THIS IS A DIFFICULT TASK. _I agreed to write an introduction to_ Will
Bradley, His Chap Book _before I had seen the book’s text itself. Now
I have encountered here the gaiety, courage, vitality of this man
who romped like a breeze through American graphic arts for several
decades--and I feel that my part should be little more than the opening
of a door to this perennial springtime freshness._
_But still there is something to talk about that he, modest man,
hasn’t even mentioned. And that is the impact of his work on his time.
It should be talked about, because it is hard to realize today, in
our state of emancipation, what a closed and stuffy room Bradley
entered--and opened to the sun and air._
_Across the Atlantic, the Nineteenth Century was bursting its seams:
Morris failing to revive medievalism but startling his world with a
revival of fine craftsmanship; Beardsley, the Yellow Book and their_
avant garde _galaxy startling their world in quite a different way;
Toulouse-Lautrec spreading modern art in the kiosks of Paris when only
a handful knew anything about Cezanne, Van Gogh, Seurat; barriers being
demolished everywhere._
_In America, these goings-on were known to a few connoisseurs amid a
vast indifference. It was Bradley in the Nineties who made the American
public stir in its sleep and at least crack an eye. In the next decade
he and the many who followed him were well advanced in the lively
morning of a day that isn’t over yet._
_There were derivative traces in Bradley’s early work--and whose
hasn’t?--but when he hit his stride it wasn’t Europe’s leadership he
followed. He discovered American colonial typography, bold and free,
and from that springboard he took off into a career of non-archaic,
non-repetitive, exuberant and exhilarating design. In its way it was
as American as the Declaration of Independence. In this field we have
never had any more indigenous art than Bradley’s._
_He was a native, corn-fed American in another way, too. It was a time
when Kelmscott House had set a pattern, and the only pious ambition
for a serious typographic designer was to produce meticulous limited
editions for equally limited collectors. Bradley may have had some
such idea in mind when he started the Wayside Press, but thank God
it didn’t work. There was a lusty, democratic ambition in that slight
body, and it thrilled him to speak to thousands, even millions, instead
of just scores. The turbulent current of American commercial and
industrial life appealed to him more than any exquisite backwater._
_So he spread his work over magazines, newspapers, the advertising
of such houses as the Strathmore Paper Company, his own lively
but not limited publications, even the movies. So he enormously
enriched our arts; and he smashed more false fronts and took more
liberties--successfully--than anyone has done before or since._
_Now his retirement has lasted almost as long as his active career.
His work has been absorbed into our culture so completely that many of
the young men cavorting brilliantly in his wake today are scarcely
aware of their debt to him--the pioneer and pacemaker. They should
be--he is aware of them: he closes here with chuckling praises of the
fine, free-handed job they are doing. There was always a giant’s spirit
in this powerful little man, and it’s as strong and generous now as
it ever was. My memory is long enough that I can say for all these
latecomers, “Thank you no end for everything, Will Bradley.”_