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James Reid: Selected Wood Engravings

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.