The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, using the text of FitzGerald’s fourth version and illustrated by Jeanyee Wong, was published by the Peter Pauper Press of Mount Vernon, New York. It was undated, but is generally reckoned to have been published in 1961 (1). It contained 9 illustrations which were basically line–drawings somewhat garishly coloured in pink and red, and done in imitation of the style of a Persian miniature. Four examples are given here. Fig.1a relates to quatrain 12 (“A Book of Verses underneath the Bough &c”); Fig.1b clearly relates to quatrain 70 (“The Ball no question makes &c.”); Fig.1c to the Potter’s Shop of quatrain 82 (“As under cover of departing Day &c.”); and Fig.1d to quatrain 100 (“Yon rising Moon that looks for us again &c.”) To be honest, these aren’t among my favourite illustrations of The Rubaiyat [browse here], though there is something appealing in their ‘Persian’ style, but the artist behind them turns out to be rather interesting in her versatility, for she was not only an illustrator but also a calligrapher, a prolific designer of dust–jackets, and, in the course of her book illustration, a cartographer. So who was she ?
There are two particularly useful sources of information about Jeanyee Wong. The first is an interview with the artist by Diane Oltarzewski and Chi Nguyen published in the Fall of 2001 in NEWSOS, the Newsletter of the Society of Scribes (vol.26, no.5, p.4–9) (2a). The second is a filmed interview with her by Jerry Kelly recorded on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday in 2010 under the auspices of the Grolier Club of New York and the Society of Scribes (2b). (Jeanyee Wong is one of the very few Rubaiyat artists to have been captured on film.) The following is based on both of these, as well as on contemporary newspaper reports and material from ancestry.co.uk.
Jeanyee Wong was born to Cantonese Chinese parents in San Francisco on 8 May 1920. She was educated in local schools there, until which time her first language was Chinese, and at an early age she showed a facility for drawing and a particular interest in lettering. In about 1930 she and her family moved to the Bronx in New York, where she at first studied at Haaren High School in Manhattan, a ‘Trade School’ geared to the likes of typewriting and shorthand. These were not to her taste, and she opted for all the art–related courses instead. Between 1936 and 1940, having somehow passed the entrance exam, as she modestly put it, she attended the Cooper Union School of Art where she studied painting, drawing, sculpture, and calligraphy. For this last, she trained under the typographer, calligrapher and designer, notably of dust–jackets, George Salter. It was whilst still at Cooper Union, at the age of 20, that a fellow student who worked at the publisher’s Alfred A. Knopf, recommended her to do the lettering for their forthcoming children’s book by Harry Zarchy, Let’s Make Something. Published in 1941, it was her first book. Meanwhile, in 1940 George Salter apprenticed her for five years to his friend, artist and book illustrator Fritz Kredel, whom she assisted in his book–jacket designs – she was his “toucher up–er”, as she put it. She gained a great deal through working for him, and it was through him that she got her first major book break – Lin Yutang’s book, The Wisdom of Confucius, published by the Illustrated Modern Library in New York in 1943. Apparently the editor of the Illustrated Modern Library, whom Kredel knew, couldn’t find a Chinese artist who would illustrate the book for him, and Kredel suggested Jeanyee. Needless to say, after doing considerable research and producing a sketchbook of sample drawings, she got the job. Three of her fine illustrations are shown here as Fig.2a (facing p.106), Fig.2b (facing p.120) and Fig.2c (facing p,190) (3). [Browse here.] Soon after this she ‘went solo’, and, incidentally got married.
An article in The San Francisco Examiner of 23 March 1947 (p.52) gives a good account of her at that time:
In New York a young San Franciscan – born Jeanyee Wong, just off Grant Avenue in Chinatown – has won an art award that fills her local clan with pride. For the second year, one of Jeanyee’s exquisite hand–lettered and illustrated books, “The Flower Lover and the Fairies,” has been chosen for inclusion in the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ “The Fifty Books of the Year.”
At Cooper Union Art School Jeanyee made one of the highest entrance scores in the history of that famous school’s competitive examinations. Since graduation she has become a topflight book jacket designer, book typographer and illustrator. Recently Jeanyee became Mrs. Waie Lew, proud possessor of a husband whom she knew as a child in San Francisco, a hard–to–find apartment, and a brand new pressure cooker for which she displays a most un–Oriental enthusiasm!
