Margaret Ely Webb

• Name — Margaret Ely Webb • Born — March 27, 1877 • Birthplace — Urbana, Illinois • Died — January 12, 1965 (aged 87) • Place of death — Santa Barbara, California • Field — Illustrator • Movement — Arts and Crafts • Works — The House of Prayer by Florence Converse • Education — Arts Students' League of New York

• Illustration — One of Webb's self-made bookplates. Margaret Ely Webb was born in Urbana, Illinois, on March 27, 1877, the daughter of Mary Emeline Gregory and John Burkitt Webb. She was the eldest (and only daughter) of five other siblings. Her father died in 1912 and in 1917 Webb's mother married Charles Albert Storke, a prominent citizen of Santa Barbara, California and mayor from 1898 to 1901. Webb was encouraged to read and draw as a child by her mother: "Indeed, as soon as her mother realized that the one thing she was going to do was to draw she made up her mind to see that the child's imagination got its proper food, and every sort of good imaginative literature and picture was quietly paid where she would stumble upon it." As a child, she drew on anything she could find. At age thirteen she started regular drawing lessons with Lucy Tye Fenner. At sixteen Webb studied in New York at the Art Students' League but because of an illness it wasn't until three years later that she started regular study at Cooper Union and then later at the Arts Students' League. Her teachers at the League included J. Alden Weir, Kenyon Cox and John Henry Twachtman. Webb said "the Composition Class under Mr. Cox was both illuminating and inspiring." Her early works were produced for St. Nicholas Magazine, The School Journal and The Primary School, The Century, Youth Companion and The Churchman. She lived in Boston and New Jersey, before settling in Santa Barbara in 1922.

Webb was also a talented musician and a horticulturalist. The gardens at her home in Santa Barbara were admired throughout the South Coast.

Some of Margaret Ely Webb's bookplates are held in the William Augustus Brewer Bookplate Collection at the University of Delaware. • Illustration — Bookplate for the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross • Illustration — Bookplate for relative William Mackenzie Webb • Illustration — Bookplate for Trinity Church, Santa Barbara • Illustration — Bookplare for relative Carl Ely Webb • Illustration — Bookplate for Anne Lotterhos

Margaret Ely Webb is recorded as artist, illustrator, printmaker and exlibrist.