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60. CRAIG, Edward Gordon. Gordon Craig’s Book of Penny Toys. Hackbridge, Surrey, At The Sign Of The Rose, 1899.
£12,500
4to. (319 x 251 mm). Quarter white buckram over thick printed card boards, printed title and vignette with hand-colouring to the upper board, printer’s device to the rear board, paper label with printed title to the spine, somewhat rubbed,; ff.[46], comprising printed title with hand-coloured woodcut vignette, 3ff. introduction by Craig, 20 original hand-coloured woodcut plates, printed on the recto only, each preceded by, and facing a leaf of verse describing the image, each with a small woodcut vignette of which 18 are hand-coloured, 2 blank leaves; the boards rubbed and worn, particularly so at the edges.
One of 50 copies hors commerce of a proposed edition of 550 of which 500 were for sale (actually the number completed was considerably smaller, see below). This copy numbered 517
Provenance: Charles F. Dawson, poster artist and friend of Craig. Inscribed in pencil in Craig’s hand ‘Charles F. Dawson 1899’ to the recto of the title page.
Inspired in large part by the bold graphic work of his friends, the painters William Nicholson and James Pryde, Gordon Craig’s Penny Toys is a paean to the honesty and simplicity of the wooden toy. The volume is very much a book for children and poignantly was created at a time when Craig, newly divorced from his first wife, May Gibson, was prevented by her from seeing their four children, whenever his new love, the actress Jess Dorynne was in residence at the former marital home in Hackbridge. Craig himself had a large collection of wooden toys, many having been bought from passing gypsies at a penny a time, while others had been brought back from Germany by Craig’s sister Edy. Ostensibly limited to five hundred and fifty copies, the book comprised twenty hand-coloured woodcut designs each preceded by a leaf of verse and a hand-coloured woodcut tailpiece. The stock chosen was a heavy sugar paper, at that time more commonly used for wrapping groceries, but which now lends a pleasing naivety to the book. Of course the task of colouring by hand some 2200 images was always going to be an arduous one, even with the help of Jess and other able friends, and so it turned it out. Prompted by the news that May wished to return to Hackbridge to claim furniture and books, necessitating his and Jess’s absence, Craig flew into a rage and took the opportunity to consign to the fire the uncoloured sheets for roughly two hundred and fifty copies of the book, along with many of his wood-blocks, manuscripts and drawing books.
Edward Craig. Gordon Craig, 1968.
An improvised paper pocket to the rear pastedown contains three autograph letters in Craig’s hand, of which two are to an unnamed recipient, possibly Charles Dawson, the other addressed to a ‘Miss Antonia’; a typed letter possibly dictated and signed in a secretarial hand ‘Gordon Craig’; a small hand- coloured woodcut possibly by Craig depicting a figure sitting under a tree; a newspaper cutting from the Evening Standard of Monday, October 8, 1928 concerning Edward Craig (later Carrick), Gordon Craig’s son, who is described as designing sets for a new film “The Broken Melody” directed by Fred Paul; ‘Hamlet’ in Moscow. Notes for a short Address to the Actors of the Moscow Art Theatre by Gordon Craig, extracted from The Mask of May, 1915, annotated and marked in pencil possibly by Dawson.
Full transcriptions of the letters and further images are available on request.
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