The article featured a photograph her, captioned “Jeanyee Wong Wins Art Distinction,” here reproduced as Fig.3a. A rather later, but undated, photograph of her with her husband is shown in Fig.3b; and another, of her alone, again undated but taken some years after her marriage (she wears a wedding ring), in Fig.3c. The photograph in Fig.3d was taken at the time of the Grolier Club interview.
As regards dust–jackets, in 1947 she was a founder member of The Book Jacket Designer Guild, otherwise known as “The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Book Jacket Designers.” She is said to have designed over 2000 dust jackets in the course of her long career, a feat which she said took up some 90% of her working life. Some of these involved only calligraphic lettering with decorative designs, like that for D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, published by the Viking Press in New York in 1968 (Fig.4a) but others were more interesting artistically for their accompanying illustrations (not always by her; sometimes supplied by the publisher for her to incorporate into the design.) Two notable examples are that for Muriel Molland Jernigan’s novel Forbidden City (Book Club Edition, Crown Publishing, New York 1954) (Fig.4b – which was clearly wholly by Jeanyee) and John Updike’s novel Couples (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1968) (Fig.4c – the illustration is not by her, merely one given to her to incorporate into the design.) [Browse here.]
The above–mentioned prize–winning book, The Flower Lover and the Fairies, is a wonderful combination of her skills in both calligraphy and illustration. It was published by the Archway Press of New York in 1946, its explanatory title–page being shown in Fig.5a and two sample pages in Fig.5b (p.9) & Fig.5c (p.35.) This was one of seven AIGA “Fifty Books of the Year” awards presented to her, another being for Lafcadio Hearn’s Tales out of the East, published by Story Classics of Emmaus, Pennsylvania in 1952. Three of its wonderful illustrations – among my favourites of her work – are shown in Fig.6a (p.39), Fig.6b (p.58) and Fig.6c (p.147). The Oriental nature of both books, like that of The Wisdom of Confucius, is, of course, immediately evident in her illustrations [browse here], naturally enough for a Chinese–American artist, and though a number of other books illustrated by her were of a similar nature, it should not be assumed that she was limited in her scope – far from it, as we shall see.
We shall return to her book illustration presently, but meanwhile, to return to her biographical details, on 24 November 1960 the Californian newspaper The Sacramento Bee (p.94) ran a feature under the title “Cards Portray The Christmas Message”, an account of an exhibition staged by the American Artists Group, in which we read:
Somehow managing to look modern and archaic at the same moment, Jeanyee Wong’s Herald Angel, in blocks of paint and of print, proclaims the timeless message of glory to God and peace to men of good will.
Unfortunately, Jeanyee’s contribution is not one of those illustrated.
In December 1975 and January 1976 she participated in an exhibition of calligraphy and illumination held at the Bergen Community Museum of Art and Science at Paramus, New Jersey. It was staged by members of the Society of Scribes, which had been founded in 1974. An account of the exhibition was given in The Herald–News of Passaic, New Jersey, on 8 December 1975 (p.3) and briefly mentions Jeanyee thus:
One exhibitor is Jeanyee Wong, who is employed by the United Nations and does work on the well–known UNICEF greeting cards.
One of these cards was included in the “Two Thousand Years of Calligraphy” exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1981.
The San Bernardino County Sun of 9 September 1979 (p.36) carried an article by Mike McCleod titled “Calligraphers revive ancient art” (the article featured under different titles in several American newspapers at the time.) It read in part:
Calligraphers have formed clubs all over the country, and spirited calligraphy workshops are held regularly in New York and Los Angeles.
Some calligraphers are purists, sticking to the sleek, gently curving style used by Roman scribes centuries ago.
Others, like Robert Boyajian, have developed bold new letters souping up their alphabets so much that it’s difficult to tell their A’s from their Z’s.
Like other graphic artists, calligraphers have their superstars, letter men and women who have earned international reputations – Jeanyee Wong, Charles Pearce, Philip Bouwsman, and Robert Boyajian to name a few.
Many of these artists teach classes in calligraphy and command anywhere from $50 to $500 for their wall–hangings and manuscripts.
The article pictured a wall–hanging of Proverbs 9.8–9 by Jeanyee (Fig.7a), though it did not stipulate a price. (Another of her wall hangings, of Psalms 118.24 featured in the book International Calligraphy Today, compiled by the International Typeface Corporation and published by Watson Guptil in 1982, for which Jeanyee co–authored the Introduction. This wall–hanging is shown in Fig.7b.)
