line work). Notice too how the ink in the “pink” block has not only turned orange over time, but reveals the grain of the wood on the flat raised printing surface (see below).

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Cotsen 32262. Here are the blocks and illustration paired for comparison. Notice how the image in the blocks is the reverse image for the finished product (converted during the printing process as the blocks are pressed onto the paper).

Close analysis of the wood blocks themselves, including areas other than the printing surface, reveals even more about the production of Marigold Garden. By looking at the backs of the blocks, we find the name “T. I. Lawrence” carved (with a burin) into the blocks themselves.

Cotsen 32262. Back of the “Blue” block. “T. I. Lawrence” is just visible across the bottom right of the block. It looks thick paper was once affixed to the back of the block. This may have been done by the printer to help the blocks reach “type height” in order to be flush with type used on the page. Or it may have been pasted on later in order to mount the blocks for presentation.

Using cutting edge research tools (a little bit of googling) I was able to discern the identity of T. I. Lawrence. From the website of Lawrence art supplies, I was able to discover a well informed (complete with sources) meticulous family history of Lawrences who have been art suppliers for seven generations. It turns out that Thomas John Lawrence Junior (1840-1887) was an engravers’ block manufacturer and most likely the wood block supplier for this work. With close analysis of the wood blocks themselves, I was able to add this missing link to the book production process.

Looking closely at the blocks also reveals more about their use. Printing blocks were subjected to a tremendous amount of pressure during the printing process. As a result, many would crack after continuous pressings. Notice above how the “green” block has a significant horizontal crack across the upper left side. Such cracks are sometimes visible in illustrations using well worn blocks. But, with a little attention, cracks could be repaired for continual use without blemishing the image. Savvy printers like Evans could extend the life of a wood block by inserting new wood joints and rejoining cracks and splits:

Cotsen 32262. The top left edge of the “green” block.

Cotsen’s six blocks for the half-title illustration reveal how much work and preparation is involved in creating just one small 3 x 2 inch image. Larger images would have required multiple wood blocks joined together (using end grain wood from young box wood trees meant that the size of engraving wood blocks was limited to a few inches), often employing several wood engravers working together to complete a single image. Can you imagine then how much more labor and time was required to make a larger image (or, indeed, the whole book)?

Rare Books PZ8.3.G75 Mar3, page 20. I count seven colors requiring seven blocks, how many do you see? This illustration also reveals one of the primary advantages of printing from wood blocks. Images and text could be printed together since wood blocks and printer’s type could fit together in the printer’s forme (unlike the popular rival to color wood engraving: the chromolithograph).

Wood blocks and other printing surfaces help tell the story of the labor and people involved in making books. They can also be used to help teach and illustrate the history of printing and illustration. With close consideration of these once disregarded pieces of manufacturing equipment we can learn so much more about the history of books and the process of their creation.

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Heads up for a blog extravaganza! Next week, in celebration of banned books week, Cotsen will highlight a banned children’s book every day!

 

Illustrating Summertime in Children’s Books

Little Tot's Holiday Book (Warne: not before 1881) Cotsen 30357

Little Tot’s Holiday Book (Warne & Co.: ca. 1881) Cotsen 30357.

As the days of summer dwindle into a precious few, the long days of sunshine slowly get shorter, and a new school term impends, we all tend to wonder: “Where did the summer go?”

With that thought in mind, we might help keep summer alive a little longer by taking a look at how children’s book illustrators picture summer and its activities.

It certainly didn’t take children’s books to make school kids (and the rest of us) love the prospect of having time off from school and being able to enjoy all the activities available for a few precious months a year. But nineteenth-century books for children certainly stressed summertime fun and vividly pictured outdoor activities, some relatively ‘novel’ ones at the time, such as beach holidays at newly-popular (and accessible) ocean-side resorts. As such, they provide a terrific window onto life and leisure-time activities at the time.

detail

Children at the shore (detail from Little Tot’s Holiday Book).

Frederick Warne & Co., one of the major nineteenth-century publishers of children’s books readily added “holiday” books picturing seasonal and summertime fun to its line of books. The large format (over 12″ tall) picture book Little Tot’s Holiday Book features vivid, full-page chromolithographed illustrations of children in all sorts of holiday activities (including some in winter). The bright red cloth front cover features a paper onlay of two Victorian children at a seaside locale. Note their fashionable, but modest, attire, fairly typical for the time.

“A Holiday at the Seaside.”

One of the illustrations inside the book shows children happily engaged in a range of contemporary seaside activities: playing on the beach and making sandcastles, taking donkey rides, and riding in a goat cart. I like the background detail of “On the Sands,” which shows a Brighton-like pleasure pier, one of the “novel” aspects of Victorian seaside resorts.

train

“Off to the Seashore”…via train.

