book work

"If at some point in the misty future an interested gentleman looks back upon our present age, he must surely note the quality of prizing the original spirit as the most valuable we have developed. It is, I believe, intrinsically bound up with a right regard for the medium. The two go along together, and sustain each other.  ... The men and women who are foremost in the world of book illustration today stand each one alone; the work of each is the expression of an individual who has something worth saying; at the same time it is intrinsically book work, by which I mean that its use in any way, save as a part of the book, must by its very nature be secondary."

Lynd Ward, Contemporary Book Illustration, 1930

(illustration from Mad Man's Drum, a novel in woodcuts, according to the interwebs)