Stratford-upon-Avon
Book Description
Chromolithograph
Published by Pictorial Maps Ltd., Lincoln Chambers, Portsmouth Street, London, W.C.2 and Printed in Great Britain by Chromoworks Ltd. Copyright in all countries. [London, c.1950]
465 x 610 mm
unmounted
Kerry Lee’s decorative mid-century map of Stratford-upon-Avon, one of a series he devised and illustrated to encourage tourism during Britain’s recovery after World War Two, particularly for the Travel Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The map provides a birds-eye view of the historic centre of Stratford, with notable landmarks labelled with yellow banderoles. The map’s main focus is obviously the life and works of William Shakespeare, with a second set of red banderoles marking locations and events relating to Shakespeare. Three of the four corners of the map contain vignettes, showing Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, Mary Arden’s House, and Charlecote Hall & Park, while the fourth contains a compass rose. Like Kerry Lee’s other works, the map is enclosed in a large decorative border, this one containing famous scenes and lines from Shakespeare’s plays. At the centre top is a stylised illustration of Shakespeare’s funerary monument, with the epitaph replaced by a facsimile of his signature and flanked by his dates of birth and death, under a banner declaring him ‘The Immortal Bard.’ The top left and right corners of the border contain large crests, featuring the Arms of Stratford and Shakespeare himself.
Kerry Ernst Lee (1903-1988) was a British artist, born in Hackney, best known for a series of chromolithograph advertising posters issued by British railways, designed and used to help promote British tourism after the second world war. He attended Reading Schools of Arts and Science, the Slade, and the Sorbonne in Paris. Many of Kerry Lee’s maps depict the artist sitting sketching in the corner, with his dog beside him.
Condition: Minor surface creasing. Otherwise an excellent bright impression.
Author
Lee, Kerry
Date
c. 1950
Publisher
Published by Pictorial Maps Ltd., Lincoln Chambers, Portsmouth Street, London, W.C.2 and Printed in Great Britain by Chromoworks Ltd. Copyright in all countries. [London, c.1950]
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