You know about the Partridge in a Pear Tree,

. . . well, here is a Pheasant in an Apple Tree!

And here is a less than perfectly successful attempt to capture his exit from the scene!

A change of scene

We decided to take ourselves away for a couple of days to try to rid ourselves of some accumulated end-of-summer-that-hardly-was glooms. Partially successful only, to be honest, but I was happy to return with some of the inevitable camera full of photographs . . . of which these are a proportion.

I somehow feel they are different from my usual (blowsy, romantic!) style and that they rather reflect my mood . . . or perhaps that is simply my take on things.

If you can spare the time, do click them bigger for they seem to want as much space as they can get, as do I!

They are not intended to provide memories of particular places but, for the record, we were in Lyme Regis, Portland and Cerne Abbas - all in the county of Dorset.
































































































. . . and finally

a photograph of Frances reprising her end-of-the-pier triumph in the role of Winnie in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days!

It must be Autumn

First of all, an early morning spider's web taken just before we went to London for the shenanigans described below and when, if I am honest, I was having my usual 'missing you already' feelings about this place before leaving it even for a couple of days!

The remaining images, taken today, are by way of being a homage to those of my favourite neo-romantic painters who gave me such frissons as a youngster by putting seedheads in the foreground of their landscape paintings (eg Alan Reynolds). So often these echoed the hard angularity of the sculpture of that age and contrasted thrillingly with the softer shapes and textures of the spaces behind.

Fun and Games at The Whitechapel Gallery

The McDowalls stepped out of their hotel and were assailed by wafts of warm air bearing scents of exotic food preparation and the sounds of multifarious city life. Had they returned to Italy for another holiday? Sitting down for a pavement breakfast, Frances sips her coffee while I turn 90 degrees in my seat to snap the Duomo . . . or rather the Gherkin, almost as impressive in its way! It was pretty well our first visit to this part of London since it had become a centre d'animation in so many ways, and it happened to be a gloriously sunny and almost hot end of September.


NOT a holiday, in fact, but a pleasant prelude to a three-day stint in The Whitechapel Gallery where we were showing our wares at The London Art Book Fair.



This was a 'new' event although it was the development of a number of fairs that had happened in former years. The Fair was hectic throughout but in a good way. We were most pleased to have met (and often talked at length to) people we had not met before in any form. Especially happy to meet young designers and printmaking students who clearly liked the books we make when they could have been expected to look askance at objects so clearly NON-trendy.




This event marked the first public appearance of EQUUS (see major post below) and the book was much admired. It had been planned that, at the start of the Fair, there would be a small gathering of people who had been concerned, especially Clive Hicks-Jenkins, the artist, and Callum James whose chance remark to us had started this particular quadruped galloping!




This shows Clive (in the centre) with Peter Wakelin and, on the right of the photograph, the unmistakeable figure of Simon Callow.



Simon Callow has been a friend of Clive's for some years and he helped the artist during his work on the many images for the book with much thoughtful comment . . . especially while Callow was actually taking the part of Dr Dysart in the production last year that toured the country.




He had much of interest to say here as well and we were very grateful that he had found time to visit this newborn book . . . and to turn some heads in the Gallery!

EQUUS: here it is at last!

EQUUS
The play by Sir Peter Shaffer
Images by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

Equus was first produced on stage in 1973 and, in its first published form, Peter Shaffer wrote of the dangers of ‘flatly setting down on paper what was far from flat on the stage, and listing inexpressively details of the work which, in accumulation, became deeply expressive’. John Dexter directed that first production ‘powerfully through suggestion’, ‘. . . he charges the action of the play with electric life. He is a master of gesture and economy.’

More than thirty years later those words could be written about Clive Hicks-Jenkins' imagery which now accompanies the text. He wanted to create his own universe for this new expression of Shaffer’s story. ‘Meditations and inventions, rather than recollections of past productions’ were his aim.




This is a long, dramatic text of a dreadful event committed by a highly disturbed young man. The characters endeavour to explore the mental world in which such a deed could be comprehensible but the power of the play is in the extraordinary relationship of the young man and his psychiatrist. Understanding the overwhelming nature of Alan’s love of horses becomes the key and the imagery focuses on the struggle between horse and man and emergent sexuality.





124pp. 325x235mm. Bodoni type. Regency Klassica paper. Images by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, multiple ground drawings printed from photopolymer blocks. Text printed by J.W. Northend. Cased binding, executed by The Fine Bookbindery, with printed paper sides and chemise slipcase printed from wood.






