Two More Balls

This week a Ball arrived that I have been after a decent copy of for several years:

 Thomas Watson Ball

A Romance of Summer Seas

by Varina Anne Jefferson-Davis

Harper & Brothers, New York, 1898

The book is scarce for several reasons. Besides the beautiful cover and any literary merit, the author was the daughter of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, and lived a short and tumultuous life.  

The spine is simply stamped in gold lettering. The nautical art on the cover is in light blue, off-white, and creamy light yellow, with lettering, shell motif, and border in the creamy color.

How do we know that this unsigned design is a Ball, besides that it looks like his work? The cover panel is in Ball's portfolio, which is in the rare book collection of the University of Rochester.  While in Rochester for The Future of Reading Symposium at RIT last year I went to the UR Special Collections, which has a strong interest in American book covers and a nice website on the subject, and went through the actual Ball portfolio. One revelation was the discovery of a Ball monnogram I had never seen. He rarely signed his covers, and the only two monograms I have had were T.W.B. in simple lettering. Fortunately I was able to find a decent copy of this book

Thomas Watson Ball

Robin Brilliant

by Mrs. Henry Dudeny

Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1903

Detail:  Monogram of T. W. Ball

If it were not in the portfolio, this device, or logo, would not likely be interpreted as TB or TWB--it looks like AB. Perhaps he was trying to blend it into the Art Nouveau styling of the design and lettering.

 

An Award for The Art of American Book Covers 1875-1930

Very pleased to let you know that the 2011 Worldwide Books Award for Publications was awarded for The Art of American Book Covers 1875-1930 by The Art Libraries Society of North America. Here's a webcam snapshot:

If you are in Holland, you might enjoy the review of The Art of American Book Covers 1875-1930 in Boeken over Boeken (Books about Books).

If you are near Den Haag, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek has the three Limited Edition volumes the reviewer describes as "Van de boeken die hij daarvoor heeft verzameld heeft hij drie catalogi gemaakt in gelimiteerde edities, die nogal kostbaar zijn."

If you are elsewhere and your local bookstore does not have a copy of The Art of American Book Covers, amazon.com offers a substantial discount. 

Meanwhile, you may have noticed that I have not been updating this blog recently.  Don't worry, in the future it will become much more active.  I have been busy getting out Volume 3 of American Decorated Publishers' Bindings 1872-1929.  It has 300 designs that were not in the first two volumes, bringing the total to 1,100 cataloged designs + variants. The cover features an adaptation of a Thomas Watson Ball design from 1899:

A Beautiful Gift for Book Lovers

If you are looking for something beautiful and inexpensive for someone who loves books, The Art of American Book Covers 1875-1930 is perfect. It was designed in gift book format, is exceptionally well produced in full color with images of about 150 gorgeous books, has a top quality gold-stamped cloth binding, and rave reviews of the content.

If you tried to get a copy earlier this year and discovered that none were available in stores or online, that's because the first printing of 2,000 copies sold out in three weeks. The second printing finally arrived, and it is again in your local bookstore and in stock at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Click for a  free PDF preview

Huffington Post review

There's a nice review of The Art of American Book Covers 1875-1930 today in the Huffington Post.

Thomas Watson Ball

 

 Gilian the Dreamer
by Neil Munro
Dodd, Mead, 1899

cover by Thomas Watson Ball, unsigned

The covers of T. W. Ball were completely neglected by scholars of binding design for many years. Gullans and Espey did not mention him in their 1979 essay in Collectible Books, despite listing “The Major Designers” and “Other Noteworthy Designers.” 

Ball worked in several distinct styles and rarely monogrammed his work. So what makes me think the wonderful 1899 abstract landscape on the cover of Gilian the Dreamer (above) was his? Fortunately, Ball compiled a portfolio with some of his binding designs, likely for the purpose of showing these to publishers. His portfolio was acquired by the collector Robert Metzdorf, who loaned it to Sue Allen in 1972 for an exhibition she organized in Chicago. 

