A John DePol Feathursday
This week we present signed, wood-engraved proofs of birds by the legendary American wood engraver John DePol, created for a 1991 letterpress edition of Texas author John Graves’s Self-Portrait, with Birds; Some Semi-Ornithological Recollections, printed by W. Thomas Taylor in Dallas at Chama Press in a limited edition of 330 copies. These prints appear as chapter heads in the book and present birds in their landscapes, rather than as ornithological renderings, in order to reflect the author’s view of birds as part of the natural environment.
There are a Bobwhite, some kind of passerine, an eared owl (maybe a Long-eared or a Screech), a Mallard, a Turkey, gulls, and some raptors. The book is not so much about the author as about the people who occupy a special place in his memory, all of them who in one way or another were associated with birds and contributed to the writer’s knowledge of them. Unfortunately, we do not hold the book (yet), just the prospectus and this suite of prints donated by our good friend Jerry Buff.
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