2026 Kranzberg Fine Print Student Essay Competition

Claire Van Vliet, Shirley Jones, and Elisabeth Frink

This topic invites students to explore the work of three artists whose practices engage deeply with printmaking, book arts, and the relationship between text and image. Essays may compare all three artists or focus closely on one or two, considering their approaches to materials, literary inspiration, and the traditions of fine printing.

For more than seventy years, Claire Van Vliet (b. 1933) has been a defining figure in fine press publishing through her work as the founder of the Janus Press. Van Vliet has led a pioneering career in paper engineering, combining paper, ink, and type with engraving techniques such as woodcuts and etchings, and most notably through her innovative use of dyed paper pulp in landscape and “cloudscape” compositions. Her work has helped shape the modern fine press book through its bold color, material experimentation, and thoughtful integration of image and text. Drawing inspiration from subjects as varied as women’s lives, nature, religious art, and Shakespeare, Van Vliet has expanded the expressive possibilities of the book form.

The Mercantile Library holds a wide range of her work, including broadsides, illustrations, printing ephemera, and major book and portfolio productions. In addition to the works on view in the Siefert Gallery, the Mercantile Library presents an accompanying exhibition in the Medart Gallery, A Closer Look at Claire Van Vliet and the Janus Press, which offers a more focused examination of Van Vliet’s innovative contributions to fine press publishing.

Shirley Jones (b. 1934), the daughter of a Welsh coal miner, began her career studying English at Cardiff University and working as a teacher before returning to school to study sculpture and printmaking. She later became a self-taught letterpress printer, allowing her to publish her own poetry and merge literary content seamlessly with book design. Through her work at the Red Hen Press, Jones infused her prints with Old English mythology and the history and landscape of her native Wales. She is especially known for her combination of richly detailed mezzotint engravings and her identity as a deeply introspective poet, creating works in which image, text, and personal expression are inseparable.

Although best known as a world-renowned British sculptor of the 1960s, Elizabeth Frink (1930–1993) maintained a sustained interest in printmaking and works on paper throughout her career. Frink translated her sculptural exploration of animal and human forms into drawings, etchings, lithographs, and book illustrations. She frequently turned to English literature and Greek classics as sources, producing powerful visual interpretations of canonical texts. The Mercantile Library holds Frink’s complete series of prints illustrating The Canterbury Tales, as well as her illustrations for works by Homer and Aesop, demonstrating her engagement with literature through graphic media.

Works by Claire Van Vliet, Shirley Jones, and Elizabeth Frink are on view in the Siefert Gallery on Level 3 of the Thomas Jefferson Library. Additional works by Claire Van Vliet are on view in the Medart Gallery on Level 3 of the library as well.

The Great River: Poems and Pictures by Frederick Oakes Sylvester (1869-1915)

The Great River: Poems and Pictures (1911) represents the culmination of Frederick Oakes Sylvester’s artistic and poetic engagement with the Mississippi River, which became his central muse after he relocated to St. Louis. The Mercantile Library, with generous loans from outside institutions, currently has on display more than twenty copies of Sylvester’s deluxe edition, out of only 100 produced, each featuring tipped-in original watercolor illustrations on the title page. These watercolors, combined with Sylvester’s poetry, reflect a unified vision in which image and text work together to evoke the river’s physical presence, symbolism, and emotional resonance. This edition exemplifies early twentieth-century American Arts & Crafts ideals of craftsmanship, utility in design, and high-quality materials. Students may consider the book as a meditation on place, as a dialogue between poetry and visual art, or as an expression of the Mississippi River’s importance to Midwestern artistic identity.

The Great River is on view in the Kranzberg exhibition case on Level 2 of the Wallace H. Smith Gallery of Art. The related special exhibition in the Wallace H. Smith Gallery provides additional context for the artist’s life, teaching career, and impact on art education in St. Louis.