The portfolio passed from Metzdorf ’s estate to the University of Rochester in 1975. Only the front covers are in it, with no spines or indication of publisher or date. That made acquiring copies of the actual books to photograph more of a challenge. Gilian the Dreamer is not in the portfolio, but several similar designs are, and that is the basis of the attribution. The Mistress of the Ranch (1897, below) is in the portfolio, and shows that Ball was working towards this level of abstraction at least two years earlier.

The Mistress of the Ranch
by Frederick Thickstun Clark
Harper & Brothers, 1897

 Old Chester Tales (1899, below) uses similar trees with a more realistic townscape.

Old Chester Tales
by Margaret Deland
Harper & Brothers, 1899

Last September I wrote about Variants and More Variants. Below is a variant of the cover at the top of this post. The obvious difference is that the title and author on the top one are gold on the cover and spine, and below are silver.

Gilian the Dreamer
by Neil Munro
Dodd, Mead, 1899

cover by Thomas Watson Ball, unsigned

A more subtle difference, which would have struck the author on first glance, is that his name is spelled "Munroe" on the gold copy and "Munro" on the silver. The latter is correct. The interiors of the books appear to be identical. The mis-spelling suggests that the gold version was the first impression of the stamping.  The error was apparently discovered early on, as one of our subscribers has the gold version with the name spelled "Munro."


Ball often painted in the Pointillist and Impressionist styles. He made many nautical paintings; his fascination with ships and the sea influenced his cover art. The Merry Anne (1904, below) uses decoratively textured fields to create the feeling of the water’s surface by translating the impressionist technique of his painting to the medium of die-stamped cloth. 

 The Merry Anne
by Samuel Merwin
Macmillan, 1904

Fortune’s Boats (below), done for Houghton in 1900, features a gorgeous combination of gold and silver with stylized silhouettes. 

 Fortune’s Boats
by Barbara Yechton
Houghton, Mifflin ,1900

A combination of Ball’s styles appears in a series of designs for Houghton beginning in 1901 with In The Levant (below). That cover is in his portfolio, and similar covers use silhouetted buildings on a gold background. Each design features different Ball elements.

In The Levant
by Charles Dudley Warner
Houghton, Mifflin, 1901

English Hours
by Henry James
Houghton, Mifflin, 1905

Thomas Watson Ball was a master of creating covers that used silhouettes, either for the complete design or for particular elements of it. His 1900 design for Lords of the North by A. C. Laut (below) is particularly interesting because there is a reflection of the silhouette in the water--or is it a shadow? The smooth ripples from the motion of the canoe and the smaller ripples further out tell us about the speed of the canoe and the breeze. The angle and length of the shadows suggest the position of the sun.

 Lords of the North
by A. C.  Laut
F. Taylor, 1900

In several other designs Ball sets the silhouette against a striated sky, patterned water, or both. In Visiting the Sin (below) he creates compelling and evocative images with silhouettes in a flattened pictorial space.

Visiting the Sin
by Emma Rayner
Small, Maynard, 1900

Many of Ball's binding designs can be identified by several features seen above, particularly the stylized trees, striated skies, and use of panels. There are several other styles in which he worked, which will be the subject of a future post.

The Book is Out, Reviews are In

The Art of American Book Covers, 1875-1930 is now in bookstores and available online.

Here are some quotes, with links to the full review:

Fine Books & Collections

"Whether you curl up and read it, shelve it for reference, or place on the coffee table, this is one book you don’t want to miss."

Library Journal

"A perceptive introductory essay makes excellent use of both small illustrations within the text and reference to larger illustrations in the main body of the book to offer perspective on the place of these works and their often anonymous creators within the context of the trends in art and design of the late 19th and early 20th centuries."

The Devil's Accountant

"One look at Dodd, Mead and Co.'s 1880 wraparound cover for Richard Markham's Aboard The Mavis will instantly explain why someone (you) will want to procure Minsky's book."

