This is my all time favorite Steinweiss. This makes it one of my all time favorite covers. I may have posted it once before, back when I was trying photographs instead of scans. I love it partly for historical reasons – it is one of the first two Steinweiss covers I bought just for the covers. But I also love the design for its beauty, its suggestion of British village life (which I assume is related to the music) and its cleverness. The violin outline is the wall around a village. The bow is a flagpole. A farmer ploughs the strings. Steinweiss scrawl is used to handle the less important information and keep it from interfering with the design. No one thing is most important, so Sammons (not a very famous performer), Sargent, Delius and Columbia all stand out in equal sized font. Steinweiss emphasized the selling points, and these four are assumed to be roughly equal for prospective purchasers.
Wow, the Delius has always been my favorite Steinweiss too. I’m so glad you had it! I haven’t had it for seven years.
Sammons, incidentally, was considered the greatest British violinist of his time, and probably was, but he didn’t leave as many recordings as a musician of his stature would warrant. I’ve got a few Sammons recordings available for download on my blog.