Stone Dust: The Autobiography of a Stone Carving [INSCRIBED]

Accokeek, MD: Sun-Stone: The Private Press of Lenore Thomas, 1969. Poem on the creative process & spirituality of a sculptor. Born in Chicago in 1909, Lenore Thomas, though she studied at the Chicago Art Institute, was a largely self-taught sculptor, creating large-scale public works for New Deal programs. Living in Maryland in the 1940s, she married Robert Ware Straus; both were involved in social justice issues and Lenore was investigated by HUAC in the 1950s. Later she moved to Maine, where she taught, continued to sculpt, and became active with a zen community until her death in 1988. This, her second book, was made entirely by the artist (except the binding), including two copper-plate engravings printed with hand-set type, fifteen engravings reproduced as half-tones overprinted with color woodblocks and a tipped-in half-tone plate of a sculpture she erected in the Lofoten Islands of Norway in 1967. This is number 541 of 600 printed (there was a smaller edition with a more elaborate binding, better paper, and original engravings), SIGNED by the artist on the half-title (with her stamped seal in red) and additionally INSCRIBED on the endsheet to a Wisconsin social psychologist, child welfare advocate, and activist. Hardcover in jacket, as pictured. Light wear to book; jacket shows light edgewear & minor creasing, but most of the front panel is cockled & lightly waterstained, the rear panel shows a faint waterstain, small smudge, tear to the flap hinge. Text clean; [64] pages, color & b/w illustrations, photo endsheets. . First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Good. Illus. by Lenore Thomas Straus. Quarto.