ISBN-13 987-0-907664-83-3

Main Edition: 200 numbered copies signed by the artist. £275

Special Edition: 12 copies (10 for sale) signed by the artist. £950
For the special edition, the book (within its chemise) is as described above but it is housed in a drop-back box together with an articulated maquette such as the artist is wont to make for himself to provide a 'model' for painting or drawing. In addition to the one model that has been made up, there is another copy on two sheets, as designed, which could also be made up into a second maquette. The artist has also provided an original drawing for each copy (one of his studies for an image in the book) together with an original linocut which was made, especially for this edition, on an EQUUS theme. Both of these are signed by the artist.

Further photographs of the binding and text pages of the main edition are given below. Some images of the goodies included in the Special Edition will be posted at a later stage!

EQUUS: how the OSP edition came about

Over the years, there have been many ways in which we have found texts which tempt us to work with them and many ways also in which we have discovered artists whose work we can visualise within one of our books. Our newest venture is a dramatic example of these arcane processes.

This remarkable (and vast) drawing in conte crayon is by Clive Hicks-Jenkins and has hung in our hall since 2001 when it was shown in his Mari Lwyd exhibition in Newport Museum and Art Gallery. We are constantly moved, torn apart, rendered speechless by the power of this picture . . .

. . . as indeed was our friend, Callum James, who happened to be staying a night with us some time ago. Sleepless (not unusual for this perpetual motion man!) at 2am or thereabouts, he found himself standing in front of it for an hour or more.

Not long afterwards he went to one of the early performances of Equus in the 2007 production of Peter Shaffer’s play with Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe in the lead roles. The next day he visited our stand at the Watercolours and Drawings Fair in London. He rushed in saying ‘you have to put that play and that artist together - they are meant’.

We did indeed put it to Clive Hicks-Jenkins who then declared how overwhelmed he had been by the play when he first saw it in the 1970s. He had always hoped he might direct it in those earlier days when he was a choreographer and theatre director and had also worked with puppets and figures such as John Napier had created for the horses in that first production. The idea grew on him . . .

The author and his agent were agreeable to the possibility of such a book and so Clive and Nicolas set about finding a way of presenting this long, dramatic text in relation to images which Clive was determined should not detract from the language of the drama but would enhance the moods and states of mind of the characters as they moved through their confusion and distress.



The imagery was created in ink but on multiple grounds. Line work on paper but solid work, with techniques such as sgraffito, on a transparent overlay. These were combined on photopolymer blocks to print the image, in black, on to the page on which the text (using a deeply dense green ink) had already been printed.

We add here a few images to give an idea of what is soon to be a most spectacular book. After what has been a mammoth labour on all sides, we are absolutely thrilled with the result. Sneak previewers say it is probably one of our best!

The bindery are at work now and we will post lots more photographs in a few days time - together with important details such as price!






We are to going to ' launch' the book on 25 September at the London Art Book Fair in the
Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX
tel. 020 7522 7888



Underground: Aldgate East, Liverpool St, Tower Gateway DLR


Friday 25 September: Private view 2pm-5pm: Open to Public 5-11pm
Saturday 26: 11am - 6pm
Sunday 27: 11am - 6pm

'New' wood engravings from Peter Reddick

However much fun it may be to obtain pictures, or whatever, from sympathetic galleries and dealers, it is even more rewarding to have them direct from the artist.

A fantasy version of this sort of transaction could involve paintings torn, still dripping with paint, from an artist's easel or a printmaker just popping across to his Albion so that a particular block could be rolled up so a proof could be taken! The other day we received two lovely wood engravings . . . but through a process very different from the one I have just described!




Peter Reddick had come to see us about something quite other and I announced that I had 'rediscovered' an article about him, together with two other wood engravers, in Volume 7 of the splendid journal Motif - seen below with its glorious cover by Alan Davie.



Now this, as you can see (together with other mouth-watering offerings) from the Contents below, was published in

1961!

I found that I greatly admired all Peter's work in this article (together with the others artists) but there were two prints that I thought were incredibly strong and would be seen as innovative now, let alone then.



Absurd though it seemed to attempt to order a commodity from a 'catalogue' dated 1961, I nevertheless revealed my interest to Peter and wondered whether he might possibly have a proof of either or both lurking around somewhere. Peter said he had no idea but that he would search through his box labelled "Early Stuff".

Wonderfully, he was able to find just what I had wanted and a swopping bargain (another very satisfying thing to do) was struck.

Thank you Peter!

Thoughts on some books, back from the binders.

Although, of course, I complete the printing of each of our books there and then (and it cannot be reprinted), the binding of the folded and collated sheets is done in batches. We might start off by binding half the edition and, if the book catches many eyes, we might be back for more within a few months. It could however be that the final tranche of copies goes to the binder a decade, or more, after first publication.

