September 22, 2009

Bold settled on some foreign shore

This post now resides on my other site 50 Watts:

12 comments:

  1. I think this may have been one of the few books at my grandparents' house; I distinctly remember having seen the first picture as a child, and also I think I remember seeing the "witch" one as a child.

    This was a surprising trip down Memory Lane first thing on a Wednesday morning...

    Great post as always!

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  2. What you have here is a bookworm+design enthusiast's utopia.
    Came here through the malayalam covers and then got hooked to all the blogs you follow. I'm bookmarking your profile page. :)
    Thank you, Will.

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  3. These are fantastic. I'm hoping someone has some additional information on this Bold figure, as I have none and haven't yet been able to find any.

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  4. Some of the Amazon listings credit the illustrator as "Bold de la Mare," but that's probably a mistake.

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  5. Hello,

    your blog really blows my mind away. As a form of tribute, and only if you don't have anything against it, I would like to always use one of your pictures to accompany my posts on my 2 blogs: www.bilinguepergioco.com/blog, www.bilingualforfun.com/blog.

    It goes without saying i'd always cite the source.

    I really hope this is OK with you.
    Thank you for all this.

    L.

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  6. Mmm yeah, these are very nice. Particularly like the last woodcut. Hopeful someone out there has the scoop on Bold, curious to learn/see more of their work.

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  7. Thank you all for the nice comments. Jon, glad to give you an early morning flashback.

    I'm heading to the library tonight and will check the de la Mare bio for any mention of Bold. Fingers crossed.

    L., go for it.

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  8. Best of luck. These woodcuts are gorgeous!

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  9. My guess is that it'll be found to be a pseudonym for someone well-ish known. C. Lovat Fraser comes up as a coloured plate creator in a de la Mare book where Bold is still credited as illustrator.
    {thanks for the post, some choice work in there}

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  10. peacay, that sounds likely. No mention was made in the de la Mare bio about "Bold."

    The book you found with the color plate must be an edition of "The Listeners," which unfortunately my library does not have. I'll try to find it and will report back.

    Though C. Lovat Fraser died in 1921 and the de la Mare book is from 1925, I'm still not ruling him out for a variety of reasons. There's a nice book of his illustrations on archive.org (with a section of his designs for books) -- I think I'll do a post on him!

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  11. I have seen these attributed to one Alan Bold, who I cannot locate in my extensive collection of books about wood engravings and illustration. I have always felt it to be a pseudonym. I can see why Lovat Fraser is suggested (despite the dates) Perhaps a follower of CLF?

    I am new to your blog and enjoying it very much.

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  12. Using "Alan" for a google search immediately brought up a fulltable page on Broomsticks. I'll shoot fulltable an email. Thanks Andy.

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