James Guthrie (3)

Scottish illustrator, woodcut designer, writer, and painter (1874-1952). (Not to be confused with Scottish painter Sir James Guthrie (1859-1930)) He founded and illustrated the magazine 'The Elf' in 1895. He published 'An Album of Drawings in 1900 from the address 'White Cottage, Shorne, Kent'. Some of Guthrie's illustrations are engraved in granulated cardboard and plaster. Guthrie was born in 1874 in Glasgow, Scotland, and started his artistic career as a painter. In 1899, he acquired an Albion press at his house in Essex (Pear Tree Cottage), and his life became devoted to print-making and book illustration. Surprisingly enough, given the date that he started working, he was not following in the tradition of William Morris (2) (who at the time had just issued his last books from the Kelmscott Press) but was inspired by William Blake, who "designed for himself and for us, a working tradition which is well within the scope of one man, and showed in the work he did not merely use the fusion of the text with its surroundings as evidence of right craftsmanship, but a fitness of means and ends which is abiding testimony to his artistic sanity and the creative intensity of his mind".