624. Charles Ricketts about Marcus Behmer

Throughout his career, the German artist Marcus Behmer (1879-1958) has been engaged with Ricketts's work. 

The Insel Verlag edition of Goethe's West-Östlicher Divan (1910) was decorated by Behmer, and its opening pages distincly refer to the borders of Vale Press publications.

Early on Behmer seems to have seen works from the Vale Press and collected them. However, most of the books were lost in a bombing raid during World War II, and few survivals from his library are known to exist.

Dorothea Werner, portrait of Marcus Behmer, dated 1947
[Creative Commons Licence 3.0]

Little remains of the correspondence between Ricketts and Behmer either. However, the most recent catalogue on his oeuvre, Peter Christian Hall's Delphine in Offenbach. Marcus Behmer, Meister der kleinen Formate, published in 2018, quotes unpublished notes by Behmer on his work.

In 1927, Behmer wrote a four-page essay about 'Charles S. Ricketts (Vale Press). Eine Auswahl seiner Werke' for the exhibition catalogue Internationale Buchkunst Ausstellung Leipzig 1927. This was followed two years later by 'Bibliophile Shakespeare-Ausgaben' in Philobiblon (October 1929) that mentions Ricketts's Shakespeare editions, and in 1935 Behmer published his essay 'Charles Ricketts' in Buchkunst. Beiträge zur Entwicklung der graphischen Künste und der Kunst im Buche. With 10 pages and 28 illustrations, this was his most substantial piece on Ricketts.

Thanks to several publications, we knew what Behmer thought of Ricketts, but now we also hear what Ricketts thought of Behmer. (Ricketts himself never published anything about Behmer's work.)

Behmer considered his illustrations for Enno Littmann's Vom morgenländischen Floh (1925) his greatest achievement, adding that Ricketts greatly appreciated it.

Die späteren Bücher mit Radierungen sind übrigens mit ungewöhnlicher Sorgfalt "aufgebaut", aber dergleichen merkt kaum irgend jemand. So z.B. der sehr schmale und hohe Satzspiegel im Flohbuch, wo der untere Papierrand sehr schmal, der äussere aber sehr breit ist, eine ganz ungewöhnliche Form bei europäischen Büchern; ist von anscheinend niemand bemerkt worden; ausser von einem Mann wie Charles Ricketts, dem feinsten, nicht fachmännisch bornierten Kenner, der gleich empfand, dass dieser Seitenaufbau dem "morgenländischen" Geschmack - dem Titel des Buches entsprechend - angepasst war. 

(Letter to Gotthard Laske, 10 March 1929, in Delphine in Offenbach, p. 253) 

Translation:

The later books with etchings are, by the way, "constructed" with unusual care, but hardly anyone notices this. For example, the very narrow and high type area in the flea book, where the lower margin is very narrow, but the outer margin is very wide (a very unusual form in European books), has apparently not been noticed by anyone; except by a man like Charles Ricketts, the finest, not narrow-minded connoisseur, who immediately felt that this page layout was adapted to the "Oriental" taste - according to the title of the book.

Behmer's copyright is apparently very confusingly settled, therefor I can't show an image on this page, but plenty of images of the flea book can be found online at sites of antiquarian booksellers - if you want to sell it you may reproduce it, if you own it you are not allowed to do so.