Back in May of this year, I wrote about the effort to publish The Vadeboncoeur Collection of ImageS #13.
Long time publisher and classic illustration enthusiast Jim Vadeboncoeur was looking to KickStarter to raise the funds to publish the the ultimate issue of his 13 year labor of love, with a fantastic selection of classic and Golden Age Illustration and a stunning centerpiece of pages from Louis Chalon’s lost classic of art and publishing from the December 1899 issue of Figaro Illustré (above, fourth down), that was never properly realized — until now.
Painstkingly printed with special gilt ink, protected with spot varnish, the section of eight two-page spreads is unlike anything I’ve seen before in the publishing of classic illustration. The effect is carried over into subsequent pages, in which a similar gilt and spot-varnish effect is applied to the ornate borders surrounding the images (above, second and third from bottom).
Reproductions on the web do not do these images, or the printed effect of the gilt ink and precision reproduction, justice. These pages provide something of a feeling of what Gilded Age illustrated magazines should have been like, even if they weren’t in reality (something to be enjoyed while relaxing in your formal garden, glass of cabernet in hand, serenaded by a string quartet).
Of course, if that’s not enough, Vadeboncoeur has expanded his ultimate issue out to 64 oversize, 100lb coated stock pages, and filled them with stunning illustrations by greats like Alphonse Mucha, Maxfield Parrish, J.C. Leyendecker, Frank X Leyendecker, Edmund Dulac, Dean Cornwell, Jessie Wilcox Smith, N.C. Wyeth, Coles Phillips… and, well, you get the picture.
Or, you should get the picture(s), because Vadeboncoeur is making the issue available for only $30.00 (with help from Kickstarter and other supporters)!
Over the years, we’ve come to expect the extraordinary from Jim Vadeboncoeur and ImageS, and he has consistently delivered with some of the most beautiful, and often rarely seen, classic and Golden Age illustration. The Vadeboncoeur Collection of ImageS #13 is a fitting culmination of that tradition.
(Images above: R.L. & E.D. Forkum, J.C. Leyendecker, Norman Lindsay, Louis Chalon, Edmund Dulac, Alphonse Mucha)