We are very happy with this. A good start should pay us back for the cost of actual outgoings such as paper and, of course, the binding, after which we are very content with a succession of sales over months or years. It is exciting when we 'meet', at a book fair or online, a collector who is passionate about this or that sort of book which is one of our specialities but has not been aware of us . . . until now!

Freshly bound copies of these three books have just arrived from the binder. As it happens, each of these, very different, books was published quite some time ago but I, for one, like them still and am quite proud of them. I remember the designing of them and discussions with the artists as the projects developed and I am aware, with sadness, that two of the three are no longer with us.

Over the years since these bindings were first designed and materials chosen, a number of types of cloth have been discontinued and alternatives have had to be chosen. Other small changes have had to be made but it makes us VERY happy to know that the HUMAN BEINGS who were responsible for creating these bindings in the first place remain exactly the same now.

The Fine Bindery has given way to The Fine Book Bindery and the financial structures and ownership have changed over the years but we are happy to know that we can get initial advice and helpful reactions to our (often daft) first thoughts from the same expert who advised us more than two decades ago and that the sewers and the case-makers and the spine blockers are again as they always were!

Fuller details about these books can be found on our website, if you wish to turn them up.

In the matter of their prices, the figures on the website will be the same as they have always been for that has been our policy wherever possible. This means that many of our early books seem almost ridiculously cheap for what they are. [Indeed we often see secondhand copies offered via the book-search websites at higher prices than we are still charging for new copies!]

Inevitably, however, costs rise and Frances and I feel that must increase the prices of these three books on September 1st 2009, together with a number of other titles, BUT any orders received before that time will be charged at the existing prices. Run for your chequebooks!



GYMNOPAEDIAE
images by J. Martin Pitts











THE SEAFARER
translated by Kevin Crossley-Holland images by Inger Lawrance












THE FLUTE OF SARDONYX
by Edmund John images by Nicholas Wilde

Before they all go over . . .

Sunday evening. I've had a good day in the printing office, enjoying the advantages of its stone walls and cave-like feeling as the temperatures here creep up the dizzy 20s!

All sorts of things I should do this evening, I am sure, but I just thought I would indulge myself by posting a number of ROSE photographs taken, in one quick go round the garden, a couple of days ago. No captions, no latin names . . . just some photographs I hope you will enjoy.


NOTE: They look so much better enlarged with a click!

Mutantcy and a terrible destruction

If you have been here before, you may remember the above photograph, a plant of rich and velvety lushness that had just turned up in one of our 'pots'. A Mullein of course. Later it was seen to contain at its heart a diamond of great beauty which I also tried to photograph.

One turn of Fortune's Wheel produced all that deliciousness. Now another turn and all is changed.




The ravages began to be apparent about a week ago but now the complete plant has something of the appearance of a bombed tower block.





The perpetrators look like tigers in their particular jungle but Frances' researches lead us to suspect that they are not on their way to stardom as exotic Hawk Moths, as I had hoped, but, rather more mundanely, they will emerge as Large White Butterflies!







The scent of Lemon Verbena is an important element of the olfactory background to my childhood (along with Sweet Peas and Lilies of the Valley) and I always try to have a pot of it within pinching distance of a route from the house used many times a day.

Apart from the smell there is not much special about the plant in my view except for the fact that it usually fails to 'get going' in the Spring until just after the point when I have spent considerable emotion over its presumed demise!





This year was different! I am no horticulturalist and I have no idea whether this is a common occurrence but I was amazed and fascinated to notice that the plant had contrived to create a double leaf, as you can see here.

Amazing enough for the plant to have done it but I was enthralled at how extraordinarily beautifully it had done the job. I feel that if I were to give a single leaf to all manner of designers, artists, geometers and so on with the request that they design a double version, they would not come up with a more perfect shape than we have here.

Out & About

Frances says (!)

It may seem, to some readers of this blog, as though we spend all our time wafting about in meadows filled with cow parsley, cornflowers and apple blossom but here are some dates when we leave the sunny slopes and head off to places where our books can be seen and bought!

Olympia - The Antiquarian Book Fair

Thursday 4 June 4pm-9pm
Friday 5 June 11am - 7pm
Saturday 6 June 11am - 5.30pm

Olympia 2 Hammersmith Road London W14 8UX

This is the first time that this famous Fair has included designer bookbinders and a Private Press . . . us. Our stand is downstairs and on the way to refreshing coffee and somewhere to sit down. Quite possibly the perfect position! Do come to the Fair if you can. We can send you a free ticket, if you ask.

