The John DePol Collection consists of 1.66 linear feet of Christmas cards, menus, announcements, prints, illustrated books and other engraved materials done by John DePol between the years of 1947 and 1993 along with some biographical material about DePol and some correspondence between him and Dr. Frank Piskor. The collection came to St. Lawrence University through separate gifts from John DePol, Frank Piskor and Saxon Industries.
John De Pol wood carving.
Collection Overview
Born in 1913 in Greenwich Village, NY, John DePol taught himself to draw while still a teenager. During World War II he was stationed in Ireland, where he took time to study lithography at the Belfast College of Art. However, it was not until 1947 that he began to teach himself the art for which he was to become famous--that of wood-engraving.
DePol spent most of his working life as a printer and designer at the L. F. White Company. It was through this connection that he met a number of private press enthusiasts, and soon he was spending many of his "free" hours engraving designs for limited-edition books and pamphlets. Although for much of his life his art was a spare-time pursuit, he was extremely prolific, creating more than 400 wood engravings for the Franklin Keepsakes alone.