BY SALT MARSHES: PICTURES AND POEMS OF OLD IPSWICH

1908. DOW, Arthur Wesley & Everett Stanley HUBBARD. BY SALT MARSHES: PICTURES AND POEMS OF OLD IPSWICH. Ipswich: Privately printed, 1908. No. 103 of approximately 200. [32] pp. 8vo. Quarter brown cloth (unmarked) with color illustrated (front cover only) paper covered boards. Covers worn but still attractive; interior near fine, small pencil numerals to front pastedown. Eight lovely color woodblock illustrations, with other monochrome and two color designs/headpieces. "BY SALT MARSHES is Arthur Wesley Dow's tribute to the old North Shore town of Ipswich, where he was born and spent most of his life, and to his boyhood friend, Everett Stanley Hubbard. It is a collaboration somewhat in the spirit of Meteyard, Carman and Hovey in their Vagabondia books, though Hubbard was undoubtedly a lesser poet and Dow a greater artist. BY SALT MARSHES is his masterpiece, and it is evident from the numerous sketches and proofs in the Ipswich Historical Society and the Society for Preservation of New England Antiquities - some dating back as far as 1895 - that it was a labor of love. Infinite care and craftsmanship were expended on every detail. The illustrations are color woodblock prints, such as Dow described in an article in MODERN ART (1896), entitled "Painting with Wooden Blocks." This was a technique Dow had discovered in the course of his study of Japanese art, and he was a master of it, using as many as four or five different blocks, accurately registered, thinly inked to show the grain of the wood, and printed in subtle gradations of tone to achieve a luminosity that effectively evokes the quality of the light on the marshes. Although the text is printed from small gothic type, the lettering on the cover and title page was also cut by hand in woodblocks, after the manner of Meteyard and Dawson-Watson's lettering for the COURIER INNOCENT (1897)." Finlay - Artists of the Book in Boston, 1890-1910.