Word: rackham
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Rackham...
...with any sense at all ever fails to look first at the pictures in any book whose cover says that it was "illustrated by Arthur Rackham." In fact, that one phrase makes a great many people want certain books which they might otherwise never think to buy. This applies particularly to grown people, who have read Peter Pan and The Water Babies and Aesop's Fables and Hansel and Gretel years ago. A great many parents now buy Rackhamized editions of these books and pretend that they are doing it to please their children. It comes to that...
Saying why this should be so is like trying to say why some leaves have crickets living under them while others have not. When Artist Arthur Rackham adjusts his cuffs and sets out to put part of a story into a picture, his fancy slips cricket-wise into the subject, in small surprising lines that never reveal what they are about until they have done it. Some are firm lines with tiny hairs on them, like a cricket's thigh. Some are more delicate and hesitant, like timid creatures creeping from crannies. Some are wry and perverse, like...
...watch an old tree or the weathered slabs of a thatched shed take form from Artist Rackham's pen, and the first thing you know the tree or shed is leering at you like a weird warlock, or smiling like an oldtime grandmother, put of eyes and mouths that vanish when you look closely. Only some knots, bark or grain-wrinkles remain. A gnarled shrub will be writhing and snickering like a soul lost and sarcastic in a twilit place, until you examine. Then you see it was only some Rackham lines, perpetually innocent in their deceit...
According to Colgate & Co., Mr. Rackham was induced to become a commercial artist by a persuasive young woman who was able to point out to him the splendid facilities offered by the soap interests for the introduction of his work...