From the 1970s Jeanyee was invited to teach classes in calligraphy at various schools, colleges and universities, as there were so few teachers able to do it. Newspaper advertisements show that in the 1980s and on into the late 1990s she was still much in demand for delivering lectures and running workshops, often under the auspices of the Calligraphers’ Guild. She also worked for advertising agencies, adding a calligraphic dimension to their advertisements. In fact, Jeanyee first gained national recognition for her calligraphy in a full–page Christmas advert she did for the New York Life Insurance Company (Fig.7c), which ran in magazines like Life and Time throughout the 1950s, and on into the 1960s and 1970s, I believe. She also gained a reputation for designing logos. She did one for the New York Public Library and it was her design for the logo of an antiquarian bookseller that led her into the field of restoring damaged art works in old books and manuscripts, work which she found particularly interesting. She also became much in demand to use her calligraphic skills in producing certificates, testimonials and such like, a ‘nice little earner’ but one which sometimes seems to have held little appeal for her, though she was thrilled to do a certificate for Artur Rubenstein, commissioned by Avery Fisher, which she did whilst listening to Rubenstein play on the radio, and it appears that she also enjoyed working for MAD Magazine, producing the certificate shown in Fig.7d, probably in 1975 when the January issue of the magazine ran a cartoon feature on the problem (I leave details to readers’ imaginations.) [Browse here.] By her own account, she took on pretty much any work that came her way, as there was mostly something to enjoy in it whatever it was. As a result, her earnings were sufficient to enable her to live a comfortable old age.
As noted earlier, in 2010 the Grolier Club of New York filmed an interview with her to celebrate her ninetieth birthday. At the end of the film, she was presented with a certificate of commendation for her lifetime’s work. The sound quality and the filming are not great, unfortunately, but are good enough to show her as a sprightly 90 year old with a good sense of humour – “I can’t believe how old I’ve become,” she is recorded as saying. Asked if it was calligraphy that had kept her young, she replied, “no, it’s my legs” (as a result of walking up the stairs to her fifth floor apartment, which, however, she declined to swap for a more accessible one on the third floor.) Though her memory falters on some details – the problem, as she put it, being that the older you get, the more you have to try to remember – she could still recount the various stages of her career and many of the fascinating people she had worked with, one of whom was Maurice Sendak. She did the lettering for four of his books: Some Swell Pup (1976); Outside Over There (1981); We are All in the Dumps with Jack and Guy (1993) and The Miami Giant (1995). She said of Sendak that “he always knew what he wanted. He cares – that is the passion in people that I admire. He’d say, ‘Jeanyee, do it as though I had written it, but better.’” (What a pity she didn’t apply her calligraphic skills to Sendak’s earlier classic Where the Wild Things are (1963)!)
Towards the end of the Grolier Club film, one of the audience asked Jeanyee about her experience of working with Hermès, producers of top quality, very expensive, silk scarves, beloved of the rich and famous, “designer gear” as we would now call them. She explained that she was approached by the firm to do the calligraphy for a scarf depicting the flowers related to various operas. She didn’t go into any great detail, but the scarf must have been the “Fleurs de l’Opera” type, an example being shown in Fig.7e, though it should be noted that it was issued in several different colour schemes, starting in 1989, which gives us some indication of when Jeanyee must have worked on the calligraphy. The flowers were designed by Julie Abadie, with Jeanyee supplying the calligraphy around the edge of the scarf. Thus, for example, reading along the bottom edge from the tip of the palm frond we have, “Fleurs de l’Opera – Der Rosenkavalier de Richard Strauss – Rose d’Argent,” denoting the silver engagement rose of the opera. The dominant palm fronds, incidentally, relate to the Egyptian setting of Verdi’s Aida.
After a long and productive life, Jeanyee Wong died in New York on 21 February 2017, at the ripe old age of 96. Her husband predeceased her, dying in New York on 14 March 1985 at age of 71. The two are buried together in the Calverton National Cemetery, New York.