Another full-page illustration features a train. While trains were always popular with children, particularly boys, why does a train appear in a holiday book? The answer lies in the caption: “off to the seashore.” Trains were a relatively novel form of transportation at this time, and one of the ways that middle-class and more prosperous working-class families went to the seashore in the 1880s.

holiday

Little Tot’s Holiday Book, alternate cover – Cotsen 30357 (c.2)

Little Tot’s Holiday was apparently a popular title, because Warne issued another version of the same title, with identical content, but a different cover, one showing a very different kind of summertime activity. Again, two fashionable and apparently affluent children (similar to the book’s target audience) are featured, but this time they’re presented in a rural setting, getting donkey rides from a young adult from the country (note, his mustache and “rural” attire).

Warne’s picture books repeatedly show children at the seaside, attesting to the popularity of the subject.  Another large-format picture book, Little Tots Playtime Book includes an illustration of a girl on a donkey, a sailor-suited boy, and the family dog on the beach, with sailboats in the background and a nearby patriotic Union Jack, which breaks the perfect (“boring”?) symmetry of the rectangular frame and creates visual interest via a technique sometimes used by painters.

At the seashore again… (Little Tots Playtime Book, ca. 1881) Cotsen 30359

LittleTotsPlaytime-cover

Cover of Little Tots Playtime Book

The general design of the Playtime Book’s cloth cover is essentially the same as that of the Holiday Book (perhaps this was Warne’s stock design for these picture books?), but the inset chromolithographed medallion provides quite a different, more formal and stylized, view of little women in summertime — a somewhat Kate “Greenawayesque” presentation.

Cover of Kate Greenaway’s Book of Games, (Routledge & Co., ca. 1899) Cotsen 5633

Speaking of Kate Greenaway (whose presentations of children are famous), let’s take a quick look at how she pictures summer in Kate Greenaway’s Book of Games, issued by by George Routledge & Sons in 1889 (and later reissued by Warne in 1899). The cover shows a vignette of children on a rustic teeter-totter. The twenty-four colored wood-engraved illustrations by Edmund Evans show children in Greenaway distinctive style: extremely well-dressed, fashionable, and not very kinetic. The two illustrations below present several girls in caps playing “Battledore & Shuttlecock” (“badminton” to us now) and “Puss in the Corner,” both accompanied by brief descriptions of the games.

greenaway 1

“Battledore & Shuttlecock”

grrenaway 2

“Puss in the Corner”

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that summertime and beaches are featured only in English books for children — that was definitely not the case! For instance, a German book, In Sommer, from about 1900 features a terrific, highly-saturated color depiction of children playing on the beach on its cover. And illustrations inside the book show children busily involved in other summer activities: flying kites, picking flowers, and making quite a fuss over an apple!

InSommer-apple

In Sommer: quite a fuss about an apple in the woods on a bright summer day

InSommer-kites

In Sommer: Children and their kites, including the “Man-in-the Moon” and giant clown face

InSommer-cover

Children on the beach: cover of In Sommer, ([Germany? ca. 1900]) Cotsen 52215

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another terrific book cover appears on Johnny Headstrong’s Trip to Coney Island, published about 1882 by New York’s McLoughlin Brothers, perhaps the preeminent children’s books publisher in the USA at the time. In the 1880s, Coney Island was a seaside resort for residents of New York City and Brooklyn Heights, a place reached by train and with the same sort of summery, festive ambience as Cape May or Cape Cod, if you can imagine that. The chromolithographed cover of this “toybook” presents an idyllic beach scene via illustrator William Bruton’s artwork, although something in Johnny’s own facial expression suggests another strand in the thread of the story…

johnny

Johnny Headstong’s Trip to Coney Island (McLoughlin Bros, ca. 1882) Cotsen 540

page 1

Johnny arrives at Coney Island with his family (note the masted sailing ships in the background)

Johnny Headstong’s story begins in much the same way as the other summertime books we’ve been looking at – a fashionable youth sets out for the Coney Island seaside resort accompanied by his sister, nanny, and father, a “kindly man of good repute…and wealth.”

But as his name suggests, Johnny is impulsive and lacking in self-discipline — he gets into all sorts of trouble… He climbs over the railing while sailing a toy sailboat, falls into a pool, and has to be fished out. He then “slips away” from the adults “to see things by himself.” More trouble ensues in the form of various misadventures, as Johnny hits another boy in the face with a ball, falls off a swing he pushed too high, and finds himself on a runaway donkey, causing mayhem on the beach and knocking over an apple-seller (as Bruton’s double-page illustration vividly shows). Eventually, covered in bandages, Johnny winds up back home, where his father admonishes: “You see what comes to heedless boys, whene’er they disobey.”

JohnnyHeadstrong-center

Bruton’s double-page illustration of Johnny Headstrong on the pony causing mayhem

So McLoughlin’s Brothers’ rendition of this “summertime story” is really one of the “cautionary tales” inspired by Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter for which the firm was famous: stories showing kids “acting badly” and suffering the consequences. Some of their other classics in this vein have titles like: Little Suck-a-Thumb, Naughty Girls, Lazy Sam, Inky Jake, Foolish Fanny, Paulina Pry, and Moping Mary. After all, “to please and instruct” was the company motto, even during summer vacation!

Enjoy more summer at the virtual exhibition on swimming!