Despite a career as an historian and a librarian at Harvard's Countway Medical Library, Richard J. Wolfe's passion lay in making and writing about decorated paper. Wolfe's marbled papers achieved a statuesque quality to beat the best of Connemara or Carrera. Here we present a representative ream of his work, both artistic and scholastic.
An archive of 29 sheets shows samples of experimental styles, some of which feature in an accompanying copy of
The Art of Marbling. All the world's a page, thanks to Wolfe's treatments and translations of paper practices in
France,
The Netherlands, and
Dedham, Massachusetts, all published by the Bird & Bull Press. The foremost traces of Wolfe's skill are two examples of his stencil marbling, each of which shows multiple patterns on the same sheet, one of
a horse and rider and the other of
a horse and groom.
We hope something here leads you to water.
Until next time,
P. S. & Co. Rare Books
