Dwiggins Marionettes Views
The Northern California Chapter of the the American Printing History Association is pleased to announce that it will meet this Saturday Febrary 21st at the Book Club of California at 11am (312 Sutter Street, San Francisco) to hear Barbara Land, the Club's Librarian, on W.A. Dwiggins. Ms. Land will show one of the four master copies, assembled by Dorothy Abbe, of the DWIGGINS MARIONETTES. We will also have a brief annual business meeting, with lunch to follow will be at the newly restored Ferry Building, and a tour conducted by Kathleen Burch. All welcome.
Dwiggins' love of wood carving led to his creation of a marionette theatre in a garage (.5 Irving Street) behind his home in Hingham, Massachusetts (30 Leavitt Street), and a puppet group named the Püterschein Authority. In 1933 he performed his first show there, The Mystery of the Blind Beggarman. Dwiggins built his second theatre under his studio at 45 Irving Street. Further productions of the Püterschein Authority included Prelude to Eden, Brother Jeromy, Millennium 1, and The Princess Primrose of Shahaban in Persia. Most of his marionettes were twelve inches tall.[2] The marionettes were donated to the three-room Dwiggins Collection at the Boston Public Library in 1967.[3]
Book Description: Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York: 1969., 1969. Hardcover. pp. (22) 232 + Plates (32 with tipped on color illustrations). Folio. Decorated full cloth binding. Mildly XLib. William Addison Dwiggins (1880-1956) was the dean of American book arts. His design, typography, and calligraphy were world famous. He also made marionettes and wrote about them extensively. His work on these puppets has been chronicled here by his protege Dorothy Abbe. Considered by some to be her most important book, The Dwiggins Marionettes documents the extraordinary basement theater in Dwiggins' studio, where he carved the marionettes, made sets, and wrote original scripts for the puppet productions. W44. Bookseller Inventory # 025R17
DWIGGINS, W.A. PRELUDE TO EDEN. A Drama for Marionettes. Hingnam, Mass.: 1956. 8vo, 29, (3)pp, 30 silk-screen illustrations (4 in several colors), hand-set Winchester type, Weimar mould-made paper. Quarter green printed paper over reflective aluminum boards. Near fine, in the orig. shipping carton with the Pruuml;terschein-Hingham label, addressed to Robert Hunter Middleton, the typographer with Ludlow. Epara; Only Edition of this scarce and unusual volume, a play for Dwigginsors" marionette theater. The illustrations, made by Dorothy Abbe, who also bound the work, were made by first photographing the four puppets which Dwiggins made for the play. By means of the Tone-Line process, Abbe then turned the photographs into line for reproduction by silk-screen.
Dwiggins Marionettes Images
