WERKMAN, Hendrik Nicolaas. LUTHER, Martin. ~ Sendbrief an dei christen im niederland.
One of 90 copies. Colphon with the woodcut press device of De Blauwe Schuit. 19 x 15 cm. Original brown paper wrappers, sewn as issued, upper cover with a print of a martyr being burned in a brazier with an executioner standing by and a man on horseback with the silhouetteof a city behind him, all printed in orange, green, black and brown ink by Werkman. An extremely good, crisp copy.
Ex libris stamp of HL on the first page.
Luther’s Sendbrief an die Christen im Niederland was first printed by Hans Lufft at Wittenberg in 1523 and Werkman reprinted it for the friends of his Press for Pentecost in 1941.
Hendrik Werkman (1882-1945) is best known for his innovative printing techniques and avant-garde typography. He was the publisher of ‘De Blauwe Schuit’, a series of over 40 underground, clandestine booklets produced by dissident authors and poets, including Jewish writers, during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands. The works were printed using his simple handpress and he developed several creative printing techniques to produce the designs he desired. He often mixed stencil and stamp techniques and employed a method of rolling the ink directly onto the paper, overprinting a single sheet several times without re-inking the block, varying ink thicknesses and the pressure of the press to create his ‘druksels’ or repeated impressions..
The works he printed included poetry, biblical and Jewish texts intended to bolster the spirit of an occupied people and often lauds freedom of thought and expression. Werkman was not a member of the Chamber of Culture and not permitted to publish yet he boldly printed his name on the colophon of his publications. Inevitably he was imprisoned by the German secret police in 1945 and executed without trial just three days before the liberation of the Netherlands. Much of his work was destroyed at that time.
4 copies listed on OCLC, only in the US (Getty, Northwestern, Harvard and Ohio).