FoodBanter.com - View Single Post - R.I.P. Ruth McCrea, 94, in February (Illustrator for Peter PauperPress cookbooks)

g8dgc

On 4/25/2016 12:56 PM, wrote:
> Well, it seems I spoke too soon when I implied on March 4th that she was alive - but it's not too surprising that the obit wasn't available at that time.
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> I first saw her illustrations, as a kid, in "Japanese Fairy Tales." (Also published by the Peter Pauper Press.)
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> http://easthamptonstar.com/Obituarie...nd-Illustrator
> (includes photo - the bit about the dollhouse makes me think of Tasha Tudor)
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> Ruth McCrea, 94, Writer and Illustrator
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> May 28, 1921 - Feb. 27, 2016
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> By Carissa Katz | March 17, 2016
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> Most of the obit:
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> Ruth D. McCrea, a writer and illustrator who had worked for all the major New York publishing houses, died at home in East Hampton on Feb. 27, surrounded by her family. She was 94.
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> She and her husband of 70 years, the late James McCrea, a designer and typographer, wrote and illustrated four children's books published by Atheneum Books in the 1960s, "The Story of Olaf," "The Birds," "The Magic Tree," and "The King's Procession," which was named one of the 50 best books of 1963 by the American Institute of Graphic Arts.
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> The McCreas also collaborated on dozens of book jackets, designs, and illustrations including covers for novels by such writers as Graham Greene and Iris Murdoch. They worked together on the original oil paintings used for the cover design of the full set of Ernest Hemingway titles in the Scribner Classic series.
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> Among Mrs. McCrea's independent work were the covers and illustrations for dozens of cookbooks published by Peter Pauper Press, with titles ranging from "The ABC of Canapes" and "The ABC of Cheese Cookery" to "Simple Continental Cookery," "Simple Hawaiian Cookery," "Aquavit to Zombie: Basic and Exotic Drinks," and "Abalone to Zabaglione: Unusual and Exotic Recipes."
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> In East Hampton, where she was a longtime member of the Ladies Village Improvement Society, she was known as the "dollhouse lady," her family wrote. She built and lovingly maintained a collection of elaborate dollhouses, all impeccably furnished and decorated. In years past, she often opened her historic Main Street house to visitors interested in her creations. The largest of them was called Hazard Hall, because, according to a 2011 article in The Star, "it was too hazardous to get anywhere near it because things, like the children's chess pieces and their father's handkerchiefs, disappeared into it."
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> "Every time life was too much for me, I would start another room on the house," she told The Southampton Press in 1998. "It's a form of escapism."
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> She was born in Jersey City on May 28, 1921, to Ernest James Pirman and the former Ruth Waterman Dickinson. She attended schools in Brooklyn Heights, in Brigh****ers, and in Florida, and earned her bachelor of fine arts degree from the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Fla., where she met her future husband.
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> For several seasons she led the Ringling Brothers circus parade on its return to winter quarters in Sarasota, seated on the head of an elephant, dressed as a harem girl, her family wrote. It was a high point in her life, they said...
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> (snip)
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> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!se...0/e9ZmUpsxiN4J
> (birthday thread I started three years ago, with booklist and links to her illustrations - wonderful, if you haven't seen them!)
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> Lenona.
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Her momma gimmie good head.
LOL