James Reid: Selected Wood Engravings is a limited edition of 125 portfolios, of which twelve copies are not for sale. The portfolio houses thirty-two wood engravings printed directly from the surviving blocks created by James Reid (1907 - 1989). Nineteen of the engravings originally appeared in The Life of Christ in Woodcuts, a wordless book published by Farrar & Rinehart in 1930 and issued in both American and English editions. The thirteen additional engravings originally appeared as illustrations accompanying passages from the Song of Solomon, published as The Song of Songs by Farrar & Rinehart in 1931. Apart from a very few engravings printed by James Reid for presentation to family members, the engravings have never before been issued separately.

The engravings, their folders, and the booklet cover were printed by Art Larson at Horton Tank Graphics in Hadley, Massachusetts; Larson apprenticed with Harold P. McGrath and produced work for Leonard Baskin at his Gehenna Press and for Barry Moser at his Pennyroyal Press. He is among the most skillful fine press craftsmen working today. His work on the James Reid project produced prints whose detail and fidelity to the original matrices exceeded those of the original publications in book form.

The custom portfolio box, produced by Portfoliobox at Pawtucket Rhode Island also contains a descriptive booklet written by the publisher, Robert Strossi and designed by Michael Russem of Kat Ran Press of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The booklet text pages were printed on a six-color Indigo digital press at Puritan Press of Hollis, New Hampshire.

The portfolio was published with the principal intent of introducing the long neglected work of James Reid to both institutions and individual collectors in the belief that Reid's work fully merits their attention and deserves a permanent place in the history of American arts in the twentieth century.

INK provides broad observations and synthesis of trends and events related to the print world, as well as criticism on specific subjects when appropriate.

INK is written by Sarah Kirk Hanley, who is an independent print specialist and critic as well as a frequent contributor to Art in Print. She is also an adjunct instructor at NYU and a consulting expert and advisor for several art appraisal services and online fine art marketplaces. Hanley is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, ArtTable, the College Art Association and the Association of Print Scholars. She has held positions at Christie’s, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Lower East Side Printshop.

Bibliothek und Wissenschaft 46

Hieronymus Cock (1518-1570) was an Antwerp painter and printmaker. Together with his wife, he was one of the first to establish a publishing house for prints. From 1548 their firm “At the Sign of the Four Winds” issued hundreds of important etchings and engravings. Prints after frescoes and paintings by Italian artists Raphael and Bronzino, the first series of classical ruins, antique sculpture, as well as designs by such Northern artists as Maarten van Heemskerck and Frans Floris were distributed all over Europe and helped to spread Renaissance ideals of beauty. It was Cock who spotted the talent of Pieter Bruegel, an artist who would eventually supply Cock with more than sixty designs for prints.

Hieronymus Cock (1518-1570) was an Antwerp painter and printmaker. Together with his wife, he was one of the first to establish a publishing house for prints. From 1548 their firm “At the Sign of the Four Winds” issued hundreds of important etchings and engravings. Prints after frescoes and paintings by Italian artists Raphael and Bronzino, the first series of classical ruins, antique sculpture, as well as designs by such Northern artists as Maarten van Heemskerck and Frans Floris were distributed all over Europe and helped to spread Renaissance ideals of beauty. It was Cock who spotted the talent of Pieter Bruegel, an artist who would eventually supply Cock with more than sixty designs for prints.

For seven centuries, Japan was ruled by samurai, the warrior class. Over the course of this unique national history, the samurai have exerted a powerful and enduring grip on the Japanese imagination. Their exploits, first recounted by wandering minstrels and later recorded in literature, drama, and art, are often seen as morality tales or models for behavior. There is also an insatiable desire to understand warriors as distinct individuals through biographical details that illuminate their grand, romantic lives and explain their victories or defeats. Today, the Japanese public’s enthusiasm for samurai stories is met with countless novels, TV dramas, films, and computer games, many of which have found audiences in the West. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the medium of popular culture was the woodblock print. Colorful, dramatic, and affordable, prints played a key role in shaping not only Japanese but also Western perceptions of the samurai as complex and even conflicted characters. The 26 prints in this exhibition were selected to introduce some of the most famous warriors of the twelfth through sixteenth centuries, as well as varied moods and perspectives. In these prints we find portraits of heroes and cowards, men who conquered as well as men who lost, and men who are remembered as musicians and poets as well as fighters.

Exhibition dates: September 14, 2013-January 12, 2014