Stained Glass
This selection of Armstrong bindings features designs resembling stained glass. Armstrong’s father, David Maitland Armstrong (1836–1918) was a stained glass artist and painter. Her sister, Helen Maitland Armstrong (1869–1948), was also a well-regarded stained glass artist who worked both with her father and independently. Although Margaret rarely worked with windows herself, she designed the decorative lilies bouquet for the George and Mary Morris Memorial Window (ca. 1914) at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Green Cove Springs, Florida.
Armstrong’s adaption of the stained glass technique that appears on a third of her book cover designs was achieved by forming a design from separate parts: outlining each shape with another color, often gold, or the cloth color itself, which forms the overall design within a vertical panel.
The best known of her stained glass book covers is the Henry Van Dyke series published between 1901 to 1927, mostly printed on dark blue cloth with gold stamping and ornamental symmetrical designs.
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Flowers
Margaret Armstrong’s love of nature was often reflected in her book cover designs using copious flower, vine, and plant themes as shown in this selection of bindings. In addition to her work as a book cover designer, Armstrong was also an author, field collector, and botanical illustrator. After traveling throughout the Western United States and Canada five times between 1909 and 1914, she wrote and illustrated Field Book of Western Wild Flowers (1915), the first comprehensive guide on the subject.
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Variants
This selection of Margaret Armstrong’s variant editions includes titles from Myrtle Reed’s successful lavender series.
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Lesser-known Designs
These designs differ from Armstrong’s distinctive symmetrical or stained-glass designs, often featuring a muted palette or unusual lettering.
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Ukraine
The blue, gold and yellow stamping of these luminous Margaret Armstrong bindings reminds us, in solidarity, of the victims in Ukraine.
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Lavender Series
Author Myrtle Reed had success with her novel Lavender and Old Lace (1902), and thereafter all fifteen of her books published by G.P. Putnam's Sons were designed by Armstrong and covered in this distinctive lavender ribbed cloth. Six of the seven lavender titles in Watson’s collection are featured in this exhibition.
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