It's not often you get to experience a day, and know it's one you'll never forget. Today was one of those days for me.

I had the pleasure to visit the Arabia Steamboat Museum in Kansas City, MO today. This ship and all it's cargo was one of hundreds of steamboats in the 1800s that sunk in the Missouri River. It is the world's biggest and most complete pre civil war time capsule ever to be uncovered! This steamboat hit a tree snag in 1856 and went down in 15 minutes, in 15 feet of water. All 121 passengers survived. Time took the Arabia and it's 220 tons of cargo away as the river changed it's course over the next 135 years. In 1988, 5 adventurous men set forth to uncover it, buried 45-70 feet deep in a cornfield. Yes, it was buried below a cornfield.

One of those men was Jerry Mackey. I had the museum to myself, and only one man was there as it opened. Turns out, it was Jerry. He proceeded to give me a personal tour of the massive collection that they are still preserving for over 2 hours today! To hear the tale from Jerry made me feel like I was somehow connected to the steamboat, and to the discovery myself. We walked room after room together as he regaled me with the triumph and tragedy of the Arabia, and his fellow partners. This dear man is so knowledgeable, he's probably forgotten more than I'll ever know. His wisdom and curiosity are unmatched. He knows the intimate details of all the items aboard, and has been a devoted researcher over the 30 years since they painstakingly pulled up the cargo. Their discovery has literally rewritten our collective knowledge of the 1850s in America, filling gaps with stories big and small. To see two story lines unfold; the story of the frontier and the steamboat searchers made history and the American spirit come alive in me in a way I never thought possible.

Not one piece of the collection has been sold or is in private ownership. The partnership of the five men vowed to keep it all together as one time capsule to share with the world. It cost them 1.5 million to recover the steamboat, and they made their money back in ten years of museum visitors. Talk about vision!
Jerry reminds me of both of my grandfathers somehow combined in one. I was hanging on each word, each story. I wanted to stay all day. I wanted to be part of their team!

I knew I would be seeing this amazing collection as I made my way to Asheville, and I listened to Surviving Savanna by Patti Callihan which is also about a steamboat from the mid 1800s and it's modern day recovery. To be immersed in this brave period of American history (and the historical preservation and seeking) over these 20 hours in the last two days has given me such a beautiful perspective on perseverance, resilience, and tenacity.

Adventure is out there. I feel the heaviness of the last two years wash away as I drive East to my beloved art show and family reunion with my fellow artisans, craftsmen, and collectors.

I could talk for hours about these photos below, but instead, I encourage each of you to come find this museum and walk it's 1856 rooms of artifacts for yourself. You will be transported back in time through the hope of the American West. Many of the items were brand new. Dishes never used, hats and shoes never worn, prefab homes never built. In many cases the last hands to touch them were their makers.... That is a powerful story for this maker, at least.
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1856.com
#arabiasteamboatmuseum

​Bookplate by Walter Crane. Even for private use, Crane’s design philosophy combined socialist aesthetics and symbols with conventions of children’s literature. The plate refers to its creator (and the book’s owner) in three different registers. The first showing “Walter Crane” printed across the top of the image. The leading “W” appears in two forms; first, roughly formed by four paintbrushes and then below on the artist’s palette from which the brushes emerge. The central illustration, depicts Crane as his animal alter-ego; a crane. His socialistic philosophy of integrating art and life and of creating work that is consistent with one’s identity is well defined in his bookplate.

Every book lover knows that a book loaned often becomes a book lost. Sharing your treasured books can often be a losing business. So, how can you gently remind the borrower it’s your property, with hope to see it once again? Enter center stage, the innovation of the bookplate.

A bookplate is also known as an ex libris in reference to the Latin inscription meaning “from the books of…” The earliest known example dates back to 1450, the same year as the birth of printing from movable type. Many early bookplates were designed to safeguard the books of barons and nobles. Because of this they were adorned with coats of arms and other indicators of inherited prestige. This was the case through the 18th century. The Victorians with their love of gathering “beautiful things” realized as early as 1875 that bookplates were collectable. In his 1880 publication on bookplate collecting, John Byrne Leicester Warren recognized four distinct styles in early British bookplate design: early armorial, Jacobean (including Restoration, Queen Anne, and early Georgian), Chippendale (rococo), and wreath and ribbon (Victorian).