Though Jeanyee rated herself first and foremost as a calligrapher & designer, and only secondarily as an illustrator, this is not to do her justice. The illustrations shown in Figs.6a, 6b & 6c surely demonstrate her skill as an illustrator, as do her ten illustrations for Buddha – his Life and Teachings, published by the Peter Pauper Press. This book was undated, but its publication date is generally given as [1954] (eg. Donnelly & Dobkin #64.) Two examples are shown in Fig.8a (facing p.46) & Fig.8b (facing p.158). (4)
There is no space here to cover in detail all the other Oriental books illustrated by her, but particularly worthy of mention among them is Chang Fa–Shun’s The Sky River (Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, New York, 1950), the Chinese legend accounting for the origin of the Milky Way. Two examples are shown in Fig.9a (p.30) & Fig.9b (p.75.) The list also includes Chinese Fairy Tales (Peter Pauper Press, 1946 with a reprint in 1961); Malcolm Reiss’s China Boat Boy (J.B. Lippincott Company, 1954); Glenn W. Monigold’s Folk Tales from Vietnam (Peter Pauper Press, 1964); and Harold Whaley’s Oriental Meditation (Peter Pauper Press, 1976.) Oddly, she also illustrated at least two Oriental cookbooks: Mimie Ouei’s The Art of Chinese Cooking (Random House, New York, 1960) and Pearl S. Buck’s (5) Oriental Cookbook (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1972). To satisfy readers’ curiosity, in the former Fig.10a heads the section on cooking with sea food and Fig.10b that on cooking with eggs; in the latter, Fig.10c is frontispiece of the section on Burma and Fig.10d that for the section on Japan (the book covers recipes from Thailand, Burma, India, China, Malaysia, Japan & other countries.) [Browse here.]
Thus far the Orient, but moving westwards Jeanyee also illustrated numerous books on western themes. Notably, she illustrated and did the calligraphy, as well as the dust-jacket and the end–papers, for The Cherry Tree Carol, first published by the Peter Pauper Press in 1951, but with a revised edition (or editions ?) published in the mid–1980s (6). Fig.11a shows the dust–jacket, Fig.11b the front end–papers and Fig.11c the opening two–page spread.
Following the Christian theme of the foregoing, she illustrated at least five books for the Catholic publisher Sheed and Ward of London and New York. Thus she illustrated Sister Mary Charitina’s book The Adventures of the Redcrosse Knight, first published by in 1946, a rendering in prose, for children, of the first book of Spenser’s Fairy Queen. Fig.12a (p.15) and Fig.12b (p51) are two examples of her illustrations which capture well a medieval English style. On a different front she illustrated for them, John de Marchi’s book, retold in English by Elisabeth Cobb, The Shepherds of Fatima, first published in 1953, the story of the visions of the Virgin Mary supposedly experienced by three shepherd children at Fatima in Portugal in 1917. Fig.13a (facing p.60) & Fig.13b (facing p.136) are two examples. Other Sheed and Ward publications illustrated by Jeanyee include M.K. Richardson’s Barbara and Sister Mary Francis’ Francis, both published in 1959 as part of their Patron Saint Book series. Finally, back in 1947 they published Gospel Rhymes by Various Authors – though billed as illustrated by Jeanyee, the illustrations are as much decorative vignettes as illustrations. An example of the rhyming and its accompanying illustration is shown in Fig.14 (p.45) – enough said, I think! [Browse here.]
Five books illustrated for a Catholic publisher, of course, naturally raises the question of the artist’s own religious beliefs. (Recall also the Biblical wall–hangings in Figs.7a & 7b, the Christmas Prayer in Fig.7c, and the Cherry Tree Carol of Figs.11a, 11b & 11c.) In the Grolier Club interview, she was asked about her spiritual side, but replied only to say that she aimed to live as well as possible, without complaint, which rather suggests that she was not a particularly religious person – no more Catholic than Buddhist, and as much Confucian as Christian, her illustrations reflecting no more than what particular publishers had asked of her. An amusing instance of this is supplied by two science books for children which she illustrated for Thomas Y. Crowell of New York – Franklyn M. Branley’s Experiments in the Principles of Space Travel (1955) and Michael Faraday’s The Chemical History of a Candle (1957). As she explained in the Grolier Club film, she told the publisher that she knew absolutely nothing about science, merely to be greeted with the reply, “We want you to do it because if you understand it, the kids will too.” The rather neat frontispiece for the former is shown in Fig.15.
