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!

Some excellent photographs and a crazed printer (digital!)

Earlier on we mentioned the fact that House and Garden wanted to do an article about us (in a series about people who do things or make things) and that we had been interviewed and photographed. The article was duly published (in the December issue, so it should still be in the shops) and we have heard from a nice lot of people who are new to all this and were interested to look on our website and choose stuff to buy. We also heard from a lot of already friends who had somehow seen the article and were spurred to say hello!

The photographer, Andrew Montgomery, had kindly said that, after the publication of the article, he would send us a disc of the photos saying that, with a few entirely understandable exceptions, we could do whatever we liked with them. Here, therefore, are the three main ones which we are very pleased to have.

I must however give one very strong caveat. If anyone out there starts to look not at the figures but at the 'things' lying around and whatever is happening on the press &c in order to learn how things are done at the OSP, please let them not waste their time!!

Andrew is a wonderful photographer but not much of a printer . . . more like a set designer in some costume drama for a film. When he saw clothes pegs hanging from the roof he wanted something hanging from them. Old discarded proofs from an earlier book looked colourful even though there is no circumstance under which they would be hung up like that! I will not continue but would simply say that almost nothing is as it should be. The image of me peering at a sheet that appears to be coming off the press looks really great BUT, I have never before been at that end of the press in my life and no printed paper would emerge from that end of the press and so on and so on . . . but, again, they are really lovely photographs and we thank him profoundly.







Now here's a funny thing . . .

I remember, as a boy, being fascinated when I was shown, in the National Gallery, the painting entitled The Ambassadors, and received an explanation of the curious object in front of the two gentlemen. On subsequent visits, I remember purposely going to the side of the painting and squinting at what, from there, was clearly a skull in elongated form. I cannot remember the theories as to why it had been included like that by the artist but I certainly enjoyed it when my knowing little act had the effect of causing others, young or old, to sidle round to see for themselves!






Why do I mention this now with a reproduction of the painting? Simply that, after inserting Andrew's disc in my computer, I sought to print out one of the photographs. All seemed to be going to plan until I started to see what was emerging from the printer . . .

I am not really interested in why or how this happened except that either computer or printer had clearly had some sort of seizure. I am however very intrigued to see my own head [I am not quite sure how easy it is to view a computer from the side but it is easier if you click the image bigger] appearing in exactly the same way as the skull in Mr Holbein's painting!

Kouros

I decided to photograph this a few days ago - because the light suddenly struck me as good - but it has been standing under a cherry tree in our garden, giving pleasure to all, for a decade at least.

Frankly I have seen damaged sculptures of kouroi in the The British Museum and The Louvre with much less presence than this and I could kid you with tales of expensive dealers in illegal exports and/or digs at dead of night or even of famous British sculptors with a 'thing' about 5th century Athens . . .

. . . but I will come clean! We two were enjoying a rare holiday, all that time ago - in the Yorkshire Moors. I cannot recall exactly where but I remember we were told that from there, on a good day, you could see the sea off the east coast of England and the west at the same time. [Could that really be? Were we being taken for a bit of a ride?]

Anyway, we were quite high up and found ourselves on a hillside which was literally strewn (like bodies on a terrible battlefield that went on as far as the eye could see) with pieces of limestone pavement, presumably littered there by some glacier or another. [OK, so I am NOT a geologist!]

This was a remarkable enough sight but my eye was suddenly caught by one single piece of this rock. It was not particularly close but was propped up slightly by the fact that it lay on another so that the all-important line of its 'neck' was visible. I went to it, stood it upright and walked back. At that moment it HAD to come home with us.

Two points to make. Firstly, I had brought home pieces of rock from holidays practically all my life. Great hunks of serpentine from Cornwall, a large but beautifully broken 'pebble' from a beach in Ireland and various treasures from France, Greece etc.

The second point, and I hasten to make it, is that all this was before there were laws in this land designed to stop beautiful natural landscapes being denuded by insensitives with great lorries ripping up stone for sale in garden centres for suburbia's water-features. Yes, I put my hands up to thieving this piece from the nation but we did only take the one piece and I am sure that it has given more pleasure to our visitors here, quite apart from ourselves, than it would have given if it had lain all these years, anonymous among its millions of fellows!

We found a base (from our own land!) and pinned the one to the other and placed it under the cherry tree. Since then, I have been continually amazed at how satisfying a piece of sculpture it is. It is my experience that most pieces of 'found sculpture' may look wonderful from one angle but, from most others, just look like a hunks of rock. This one looks spectacularly good from pretty well all angles.

Anyway, that is enough of me going on about it. I will simply give a random sequence of the photographs I took the other day and I hope they will please and interest. It may be, of course, that you see the thing just as a random hunk of rock . . .

It's that time of year again!

. . . when Christmas Cards have to be produced!

Our first thought is whether there is anything suitable in the book that is 'on the press' or in preparation at the moment. [The Benjamin Britten A Christmas Sequence was so long in coming that it served for TWO Christmases!]

Thus it was logical to think in terms of Clive Hicks-Jenkins who has long been making studies towards a definitive style for our edition of Peter Shaffer's play EQUUS. These heads may or may not appear in the book as the style continues to develop. The images in the book, however, certainly won't have blue backgrounds!

This was my idea and (as I said to Clive in an email giving him a courtesy preview!) 'I enjoyed painting 400 unique little abstracts - just in the correct place on a large sheet. I reckoned it was fascinating how each of the heads changes character minutely depending on the background'.

Clive happily approved of what I had done and added "I like the way the brush strokes give a feeling of wind and movement in keeping with the mane-blown subject. And the colour too is perfect, turning the beast into a creature of the high air, as in Pegasus, as well perhaps as of watery depths, as personified by the Scottish Kelpie!"