Abergavenny Art Shop and Gallery
Each year this exciting gallery shows the work of book artists and this year
Unfolding - celebrates the book in many forms by fine artists, printmakers and applied artists.
6 June - 11 July 2009

London Art Book Fair 2009,
Whitechapel Gallery, London E1
25-27 September 2009

This is the successor to the London Artists’ Book Fair run for many years by Marcus Campbell. He is now expanding our horizons to collaborate with the newly re-furbished Whitechapel Gallery. The aim is to show the work of 70 international artists, bookmakers, gallery presses, publishing houses, art magazines and antiquarian dealers. More details nearer the time . . .

Oxford Fine Press Fair,
Oxford Brookes University
Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 November 2009

The fair happens only every other year and this year promises to have some exciting presses from many parts of the world showing their most recent work, apart from everybody's favourites from around the UK. Again, we will post times and details of speakers nearer the time.



as a special extra:

Larkhall Fine Art Dealers
10 St Margaret Buildings, Bath BA1 2LP
01225 444480

C. F. Tunnicliffe RA OBE The Memorial Collection Part Two

Gallery Hours Tuesday - Saturday 10:30 - 5:30 Other times by appointment

The complete portfolio of nine large wood engravings of birds will be exhibited in the Larkhall gallery throughout June. Prints are available for sale now.



The wonderful wood engravings of birds in this exhibition were printed by Nicolas - but are only on sale from Larkhall Gallery

Happy Birthday to me!

This post is not designed to generate lots of late birthday cards or even good wishes for this particular day . . . for I prefer to think of every day as special. It is rather me rejoicing yet again that I was born at this, the most beautiful, time of year. My mother always said that I arrived in the middle of the night and that nightingales were singing!

. . . how I wish that this book was one of ours! . . . 6

Here is a book which I not only objectively admire but which gives me tingles down the spine when I turn its pages. I love sharing the joys of it with friends, not least because the tiny 'run' means that there will not be many other copies around.

It was all a matter of chance, and the need for a quick decision! Towards the end of 1996, Frances and I were staying with some friends in Devonshire. This was interesting enough, because we so seldom leave here, but one evening we were taken to the Private View of an exhibition by members of "The Dartington Printmakers" at The Devon Guild of Craftsmen.

"You should be interested," we were told, "because it takes the form of a book."

We were interested . . . from the very first glance.

On entering the hall where the exhibition was being held, we were faced with the amazing sight of thirty-six (the complete edition!) copies of a large book laid out in an exact grid in the middle of the floor (3 x 12, as I remember), with the design on the cover, striking enough on one copy, making a really dramatic repeat pattern.

I was immediately intrigued and set out to find out what this extraordinary book was. I can best quote a few sentences from the preface by Michael Honnor (the Svengali figure behind the venture, I understand!) in the catalogue.

A Printmakers' Flora is a remarkable limited edition Artists' book. Every part of it has been hand-made at Dartington by twenty one printmakers, a bookbinder and a letterpress printer. The idea was to make a large, luxurious book about British wild flowers in the form of an anthology of their common names. The book would exploit the diversity of the artists taking part and use a wide variety of printmaking techniques. Thirty flowers would be chosen, each illustrated by two Artist's prints. The result is a strikingly handsome, unusual and substantial book, bound in blue silk and printed on heavy artist's paper and hand-made Chinese paper. The edition consists of thirty seven books with one Artist' Proof copy. Twenty three of these belong to the participants, one has been purchased by the V & A, one by the Dartington Hall Trust and three by major collectors. The remaining nine are for sale.

N I N E copies!!! . . . and the private view was simply seething with people who looked to me as if their cheque-books were always at the ready one such occasions!

I should mention that, by now, we had seen the inside of the book. Not by looking at a copy of it (all were on parade on the floor) but, in an adjoining room, in the form of spreads/prints framed on the walls. A further limited edition of each of these prints was for sale and a 'set' of them seemed quite expensive. It seemed to me, however, that having them bound together in a book, would make them more, rather than less, fascinating . . . but then I am a book person.

Another advantage was that, in this form, it seemed to be priced as a book is priced rather than as something from an art gallery. How often have we been surprised and aggrieved at other examples of this but, on this occasion, it worked in our favour because the book contained everything, was a stunning object but the price seemed almost moderate for the wonder that it was.

Anyway, we BOUGHT a copy and have never regretted it. We turn its pages often, particularly in the winter months when spring and summer seem so far away.

I will not comment further but will just let these wonderful pages speak for themselves. You need to know one more thing - the scale of the thing. The book is, by most standards, vast. The spread of the opened book measures 30 inches!

This is positively the last time . . .

