Book Illustrations for Private Presses

In 1950, John DePol cut wood engravings for the first book that featured his work, not surprisingly about Ireland, the country he grew to love during the War; it was Liam O’Flaherty’s Two Lovely Beast and Other Stories. The exposure that DePol’s work received from this book resulted in numerous yearly commissions that extended into the late 1990s. Featured here is California Flora by Elizabeth McClintock (San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 1995) illustrated with 12 flowers and 2 smaller blocks for the patterned endpapers and cover decoration. (The book, its accompanying suite of individual flower prints in a portfolio, and all of the blocks were gifted by the curator to the Art, Architecture, and Engineering Library’s Special Collections in 2011.)