The 19th century saw the rise of the middle class. Scholars, professionals, and other educated individuals became interested in bookplates and commissioned works in a pictorial vein. These drew from classical and symbolist iconography and were heavily influenced by The Arts and Crafts Movement. In 1891 a few British bookplate collectors met in London to establish the Ex Libris Society and by the end of that first year, it had grown to more than 300 members. The Society began publishing the Journal of the Ex Libris Society and it was published through 1909 with 18 volumes in all. As the collecting of bookplates from previous generations was gaining popularity, the demand for new bookplates also grew. Interest in bookplates reached its peak around the turn of the century but began to decline with the onset of the First World War. Over the next 100 years, interest has come and gone, but for me at least, the height of the art of the bookplate is directly linked to the European Arts & Crafts era.  Today there are some 50 ‘national’ bookplate societies that gather world-wide every two years.

Celebrated artists like Walter Crane, Aubrey Beardsley, Robert Anning Bell, Jesse M. King, Gordon Craig, and C.F.A. Voysey created beautiful works of art, knowing that they would only be seen by a select few. It the bookplate is one of the most intimate forms of personal art during this era. Art for Art’s sake, a treasure to be hidden away in a book somehow becomes more romantic to me, than art meant to be on display for all. Personal art, originally meant only for high society, now acknowledged the social principles put forth by John Ruskin and William Morris; no matter your station in life, you deserve to enjoy refinement and objects of beauty.

Many of the artists of the time saw bookplate design as a new artistic challenge. To reduce the artwork to such a small size and to create with only a limited color palate, or even just in black and white, gave way to graphic design. Simple line contour had to speak volumes. Shape had to be distinct enough to allow instant recognition. In response to these artistic challenges we can see the birthplace of the modern logo.
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And art wasn’t just made from oil or egg tempura anymore. Ink was king! Early innovation in the artistic printing press was akin to adding a snare drum to the band for the first time. Such rich and bold notes had not previously been heard, and could be shocking to the ears. Even today, there is fine art--leave room for the Grand Canyon--and then illustration, including typography. In the 1990s, I received Cs in some of my painting classes at Colorado State University because I wasn’t “painterly” enough. One memorable professor said my work just wasn’t “cooked in” yet. I’ve always been drawn to sharp, defined line work and expressively bold shape. Creating a visual gut-punch of emotion with fewer details always wins in my book. Simplicity of design can be seen as the very foundation of refinement. Oh how I would love to transport back in time to dine with the bookplate artists of the Arts & Crafts Era and hear if they too experienced the inferred or even at times outright scowl from the fine art world. Art should always be personal. These artisans took the time to create small, concentrated drawings that delight to this day like humble lyrics to a whispered song. Next time you are shopping for old books, take the time to open their front covers. You never know what delicious details may be in store for you there.  You may even feel the previous owner looking on, hoping to get their beloved book back. They took the time to mark it, after all.

This article was written by Julie Leidel for the Colorado Arts and Crafts Society.

As the idea for my next painting rolled around in my heart for a few weeks, I knew I wanted to have a strong visual to bring it alive with connection. I wanted this artwork to resonate with the historical time between 1890-1910 when the Art Nouveau Movement flourished and the time in which Mahatma Gandhi lived. The monarch butterfly has represented change across many cultures for centuries.

This female figure in my artwork is not meant to be a fairy however, but it is more of a representation of the "hats" we wear in our lifetime. Similar to putting on a uniform, this is a way we become the job. It's more of a nostalgic take on why a super hero would wear a costume. I've heard many interviews with ordinary citizens put in extraordinary circumstances where the news heralds them "A Hero." Almost always, this hero never feels deserving of the title, they were just doing their part. That's exactly the point behind putting on your wings. We all can be that hero to someone by being the change we want to see in this world.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world" is a beautiful quote, but it's not word for word from Gandhi in printed format. After some research, it is based on his printed teachings from 1913: "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him."  In 1989, the L.A. Times asked Gandhi's family about the quote and this was their response. "The Gandhi family states that M. K. Gandhi was known to say this verse many times in his lifetime and believes it to be original with him." So to be as accurate as possible, this is why I wrote "Inspired by Gandhi" on the artwork. Notably in 1976, Arleen Lorrance wrote with the same idea "Receive all people as beautiful exactly where they are. Perceive problems as opportunities. Be the change you want to see happen instead of trying to change everyone else..."

