Description

Storytime Etching by P. Buckley Moss

Introduction

Storytime Etching by P. Buckley Moss is a 1989 hand-signed, limited, numbered etching centered on the shared experience of storytelling. A seated adult figure holds an open book while three girls gather around her, their bodies and attention turning toward the story. Moss encloses the group within a soft circular field of foliage and flowers, giving the intimate reading scene the feeling of a world set apart.

The work brings together several subjects important to collectors of Moss’s child-centered art: books, companionship, imagination, women and children, and the quieter rituals through which stories are shared from one person to another. Canada Goose Gallery’s approved inventory classifies Storytime Etching as Artist Signed, Etching, Limited Edition, Numbered Edition, and Rare, with Children, Education, and Women as its principal subjects.

Story Behind the Artwork

The strength of Storytime Etching comes from how little explanation the scene requires. An open book forms the center of attention, while the surrounding figures respond through proximity and posture. Rather than depicting a formal lesson, Moss presents storytelling as a shared experience.

The title broadens the image beyond reading alone. Storytime can mean hearing a familiar tale, discovering a new one, or participating in the tradition of one generation sharing stories with another. The three girls do not all occupy identical positions, giving the composition the natural variety of a small group gathered around a storyteller.

No documented artist statement for this particular work has been supplied, so the relationships among the figures should not be identified more specifically than the image supports.

Symbols & Meaning

The open book is the clearest symbol in the work and may represent storytelling, learning, imagination, and the preservation of ideas.

The gathered figures suggest companionship and shared attention. Because several generations or ages may be represented visually, the scene can also evoke the tradition of stories being passed from one person to another, although the exact relationships among the figures are not documented.

The surrounding flowers and foliage create an almost enclosed space around the group. Rather than assigning a fixed symbolic meaning to them, they can be read as creating an atmosphere of growth, shelter, and imagination around the storytelling scene.

These are editorial interpretations rather than documented statements of Moss’s intention.

Artistic Details

The circular composition is one of the most distinctive features of Storytime Etching. Dense foliage and flowers form a soft perimeter, directing the viewer inward toward the figures and their book.

Moss balances cool blue-green tones with touches of pink, white, black, and muted brown. The restrained palette keeps the scene gentle while allowing individual dresses and figures to remain distinct.

The etching format is especially suited to the fine details visible in the work. Delicate linear marks define clothing, faces, plant forms, and the surrounding foliage, while tonal areas create greater depth than a simple outline drawing.

The figures also form a compact visual rhythm around the bench. Their repeated dresses, varied poses, and placement around the open book reinforce the sense that the story—not any single figure—is the compositional center.

Featured Master Collections

Primary Master Collection: Childhood & Storytelling

This is a direct, approved assignment. Storytime Etching is specifically named among Canada Goose Gallery’s representative works for Childhood & Storytelling, whose subjects include books, storytelling, children, imagination, learning, and childhood memories.

Supporting Master Collection: Women Who Built America

The adult female figure and three girls create a strong women-and-children composition, while the central act of guiding children through a book can reasonably connect with the Collection’s themes of mothers, grandmothers, teachers, caregivers, and women whose everyday work shaped families and communities. This remains a supporting assignment rather than an assertion about the figures’ exact identities.

No third Master Collection is necessary.

Decorating Ideas

The circular format and soft blue, green, pink, and white palette make Storytime Etching particularly effective in a home library, reading room, nursery, child’s bedroom, study, family room, or quiet sitting area.

Its floral enclosure gives it a softer decorative character than many classroom-centered Moss works, making it compatible with Cottage, Traditional, Collected Home, Nursery/Storybook, and romantic interiors. It could also become the centerpiece of a reading-themed grouping surrounded by smaller Moss works focused on individual readers.

Gift Ideas

Storytime Etching is especially meaningful for parents, grandparents, teachers, librarians, readers, and collectors who value storytelling and childhood subjects.

It could mark a grandparent’s or teacher’s milestone, a librarian’s retirement, a new baby’s arrival, Mother’s Day, or a family occasion connected with reading together. Its verified rare-etching classification also gives established Moss collectors a concrete edition-related reason to consider it beyond the subject alone.

About the Edition

Storytime Etching is a 1989 hand-signed, limited, numbered etching.

• Specific impression supplied: 38/99
• Inscription supplied: “38/99 – Storytime – P Buckley Moss 88”
• Plate size: 11-3/4 × 11-7/8 inches
• Paper size: 18-1/4 × 17-5/8 inches
• Condition: New, mint condition
• Certificate of Authenticity: Included
• Canada Goose Gallery classification: Artist Signed, Etching, Limited Edition, Numbered Edition, Rare
• Current CGG inventory price: $1,650

The supplied inscription indicates an edition of 99, not the larger edition size sometimes associated with other Moss works. That specific edition information should be preserved unless the physical print record shows otherwise.

🎨 Fun Fact:

An etching is not simply a drawing reproduced by ordinary printing. It belongs to the intaglio family of printmaking: the artist creates a design on a prepared metal plate, acid bites the exposed lines into the metal, ink settles into those recessed lines, and the image is transferred to paper under pressure. The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that an etching plate may be made from copper, zinc, or iron. That process helps explain why etchings can preserve such fine linear detail—an especially relevant point when looking closely at the delicate figures, foliage, and floral forms in Storytime Etching.

🖼️ Collector’s Insight:

Storytime Etching stands apart from the reading works we have recently explored because the experience is shared rather than solitary. Quiet Time and Favorite Escape isolate one reader, while Spelling Lesson moves into formal learning; here, Moss gathers several figures around a single open book and then encloses them within an unusually lush circular field of flowers and foliage. The verified Artist Signed / Etching / Limited / Numbered / Rare classification also makes its physical format part of its collector interest, not merely its subject. For a collection built around childhood, books, women and children, or Moss’s etchings, it provides a visually and technically different anchor from the lithographs in the same storytelling theme.

Why Buy from Canada Goose Gallery

Canada Goose Gallery specializes in the art of P. Buckley Moss and provides collectors with clear information about edition type, condition, authenticity, and the distinctions among Moss’s printmaking formats. The gallery’s approved inventory identifies Storytime Etching as an artist-signed, rare, limited and numbered etching, and the supplied example is offered in new, mint condition with a Certificate of Authenticity.

Continue Exploring

Collectors drawn to Storytime Etching may especially enjoy:

• Learning Through Love, where several children share a broader environment of books and discovery.
• Quiet Time, which offer contrasting portraits of solitary reading.
• Favorite Escape, which offer contrasting portraits of solitary reading.
• Spelling Lesson moves the story into the classroom.
• Our Library and Our Carnegie Library connect children and books to historic community institutions.
• P. Buckley Moss Etchings
• P. Buckley Moss Prints

Additional verified works within the Childhood & Storytelling Master Collection include:

• Grandma’s Story
• Storyteller
•  Storyteller Revisited
• Mother’s Story
• Reading
• The Evening Hour
• Tales Retold
• A Reading Nook

 

“Some of our first journeys begin while gathered around a book.”