Bright and Matte Gold

One of the most beautiful techniques employed on publishers' bindings was stamping in bright and matte gold. This could be accomplished with a single impression of a specially engraved die. Microscopic textures were added to parts of the image by various processes. Physical methods would be to engrave a stipple or cross-hatch pattern with a burin, or to roll or press a pattern with a mezzotint rocker or similar tool. A chemical method such as aquatint can also be used to texture the die.

The effect is to make the gold reflect bright and dark in different parts of the image as the light hits it at different angles. This would draw attention to the book in a bookstore window or store display as someone walked past it, and also creates dramatic shifts in light as the book is held and turned at different angles. 

The First Violin
by Jessie Fothergill
Illustrated by G.W. Brenneman
New York: Brentano’s, n.d., ©1896
two volumes 21 x 13.8
[unsigned, Lee and Henry Thayer?]
Two-tone gold stamped black cloth
with original cloth dust wrappers and slipcase.  

Above is a scan. Below is a flash photo, with the light at a different angle. The vines on the front cover that are light above are dark below. The texturing on the back cover is symmetrical with that of the front cover. The curved spine in the photo is not that much darker than the covers, but the covers are flat on to the flash and the reflection of the light in the gold is too much for the camera. 

The enlarged scan detail below makes it easier to see the technique.

The above design is attributed to Lee Thayer (of The Decorative Designers firm) by John Lehner in TBR #4, March 1992 [Trade Binding Research Newsletter]. Charles Gullans felt that the release date of this design was a few months too early to be a DD production, and the 1840’s derivation of the style indicated late work by an older designer. He suggested (in a letter to John Lehner) that it might be by H. L. Parkhurst, who is known to have designed the signed binding below for this edition.

The First Violin
by Jessie Fothergill
Illustrated by G.W. Brenneman
New York: Brentano’s, n.d., ©1896
two volumes 20.9 x 14.1
[signed HLP, H. L. Parkhurst]

Lehner’s points are more compelling. In an e-mail to me, he wrote “The lettering is the best overall example of the early DD work...dingbats, a flamed L, the cross bars pushed to the top, dingbatted o’s, the graceful R, the diagonal part of the N intersecting RHS above the bottom corner. Just wonderful. Not to mention the Lee Thayer repeat design using one of her favorite leaf forms.. a gothicky leaf based on the thistle, used on other works such as Red Cap Tales, and the T Y Crowell reprint of Kenilworth by Scott ca. 1900 and finally, The Strathmore Quality Book Paper sample book where she uses them on the cover, tp, and borders to introduce each type of paper, changing the two colors.” He notes the “trumpet E” in his TBR article.

I agree with Gullans about the 1840’s reference, but the reinterpretation like this of earlier motifs was not uncommon among the younger designers. The repeat design is reminiscent of Will Bradley’s work, as in Lucile (1897).

Lucileby Owen Meredith (Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton)
Illustrated by Madeleine Lemaire and C. McCormick Rogers
New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., n.d., ©1897
23 x 14.4
[signed B, Will Bradley, Bambace A28]

There is similarity in movement to the vines above on The First Violin in the DD design on The Epic of Hades (1897?), and also a similarity to the Bradley design above. Artists paid attention to what others were doing and freely copied what they liked. This often makes the attribution of unsigned cover art difficult.

The Epic of Hades
by Lewis Morris
New York and Boston: Thomas Y. Crowell and Company, n.d.
17.3 x 11.7
[DD]

The Rosary
by Florence L Barclay
Illustrated by Blendon Cambell
Decorations by Margaret Armstrong
New York and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons:
The Knickerbocker Press, 1910, “June”
22.5 x 15.5 cm.
[MA, GE 17]

Poems

by Josephine Daskam

New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1903, October

An unread copy with uncut pages

19.8 x 13.3

[Lee Thayer, signed DD]