Many times the idea for my art's verse, and the idea for my art's composition & visual layout don't happen at the same time. I knew I wanted to base a painting off of Gandhi's teachings in Sept. of 2019 and include monarch butterflies. For my creative process, I muse over different ideas (usually just in my head) as the artwork starts to take shape in a very natural way. I keep my mind open and on the look out for inspiration. New Year 2020 comes around, and I can always count on my dear friend Robert Rust, co-author of The Arts & Crafts Home, and Arts & Crafts Architecture & Design Library to post the most wonderful, antique illustrations & cards on social media. I saw this amazing greeting card drawing, and I was in love.

I stayed up all night on Dec. 29, 2019 creating my conceptual layout for the art. At the time, I didn't know who "LE" was, and neither did Robert.  Weeks later, Laura Euler, author of The Glasgow Style, and Arts & Crafts Embroidery, gave us the missing link. LE is British illustrator Ethel Larcombe (1876-1940.) Anytime I can stumble across a new (to me) female A&C illustrator, I'm all in. I want to share my research of this amazing artist that was also thriving in the time of Gandhi (1869-1948), albeit in a much lesser known capacity.

Ethel Larcombe was born in 1876 in Exeter, England where she lived all her life. Not to be confused with Ethel Thomson Larcombe (British tennis player, 1876-1965.) Her early influences included the book illustrations of Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway, whose work she studies and copied.  William Morris’s Kelmscott Chaucer in 1896 inspired her to explore the Arts & Crafts style, and her artistic influences shifted to painters like Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

In the following years she decreased her use of medieval elements and concentrated on more modern Art Nouveau designs and winning many competitions. Her work  was featured in The Studio Magazine. Other publications that featured her work were Stone, Von Larisch, and Salwey. Her typographic lettering was shown in 1902  in Italy, and a German publication alongside an original alphabet by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. 

​This style soon caught the eye of prolific book designer Talwin Morris,  the Art Director of Blackie & Son in Glasgow.  He commissioned her to design several book bindings for the firm and its London subsidiary, Gresham, between 1904 and 1912. Today, many of Larcombe's bindings are misattributed to Talwin Morris. Larcombe’s work was usually more compact compared to Morris’s. She also provided the title pages and initials to Walter Shaw Sparrow's Women Painters of the World, published in 1905, seen below.

In the Spring of 1917, American retailer Sears, Roebuck, & Co. hired her to design green-bordered cotton textile "coverettes"  and catalogues to appeal to the female buyers looking to decorate children's rooms. Ethel is also well known for her illustrated "rag books" for Dean & Son. Her designs were also used in postcards printed by E. W. Savory Co. and she provided graphical design work for Arts & Crafts furniture designers Neatby & Evans. Not much is known about her personal life, sadly. Ethel Larcombe died in Exeter in 1940. 

This is one of my favorite things about being a Revival artist; I love to bring back not only the style of the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau movements, but also I love to raise awareness to some of my personal unsung heroes, the lesser known artists from this era. As I was writing, I discovered a lead on the 1917 Sears pamphlets. The last two images posted below have decorative designs that stand starkly against much of the other design work produced by Sears at that time, so I did a little more digging. I have a hunch both of these are Ethel's designs. The Glasgow School of Art put together a wonderful "Treasures of the GSA Library" online after GSA lost their centuries-old library collections in two separate and devastating fires in May 2014 and again in June 2018 before all renovations were complete. I don't believe this digital collection was available before the fires. This image below shows Ethel's 1905 cover (left) next to a 1917 Sears ad (right). Ethel Larcombe's unique typography is unmistakable in both.

Lastly, I want the reader to understand that artists are inspired by other artists and have been since the beginning of time. Art history shows us time and time again how peers (and rivals) have influenced, innovated, and copied each others work whether they are living at the same time, or are divided by a century or more. When I saw this 1905 title page of Women Painters of the World illustrated by Ethel Larcombe, the first artist that popped into my 21st century mind was none other that of Mary Engelbreit. I'd be willing to bet she's been influenced by this book illustrator too. It's a small world, after all.

Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany

Brienz, Switzerland

Brian and I took our kids (Abby & Brady) out of school for two weeks earlier this month and we went on an amazing Alps tour, through Switzerland, Austria, and Southern Germany. Bavarian food and customs were all around us as we explored the mighty Alps. I love feeling small when nature can feel so enormous and encompassing. This road-trip style European vacation included castles and hikes, churches and museums, lake cruises and mountain cable cars, salt mines and Hapsburg Palaces, bustling city streets and quaint, quite walkways in towns that time forgot.

Oh, and cows. Yes, more cow bell is a real thing in Switzerland. This was a trip of a lifetime, and my family is beyond amazing. We have always been a very close family, but this trip pulled us that much tighter together. We did drive around one round about three times, and the roads are so narrow in places that we somehow ended up on a sidewalk once. Oh, and there was that incident with the castle playground in Innsbruck that caught Abby's pants in just the right way to rip a huge hole in her bottom! I'll remember Brady flying through the air at Nordekette, and Abby joining a Mozart opera and quintet on stage forever. Memories for a lifetime, and probably a few paintings will be coming out of this inspiration too.

Did you know our Rocky Mountains are 77 million years older than the Alps? Imagine what they must have looked like before erosion in their prime... I'm blown away by this planet of ours...

As I settle back into my daily life, I'm reminded just how much I love and cherish what I do. It's not work for me at all. I missed my career that was at home waiting for me as soon as we got on the plane for home. This is proof that I've found the meaning in my life. Carpe Diem.

360 Degree Views from the top of Shilthorn

Bern, Switzerland

Bird's Eye Views form Bern's Gothic Cathedral

Ceramic work by Freidrich Ernst Frank (1862-1920)  on display at Schloss Thun in Thun, Switzerland

Chapel Bridge in Lucerne, Switzerland

Lake Lucerne (and my future home one day...)

Fall Colors Over Lucerne, Switzerland

Hapsburg Palace in Innsbruck, Austria

Brady in meat heaven.

Austrian Alps from Innsbruck

Nordkette, the top of the Austrian Alps

Gothic Glory at Schloss Tratzberg
(My favorite castle!)

Hohensalzburg Fortress

Movie spots from the Sound Of Music in Salzburg

Allen Tupper True studied at The University of Denver for a year, and then went out east to Delaware to study under Howard Pyle as a book and magazine illustrator from 1902 to 1907. He was drawn overseas to study art in London in 1908 and apprenticed with muralist Frank Brangwyn. Here he learned how to tell a powerful story through his mural work. He became a master of mural painting, and received many public mural contracts all over the American West. His first mural was sold to Anne Evans  (daughter of Governor Evans) in 1912. He partnered with Brangwyn on the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco  1913-1915, and was commissioned for an astounding amount of murals (many not listed here but a few of note) for the Denver Public Library 1912-17, Wyoming State Capitol 1917, Denver Civic Center Park  1920, Colorado National Bank 1921-25, Missouri State Capitol 1922-1925, Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Company 1927-29, restoration to the Central City Oprah House and Teller House 1931-34, Colorado State Capitol 1934-40, The Brown Palace 1937, University of Denver 1946, Denver's City and County building 1950, and his last mural for the CU Students Union building in 1953-55 where he suffered from a stroke while working.

He was hired by the US Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation from 1934-42 to design color schemes and decorative floor designs for several dams and power houses including the Hoover dam. True was commissioned in 1935 to design the bucking bronco for the Wyoming  license plate that is still used today. He also had many exhibits of his paintings nationally throughout his career, including a solo exhibition at the Denver Art Museum in 1947.

True had been allergic to turpentine for most of his life, which caused painful skin conditions and later caused him to work with egg tempura rather than oil paint, which was his first love. Many of his murals have been lost to time sadly, but some of the best examples of his mural work in Colorado can still be found at The Renaissance Hotel (in the historic Colorado National Bank Building) at 17th & Champa, and the Qwest Building (formerly the Mountain States Telephone company) at 14th & Curtis as well as the Brown Palace and the Colorado State Capitol.

As I work on my commission painting for Civic Center Park here in 2018, I'm reminded that each building in this painting (The Greek Theater, The Denver Public Library, and the Denver Art Museum) now house some of Allen Tupper True's work today. I wanted to honor True's lifetime of murals by paying homage to him through using what I call the "True Light" - his color palette through much of his collective body of work. His choice of color is extraordinary, bringing bold colors forward, mixing with the pastel coloring of the background. His illustrative painting method is also an inspiration to me as an artist.