Overview

The middle decades of the twentieth century saw an extraordinary flourishing of the illustrated, pictorial dust jacket. From the 1920s, as the potential for the book's protective wrapping to be used for promotion and enticement became clear, artists and illustrators on both sides of the Atlantic applied their talents to this particular art form. Rising to the wide-ranging challenges posed by format and subject matter, leading artists and illustrators, including John Piper, Edward Bawden and John Minton in the UK and Ben Shahn, Edward Gorey and George Salter in the USA, brought their unique personal vision to bear on the world of books. Many of their designs reflect the changing visual styles and motifs of the period, including Bloomsbury, Art Deco, Modernism, postwar neo-romanticism and the Kitchen Sink School. Martin Salisbury has selected over fifty of the artists and illustrators who were active in the period 1920-1970 in the UK and USA, as well as others such as Tove Jansson and Celestino Piatti, and discusses their life and work. A selection of dust jackets - both known and too long forgotten - for each artist reveals how far the book as an artefact had travelled from the days of the plain wrapper in the nineteenth century.

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9780500519134

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Reviews

Salisbury's book shows that the greatest jackets tint our experiences of the books they grace. He guides us with easy authority through a delightful graphic history of all-too-often underappreciated literary pleasures and reminds readers just how much wonderful art they may have hidden away on their shelves. For those who never paused to think much about jackets, this book will be a revelation. For those who do, it will be nothing less than a thrill. Lushly illustrated, Salisbury's exciting visual history showcases the work of Edward Gorey, Vanessa Bell, Alvin Lustig, and many others. The Illustrated Dust Jacket, 1920-1970 by Martin Salisbury, chronicles how this once disposable object became a major creative force in publishing.

Author Information

Martin Salisbury is Professor of Illustration at Cambridge School of Art in Anglia Ruskin University. He trained as an illustrator at art school in the 1970s before working as an artist, illustrator, lecturer and writer. He is the author of a number of books on the practice and theory of illustration, which have been published in numerous languages around the world.

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