A robust collection of American woodcut illustrator J. J. Lankes arrives at UMD Libraries Special Collections

A collection of works by notable American graphic artist J. J. Lankes (1884–1960) has been donated to the University of Maryland Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) by alum and Lankes scholar Welford D. Taylor Ph.D. ‘66, and his wife, Carole W. Taylor. The collection comprises over 600 woodcut prints, dozens of books, and myriad periodicals illustrated by Lankes, as well as correspondences and books from Lankes’s personal library.

Julius John Lankes was born in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1884. He studied art in Boston and made his first woodcut print in 1917. An illustrator, graphic designer, and woodcut print artist, he would go on to carve and print more than 1,300 drawings in his lifetime. He is revered for his woodcuts, which featured both pastoral and industrial American scenes. His 1932 book, The Woodcut Manual, was the first comprehensive book on the subject in North America. He was good friends with Robert Frost, and contributed many illustrations to his books of poetry.

Taylor wrote his doctoral dissertation at the University of Maryland on American author Sherwood Anderson, in whose house he first observed Lankes’ woodcut prints. Taylor wasn’t just drawn to Lankes’ art, but the inherent connections between Lankes and American literary authors of the 1920s and ’30s.

Taylor began his collection in the 1970s, and in the ensuing decades, came to amass not just Lankes’ illustrations, correspondences, and catalogues, but even some of his woodcutting tools. He also authored The Woodcut Art of J. J. Lankes (1999) and Julius J. Lankes: Survey of an American Artist (2013). “I regard my collection not as an aggregation of tangibles owned, but rather as evidence of a quest, driven by love of a subject and the enriching intellectual spoils that it imparts,” Taylor says.

The collection is part of SCUA’s Literature and Rare Books collections, which specializes in book arts and illustration. Lankes was a contemporary of illustrators Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) and Lynd Ward (1905-1985), whose works are also represented in SCUA’s collections.

The Welford D. and Carole W. Taylor Collection will be available to researchers and the public in the Maryland Room in Hornbake Library. “What better place for the collection than UMD, my alma mater, which shares my passion for this trove and will make it available to scholars and art lovers now and for generations to come,” says Taylor. Special Collections staff has begun the work of rehousing the woodcut illustrations and other documents into acid-free folders and preparing the collection to be accessed. For questions or more information about this new collection, contact Amber Kohl (amberk@umd.edu), UMD Libraries’ Curator for Literature and Rare Book Collections in SCUA.