Description
CLEARANCE – NEW IN SHRINKWRAP – ONE AVAILABLE
Interior photos are taken from another online listing.
In 1929, Pasadena artists and sisters Frances, May, and Edna Gearhart created a children’s book illustrated with their original linoleum cuts and descriptive verses. It was, however, not published, and the set ultimately entered the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University. Eighty years later, The Book Club of California published the first edition of this charming work based on the Princeton portfolio.
Frances Gearhart (1869–1958) became the leading color woodcut artist in California during her lifetime, renowned for her dramatic landscape views of mountains, desert, and shore. (See her book, Behold The Day.) Her use of saturated color, her sense of composition and her use of outline reflect her interest in Japanese prints. This series of children at play combines Gearhart’s artistic sensibilities with a subject she knew well from her years of teaching.
May Gearhart (1872–1951), a leading practitioner of the color etching, was the Supervisor of Art in the Los Angeles City School system, while Edna Gearhart (1879–1974), who was skilled at drawing, taught art at Los Angeles High School. During the 1920s, all three sisters worked together in the gallery, where they offered their own prints and exhibited the work of leading international printmakers—the Gearharts were at the center of the printmaking world of Southern California.
Let’s Play contains 25 color plates (including on fold-out plate) and 11 verses. An extra, loose print is laid in and is suitable for framing. The “Afterword” is by Victoria Dailey and “A Note on the Gearhart Printing Technique” is by Susan Futterman.
Let’s Play was published in an edition of 1,000. It has been designed by Janine Vigus and printed by Typecraft, Wood & Jones of Pasadena, California. The size of the book is 11 1/2 x 10 inches. 48 pp. Bound in tan paper over boards with title and names of authors in three colors on label pasted on front cover. Brown cloth spine with title and authors stamped in gold. Tan dust jacket with title, authors, and modified three-color version of the loose print.
