#barry moser

[antiqueanimals]

Barry Moser. 1996.

[mrdirtybear]

'Self Portrait', a 1985 wood engraving by American artist Barry Moser (born 1940) for the portfolio Face To Face, a gathering of self-portraits by leading contemporary wood engravers. For more about Mr Moser please left click here.

[garadinervi]

Erin Fletcher / Herringbone Bindery, 'An Alphabet' by Barry Moser [Wood Engravings by Barry Moser, Calligraphy by Yvette Rutledge, Printed by Harold McGrath, Pennyroyal Press, West Hatfield, MA, 1986, Printers copy], (bookbinding), Completed in 2015 [Private Collection. © Erin Fletcher]

[uwmspeccoll]

A Moser New Year’s Eve

We close out 2022 with these somber wood-engraved landscapes separated by images of icebergs by noted wood engraver, book designer, and fine-press publisher Barry Moser from his 1983 Pennyroyal Press edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, printed by master printer Harold McGrath in a limited edition of 350 copies. The original edition, of course, was published in London in 1818, and Moser’s production was based on a copy of that edition from Special Collections at the Smith College Library.

With its somber winter imagery and our own penchant for wood engravings (18% of our posts for 2022 have wood engravings), we thought this was an appropriate way to ring out the old and ring in the new, as our graduate intern Olivia is currently working on a major exhibition of Barry Moser’s work to open in February 2023. Our copy of the Pennyroyal Frankenstein is another gift from our friend Jerry Buff.

We wish you all a safe and festive passage into the New Year!

View more posts on work by Barry Moser.

View posts from New Year’s Eves past.

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[the-cricket-chirps]

Barry Moser

King of the Birds

(Pennyroyal Press)

[thebeautifulbook]

FRANKENSTEIN, OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) Illustrated by Barry Moser. Art binding by Karen Hammer.

Karen Hammer’s work is included in collections ranging from the Tate Britain and the Library of Congress to UCLA and Graceland.

[sesiondemadrugada]

Barry Moser.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

"Edgar Allan Poe" (c. 1992) by Barry Moser

[archivist-dragonfly]

Book 396

The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Inferno

Verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum / illustrated by Barry Moser

University of California Press 1980

Published in 1980, the California Dante is an absolutely gorgeous set of books. Each volume is beautifully laid out in parallel with Mandelbaum’s verse translation on the verso facing the original Italian. Each book is also printed in two colors—red for Inferno, green for Purgatorio, and blue for Paradiso—highlighting the captions of the illustrations, and each is typeset in an elegant monotype Dante, a typeface designed in 1957 by Giovanni Mardersteig. In total, there are 96 pen and wash drawings in the books, and amazingly Moser began the illustrations for Inferno as late as 1979. However, he states that “most of those which appear in [Inferno] were, in fact, done during a single violently productive month—July, 1979.”

[bishopsbox]

source: bishopsbox

Edgar Allan Poe. Woodcut (c. 1992) by Barry Moser.

Thanks to: @s-o-u-t-h-o-f-h-e-a-v-e-n-69

[cold-linoleum]

Barry Moser, “The Death of Jezebel” / The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 284

[antiqueanimals]

Barry Moser. 1996.

[kestrelhill]

Going to rec two illustrated editions of Moby-Dick for your viewing pleasure that go in opposite directions

First, the Arion Press version. Moby-Dick is difficult to illustrate without falling back on melodramatic poses, so this version focuses on places, creatures, objects or tools, and processes connected with nineteenth-century whaling with original  engravings by Massachusetts artist Barry Moser. Want to know what a whaling ship looked like? How a whaleboat was equipped? How a whale was butchered after being killed? Look no further. Available used in pb from the usual sources

Moby-Dick in Pictures, art by Matt Kish. For a year and a half, Kish drew an image inspired by one line of text on each page. Unique and brilliant. Not a reading text, but I pulled out my copy to enjoy again alongside whale weekly. Expensive, but worth it - my birthday present to myself when it came out https://www.matt-kish.com/moby-dick

[rbolick]

Books On Books Collection - Annie Cicale

Patterned Alphabet (2013) Patterned Alphabet  (2013)Annie CicaleSewn, casebound leporello. H104 x W104 mm. 34 panels. Edition of 41, of which this 26. Artist 4 July 2023.Photos: Books On Books Collection. Patterned Alphabet could well have been entitled Textured Alphabet. The number of different textures almost equals that of the patterns. It is the textures’ interaction with each other as well…

[uwmspeccoll]

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.

View more posts on work by Barry Moser.

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[the-cricket-chirps]

Barry Moser

The Wicked Witch of the West

(wood engraving)

1985