| Abstract: |
Artist and engraver John DePol was born in 1913 in Greenwich Village in New York City. The John DePol papers document a remarkable
artistic life and the career of arguably the most renowned American wood engraver of the twentieth century. Over 51 linear
feet of personal papers and an additional extensive book collection trace the evolution of John DePol’s craft from his early
experiments in lithography during his military service in Ireland, England, and Europe, to his apprentice years with Lewis
White Company, on through his prolific career as a wood engraver for commercial firms and fine press printers which continued
into the twenty-first century. John DePol maintained meticulous records of his commissions as well as his own independent
work, and his papers contain virtually all of his correspondence and memoranda relating to jobs, contractual material, preliminary
renderings and sketches, photographs, proof material, examples of the final printed work, original woodblocks, and files,
relating to all the artists, printers, and publishers with whom he has worked. One of the largest and most important groups
of papers documents the long, productive collaboration between DePol and John Anderson of the Pickering Press. DePol and
Anderson worked together for nearly forty years producing numerous pamphlets, chapbooks, broadsides, keepsakes, Christmas
cards, letterheads, and ephemera, all of which are represented in the John DePol Papers.
|