![Vita di sancti padri vulga[m] historiada](images/rw0040-overview.jpg) Exhibition Overview
At a series of auctions after World War II, Lessing J. Rosenwald
(1891-1979), noted book collector, philanthropist and businessman,
participated in the venerable practice of purchasing highlights
from a collection formed by a book collector of an earlier generation.
Mr. Rosenwald, the retired chairman of Sears, Roebuck, and Company,
was adding to his collection important examples of books illustrated
with woodcuts owned by C.W. Dyson Perrins (1864-1958), an heir
to the Lea and Perrins fortune, and another noted philanthropist
and collector of early printed books and English porcelain. Mr.
Dyson Perrins sold his collection of woodcut books to secure the
financial future of the Royal Worcester porcelain factory. Mr.
Rosenwald purchased eighty-four titles at this sale and was the
most important single buyer.
The Library of Congress exhibition A Heavenly Craft: The
Woodcut in Early Printed Books presents for the first time
all the woodcut-illustrated books purchased by Mr. Rosenwald
at the Dyson Perrins sale, now part of the legendary Lessing
J. Rosenwald Collection at the Library. These books were printed
within the first century after Gutenberg mastered the art of
printing with moveable type. They represent the evolution of
this pictorial art form during the late Medieval and early Renaissance
periods and document significant features of various national
styles and tastes.
 This exhibition explores the development in technique, composition,
perspective, and coloration of the woodcut as it evolved in Western
Europe through examples from German, Italian, French, Spanish and
Netherlandish printers, designers, and woodcutters. Augmenting
the books are documents from the Rosenwald Archive that illuminate
Rosenwald's thoughts about the Dyson Perrins Collection and record
his determination to purchase as many lots as possible at the London
auctions that took place between 1946 and 1948.
A Heavenly Craft also celebrates the impulse of the collector
to use his collection for the greater good. Through the sale of
his collection of woodcut books, Mr. Dyson Perrins saved the Royal
Worcester Company, a symbol of England's industrial revolution.
Mr. Rosenwald's purpose was contributing to the rare book collections
at the Library of Congress. In 1943, Mr. Rosenwald signed the first
of four deeds of gift that would transfer his collection of rare
and valuable books to the Library upon his death. The books he
purchased from the Dyson Perrins Collection added significantly
to his collection of early printed books and helped establish the
Library of Congress as one of the great repositories of woodcut-illustrated
books and a center for research on the subject of book illustration.
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