H.N. Werkman

The first English-language monograph on Hendrik Nicolaas Werkman (1882–1945), the Groningen jobbing printer who turned the letterpress shop into an instrument for abstract picture-making.

Written by Alston W. Purvis for the Monographics series edited by Rick Poynor, the book follows Werkman from his commercial printing business through the experimental druksels he began around 1923, the nine issues of his periodical The Next Call (1923–26), the stencilled and hand-inked prints of the 1930s and the clandestine publications of De Blauwe Schuit during the German occupation, among them the Chassidische Legenden suite. Werkman was arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst and shot on 10 April 1945, three days before Groningen was liberated; much of his work was destroyed in the fire that followed. 132 illustrations, 123 in colour, with a bibliography. 112 pages, paperback.

Purvis, professor of graphic design at Boston University and co-author with Philip B. Meggs of Meggs' History of Graphic Design, had earlier surveyed the same ground in Dutch Graphic Design 1918–1945 (1992). The book sits alongside the library's holdings on Dutch modernism, typography and the printed page as an artist's medium.