Alexeieff's Queen of Spades

Alexander Alexeieff, color wood engraving for Pushkin's The Queen of Spades, 1923
[same info for all images]

All images by Alexander Alexeieff for Pushkin's The Queen of Spades (London, Blackamore Press, 1923).

This is the first guest post by Richard Sica, a colleague and an enthusiastic book collector for the past 35 years. Richard provides some details:

The images are color wood engravings (very unusual for Alexeieff). The copy of the book is copy roman numeral I, printed on Japan Vellum (this copy is I of XXXV not for sale) and contains an extra set of the illustrations. The binding is full black vellum-gilt stamped. I believe he only worked in wood engraving for a short time as the majority of his books are etching and aquatint. However, the compositions and stylized figures are something he retains over the course of his illustrated work.

I hope to do many more posts with Richard. On Tuesday I'll be posting his scans of Alexeieff's work for "Fall of the House of Usher." (And on Monday, I'll be posting my own scans of E. McKnight's Kauffer's Poe illustrations.)

Info on the artist can be found in my previous post: Russian Fairy Tales from A. A.

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minutiae: I managed to widen the template tonight. Just in time, because these gorgeous images appear 100 pixels wider than I could have presented them yesterday. This is part of a change to lessen the time it takes for the main page to download. (It seems anyone with non-cable internet is having problems loading the blog -- sorry!) Basically, I've been squeezing large-size images into 400 pixels, and now I'll just be presenting medium-sized images, anywhere from 200 to 500 pixels -- no more squeezing. You'll still be able to click through to larger sizes when available. The page should start loading faster by the end of the month. Bored yet?