predecessor Cheney on Plank

      "Since the wonderful art of wood-engraving belongs to the Bibliophile rather than to The Print Collector, all readers of this magazine will welcome an introduction to the book-plates of Mr. George Wolfe Plank of Philadelphia. The talent of which Mr. Plank is possessed is an unusually distinguished one. It combines, and very ideally, an appreciation of the traditions, the limitations of his art, with a modernism that is beautifully informed and discriminating. In the use of the graver, Mr. Plank shows distinction in the management of his lines and masses. He draws with certainty and his masses are arranged with the

unerring taste of an eighteenth-
century Japanese print-designer. Ugliness absents itself from all his designs and, while vigorous, they never affect a medieval crudity which, to many, seems always to characterize this particular art."   (Left design by George Wolfe plank)
      "Too often the pre-Bewick cuts that have come down to us from the centuries are monotonous in their forceless grace or chapbook crudity. Bewick with his white-line, recognizing and accepting the limitations of wood-engraving, founded the great school. (His book-plates however were not his best work) But the very expert draughtsmen on wood finally ceased to think or to feel: and at last they were all replaced by the newer illustrative art, that of photography, and of which we are now also very weary indeed!"
      "The American School of Wood-engraving (it is, by the way, admittedly the greatest school of all) numbers many artists who draw perfectly and who copy with a marvelous, photographic exactitude but who originate nothing whatever. They and their public are content with facsimiles. Not many artists in any line have time to adorn mere everyday life for us, the arts as yet not being demanded by the people except for gallery and general display purposes."
      "The artist seldom concerns himself with pure beauty, with the decoration of everydaynesses generally being intent upon interpreting some of the great, world-old secrets in a big way and so obviously that the hurrying public requires no explanation. The lovers of books and all the lovely arts contributing to their perfection rejoice when an artist is found who will take a little time from the necessary pot-boiling to express a poetic, a beautiful idea through the medium of the little wood-block, neglected and misunderstood."    (Lower Right design by George Wolfe Plank)
       "Mr. Plank in his wood-engravings is constantly romancing us in a new, an individual way and about a number of things---past, present and to come. His eloquence of line and mass immediately convinces of the charm of life, even in a period as ugly as our 1840s, our 1860s. Is not this a test of the superlative fineness of artistic perception? Surely, our antebellum world was very unbeautiful, but, interpreted by the blocks of Mr. Plank, it is suddenly a delightsome place, decorated with persons who, in spite of chimney-pot hats and side-whiskers and

hoopskirts and round shoulders, are very engaging indeed. His impregnable castles in the spring-day clouds are just to our minds, as are his cottage-gardens and ideal landscapes. His trees, always with a light that is circumambiet, show uncommon facility in the handling of masses. The cuts accompanying the reprint of "Carrie Munro," by the properly esteemed "Sweet Singer of Michigan," are a distinct contribution to the treasury of latter-day humor-in-art. He realizes, too, the importance of good printing and papers, lusterless and carefully chosen. Mr. Plank is at the beginning of a career which promises much toward the re-establishment of wood-engraving as one of the popular decorative arts. (The arts must be made "popular" and life must be made beautiful in every way!) His accomplishment already proves a highly individualized mind,---rhythmical, joyous."
                                           (submitted by) Olive Percival

(courtesy Sheldon Cheney's The Bookplate Booklet, May 1909, Volume 3, Number 2, pp. 50-53, Missouri Valley Special Collection, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City; link to American School of Wood Engraving, Encyclopida.Com, http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Wood_engraving.aspx, accessed March 21, 2010)