MUELLER – Das Logbuch 1929

Hans Alexander Müller’s wordless publication of 1929, Das Logbuch, has a poetic introduction, but the images don’t tell a story. There is no story arc – just a series of unrelated images in a theoretical sailor’s log book.

David Beronä, in the Author’s Note to his book Wordless Books: The Original Graphic Novels, referred to Das Logbuch as an anomaly because it illustrates the story of a sailor’s logbook (as the title implies), but it does not constitute a story.

• It is a stretch to say this is a story/novel.
• The artist’s introduction is a poetic description of the artist’s feelings about sailboats and the sea. The images do not follow a comprehensible storyline (i.e., with a beginning/middle/end), nor do they directly relate to anything concrete in the intro.
• If the pages were scrambled, it would make no difference to the appreciation of the book.
• The use of “log book” may be helpful in the sense that a sailor can jot entries into a log book but the series of entries do not have to have anything connecting the individual entries.

Hans Alexander Müller (1888 – 1962), after immigrating to the USA, changed the spelling of his last name to Mueller.

Mueller was a notable 20th-century illustrator, known for his woodcuts and wood engravings. He emigrated to the States from Germany in the late 1930s, where he advanced his career as a freelance artist, illustrating many books, periodicals, signs and more. While studying in Europe, Lynd Ward took lessons from Mueller in the art of wood engraving.

• Title: Das Logbuch: ein Buch in Holzstichen (The Log Book: a book in wood engravings)
• Author and Illustrator: Hans Alexander Müller
• Introduction: Hans Alexander Müller
• Date of publication: 1929
• Publisher: Insel – Verlag
• Place of publication: Leipzig
• Printer: Text printed by Poeschel & Trepte; the woodcuts were printed by the artist himself on the handpress of the ‘Staatliche Akademie für graphische Künste und Kunstgewerbe’.
• Copyright: Artist?
• Dimensions: 22.5 x 16.5 cm
• slipcase: ?
• Binding: stitched
• Language: German titles, etc
• Paginated: unpaginated
• Printed: verso and recto, pages are a French fold
• Edition: limited; printed on thin paper in 200 numbered copies and signed by the artist
• Printed from the original wood blocks.
• References:
• Description: Cream coloured rice paper wrappers in Japanese style (Japanese block binding). Green endpapers with overlapping cream paper with block book stitching. 8 pp. (4 pp. ‘Introduction’), 16 double leaves with 31 woodcuts, 2 pp. (‘Colophon’).

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