Engraving exhibit opens with a tribute

Artist John DePol (left) and Wesley Tanner of Passim Editions, who attended the DePol lecture in conjunction with the annual American Printing History Assocation conference held at UD’s Morris Library.

10:40 a.m., Oct. 5, 2004--Ninety-one-year-old wood engraver, John DePol, sat in the front row of the Special Collections Room in the Morris Library, Thursday, Oct. 1, as one speaker after another praised his body of work. DePol, who lives in Cliffside, N.J., made the trip to UD for a special program highlighting an exhibition of his papers and work from the 1930s to the 1990s that runs through Friday, Dec. 17, in the Special Collections Exhibition Gallery.

UD is the home of the DePol Papers, received from the artist in 1999. Iris R. Snyder, associate librarian, curated the exhibition.

The papers are an overview of his extensive career as a wood engraver and contain examples of his work created for keepsakes, private presses, books, businesses and corporations, as well as a broad range of materials from the 1930s, such as letters, greeting cards, books, pamphlets, brochures, proofs, clippings, flyers, broadsides and programs.

There was a standing-room-only crowd present as one speaker after another praised DePol, the artist and engraver.

Keynote speaker David R. Godine, founder of a fine arts specialty press in Boston that bears his name, began with an apology. He said he was sorry that a decade has passed since he promised the engraver that he’d produce a "small and affordable book of his work." With the publication of Five Decades of the Burin: The Wood Engravings of John DePol, that promise has been fulfilled.

Godine said that there were few if any wood engravers in America when DePol embarked upon his career, and that most American books "illustrated with wood engravings were no more than sheets imported from the United Kingdom with a U.S. imprint tacked on." That meant that DePol had no mentors, no support system for his craft.

Godine acknowledged that DePol had studied in Ireland and had no doubt learned about wood engraving techniques, but when he returned to America to practice his art "he was pretty much on his own, and the work he produced and the techniques he employed were largely the work of his own industry and experimentation."

DePol is a sociable person, Godine said, and that aspect of his character brought him in contact with many of the most successful printers, artists, ad and print business executives of the day. "They loved to talk, they loved to eat and they loved to share their knowledge and their work. DePol fit right in," he said.

Soon DePol was working for the most prestigious printing companies, Godine said. "The result was an almost unbroken string of illustrated books and pamphlets...some of them extending for decades."

Self portrait by John DePol, 1985

Along with his work as an illustrator, DePol created wood engravings of the things he saw around him. His book, Ireland Remembered: A GI's Recollections, published in 1982, was a catalog of wood engravings made from sketches of Ireland he did while he serving in the U.S. Army Air Force in Northern Ireland from 1943-45.

Born in New York City, DePol grew up in a fifth-floor tenement on Hudson Street, the lower West Side, which became his inspiration for a series of carvings. "My personal favorites will always be his scenes of New York... . He captured in wood what we tend to overlook and ignore until it’s too late and it’s gone," Godine said. "He could convey the monument of an edifice in a very small space."

At the close of his talk, Godine thanked Susan Brynteson, May Morris Director of Libraries, and her staff for their help in publishing the DePol book and took a moment to reflect on the state of book arts.

"The book has to survive. The legacy must be passed along...not just by the selection of posters to be hung on walls but in the formal and for-credit teaching of the history and techniques of...the art of the book... . More and more schools are abandoning the enterprise or relegating it to not-for-credit sidelines of curriculum."

"John has taught endlessly, passing along the art of wood engraving," he said.

Article by Barbara Garrison
Photos by Greg Drew

E-mail this article

To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here.