My discomfort with the illustrations to this book may stem from the unusual freedom the artist had in the editorial and even textual fabric of the book itself. If there ever were disproportionate means used to visualise from a text in illustration, this is it. Not to say it doesn't have its attractions. The creeping verdigris of detail upon detail functions adequately when encrusting a geometric solid in the composition, e.g. the House, second row, last image.

This level of detail often reveals a lack of confidence, that if nothing else you can marvel at the fish scales, bubbles or shimmering wavelets.Like many such exercises. the drawings doo look better enlarged and on a screen, and perhaps they were indeed drawn to that scale.

Walker was born in 1883 and died in 1937. He was educated in Virginia and the New York School of Design. His first published work came in 1912, and this, his masterwork, two years later, but in subsequent editions without his own reflective introduction.