Woodcut book-plates (deluxe edition)

Foreword by Lionel Lindsay. Sydney : Privately printed [The Beacon Press], 1934. Small quarto, original marbled paper boards, vellum spine with black lettering, illustrated dustjacket (lightly foxed, a couple of short chips with loss to foot of spine), marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, pp. 240, illustrated throughout with examples of woodcut bookplates, for the most part tipped-in, the frontispiece being the tipped-in signed Adrian Feint bookplate for Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII). In the original box. The deluxe edition, limited to 70 signed copies (a standard edition of 210 copies also published.

A beautifully produced book, in which nearly every double page ravishes the eye with exquisite colour and black and white woodcut designs. Apart from showcasing the work of Australian and New Zealand artists, who include Adrian Feint (4), Lionel Lindsay (4), Norman Lindsay, L. Roy Davies (4), Margaret Oppen, W.F. Mahony, Ethel Spowers, M. Napier Waller (2), Eric Thake (2) and G.D. Perrottet (2), Peggy Sherriff, Jane Mander, Violet Pilling, Roy Hunt and Alfred Cook, the work provides a comprehensively illustrated historical survey of woodcut bookplates, from Albrecht Dürer through to the designs of contemporary American, Japanese, German, British and Central European artists.

The deluxe edition, enhanced with the addition of extra original bookplates not found in the standard edition.