SLEIGH, Bernard.

£600 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

A Faerie Pageant. First edition, one of 475 copies, this copy out of series. An attractive and uncommon example of work produced by the Birmingham Group, an informal collective of painters and craftsmen associated with the later stages of the arts and crafts movement. Bernard Sleigh (1872-1954) was an English artist best known for An ancient mappe of Fairyland, published in 1920. Sleigh was a member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists between 1923 and 1928 and produced work for many of the contemporary private presses. In 1927 he co-founded the Fairy Investigation Society, a semi-secret group devoted to collecting evidence for the existence of fairies with members such as Ithell Colquhoun, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Walt Disney. Ivy Ann Ellis trained under Sleigh at the Birmingham School of Art and exhibited from 1920 to 1939 with the RBSA. In 1954 she was granted probate of Sleigh's estate. The binder, Frank Garrett, was closely associated with the Birmingham School of Art and learned his craft from Douglas Cockerell. The Kynoch Press was established in 1876 as a company press for Kynoch, a British manufacturer of ammunition. From 1922 to 1933, the press commissioned leading artists to produce fine editions in small limitations in the hopes of gaining wider recognition.

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