(Dow, Arthur Wesley)illus. BY SALT MARSHES: PICTURES AND POEMS OF OLD IPSWICH by Everett Stanley Hubbard. (Artists of the Book in Boston, #74). Ipswich, MA. 1908, Privately printed. Numbered "130" from the edition of about 200. 8vo., cloth backed boards, illustrated with seven color woodblock prints, plus a woodblock illustration on the cover, a woodblock headpiece on the first page, small vignettes in-text, and pictorial endpapers, all by Dow. A close to Fine copy of this now rare book. There is a thin, but visible, line of abrasion across the front cover, about 1 1/2 inches from its bottom, and there are few small nicks to the paper at the corners and edges, exposing the boards. The Internals are Fine.From Finlay, "Artists of the Book in Boston, 1890-1910;" Cambridge, 1985: BY SALT MARSHES is Arthur Wesley Dow's tribute to the old North Shore town of Ipswich, where he was born and spent most of his life, and to his boyhood friend, Everett Stanley Hubbard...[It is Dow's] masterpiece, and it is evident from the numberous sketches proofs in the Ipswich Historical Society and [SPNEA] - some of them dating back to 1895 - that it was a labor of love. Infinite care and craftsmanship were expended on every detail. The illustrations are color woodblock prints...This was a technique that Dow discovered in the course of his study of Japanese art, and he was a master of it, using as many as four or five different blocks, accurately registered, thinly inked to show the grain of the wood, and printed in subtle gradations of tone to achieve a luminosity that effectively evokes the quality of light on the marshes...When BY SALT MARSHES was finally completed in 1908, Dow was teaching at Columbia University. His Ipswich Summer School, which had been such a vital force on the North Shore had met for the last time in 1906, and though he continues to maintain a house and studio in Ipswich, returning there as often as possible to pursue his own personal projects, from this time on his life increasingly was centered in New York.
