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A Fairy Tale
ROYDS, Mabel
Woodblock print (color woodcut) printed on Japan laid paper, no date. There was likely no edition; scarce. Likely just one of a handful of impress...
View full detailsMabel ROYDS
When young Mabel Royds (b.1874) chose the progressive Slade School of Art instead of the more academic Royal Academy in London (where she had been given a scholarship), it was an early indication of her experimental nature. Her instinct for invention would distinguish her throughout her printmaking career. Trained to carry a sketchbook everywhere she went – traveling throughout India and the Himalayas in the 1920s, for example – her woodcuts are structured and modern but invoke the magical power of fables and fairy tales. Royds printed on-demand, rather than in whole editions at once, and famously used inexpensive board rather than traditional cherry wood. Blurring the lines between painting and traditional printmaking, she used brushes rather than rollers to apply pigment to her blocks so that each print was unique. As a result, her 1930s flower woodcuts are especially powerful for their rich, saturated color and painterly effects.
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