The Decorative Designers and Series Books

Four Afoot- Barbour-
D. Appleton 1906



I have collected series books (among other types of books) seemingly forever. Yet I never really though much about the book covers. That is, who designed them. Really not even a blip on my screen.

Then I came into contact with an expert in that field, David Ogle. David is researching the Decorative Designers who coincidentally designed and drew numerous series book covers. The information about the Decorative Designers comes from David.






Donald Kirk-Woolley
Little, Brown and Company
1912


The Decorative Designers was a firm that was in business between 1895 and 1932. Henry Thayer was the founder and key employees were Emma Thayer, and Jay Chambers. If it is their design work, it can sometimes be determined by characteristic lettering and cover patterns (by experts in the field and certainly not me). But many of their works can be determined by finding their monogram which is an overlapped DD with the second D reversed on the book's cover. This is generally placed in a nondescript location .





Five Months on a Derelict-
Edwin Houston
Griffith and Rowland Press 1908



Interestingly enough a fair number of series books had cover designs done by the Decorative Designers. Overall as per Publishers Bindings Online
(http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/designerbios/decdesign.html) this firm's monogram appeared on more than 25,000 book covers and jackets.






The Young Bridge-Tender
Arthur Winfield
Street and Smith 1902




Here are some examples of covers with the DD. I have included several Stratemeyer books which should interest Stratemeyer expert James Keeline. Of note is that although the Decorative Designers may have done many covers for Hurst, Grosset and Dunlap, Cupples and Leon and Altemus, their logo rarely appears on any of those publishers' books.




The Rival Ocean Divers
Roy Rockwood
Stitt Publishing Company 1905


Look carefully at the covers shown here. If you click to enlarge them, you should be able to find the DD monogram.

In the future I will review other ways to determine whether your book was designed by the Decorative Designers. All clues given now and in the future about the Decorative Designers are the work product of the true expert-David Ogle.

By the way, look at the blog entry from June 18, 2009.
If you click on the Mershon and Chatterton-Peck Bobbsey Twins' covers, you will see the DD monogram on the bottom right.

Cupples and Leon Earliest Juvenile Series

Cupples and Leon was an active book publisher from 1902-1956. Although best known for their juvenile series, they also published numerous hard cover comics with Little Orphan Annie being the most popular. In total this firm sold more than 30 million comic strip books.

The company was founded by Victor Cupples and Arthur T. Leon. Early on Cupples worked for Houghton, Miflin as well as the Lothrop Publishing Company. He also helped found Cupples, Upham and Company . Arthur Leon had worked at Laird and Lee. Their partnership was very successful. With the founding partners retirements and subsequent deaths the company was eventually sold to Platt and Munk. This occurred in 1956.


The earliest Cupples and Leon juvenile series were published in 1906. The eight books published at that time have an interesting characteristic that other Cupples and Leon juvenile series books do not have. The classic Cupples and Leon logo is a circle surrounding the publisher's name at the base of the spine. In these 1906 books there is no circle. The sans circle books are among the most difficult to find Cupples and Leon books-especially with dust jackets.

Of the 8 books the Horatio Alger first edition of Joe, The Hotel Boy is clearly the most sought after especially if it has a dust jacket. The others though are quite uncommon and serious series book collectors are always looking out for them.




The eight titles are:
The Motor Boys- Clarence Young
The Motor Boys Overland-Clarence Young
The Motor Boys in Mexico- Clarence Young
The Young Express Agent-Allen Chapman
Two Boy Publishers- Allen Chapman
Four Boy Hunters- Captain Ralph Bonehill
Joe, The Hotel Boy- Horatio Alger
Through the Air to the North Pole- Roy Rockwood

Some examples are shown here.

Hurst advertising postcard

Just as trade cards were popular vehicles for advertising in the 19th century, post cards were popular in the early years of the 20th century. Nonetheless, they are hard to find.

Here is an advertising postcard for Hurst & Company, a major player in the juvenile series book world from the early 1900's to 1919. During those years Hurst published 23 boy's juvenile series, a number of girl's series as well as mixed author's series, Alger Series and Henty Series. Some of their series-in particular the Frank Armstrong Series and the Rex Kingdon Series are difficult to find in dust jackets. In fact because of relatively low print runs, many of Hurst's series are difficult to complete in dust jacketed copies.

This is the only postcard advertisement for Hurst that I have seen but Hurst also advertised with flyers placed within its books. This was commonplace with many publishers. Flyers, accordion ad sheets, or mini pamphlets were placed within a book so the reader could be apprised of other books within their interest range.

Here is an example of a flyer found within a Hurst book