. . . I waste your time with this damn plant BUT, five days after the last photo was posted, the extraordinary sheath-like thing (with another on the way, as you can see) has opened to reveal what would be a bit over the top as a Christmas decoration!

I promise that next time I will post something a bit more to the point but the sap of Spring/Summer does just get into me!

. . . and in less than a month . . . !

I am truly ashamed at having let so much time pass by since my last post BUT it does offer us the possibility of this piece of 'time-lapse' photography! I cannot remember from last year quite what its flower looks like (although I think we have quite a few more leaves to go yet!) but you may be sure that I will let you see it when the time comes!




This is the Mullein that starred in an earlier post. It too is doing wonderfully well but I just noticed that, at its very heart, there was a little jewel of water . . .

Click the photo bigger . . .

Update on Spring

I have little doubt that folk around the world will be chewing their fingers in eagerness to know how our amazing rhubarby thing is getting on!

The answer is, I reckon, . . . quite well!






. . . given that the earlier photograph was taken a mere twenty-one days ago! I suddenly realized that there is no clue about scale in this shot so it could be 'read' as being a few inches wide. I therefore ran out with a measuring stick and found that the thing is about 1.5m wide as of Sunday evening! This is, of course, only the beginning. It will become dramatically wider and then the flowers will start. Much taller than me these get. Never fear, I may be persuaded to record further progress!






On a gentler note . . . in fact quite extraordinarily gentle, it seems to me . . . the exquisite Fritillary is still alone in the garden but has delightfully emerged as twins.

Just a couple more shots of corners of the domain.

I must admit that this exquisite view of the stream that flows through our place is just a bit misleading, in that it is rather 'exquisitely' composed to imply that is chuckles and meanders its way like this for yards if not miles and again the scale is deceptive. Having admitted to this I feel wonderfully blessed to have it running as it does through our garden and it DOES chuckle ecstatically!






Finally, an oriental corner . . . with that tree I photographed last year in extravagant blossom again.

In this little pond, there have been, for a number of years, two increasingly splendid goldfish. This winter we really thought they had been taken away by the heron, the stoat or whatever (a fate that befell their 10 little chums in the early years), but, BEHOLD, we have seen them both gliding about pretending to be very grand koi!

Abbey with Post Office Attached

This is Frances, doing some posting (in the photograph above) and (below) getting a rare 'post' in edgeways!

I wonder how many of all those wonderful people who order our books realise how the parcels begin their journey. Post Offices all over the country have been disappearing to the distress of many - and then sometimes they reappear in unlikely guises in pubs and even churches, I understand. Ours was for a short time a part of a pub which then closed down and now we have what must be the most spectacular of all post offices - this van in the car park next to Tintern Abbey. It travels to several villages and at the appointed hours appears here on all weekdays except Wednesday. Though one might be a little doubtful of the efficiency of such an enterprise, we have known parcels to leave Tintern at 3.30pm and be delivered in Orkney the following day. Journeys to London sometimes take a little longer even though it is so much nearer.

Keeping down the costs of sending parcels is one of the constant tasks of 'the other half'. We have recently discovered that for parcels containing more than a single book (up to 10kgs) they can be collected directly from the house and delivered in the UK within 48 hours for about £8 which seems good. Overseas is not so easy now because the firm with whom we have dealt for many years has just been taken over and is causing us nightmares with soaring prices, lengthy delivery times and staff who don't seem to know what they are doing. I hear you say, like most take overs . . . perhaps, but not with our books please! The post office van takes away all our mail and parcels of single books (which is the greater part of our operation given that we mostly function as a mail order company) - so, long may they flourish and keep going in these difficult times.

a matter of teeth . . .

This post is dedicated to M.G., my most excellent dentist. We have been having to see too much of each other recently but I hope that this will shortly change! Last time he carved a new tooth for me, to sit where, until then, there had been a painful and annoying spike. When he had finished, he passed me a mirror.
" Michelangelo. "I said, amazed at what I saw.
" You should see my David." He replied.

Thank you, Miles!



Here is a little something to amuse him and and I hope others. It is a perfectly genuine Advertisment and comes from an Almanack of 1726 entitled The British Merlin.

ARTIFICIAL TEETH, set in so firm, as to eat with them and so Exact as not to be distinguish’d from natural: they are not to be taken out at Night, as is by some falsely suggested; but may be worn Years together: Yet are they so fitted, as to be taken out and put in at the pleasure of the Persons that use them; and are an Ornament to the Mouth, and greatly helpful to the speech: Also Teeth clean’d and drawn by John Watts and Samuel Rutter, Operators, who apply themselves wholly to the said business, and live in Racquet-Court, Fleet-Street, LONDON.

