Death In A White Tie... Grusome Yet Charming And Elegant Cover Art From A Lesser Known Edition Of Ngaio Marsh's 1930s Murder Mystery

Death In A White Tie... Grusome Yet Charming And Elegant Cover Art From A Lesser Known Edition Of Ngaio Marsh's 1930s Murder MysteryTreasures from THE MYSTERY & HORROR COLLECTION at The Willing Mind. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review. Print size 24 x 18, and consciously formatted to work with a standard 18 X 24 frame, or custom framed as you see fit. Ngaio Marsh was a rather remarkable author during what was known as Golden Age of Detective Fiction. A New Zealander who wrote in England where her novels are set, she was known as one of the four "Queens of Crime" along

Treasures from THE MYSTERY & HORROR COLLECTION at The Willing Mind. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 24 x 18, and consciously formatted to work with a standard 18 X 24 frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

Ngaio Marsh was a rather remarkable author during what was known as Golden Age of Detective Fiction.  A New Zealander who wrote in England where her novels are set, she was known as one of the four "Queens of Crime"  along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham.

This great artwork graced a cheap paperback edition, breathing new sales into a later printing.

Finding this book was in itself a great adventure.  Deen Cogan who, with her late husband, had amassed the largest collection of mystery novels in the world, taking up three floors of a small building in South Philadelphia, gave me three hours to go through her collection with my scanner back in 2001.  This was in return for my designing a poster for her for a mystery novel convention held at the Franklin Plaza here in Philadelphia... a damned sharp poster if I do say so myself!

You might not remember how big computers were and especially how big a graphic arts scanner was back then but the clock was ticking and the set up took forever.  Gently but furiously snatching books part way from the shelves to eyeball the covers (who knew the titles on the spines?) was madly intoxicating, but with that sense that time will run out and the iron spiked 10,000 pound gate will close again SOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNN!

Then of course scanning properly back then took time, with the giant old timey taxi meter clacking loudly every few seconds in my brain.  We ended up with a very modest number of first rate scans of truly amazing and very rare vintage covers.  That project will reemerge this summer and fall.  Stay tuned!

SHIPPING
All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT?  Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!

International shipping is available and reasonable. Please contact us for details.

A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps.  The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands.  That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here.  See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road.  I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle!  So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.