Here is how I started by last musing, Gremlins on the Job.
One of the books on my bedside table is a volume on book design. It is without doubt one of the most detailed histories of the book that I have ever read, and I have read hundreds, all resting comfortably in our private library in the knowledge that they will not be shunted over into the book business. When I am done reading this book, I will share it with you in a musing. Reading it last night, I started to think about some interestingly designed books that would be a fascinating item for a musing. A book popped into mind – well illustrated with intriguing designs on every page.
Earlier today, I started the hunt for it. Moving books around I came across the subject of tonight’s musing. I had forgotten all about this little gem. Between the library and the book business we have some 6,000 books in the house. And, true confession, I have forgotten about many of them. The positive side of this is that it is like Christmas when I come across a
forgotten tome! I know the other book is around there somewhere. It will be featured eventually.
I found the book and it is featured right now.
It truly is an artistic treasure.
Song of Robin Hood; selected & edited by Anne Malcolmson; music arranged by Grace Castagnetta; designed and illustrated by Virginia Lee Burton; published by Houghton Mifflin Co., 1947.
From the blurb - Virginia Lee Burton as illustrator, Anne Malcolmson as editor. And Grace
Castagnetta as arranger of the original old English music have joined forces to produce the
definitive modern version of the Song of Robin Hood. The verve and distinction of this
meticulously produced 128-page volume make it one of the bookmaking triumphs of 1947.
Anne Malcolmson has edited a vigorous, to-be-sung treatment of the text, and, burrowing
through old song books, has rescued the original music for fifteen of the ballads. Grace
Castagnetta has set it down in modern notation. Virginia Lee Burton worked on the drawings for over three years, spending two years in research and technique and the final year working from five in the morning until five in the evening on the actual art work. She has produced a work of art, whose painstaking detail and exuberant sense of life merit comparison with the miniatures which adorn the great “Books of Hours” of the fifteenth century.
Virginia Lee Burton (1909 – 1968), also known by her married name Virginia Demetrios, was an American illustrator and children's book author. She wrote and illustrated seven children's books, including Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939) and The Little House (1943),
which won the Caldecott Medal. She also illustrated six books by other authors.
Burton founded the textile collective Folly Cove Designers in Cape Ann, Massachusetts, which had numerous museum exhibitions. Some of its members' works are held today in the
collections of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem,
Massachusetts, the Cape Ann Museum, and New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Enjoy Virginia’s incredible work.
