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ARTHUR RACKHAM
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Message
Posted
About fifty years ago I bought a 1908 Arthur Rackham illustrated book, A Midsummer Nights dream. I used thirty of the loose leaved illustrations to frame . They sat on my walls for years. They are still all intact and in good condition with about another 10 still in the book alongside a fair amount of black and white illustrations.
The book is in pretty naff condition after being vandalised , oh how one grows up, to realise what a dafty I was in those dim and distant days.
Anyhow, question ....I think the colour plates might have some value , somewhere . Anyone any bright ideas where to go and who to contact ?. Incidentally 1908 was the first year that Midsummer Nights Dream was produced.
I wont tell you what I did with the dust jackets all signed from Winston Churchills six editions of the Second world war. ( almost a divorce) . So please no telling me what they would be worth now. :-(
But ideas on Arthur Rackham would be very gratefully received.
Posted
Oh you vandal.....
You know of course that the book, unvandalized, would be worth a lot more than the prints you took out of it, but far be it from me to rub it in....
But it would......
In passing, it's interesting that the inks haven't faded on those prints after all these years - not for the first time, I wonder why publishers are using inks these days that are less lightfast than those they were using 100 years ago - and the answer is usually cost. If the prints are in such good nick, they will have a value - but they weren't limited editions, were they? So it might not be an especially high one. Beyond that, hard to go - depends, as these things invariably do, on how much someone would want them if they came up for auction; the paper they're printed on; the quality of the reproduction. Rackham is quite big in the US, or was - could be a better market there. How you access it is something else again, and might need you to put your faith in a specialist auction house.
Posted
Wise words indeed Robert, I was handed down a very large leather bound edition of 'Paradise Lost', I could trace it back to my Great Grandfather and possibly beyond, so a fair bit of age to it.. It is filled with beautiful etchings, although none are in colour, with each one protected with a thin fly-sheet. There have been numerous occasions when I had thought about breaking the book up to sell them individually, but thank goodness I never got round to it, so easily and carelessly done as Sylvia knows, how tragic.
Just to add, I don't know who the artist is, the book has been passed down to another generation for hopefully, safe keeping.
Edited
by alanbickley
Posted
Insert a note, on acid free paper, into the book reading "This book is much more valuable as a complete item: do not remove the plates, or you will be haunted for the rest of your days by a malignant spirit".
Always worth a try. We can never be sure that succeeding generations have half the brains we were born with.
Needless to say, I do not imply that Sylvia is anything less than the intellectual inspiration of North Wales, who must be forgiven her youthful indiscretions. And anyway, I'm afraid she's not alone - I had a pack of playing cards featuring cartoon characters of the red-nosed and beautifully drawn and painted variety, which I played with and vandalized as a child and understand would now be worth a great deal of money. Ah me.....
Anyway, you'll have to excuse me - I have to go and draw a wombat for my mother's 90th birthday card; why a wombat? I LIKE wombats..... What a funny question...
