A hand-coloured Christmas card by the designer

Wolpe (Berthold).     1936  Single sheet of hand-made, deckle-edged paper, french-folded in four sheets to a page sized 20 cm x 14 cm    Fine copy  Letterpress printed black-line drawing and type designed by Wolpe, with his printed monogram beneath. Hand-coloured in six shades of watercolour with fine distinctions of scarlet and maroon, and dark and light blue shading. A charming miniature of an angel holding a palm-leaf descending from a star and cruciform arrangement of motifs. A substantial proportion of the colouring has been added to the lettering, as a means of shadowing and highlighting the extant display type. On the inside recto a printed design showing a candle has been hand-coloured, and around it is written in scarlet pencil ‘Happy Christmas and all the best for 1937 Berthold Wolpe’. This may be a proof copy in which Wolpe was trying out lettering for a final design, as there is a faint mark where his middle initial ‘L’ has been erased and his surname re-written over the top. Initialled ‘JW’ on verso, possibly indicating the recipient.  

Price: £300