THE FORGE IN THE FOREST WITH PICTURES BY BORIS ARTZYBASHEFF (SIGNED BY ARTZYBASHEFF)
New York: The Macmillan Company, 1925. Boris Artzybasheff. First Edition. Hardcover. 12mo, 5.5 x 7.5 in., pp. 148. Illustrated with nine four-color drawings (green, blue, red, black) and other line drawings. Signed by the artist on page 113 on a two-page drawing. Black cloth boards with embossed dual column design astride gilt title. Gilt title to spine. Very light rubbing to edges. Four-color "symbolic pattern" by Artzybasheff to endpapers. Pages and pictures are sharp. Dustjacket spine missing, and chips and edgewear to front and back panels, but these do not interfere with titles or design of front and back covers. Protected in mylar. Very Good Plus / Good Only. Item #85656
Patrick Collumb (1881 - 1972) was born in Longford, Ireland, the oldest of eight siblings. At 17, he took a job as a clerk for the Irish Railway Clearing House and began to write seriously; he had joined the Irish Republican Army and the Gaelic League and taken the name Padraic Colum by the time he was 20.
Living in Dublin during the Celtic Revival and a member of both the National Theatre Society and the Abbey Theatre, he met and became close friends with writers James Joyce, W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and George Russell. With James Stephens and Thomas MacDonagh, Colum founded the Irish Review. Colum’s poetry uses traditional forms to weave landscape and legend with image and song. During his lifetime, Colum published more than 50 volumes of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, children’s literature, and folklore.
In the 1930s, Colum and his wife moved to France, where he resumed his friendship with Joyce and transcribed sections of Finnegans Wake. In 1945, Colum returned to the United States and taught at Columbia University .... Colum died in Enfield, Connecticut at the age of 90 and was buried in Ireland. (from The Poetry Foundation)
From Society Illustrators:
The illustrator, Boris Artzybasheff, (1899-1965) was born "in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and did not leave Russia until 1919 after the Russian Revolution. After a long and often harrowing journey the young artist finally settled in New York City where he embarked on his career. His earliest employment was as an engraver designing labels for beer and medicine bottles, but Artzybasheff began doing free-lance work and soon established a reputation for creative design....
Eventually Artzybasheff turned his attention to illustrating books for publishers in New York and Paris. In 1927 his book designs won him the first of many prestigious awards including best illustrated book from both the American Library Association (the John Newbery Award) and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Throughout his career Artzybasheff was commissioned to design more than thirty books and illustrate another twenty, including several children’s books.
Artzybasheff adopted a technique that incorporated the use of transparent pyroxlin plastic as his matrix because it allowed sharp, precise line quality and easy registration of multiple blocks or colors. This process was used for several award-winning designs by Artzybasheff during the late 1920s and the 1930s....
His cover art attracted the attention of Time magazine editors who were assembling a staff of illustrators to create their cover designs. Before his death in 1965 Artzybasheff created more than 200 covers for Time including portraits of Stalin, Hitler, Truman, Mao Tse Tung, and Ho Chi Minh. Other compelling forms of Artzybasheff’s published art were his paintings and drawings of mechanized humans."
Price: $175.00