Description: Original artwork for a bookplate design by the early 20th century illustrator Dugald Stewart Walker. Walker's designs were considered suggestive of other great illustrators -- especially Dulac, Rackham and Beardsley. This unfinished drawing (13 1/4 x 12 1/2") was a design for the plate of Langbourne Meade Williams, a born and bred Virginian who became a prominent businessman in New York (appropriate that Walker had the commission, as Walker said in his Foreward to Anderson';s Fairy Tales, "I have never been anywhere except Richmond, Virginia and New York." The design is highly evocative of Mr. William's Virginia roots, especially his time at the University of Virginia -- the drawing of the Rotunda functions as a kind of crest, along with the insignia of his fraternity (Delta Psi), the Raven Society and Phi Beta Kappa. There are also the seals of Mr. Williams'; two Virginia preparatory schools -- St. Christopher';s School in Richmond and The Episcopal High School in Alexandria. Finally the drawing is embellished with very fluid drawing of horses much in style of Beardsley. An outstanding example of Walker's bookplate art, which very often displayed the personalized iconography of the client.
This artwork is tentatively scheduled to be exhibited at this book show:
Black Swan Books
This artwork is tentatively scheduled to be exhibited at this book show:
Visit the 3rd Annual
Library of Virginia Book Fair
May 30 & 31, 2014
Address: 2601 W Main St, Richmond, VA 23220
Phone:(804) 353-9476
Email Nick@BlackSwanBooks.com
.
I currently have an early Rockwell Kent/John Sloan bookplate for sale on Ebay
This bookplate is illustrated on Page 19 in Rockwell Kent The Art
Of The Bookplate by Don Roberts
The caption is as follows:
“Sloan provided the scratchboard and ink illustrations;
Kent most likely lettered Kathleen’s and his names.
Drawn in the style of a Thomas Bewick engraving, it was the first bookplate
Kent is known to have used.”
5/27/2014- The item sold for $157.50