A Fritillary and a memory of Robin Tanner

It is Spring gift-time again! The arrival of this Snakeshead Fritillary (just the one but all the more wondrous for that) beside our pond not only gladdens the heart with its fragile beauty but also reminds us of the legacy of Robin Tanner . . . his consummate etchings of course but also his encouragement of us (among so many others) in our early endeavours including the lovely books we did with him and with his wife Heather.

Year after year, letters would come from Robin at this time of the year beginning "Was there ever such a beautiful Spring . . . !"





I was pleased to dig out this piece of board that brought three of the etchings to us many years ago and which bore examples of his superb hand writing that all those who corresponded with him treasured.

This was one of my favourite of Robin's etchings. No need for him to make do with just the one flower!

At last the earth thinks its SPRING!

Just look at that for power and strength and the lusty life-force of Spring! Wonderful! There may still be frosts to come but officially Winter must be past. We (with a visiting friend) certainly celebrated today by having our lunch outside in the sun.

This amazing plant (a dramatic, if inedible, relative of Rhubarb . . . whose name I sadly cannot remember) is spreading sideways in a very impressive way as well as indulging in its main trick of growing upwards, very far and very fast. In almost no time at all there will be flower stalks and leaves about six feet high!




The Mullein below will also grow gloriously tall but that is not quite why I am mentioning it here. The fact is that it has just turned up . . . in a pot just in front of our house . . . a pot otherwise containing something dead but not yet dug up.

I know that not everyone is as fortunate as we are to have a garden for things to turn up in but, in these days of downturn, credit crunch and having to do without this and that, it seems to me that we are rich indeed to have been presented with something as wonderfully beautiful in its architecture and as sensuous in its feel as this glorious plant.





And here, finally, is a more general view in the domain . . . with some Welsh daffodils!
Feel the warmth!

Ralph Kiggell: Swimmers Mural, Hong Kong

An email this morning from Ralph Kiggell excited us so much that I rush to pass on the message and enable others to see these amazing photographs . . . and others on Ralph's Picasa site.

We knew that he was working (in Foshan, China) on an enormous mural to be placed, eventually, in a swimming pool in Hong Kong but one image is worth a thousand words and these images simply took my breath away!

This is a comment from Ralph: This is the swimmers mural at an early stage, with some changes to come. Expected to be completed early April, then shipped in pieces downriver to Hong Kong and installed by the LRC pool in May.

Those who have seen Ralph's glorious Leading the Cranes Home (one of my absolute favourites among Old Stile Press books) will recognize the style here. I am just all the more filled with enthusiastic anticipation . . . knowing that the sequel that we working on at the moment has the working title of 'Water'.

"Men-in-itis"

Our great guru and friend, Robin Tanner, always said that he could not concentrate or settle to anything while there were workers in the house mending something or attending to whatever needed to be attended to. In those less politically correct days, he had named this distemper 'men-in-itis'.

We also suffer somewhat from this ailment . . . so things tend to go on for months, if not years, without being dealt with!

This very day has been remarkable, exhausting but successful, for we have found (rather by chance, if not mistake) a good way of minimizing the miseries of men-in-itis. Not avoidance, but concentration!



A big boiler which was removed last year sometime has been lying around ever since looking very unattractive. Now (after a bit of phoning that we could have done months ago) these friendly blokes are about to heave it onto their truck . . . and away it has gone!



Also, for far too long, there has been a leak in our drive. For a year it has been an intermittent trickle but then a very big lorry went over it and it turned into the mighty river you see here. Again, once we had actually got round to inviting his services, this water expert managed to dig down to the pipe, remove a section and fill the gap with a series of plastic gismos that looked more like children's toys than building materials . . . but the problem has now been been cured.




At the same time (although this was more planned) our son Dan was removing branches from a tree that had been cut down last Christmas . . . by our daughter Cressida from Glasgow . . . but that's another story.

The moral of this is that, if you dread three days suffering with men-in-itis, get the three jobs done all on the same day and, further to get into the spirit, get out the secateurs and prune a hedge yourself . . . which is what I did!

(" . . . and don't forget to mention the rose hedge that I dealt with," says Frances, "and that was in addition to packing and posting those two orders that came this morning!")

The Plague

I am informed by the ghost in the machine that this is my ONE HUNDREDTH post! I can hardly believe it. It seems only yesterday . . . ! What to do? How to celebrate appropriately?

The clear answer is to share with all you gentle readers a treasure that has finally reached a finished state and which came to us here just a couple of days ago.

