Sallie Reynolds Matthews wrote Interwoven so that her children and their children would know how their family and the Lambshead Ranch legacy grew on the Texas frontier. Far beyond her modest intentions, the book became a classic soon after its original publication in 1936.
As Robert Nail wrote in his introduction to the 1958 edition designed by the renowned bookman Carl Hertzog, “When you read her account of the day her family moved into a mysterious, abandoned ranch house on the very edge of the unconquered prairie and see, as her small girl eyes saw, the broken window glass littering the floor, the fang marks left by a wild animal on the door, you sense quite keenly what it must have been like . . . “
The Robert E. Nail Jr. Archives is home to the Sallie Reynolds Matthews Ranching Collection. This collection of furniture, books, and artifacts centers on the headquarters of the Matthews' historic Lambshead Ranch and other area ranches and honors both its namesake, author of Interwoven, and her youngest child, Watkins (Watt) Reynolds Matthews.
Visitors are invited to enjoy an afternoon of lively discussion and light refreshments at the OJAC Spring Focus Lecture on Saturday, April, 7th.
Jason Dean, the Director of Special Collections and Archives at Southwestern University will be at the OJAC to share about the work of Carl Hertzog. Carl Hertzog defined the look of Texas, and West Texas in his work as a book designer and publisher.
Photo by Matt Reynolds.
This talk will focus on Hertzog's 1958 reprinting of Sallie Reynolds Matthews' Interwoven. Using Hertzog's own papers, Dean will share how Hertzog created this book, as well as his other work for the Matthews family and the Fandangle.
This program was made possible in part with a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The OJAC Focus Lecture Series is a quarterly offering of presentations by artists, speakers and historians on a variety of social, cultural and historical topics ranging from the visual arts to community and Texas History.
This lecture will be in the Stasney Center for Education. This event is free and open to the public.