Letters from Fairyland – Charles van Sandwyk

Charles van Sandwyk was born in South Africa and raised in Canada; he taught himself calligraphy and intaglio printing as a teenager, his first self-published book appeared when he was just twenty, and won a national award. Since then his work has been archived by the National Library of Canada and rightly so as his art is truly beautiful. Van Sandwyk has produced illustrations for several Folio Society editions but this is the first one I have bought whilst taking advantage of the end of year half price sale they were running which meant that I only paid £25 rather than the £50 original. However having now got a copy I’m thinking about the ones I have missed, such as the limited edition of Alice in Wonderland which was published by The Folio Society to mark the 150th anniversary of the first edition and sold out rapidly. Sadly I can’t see me being able to obtain original books by Van Sandwyk as they are produced in tiny numbers and are mainly snapped up by collectors in Canada so the Folio Society editions will have to do.

The story goes that many years ago a young artist living in Canada received, out of the blue, a letter from a nine year old English girl, Miss Emma Gladstone. Emma had read some books about fairies which the artist had published and she was writing to ask his advice about the little people who she sometimes could see out of the corner of her eye. She wanted to invite the fairies to come and live in her garden, but she did not know how to make contact with them. The pull out letter is included in a folder, just the first of several items that can be taken from the book and examined by the reader and this is one of the many charms of this edition which includes the gorgeous Modigliani Neve paper that it is printed on which resembles a heavy duty watercolour paper and perfectly sets the beautiful illustrations.

The artist replied with a letter to Miss Gladstone and the book goes on to tell the story of how he had received a summons from the Royal High Secretary to the King of the Fairies, commanding him to paint His Majesty’s portrait; how he had shrunk in size and travelled to Fairyland in a coach drawn by a mouse, and everything that happened to him there. The first edition of the book was published in an strictly limited edition of 200 copies which Van Sandwyk presented to members of an exclusive club, the High Branch Society, which unfortunately I have been unable to find out anything about. The double page spread above includes the finished portrait and an envelope containing fairy money which was apparently Van Sandwyk’s payment. The Folio edition explains that it is an expanded version of this original volume being twice the length but even so it is a very short book being just twenty four pages long, excluding the individual pull out items and it was this very shortness that made me originally hesitate to purchase it as it worked out at just over £2 a page. But it is so lovely that I should have really have got it sooner and treated it as an art purchase rather than a book.

Sadly the Folio Society sale has obviously tipped a few others into making the purchase so the stock of this, the 2020 first edition in this form has now sold out. If this little book has piqued your interest in Van Sandwyk’s work as much as it has mine then you may find the following link useful, I certainly had a great deal of fun exploring other works by this wonderful artist.