Everyone who has glanced at this Blog and/or become aware of the books we make, will know the name of Angela Lemaire . . . most recently in the context of the wonderful woodcuts in the Britten: Christmas Sequence but also her numerous earlier books.

Even earlier, Angela was making books! When Frances and I first met her, Angela showed us a book called The Plague which she had made when a student at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in 1967. It consisted of a text largely formed from quotations from the Bible and etchings of quite exceptional power. I was bowled over by this and managed to persuade Angela to let us purchase the last copy available (apart from her own) of the tiny edition she had printed.

As she had not quite got round, at the time, to the matter of a binding, the object consisted simply of folded sheets and there were a number of separate sheets of paper printed from the sides of wooden coffins which were to be involved in some way. We immediately thought that this was a challenge in general terms for a Designer Binder and, in particular, for Nesta Rendall Davies who, among other things, had so imaginatively bound the copies of my own Paradise Driver.

Nesta was intrigued but said that it could not be given a very high priority. We are generally happy to look forward to long-term pleasures so said we would contentedly wait. Nesta's life thereafter did become increasingly 'full' in various ways, not least by the having of a baby . . . so The Plague had to stay at the bottom of the in-tray.

That beautiful baby boy is now SEVEN years old . . . but the binding IS finally complete and Nesta handed it over to Frances at the Fair in London. Given the 'maturity time' for the binding and the fact that the 'sheets' had remained in Angela's drawer since she printed them, this object has taken FORTY-TWO YEARS to reach completion! All the more wonderful to find it finally together . . .

. . . and it is a truly stunning book with which we are completely thrilled. I have tried to photograph it with as much 'atmosphere' as possible but I am aware that this sequence of pictures (going from front to back - except for the 'scene-setter' above) is a poor substitute for handling the book oneself and discovering the worms, the winding-sheet, the coffin boards and so on as the pages turn.

I am now going to shut up and leave the photographs to give you at least a hint of the power of this remarkable book in its entirely appropriate clothing.

The photographs should benefit from enlargement so, give them a click!




























































































Two good friends have commented below that it would have been helpful had I given the measurements of this book. Of course they are correct.

The box is 41 x 35 cm and, as you can see, the 'book' tucks tightly inside it. The etched plates are 20 x 20 cm.

Leaves

No more snow photos . . .

. . . is what I said to myself but, waking up after a night of snow that had taken the forecasters by surprise, I could not resist recording this nice demonstration of how protected and snug our little valley is.





While the trees towards the top of the hill on the other side of the river look like an over-the-top set for "The Return of the Wicked Snow Queen" or some such film, those lower down seem not to have been snowed-on at all.

Snow Sculpture

As every camera in the land will be clicking away during this unusual weather, I feel that mine should not be the odd one out . . . although I have always been subject to more than a touch of snow phobia. Even as a child I did not rush around in it screaming ecstatically as children are expected to do. Rather I was wont to blunder round in a state of general discomfort born of cold, damp and sensory deprivation, waiting for my hearing, my sight and, particularly, my sense of smell to get back to normal!

Here, nevertheless, are a few examples of Nature as snow sculptor - with a couple of jokes thrown in.

The Girl from the Sea by George Mackay Brown

That particular and exciting moment has come round again - the day when the first complete copy of a new book arrives from the binder. Has it worked? Are the pages in the correct order? Do all the colours, carefully compared from swatches of cloth and papers, harmonize as we hoped they would? Does the book 'sing'?

I am happy that, on this occasion, the answers to these questions are very positive, so I am very pleased to share some photographs which will give an idea of what the book looks like while the rest of the edition is being bound.





Eighteen years ago we celebrated the seventieth birthday of George Mackay Brown by publishing In the Margins of a Shakespeare. This lovely book has long been out of print (as is our first venture with George, Keepers of the House) - but we are now able, with the enthusiastic help of his literary executors, to undertake a third venture. This is a ‘play for voices’ written in 1984 and, we think, given a single performance then, before going back, metaphorically (and probably literally!), into the drawer in the poet's kitchen table where it remained, unpublished, until after his death.






There are many stories and legends of selkies - the seals that surround the shores of Orkney - their deep brown eyes that captivate humans, their singing that mesmerises. George Mackay Brown had written stories of them.







Quite separately, we had met an American artist, Michael Onken, and had learned that he came regularly to Scotland to draw and paint. He had developed a passion for the writing of GMB and . . . for selkies, which he drew while on Orkney. In a 'long shot' bid to link two disparate strands, we asked the literary executors if by any chance there might be any unpublished writing about selkies. You will be able to sense our disbelieving delight when the typescript was offered to us for The Girl from the Sea.






It is a simply told but very moving play involving a young man, his elderly parents and the arrival of a beautiful girl in their midst . . .







