We first discovered Clare Leighton tucked away in the drawers of a little antique shop in our much loved British seaside town of Southwold.  A quick love affair ensued, our collection began.  And then the usual follow up of "you keep all the good stuff for yourself".  Well, that is just not true, yes, Jeffri is a little piggy when it comes to treasures, but, truly he does share.  Each trip we take we hunt for more, a nice collection is amassing here at CVP.   These are all "first editions", intended for book illustrations. Enjoy them, and be sure to let us know if you need some specifics an any of them.

          a little history on Clare.......

Clare Veronica Hope Leighton
British, 1898-1989

Although known primarily for her work as a printmaker, Clare Leighton also designed numerous book illustrations, bookplates, engravings, illustrations, mosaics, and stained glass windows over the course of a long and productive career. She wrote seven books, among them Four Hedges: A Gardener's Chronicle, illustrated with her own prints, and a treatise on wood engraving, her forté. She received her early training at the Brighton College of Art and also attended the Slade School of Fine Art and the Central School of Art and Design in London. During the 1920s and 1930s she taught, exhibited, and made several lecture tours of the United States. At the outbreak of World War II, she moved to America, and in 1945 became an American citizen. A teaching position at Duke University in 1943 brought her into contact with Professor Frank C. Brown's pioneering effort to collect North Carolina folklore. Eventually, the project grew to seven published volumes, all of which Leighton illustrated. Though some might have considered her an "outsider" in the matter of Southern folkways, she took her work seriously, making a research trip to the North Carolina mountains in 1946, where the customs, music, dance, and crafts of the early Scottish and Irish settlers still permeated the culture. Her sensitive, unsentimental portrayals of the difficult lives of African Americans in the United States are evident in the Cotton Pickers, shown below.

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