Margaret Armstrong
American, 1867-1944
Publisher's bindings designed by trained artists are a relatively
recent phenomenon, and Margaret Armstrong is among the first women
whose work can be so identified. She was privately educated (her
father was the stained-glass artist Maitland Armstrong), and also
took drawing lessons from Susan Hale and Rhoda Holmes Nicholls, among
others. According to her bibliographers Charles Gullans and John
Espey, Armstrong designed more than 300 bindings between 1890-1940,
the majority for Scribner's. Her best work balances the graceful
symmetry and natural motifs of the Art Nouveau style, as in the cover
of this guidebook to ferns.
Armstrong was also an author in her own right. Her Field Book
of Western Wild Flowers (New York: Putnam, 1915), which includes
500 black-and-white illustrations and 48 plates in color, all drawn
"from
nature" by Armstrong, is considered the first comprehensive
guide to these plants. Her research trip for this book was phenomenal
in another way: she and her traveling companions are alleged to be
the first women ever to descend to the bottom of the Grand Canyon,
which they did in July 1911, "after much persuasion of the
canyon authorities and guides" (Charles Gullans and John Espey,
Margaret Armstrong and American Trade Bindings, Los Angeles:
UCLA Library Department of Special Collections, 1991, p. 51).
How To Know the Ferns: A Guide to the Names, Haunts, and Habits
of Our Common Ferns, by Frances Theodora Parsons. Illustrated
by Marion Satterlee and Alice Josephine Smith. New York: Charles
Scribner's
Sons, 1899.
Firestone Library
