One of the challenges of working with the art of Len Lye's is overlooking examples of his work in collections where he's an unidentified artist. Several years ago I stumbled across one of his batiks from the late 1920s in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Made during Lye's association with the Footprints Workshop in Hammersmith, this cushion features an image derived from a larger batik scarf titled Polynesian Connection. Although the V&A haven't been able to check the verso for me, I expect that will involve a further image from derived from Polynesian Connection. There is a similar cushion in the Collection of the Len Lye Foundation based on images from Lye's film, Tusalava.
Several weeks ago I was able to locate another unattributed work in the collection of Los Angeles Public Library. One of his most obscure works, this bookplate was made by Lye in Sydney around 1925 for Hutton Vacchini (there are several collected by the State Library of New South Wales in addition to the LAPL).
It's one of two known linocut bookplates by Lye, the other being the more well-known commission for musician Noel Pearson. Scant attention has been given to Lye's work as a printmaker - you won't find mention of his work in Christchurch Art Gallery's recent publication Ink on Paper: Aotearoa New Zealand Printmakers of the Modern Era. However, these two linocuts and another (not illustrated here) made in Australia offer some of the earliest examples of Lye's modernist aesthetics before his move to London in 1926. Numerous prints were made in the UK too, including a series of woodcuts published in the London Bulletin.
The bookplate for Vacchini is particularly interesting. Why is it in Los Angeles? A note from Jack Ellitt, a musician and Lye's friend in Sydney, indicates that Ellitt helped secure the commission from Noel Pearson for his bookplate and that this work won an award in a competition. An article in the 9 May 1927 edition of the Christian Science Monitor reports on the International Book Plate exhibition in Los Angeles (at the Museum of History, Science, and Art). Lye's untitled bookplate (and misidentified as a woodblock) is singled out as a charming inclusion by the "Australian" Lye.
Working from this review, I located the Vacchini bookplate in the collection of Los Angeles Public Library in a deposit of several hundred bookplates made in 1927 by the International Book Plate Association, the organisers of the exhibition. It's possible Ellitt was referring to this work when he mentions Lye winning an award for a bookplate, misremembering an honourable mention as a win. Lye never mentioned this bookplate or the exhibition in any documents that I'm aware of. I wonder if he was aware that the work had been submitted to the exhibition at all.
So far as we know, this is among the first exhibitions to feature Lye's art. No displays of his work are known during his years in New Zealand or Australia. His first documented exhibition in England is the 7th Seven and Five Society exhibition in January 1927 which preceded the Los Angeles exhibition by several months although its possible the Vacchini work was submitted for exhibition in advance of Lye's connection to the Seven and Five. More important to note is that this work is the only known work by Lye that is not sculpture or film in a North American collection, a similar status to the batik in the Victoria and Albert Museum which is the only non-film work by Lye identified in a British collection.
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