It is to be stressed that the foregoing is merely a sample of Jeanyee’s prodigious output. A broader view would add a further diverse array including: the cover and calligraphic title–page for an abridged edition of Charles M. Doughty’s classic Travels in Arabia Deserta (Limited Editions Club, New York, 1953); the dust–jacket for Catherine Owens Peare’s The Helen Keller Story (Thomas Y. Crowell, New York, 1959) – the back of the jacket featured drawings of the letters H and K in a system of fingerspelling; illustrations for Sleeping Beauty and Other Stories Children Love (Random House, New York, 1966); drawings for Edward Robb Ellis’s The Epic of New York City: a Narrative History from 1524 to the Present (Coward–McCann, New York, 1966); and the dust–jacket design for James D. Watson’s book The Double Helix: a Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (Athenaeum, New York, 1968.) On a much more mundane level she was one of the illustrators used in Shirley Temple’s Favourite Tales of Long Ago (Random House, New York, 1958) and Danny Kaye’s Around the World Story Book (Random House, New York, 1961) – early examples of a publisher using celebrity names to sell books.
She also did the drawings for Elena Zelayeta’s book Elena’s Secrets of Mexican Cooking (Prentice–Hall, New Jersey, 1958) and drew the maps for Robert M. Parker’s book Burgundy: a Comprehensive Guide to the Produces, Appellations and Wines (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1990.) These, along with the oriental cookbooks mentioned earlier, may to some extent have been a labour of love, as Jeanyee and her husband loved to entertain at home, her husband in particular being a very good cook. Recall also her enthusiasm at becoming the proud owner of a brand new pressure cooker, mentioned earlier.
To go back to where we started, having seen Jeanyee’s passions for dust–jacket design, decoration and calligraphy, one inevitably wonders how much else besides the illustrations shown in Figs.1a, 1b, 1c & 1d she contributed to the Peter Pauper Press Rubaiyat of 1961. Though there is nothing in the book to indicate it, one suspects she had some input to the dust–jacket and title–page, though there is nothing particularly startling about either. I would guess that she did the in–text decorations and that though she clearly did not inscribe the text by hand, she did choose the typography (Fig.1e – the cloud design here is replaced by a pot, a bunch of grapes, a leaf–design etc on other pages of text.) [Browse here.]
Her Rubaiyat is clearly but one book she did among many, and it is not mentioned in Grolier Club interview or in the NEWSOS interview. Nor, incidentally, is there a copy in the British Library or in any other library on Jisc Hub, though there is now a copy in the John Rylands Library in Manchester.
Note 1: Thus Jos Coumans, #147 in his book The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: an Updated Bibliography (Leiden University Press, 2010) gives the date as [1961], as do Sean Donnelly & J. B. Dobkin in their book The Peter Pauper Press of Peter and Edna Beilenson, 1928–1979: a Bibliography and History (University of Tampa Press, 2013), in which Jeanyee’s Rubaiyat is #449. As Donnelly & Dobkin (p.xxiv) note, the Peter Pauper Press did little advertising, and I could not find a single newspaper advertisement for (nor even a review of) Jeanyee’s Rubaiyat by which to date it more precisely.
Note 2a: Also of interest is the information about her and her work to be found on the website of the New York based MOCA (Museum of Chinese in America) at
https://www.mocanyc.org/collections/stories/jeanyee-wong/
With a list of their holdings at:
My thanks are due to Nancy Ng Tam, Collections Associate at MOCA for supplying a copy of the NEWSOS article and other useful information.
Note 2b: The film can be seen at https://vimeo.com/24013347.
Note 3: Jeanyee also illustrated The Philosophy of Confucius, from the translation by James Legge, published by the Peter Pauper Press, probably in 1953. Donnelly & Dobkin indicate two issues, #393 (illustrations in green & orange) and 394 (illustrations in gray & orange), both dated [1953]. An edition with the illustrations converted into black and white was published by Crescent Books, New York, probably in 1974.
Note 4: A reprint with the illustrations converted into black and white was published by Crescent Books, New York, in 1974.
Note 5: Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) was born in America but raised by her missionary parents in China, where she grew up speaking both English and Chinese. She went to college in America, but returned to China to become a missionary herself and a teacher of English. Whilst in China she began what was to become her most famous novel, set in China, The Good Earth. It was published in America in 1931, and won her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932. She was a prolific author, but in connection with Jeanyee, the books that concern us here, besides her Oriental Cookbook, are her Fairy Tales of the Orient (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1965) and her little known book of poetry, Words of Love (John Day Company, New York, 1974). Jeanyee illustrated and did the dust–jacket for the former; and did the calligraphy and the dust–jacket for the latter.
Note 6: Notably, it was smaller, the colouring was changed (basically, reds stayed, but blues became greens), and the end–papers were left blank.
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