[BRETT, Molly]
An Archive of Original Drawings from ‘The Open Door’ Magazine
[c. 1954-1963]
A collection of 47 ephemeral items of various sizes, including amongst them 39 original pen and ink illustrations by Molly Brett, all but two of them signed by the artist in black ink using either her full name or the initials ‘MB’; along with 5 additional pen and ink drawings by other contributing artists including L. Roots and Julia Stone; the original cover artwork for the 1892 edition of ‘The Open Door’ with notes to the printer written in ink to verso; one reproduced image by Thomas Rowlandson showing Wapping Old Stairs, and a clipped obituary of Brett printed in the Daily Telegraph on 19th April 1990; together with a handwritten notecard from a Mrs. Leslie F. Ardley, penned on both rectos and versos, which states ‘Do not destroy / These drawings are / original Molly Brett / sketches for The Open / Door Magazine . / ( I rescued these from the waste / paper basket - All paperwork / for The Open Door was destroyed / after 3 years - I couldn’t / bear to throw these away. / Used in The Open Door between / 1954 - 63). Measuring between 9 x 11cm and 17.5 x 25cm approx, all drawings are in black ink, with a couple showing added colouring in blue; in very good to near fine condition, some with pencil/ink annotations, captions and/or dimensions written to margins; a couple with tears or chips and some with glue or tape residues to the versos, perhaps caused by being pasted into proof copies of the magazine issues; one or two ink stamps to verso; the cover design with the following note to verso: ‘To print in 2 colours if this is convenient, with the drawings etc darker than the border, or in 2 tones of one colour”; the odd finger mark but else remarkably clean, and survivals which would otherwise have been consigned to the bin.
A wonderful collection of original illustrations by the illustrator Molly Brett. The drawings include mothers, children and animals along with dolls, and seaside/picnic and other countryside scenes, including several situated on farms. Many are seasonal in tone, including ‘Lighting up the Bonfire’, ‘There was something in his Manger’ and ‘December chased August away with a snowstorm’. There are also drawings showing Brett’s charismatic fantasy creatures, including faun and satyr-like creatures, ‘The Devil’s Football’ (showing one kicking a ball over a distant town), and fairies both sitting atop toadstools and engaged in battle with tiny elf-like figures.
Born and raised in Surrey, the illustrator Molly Brett (1902–1990) grew up surrounded by the English countryside. Her mother, also an illustrator, kept a variety of farmyard animals, including a cow, a donkey, goats, bees, pigeons, guinea fowl, and a large turkey, and these early childhood memories no doubt influenced Brett’s later work - the turkey even featuring as the hero of one of her books. It was while she was a student at Guildford that she became close friends with Margaret Tarrant, another children’s illustrator, and in time they would both produce artworks for the Medici Society. Brett’s career began illustrating weekly magazines for children, before she was commissioned by Enid Blyton to produce drawings for many of her children’s stories. These particular illustrations represent her output towards the middle of her long career, and in one example provide a design for the seventieth anniversary of the ‘Open Door’. Varied, imaginative and in many ways quintessentially English, they show her penchant for combining animals with humans in a variety of activities, with the obituary enclosed drawing attention to her gift, which “lay in making the animals look thoroughly natural, while at the same time giving them distinctly human characteristics”.
Rare.
[BRETT, Molly]
An Archive of Original Drawings from ‘The Open Door’ Magazine
[c. 1954-1963]
A collection of 47 ephemeral items of various sizes, including amongst them 39 original pen and ink illustrations by Molly Brett, all but two of them signed by the artist in black ink using either her full name or the initials ‘MB’; along with 5 additional pen and ink drawings by other contributing artists including L. Roots and Julia Stone; the original cover artwork for the 1892 edition of ‘The Open Door’ with notes to the printer written in ink to verso; one reproduced image by Thomas Rowlandson showing Wapping Old Stairs, and a clipped obituary of Brett printed in the Daily Telegraph on 19th April 1990; together with a handwritten notecard from a Mrs. Leslie F. Ardley, penned on both rectos and versos, which states ‘Do not destroy / These drawings are / original Molly Brett / sketches for The Open / Door Magazine . / ( I rescued these from the waste / paper basket - All paperwork / for The Open Door was destroyed / after 3 years - I couldn’t / bear to throw these away. / Used in The Open Door between / 1954 - 63). Measuring between 9 x 11cm and 17.5 x 25cm approx, all drawings are in black ink, with a couple showing added colouring in blue; in very good to near fine condition, some with pencil/ink annotations, captions and/or dimensions written to margins; a couple with tears or chips and some with glue or tape residues to the versos, perhaps caused by being pasted into proof copies of the magazine issues; one or two ink stamps to verso; the cover design with the following note to verso: ‘To print in 2 colours if this is convenient, with the drawings etc darker than the border, or in 2 tones of one colour”; the odd finger mark but else remarkably clean, and survivals which would otherwise have been consigned to the bin.
A wonderful collection of original illustrations by the illustrator Molly Brett. The drawings include mothers, children and animals along with dolls, and seaside/picnic and other countryside scenes, including several situated on farms. Many are seasonal in tone, including ‘Lighting up the Bonfire’, ‘There was something in his Manger’ and ‘December chased August away with a snowstorm’. There are also drawings showing Brett’s charismatic fantasy creatures, including faun and satyr-like creatures, ‘The Devil’s Football’ (showing one kicking a ball over a distant town), and fairies both sitting atop toadstools and engaged in battle with tiny elf-like figures.
Born and raised in Surrey, the illustrator Molly Brett (1902–1990) grew up surrounded by the English countryside. Her mother, also an illustrator, kept a variety of farmyard animals, including a cow, a donkey, goats, bees, pigeons, guinea fowl, and a large turkey, and these early childhood memories no doubt influenced Brett’s later work - the turkey even featuring as the hero of one of her books. It was while she was a student at Guildford that she became close friends with Margaret Tarrant, another children’s illustrator, and in time they would both produce artworks for the Medici Society. Brett’s career began illustrating weekly magazines for children, before she was commissioned by Enid Blyton to produce drawings for many of her children’s stories. These particular illustrations represent her output towards the middle of her long career, and in one example provide a design for the seventieth anniversary of the ‘Open Door’. Varied, imaginative and in many ways quintessentially English, they show her penchant for combining animals with humans in a variety of activities, with the obituary enclosed drawing attention to her gift, which “lay in making the animals look thoroughly natural, while at the same time giving them distinctly human characteristics”.
Rare.
