This tulip page from “A Booke of all Kinds of BEASTS in their Severall Shapes, Postures and Proportions, being the third part of the View of the Creation…” inspired several World Art Group prints. (Photo courtesy Colonial Williamsburg)
Beneath the marble-printed covers of more than 200-year-old books in Colonial Williamsburg’s collection lay the pictures being used as inspiration for a new line of home decor prints.
In the fall of 2012, Colonial Williamsburg partnered with Richmond-based World Art Group to produce prints for sale online and in Colonial Williamsburg stores. The more than 12,000 rare books collected since 1928 for the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library’s Special Collections serve as the inspiration for the prints.
A new spring line being prepared for launch in April will include bird and animal prints, some of which are by early 19th-century painter John James Audubon who is best known for his work “The Birds of America.”
The venture with World Art Group is one of several projects under Colonial Williamsburg’s licensing program, which first started in 1930. Various companies have worked with Colonial Williamsburg over the years to use its design archives as inspiration for merchandise.
Rockefeller came up with the idea to work with companies for licensing products, and Raleigh Tavern is one of the first examples. As archaeological work was being executed on the site, pieces of dinnerware were found in the dirt. Colonial Williamsburg partnered with Wedgwood to manufacture new dinnerware of the same pattern.
Once produced, the Wedgwood collection was sold across the country, including Colonial Williamsburg.
World Art Group has taken its licensing project to a different level with the rare book prints; some prints have a pop art look and others a chalkboard effect. While some prints are colored differently from the original pictures in 18th- and 19th-century books, others look as if they were lifted off the page.
During an interview, the books that inspired World Art Group’s prints were spread across a table in the Rockefeller Library. Kris Fischer, director of product licensing, pointed to a tulip-covered page in the undated “A Booke of all Kinds of BEASTS in their Severall Shapes, Postures and Proportions, being the third part of the View of the Creation …”
“We loved this page in this book,” Fischer said. “We took the heads of the tulips and put them on backgrounds of punchy colors. … These have been selling very well for World Art.”
The backgrounds are more than just “punchy colors,” though. A cross-hatched pattern in varying color depths adds texture to the prints.
The early 18th-century book, “The Theory and Practice of Gardening…,” which the library has in both the original French and English printings, was used to create several prints of formal garden designs. Fischer said the book’s author, Antoine-Joseph Dezallier d’Argenville, was a “gentleman gardener,” someone who studies the practice of gardening but does not garden himself.
“These [garden prints] have been very popular in the marketplace in the last couple of years … I think [gardening] is one of the top three hobbies in the country,” Fischer said.
The architects who built Colonial Williamsburg donated several of the books in the library’s special collection. In 1999, William Graves Perry’s widow donated about 3,000 books to the collection. Perry, along with Thomas Mott Shaw, Andrew Hopewell Hepburn and landscape architect Arthur Asahel Shurcliff, was responsible for planning Colonial Williamsburg’s reconstruction.
This turkey image from the 1825 book “American Ornithology” by Charles Lucien Bonaparte was used for Wold Art Group prints. (Photo courtesy Colonial Williamsburg)
The 1802 Dutch book, “Magazijn van tuin-sieraaden” by G. van Laar, came from Perry’s collection. Several drawings from the book were used as inspiration for prints in the World Art Group collection as well as for bedding sold in Colonial Williamsburg’s stores.
More than 4,000 prints from the World Art Group collection were sold in 2013, which was the first full year of the collaboration. The prints currently for sale on World Art’s site range in price from $25 to $115.
Colonial Williamsburg cannot disclose the amount of revenue earned from the art sales, which is used for general operations. A small percentage is used to acquire new objects and documents for Colonial Williamsburg’s collections.