A nice gift from the folks at PrairieMod: they’re giving away a font (in both Mac and PC versions) which they’ve made based on classic early Prairie lettering and typefaces. Good stuff!
graphic art
Seattle Sketches
Flickr user Dermatic has some very nice sketches of interesting bits and pieces of Mission architecture in Seattle and elsewhere in his/her photostream:
Karl Schmidt Painting Goes for $120,000
Reader Tamera Herrod recently sent me a recap of December’s Treadway- Toomey 20th Century Art & Design auction. This beautiful Karl Schmidt landscape was the surprise big-ticket item at this auction:
The catalog cover for the year-ending Treadway-Toomey Galleries’ 20th Century Art & Design Auction showcased what was believed to be the sale’s most valuable piece, an illustrious Tiffany Studios Memorial landscape window estimated at $90,000 to $120,000. And on Dec. 4 in Oak Park, Ill., the Tiffany masterpiece did realize $114,000. But it ranked second among top sellers. In a surprising twist, a Karl Schmidt triptych estimated at $6,000 to $8,000 stole the show when bidding escalated to achieve $120,000, a record price for this American painter’s work.
A dreamy landscape with billowing, saffron-toned clouds and splashes of aquamarine sky, Schmidt’s "Tall Trees of California" was implemented in oil on board in 1915. Hinged together in original frames, the three-panel painting was 30 inches wide by 14 inches high. A native of Worcester, Mass., who spent much of his life in California, Schmidt (1890-1962) was known for his landscape and marine paintings.
Roycroft Book-Arts Weekend
Our friend Richard Kegler of P22 (who sell some very detailed and well-designed Craftsman typefaces) is one of the instructors at the following Roycroft workshop, which should be of interest to our readers in the northeast, Roycroft fans throughout the country and anyone interested in fine printing and bookbinding:
The Roycroft Crafts community of Elbert Hubbard circa 1896-1915 produced astonishing amounts of hand crafted items that have become highly collectable and highly regarded. The Roycroft Campus Corporation presents a weekend workshop series which allows participants to work as artisans did 100 years ago.
A collaborative workshop series will take participants through all facets of book production. Participants will work on components of one of three books throughout the weekend. Workshops include: papermaking, paper decoration, hand set type, hand printing, printmaking, illumination, and various binding techniques. Each participant will take home new skills in the book arts as well as a copy of one of the three books. These will be the first Roycroft books to be made at the Campus in over 60 years!
Roycroft Book-Arts Weekend: Oct 14 – 16, 2005
Roycroft Campus Coppershop South Grove at Main, East Aurora NYKathleen West
Kathleen West is a Roycroft Master Artisan woodblock printmaker living and working in East Aurora, NY (where else?). Her style, developed over 40 years of practice and training, incorporates elements of the Pre-Raphaelite and Nouveau movements. The level of detail in her work surpasses so much other work that is done in this medium, and her work is colorful and bright. Take a look at her alphabet series, which reminds me for some reason of William Blake. Her work is sold by dealers throughout the east coast, as well as by The Craftsman Home in Berkeley, California
A&C Stencils
Trimbelle River Studio produce a number of vintage stencil designs for the edification of your home – mostly borders, but they do sell a few panel & "spot" illustration designs as well. They also sell a full line of paints and other colorants and the various supplies needed for applying such design elements. I suppose a good portion of the appeal of these – aside from the appeal of doing it yourself, in this DIY age where everyone is an expert – is that they are much more flexible in terms of size or length than wallpaper borders, and can be altered significantly in terms of color and even structure.
William Morris for your Desktop
Our good friend Stephen Coles has taken the William Morris wallpaper designs previously featured here on Hewn & Hammered and, in this article on YayHooray!, presented them as tileable (and usably low-contrast) desktop wallpapers.
Sotheby’s: Greene & Greene
Rich Muller notes that "many of the pieces that have been in the Huntington’s Scott gallery are now up for auction (through Sotheby’s). There are a lot of high-resolution images that I’ve never seen anywhere else. Get your checkbooks out, or at least download some of these images! There is also information on each lot." Catalogs are US$43; the least expensive item up for auction is significantly more expensive.Of special note, at least to those interested in the graphic arts: some of the most expensive cuts (of such a small size, at least) ever.
Gibbs Smith, Publisher
This is not a book review, per se, but rather a publisher review. I’ve got a stack of relatively recent books on the Arts & Crafts movement in general to review, and this is sort of an appetizer for the many upcoming book reviews that we’ll be printing throughout the next several weeks.Gibbs-Smith, located in Layton, Utah of all places, give their corporate motto as "to enrich and inspire humankind." This may be the kind of thing you expect to read on the letterhead of a big art book publisher, but they do strive to meet these lofty goals.
pictured: one of Yoshiko Yamamoto’s letterpress-printed cards
CJ Hurley Century Arts
