In the early ’90s, Moser had an opportunity to combine his two passions, becoming the progenitor, designer, and illustrator of a new edition of the King James Bible for the Pennyroyal Caxton Press.

(See the listing of “Moser’s top ten creations.”)īut he never forgot his early love for the Christian Scripture. Since 1969, when he composed his first line of hand-set type, Moser has illustrated some of this century’s most beautiful private press books. His journey has included teaching stints at the Rhode Island School of Design and Smith College. Added to that, he became a brilliant wood engraver, a painter, a designer, a publisher, an author, and a frequent lecturer on the arts of the book. He forged himself into an extraordinary bookman and one of the world’s great illustrators. It was during this time that he began to learn the crafts of etching and wood engraving. Although he was accepted into the divinity school at Vanderbilt, he declined to attend and moved to New England, where he taught for five years. He put himself through the last two years of college as a Methodist preacher, but his calling to the ministry didn’t stick. Moser was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1940. But first, a few more images from Barry’s life. Why would he do this? Why would a doubter become immersed in the biblical text at the most intimate level, the realm of images, illustrations, and deep meaning? What was the five-year journey like? And how could he experience such a baptism, yet remain on the banks of the Christian life? These questions are the subject of this interview. Of all these seeming inconsistencies, the most intriguing to me is that Barry Moser is a self-proclaimed agnostic, yet he devoted five years to his magnum opus-illustrating the entire King James Bible with over two hundred wood engravings. He refers to himself as both a traditionalist and an iconoclast, and has the spontaneity of an artist but the perfectionism of an engineer. Moser is a longtime New Englander who banters with fellow artists and intellectuals in the five-college region of Massachusetts, but he has the Tennessee accent of a Bible-Belt preacher-which, for a time, he was. Barry Moser is a big bear of a man with a bald head and a full white beard.

One Hundred Portraits by Barry Moser