Lowry’s to Offer Limited-Edition David Small Prints

By Claire Kirch, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 7/17/2008

Bookseller Tom Lowry, owner of Lowry’s Books in Three Rivers. Mich., and children’s book illustrator David Small are collaborating in a venture to make Small’s art available to collectors. The two are producing a limited number of giclée ink-jet prints of Small’s work, which will be sold exclusively through Lowry’s Books, both in-store and on its Web site. Each print, which will be numbered and signed in 75 to 100-copy print runs, will retail for $495 (unframed). The prints are the same size (11-1/2 x 9) as the original art. “They’re extraordinary,” says Small. “I use a little pastel in my work—there’s a bit of a trompe l’oeil effect with giclée. You feel that if you touch the pastel, the chalk will come off on your fingers.”

According to Lowry, 12 illustrations from Small’s best-known works will be produced initially, taken from Imogene’s Antlers by Small; The Friend by Sarah Stewart (Small’s wife); The Library by Stewart; The Gardener by Stewart; and So You Want to be President? by Judith St. George. “It takes an hour for each print,” Lowry explains. “These are very high-quality prints.”

Small, who lives in southwest Michigan with Stewart, has illustrated approximately 40 picture books. He told Bookshelf that he does not sell any of the original art he creates for children’s books, but, rather, keeps them for reprints. He also lends artwork to the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature for use in traveling shows in libraries and museums.

Small calls this collaboration a “perfect fit,” the evolution of his and Stewart’s attempts to persuade Lowry and his wife, Susan, to open a bookstore in the town in which Small and Stewart live. “Tom and Susan are totally practical and Sarah and I are totally impractical,” he says. “We just love our books and they run a business. And we all love books in general.”