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THE PROCESS
Rackham took a comprehensive, integrated approach to his work, considering all aspects of a publication carefully in order to create a cohesive, beautiful object of design. He maintained strict control over every element of the book -- including illustrations, vignettes, the cover or book jacket, title page, and spine -- often corresponding with printers and making detailed notes in the margins of his drawings to make sure they achieved the best possible results. He was well-informed about the latest advances in printing illustrations, adapting to the replacement of wood engraving as the predominant method of reproduction with the photomechanical line block process and taking full advantage of the three-color printing process which flourished at the beginning of the twentieth century. The three-color process produced prints that were both deeper in color and subtler in tonal gradation than those created using other techniques.
In addition to donating original Rackham drawings, Mr. and Mrs. Alfred C. Berol presented Columbia University with a collection of thirty sketchbooks that provide invaluable insight into his working process. Rackham's working method typically involved starting with a general idea of the structure of a composition before moving on to fill in the scene with specific details and characters. Many of his sketches consist of rough scrawls and spiraling lines, suggesting a tension and energy lurking beneath the surface of the carefully composed final designs. The sketches and finished drawings for Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery & Imagination (1935) reflect his working process and reveal Rackham to be both a master of parody and the macabre, despite his fears that he would be unable to make the illustrations sufficiently gruesome.
The studio was the hub of Rackham's life, and he enjoyed being disturbed by visitors, often making conversation while unconsciously making weird grimaces, as if trying out an expression that was needed for a character. When he needed a break from work, he would comb the hair of his cat, Jimmie, named after Sir James Barrie, the author of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), or take a turn on the trapeze which hung in his studio. The trapeze was also there for his models to pose upon, proving to be particularly useful for watery subjects and other compositions that involved acrobatic movement of the figures. |