Michael Onken has indulged his love of representing the antics of seals in the water, extending over several page openings at the start and end of the book but has also cut wood and lino to tell the actual story with imagery which captures the isolation of a croft on Orkney.








For each of the 10 copies of the Special edition, Michael Onken has included an original watercolour which is included, within a portfolio, together with signed proofs of four of the prints from within the book. (For more about Michael Onken and these watercolours, scroll down to 22 October 2008.)







In a much treasured letter sent to us when George Mackay Brown was still alive, he wrote:
‘Go on for a long time making beautiful books’. Here, many years after his death, we hope we have carried out his wish!







330 x 230mm. 56pp. The paper is Vélin Arches. 27 images printed directly from wood engraved, woodcut and lino cut blocks. Type is Albertina. The binding is by The Fine Book Bindery, Wellingborough.

Main edition: 195 copies.

Special edition: 10 copies with a portfolio of prints and an original watercolour. Numbered I-X

All are numbered and signed by the artist.

ISBN-13: 978-0-907664-82-6





The book will be on show for the first time at this Fair in an exciting new venue in London.

"Hope"- for 20th January 2009

How powerful is this short word, and how deeply important to all of us, especially at this time in world history.

This was a New Year gift, sent to us by our friends in New York, Russell Maret and Annie Schlecter who we know spent much time and energy electioneering. They have stayed with us here briefly but were egregiously kind to Frances last year, when she ended up in New York after a Bookfair.

I particularly wanted to show off this treasure here because that is exactly what I think it is. I am not sure exactly how Russell 'did it' and I really don't need to know. I simply think it is one of the most exquisitely beautiful pieces of letterpress printing that I have ever seen. View it as large as you can.



This morning has been sunny and quite warm so my brain has come alive again! I walked around the domain with my camera on the look out for my own take on the theme of "Hope".
This is what I found and this is what we offer.

Frosty

The margins and sheltered backwaters of our river are frozen. This is one of the manmade piers (called cribs in this part of the world) made for fishermen to operate from, which are visible at low tide as here.

The country is afflicted at the moment by very cold winds from the north and frost and frozen water have been with us, morning and night, for many days. I am blissfully happy at the end of the day when we can snuggle under a large duvet but, to be honest, for the rest of the time, my brain freezes as solid as my body and any amount of thermal attire can hardly keep me functioning from one cup of coffee to the next . . . and that is without having had a very painful tooth removed yesterday!

Heigh Ho!

If rather miserable, go for a walk . . . with the camera!





That one is quite pleasing but the photograph below is pretty boring, I hear you say. Yes, but fascinating to me. The grass does not LOOK very frosted but is, in fact, hard and crunchy, like wedding icing. I suddenly realized that I was looking at deer slots quite clearly made and preserved and that there was a great number (indeed pretty well a fieldful) of them. We know that the deer do always come down from the hill behind us to the river but only seldom do we see them. Clearly, if I were a better Boy Scout than I ever could have been (even had I joined ), I might have been to answer the crucial question. In the moonlight of last night (with me firmly under the duvet), were there scores of roe deer leaving all those elegant footprints or was it just a few who spent the night running up and down and round in circles?

Here they some, anyway, down by the riverside.





Just when I was concentrating on something else, I heard one of my (and most everyone else's, I reckon) favourite sounds . . . the beating of swans' wings. I was at the riverside, at least, but had no time for anything other than to press the button and hope. By the time these two lovely creatures had disappeared round the bend of the river, I had taken four shots. Two proved to be complete failures but I am happy that (with some careful cropping) I got these two beauties. 50% is not too bad!

Great Christmas Present!

William Morris is famous for having said . . .

Have nothing in your house [or garden!] that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.




I feel that he would heartily approve of this, as both beautiful and useful . . . a customized wheelbarrow, given to us at this festive season by our son Dan.

He has customized cars for himself over many years but this venture relates to the time when our ride-on mower was removed from here by local ruffians and the police discovered it on top of a local hill - on view, as it were, as a 'lot' in a somewhat bizarre rural auction. We got it back unharmed and Dan had the brilliant idea of painting it all over in strange and wonderful colours so that its ownership would never again be open to doubt and a thief would have as much difficulty in disposing of it as if he had nicked the Mona Lisa!

So, we now have this fine work of art which will also do a fine (and secure) day's labour in the garden.

Thanks Dan!

Appropriate Greetings . . .

. . . from a suitably frosty Wye Valley . . .

. . . and from old "Bah, Humbug!" himself . . .

and from Frances,
unusually in the place where Nicolas is traditionally hidden,
behind the camera!