A Well-Chapeaued Feathursday
Birds in Hats!
Our graduate intern Olivia is currently preparing a major exhibition on the work of wood engraver, illustrator, designer, letterpress printer, and fine press publisher Barry Moser. He is well known, at least in fine press and book enthusiast circles, for his distinctive engravings and exquisitely-designed limited editions from his Pennyroyal Press. The rest of the world, however, mainly knows him for his illustrations for children’s books, which are usually executed in watercolors. We hold many of Moser’s fine press publications, but only a few examples of his children’s books. The Curriculum Collection in our general library, however, holds quite a number of his children’s books, and we are borrowing a few to include in the exhibition.
We are especially tickled by Moser’s humorous paintings of anthropomorphized birds in hats for Virginia Hamilton’s collection of African American folktales, When Birds Could Talk & Bats Could Sing, published in 1996 by The Blue Sky Press, an imprint of Scholastic, Inc. The illustrations are a perfect accompaniment to this set of lively and entertaining jewels of American folklore.
Since the book was mostly designed by Moser, it bears an extensive colophon, usually reserved for fine press publications. This is why we know that the paintings were executed in transparent watercolor on handmade Barcham Green paper, the types are Sumner Stone’s Stone Serif Medium (1987) and Gudrun Zapf von Hesse’s Diotima Italic (1953), the color separations were made by Bright Lights, Ltd in Singapore, and the edition was printed and bound by Tien Wah Press in Singapore. Probably more information than any child would need to know, but we sure appreciate it.
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