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    Will Bradley's Graphic Art: New Edition
    Will Bradley's Graphic Art: New Edition
    Will Bradley's Graphic Art: New Edition
    Ebook188 pages39 minutes

    Will Bradley's Graphic Art: New Edition

    By Will Bradley

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    About this ebook

    Will Bradley (1868–1962) was among the first American artists to realize the immense possibilities creative design held for the business world. Experimenting with typefaces, decorative illustrations, layouts, and print, he produced posters, advertisements, book designs, and magazine covers that were practical as well as striking and original works of art. At the turn of the century, Bradley was in the forefront of the American Arts and Crafts Movement, and his iconic posters from the 1890s brought Art Nouveau into the forefront of American graphic art and advertising design.
    This full-color volume contains more than 100 examples of Bradley's finest work, revealing his skills as artist, illustrator, type designer, advertiser, and printer. From his earliest asymmetrical, curvilinear designs through his elegant adaptation of the Art Nouveau style, his bold typefaces, and his book illustrations, this collection reveals the wide and versatile range of Bradley's art. This edition includes Bradley's extremely readable "Notes Toward an Autobiography," tracing the artist's life from his work as a printer's devil in Michigan through his career as an art supervisor for the vast Hearst printing empire. Bradley's reminiscences offer not only a personal introduction to his art but also fascinating glimpses of America during a colorful bygone era.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateDec 27, 2016
    ISBN9780486818825
    Will Bradley's Graphic Art: New Edition

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      Book preview

      Will Bradley's Graphic Art - Will Bradley

      Will Bradley’s Graphic Art

      NEW EDITION

      WILL BRADLEY

      EDITED BY CLARENCE P. HORNUNG

      DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

      MINEOLA, NEW YORK

      Copyright

      Copyright © 1974, 2002, 2017 by Dover Publications, Inc.

      All rights reserved.

      Bibliographical Note

      This Dover edition, first published in 1974 as Will Bradley: His Graphic Art, and reissued by Dover in 2017, contains a selection of graphics by Clarence P. Hornung (sources of individual works are given in the List of Plates); Clarence P. Hornung and Roberta W. Wong wrote an introduction especially for the 1974 Dover edition. An autobiographical section (pp. xi-xxxi, Notes Toward an Autobiography) was originally published in the booklet Will Bradley: His Chap Book, The Typophiles, New York, 1955, copyright © 1955 by Paul A. Bennett for the Typophiles, used by permission. An additional eight color plates have been added to the present edition.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Bradley, Will, 1868–1962, author. | Hornung, Clarence P., 1899–1997, editor. | Waddell, Roberta, writer of introduction.

      Title: Will Bradley’s graphic art / Will Bradley ; edited by Clarence P. Hornung.

      Other titles: Will Bradley

      Description: New edition. | Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, 2017. | This Dover edition, first published in 1974 as Will Bradley: His Graphic Art, and reissued by Dover in 2017, contains a selection of graphics by Clarence P. Hornung; Clarence P. Hornung and Roberta W. Wong wrote an introduction especially for the Dover edition. An autobiographical section, Notes Toward an Autobiography, was originally published in the booklet Will Bradley: His Chap Book, The Typophiles, New York, 1955.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2016038534| ISBN 9780486811291 (paperback) | ISBN 0486811298

      Subjects: LCSH: Bradley, Will, 1868-1962—Themes, motives. | BISAC: ART / American / General. | ART / History / Modern (late 19th Century to 1945). | DESIGN / Graphic Arts / Advertising.

      Classifcation: LCC NC139.B7 H67 2017 | DDC 740.92—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038534

      Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

      81129801     2017

      www.doverpublications.com

      Contents

      Introduction to the Dover Edition

      Will Bradley: Notes Toward an Autobiography

      List of Plates

      Will Bradley’s Graphic Art

      Introduction to the Dover Edition

      During the last years of the nineteenth century many respected artists turned to the creation of posters, pottery and glassware, elaborate needlework compositions and patterns for wallpapers and draperies. The current enthusiasm for handcraftsmanship and Art Nouveau, the style closely identified with the Arts and Crafts Movement, has encouraged many to turn to this earlier period, the 1890’s, for artistic inspiration. Contemporary interest in the fin de siècle has led to the discovery of many artist-craftsmen whose work, out of favor for decades, has been neglected. Among those was Will Bradley, an American decorative illustrator and artisan who was esteemed in his own day as

      . . . a craftsman, in the best sense of this much-abused word; one who seeks to beautify the essentially utilitarian; one of that sturdy band of artists who, walking in the humble path of their own choosing, make the hardest kind of a fight against bad traditions and the prevailing custom and prejudices of mere commercialism; and one of those who succeed in giving the charm and dignity of art to objects of common use.

      Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1868, Bradley was fascinated by type, printing, and illustration as a child. When he and his mother moved to Ishpeming, Michigan, after his father’s death in 1879, he found a job as a printer’s devil and later was foreman of the local newspaper. He composed with type at work, while in his spare time he earned extra money by designing posters. In 1886 he moved to Chicago to begin his career as an artist. He soon found his forte as a pen-and-ink illustrator, and by 1890 his work was appearing in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper and the Chicago trade journal, The Inland Printer.

      Bradley did not have enough money to attend art classes during those early years in Chicago, and, instead, received his instruction from contemporary magazines, libraries, and local bibliophiles. Like many other self-taught artists of his day, he was quite aware of the latest developments in the art world, here and abroad. He must have read English and American essays on Japanese art and certainly observed how Eastern concepts of design were being assimilated into contemporary illustration and ornament. He studied British theories of art and decoration, such as those formulated by Owen Jones and Christopher Dresser. The Englishman who had the greatest impact upon Bradley and many of his contemporaries, however, was William Morris. Morris popularized the idea that the Arts and Crafts Movement had a mission. All the arts, from painting to furniture design, were to bring joy to the craftsman as he produced objects that, in turn, would make everyday life more beautiful. His firm, Morris and Company, a model for other craftsmen, created and sold wallpapers, fabrics, metalwork, furniture, and stained glass. Morris himself founded the Kelmscott Press, where he designed and printed many richly decorated books. The work of Morris and his followers became identified with a particular style of design; decoration was derived from nature, but was simplified, usually symmetrical, and often interlaced with curving lines.

      Bradley was also aware of another emerging English art movement that had originated from ideas proposed by Oscar Wilde. This school embraced no lofty moral tenets, but revered art for art’s sake. The English school of design associated with this philosophy was related to an art movement that was developing on the Continent during the early 1890’s; asymmetrical compositions, strong surface patterns, and dominating curvilinear rhythms were

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