MEAD SCHAEFFER: AN ARTIST'S SCRAPBOOK

In 2020 I wrote a biography of golden age illustrator Mead Schaeffer published by the fine folks at The Illustrated Press.  

As part of that process,  Schaeffer's daughter loaned me his personal scrapbooks.  He proudly hand lettered large, heavy volumes where he preserved clippings of every published work, along with personal correspondence, notes and memorabilia.

Volume I, the first of a series

The scrapbooks contained dozens of strong illustrations where glue stains and wrinkles prevented us from reproducing them in the book.   

In addition, the scrapbooks contained old photos from the life of an illustrator in that golden age.  Below is a photo of a small party with next door neighbor and good friend, the young Norman Rockwell (standing in the doorway).  Schaeffer is on the sofa at the far right.

In an era before internet research, illustrators traded hand drawn letters sharing historical information such as  clothing and furniture styles.  Here is a note  from illustrator Norman Price with needed information about French costumes: 

Of course, much of the research for illustrators in those days was done with field trips, sometimes to remote and exotic locations.  During World War II Schaeffer received clearance from the Department of Defense to accompany military ships and planes for a series of covers for The Saturday Evening Post.

A tattered souvenir of an adventure on a Navy ship 

Here are Schaeffer and Rockwell on a roadtrip checking out a site for a painting:

Unused preliminary sketches and reference photos also made their way into Schaeffer's scrapbooks:

There are also plenty of reference photos of Schaeffer posing for his own illustrations:

Schaeffer also glued in his correspondence with the authors of the fiction he illustrated.

Today an illustrator's scrapbook is more likely to consist of digital files on a laptop.  Jpegs don't yellow with time or stain with rubber cement, but then again they lack the heavenly smell of thick, aging paper. 

So much of Schaeffer's life wouldn't fit in the 224 pages of the Schaeffer book, I'm pleased to share a little more of it on this blog.