Here, then are three cards, more or less at random. You can make up your own mind whether the horses change character or mood!

Lindsay Kemp

Liebestod in Pembrokeshire

I've been playing around again . . . at what is becoming one of my favourite forms of relaxation, setting a video of some aspect of the natural world against one of my favourite pieces of music. Although I have chopped it around a bit for the purpose of this film, the 'raw material' started life as a single take of about 29 minutes, which was a bit tiring but remarkable to do.

I am aware that I am 'borrowing' this music without permission so, if I offend copyright in so doing, please let me know and I will take it down.

This actual recording, in the form of a little 45 rpm disc, was known by certain of my friends at University as Nicolas's Catharsis Music! It was used often, sometimes more than once a day, when student angst was upon me and it often did me much good. I think that the water would have helped!

[I put up this post some weeks ago but lowered it when I found the video totally unsatisfactory. It is better this time and that is all due, yet again, to patient help from Natalie d'Arbeloff.]

If you are interested in this little movie, you can play it, bigger and better, here.

Faces in the Trees

After what seems like weeks of grey, overcast and characterless weather, yesterday produced bright sun for a few hours. We had sorted ourselves out a little earlier than necessary to drive to Swansea so I thought I would rush for the camera to catch some Autumn colours.

After a bit of time, I became fascinated with just one tree. Yes, the colours were great . . . but I soon concentrated on photographing 'found faces'. I am interested to know whether everyone who looks at any of these images first (or only) sees part of a tree OR whether all or most first sees the 'face' that I have seen and 'drawn out' of the natural elements.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy these as much as I have!


for Iulia, in Romania, whose Autumn colour photographs I have heard about and look forward to seeing.























































. . . and that is the paper-bark maple tree where all these faces live! And, of course, I was only operating at the lowest 6 feet of the tree.

The sculpture, by the way is by Harry Brockway. Put his name into the 'search blog' box above to see his books with the OSP and other sculpture around the place!



Finally, putting aside the faces, here is one I rather like . . .

Our exciting new book . . . now in the main part of the website

For various reasons, it was not possible, until recently, for us to put details of this book on to our website along with all our other books. We are happy to say that it is now here, where the movie is much more convincing! Enquiries or ordering can be done through the website in the usual way.





A Christmas Sequence
chosen by Benjamin Britten from the Chester Miracle Cycle
with an Introduction by Dr Andrew Plant
images by Angela Lemaire

Fifty years ago Benjamin Britten wrote Noye’s Fludde – an opera-for-all telling the story of Noah’s Ark with the main characters taken by adult opera singers alongside children playing animals, involving instrumentalists at all levels of ability and including hymns for all present to join in with. It was a tremendously popular work and is still widely performed. In 1974 the head of Pimlico School in London, Kathleen Mitchell, asked Britten to write another such opera for performance at the school. The composer went to the same source, the Chester Miracle Cycle and selected scenes for a Christmas Sequence which would again afford opportunities for collaboration between professional musicians and schoolchildren. Sadly, the second draft of this libretto has remained only as a typescript in the Britten-Pears Library because the composer died before any music had been written.
Dr Andrew Plant, until recently Curator of the Library, warmed to our idea of the work coming to life as a book filled with images as evocative as the music would have been. He writes an introduction to establish the story and then Angela Lemaire has cut magnificent woodblocks which capture a splendid sense of the medieval play, its presentation by contemporary children and a mystical rendering of the events surrounding the birth of Jesus.
The scenes included involve the Salutation – which introduce Gabriel, Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and midwives who arrive for the birth; The Shepherds; the Magi; Herod and the Innocents and the knights who carry out the orders to kill. The language is wonderfully down to earth and designed to entertain in the market places of medieval Chester and the surrounding towns and retains that power. The woodcuts dance through every page – 76 blocks were cut and printed in midnight black (which is slightly blue) weaving between the blocks of text, printed in seville black (slightly orange). The binding was inspired by the colours of medieval stained glass, green images on blue for the covers with a black leather spine as though leading on the window. A deep red cloth on the slipcase surrounds a large label printed on golden yellow paper.

380x290mm. 80pp. The paper is Vélin Arches, the type is Truesdell. 76 woodcut images printed from the wood. Cased binding with black leather spine and boards covered in blue paper printed with woodcut images front and back in green. Slipcase covered in red cloth with a large label on yellow paper. ISBN-13: 978-0-907664-80-2 Main Edition limited to 195 copies, numbered and signed by the artist : £275

As with some of her other books with The Old Stile Press, Angela has hand-coloured ten copies for a special edition. This version is bound as the main edition but housed in a lined, drop-back box.
Special edition I-X, numbered & signed by the artist : £950

All power to the Carrying trade!

Especially if one lives in rural isolation, the Carrier supplies an incredibly valuable service. A few days ago one such van came to our door, at our request, and saw to it that a large parcel was delivered to a hotel in Edinburgh in double quick time. Some days later the same parcel was returned to us with the contents somewhat modified. We did not need to leave the house!

Staying in the Edinburgh hotel was Michael Onken, well-known already to readers of this blog as the artist whose relief blocks I have been printing rather manically of late to complete The Girl from the Sea, the play for voices by the late George Mackay Brown.

Michael had taken the opportunity to time one of his regular escapes from the United States to Orkney with our need for him to sign the edition and also the proof pulls of four of the engravings in the book which will be found alongside the book in the TEN copies of the Special Edition.

The final treasures in the parcel were also destined for the Special copies, being ten original paintings by the artist, in watercolour on handmade paper, each loosely based on a scene from the play or on one of the engravings in the book. These are really lovely things and I cannot resist posting three of them here . . . at random, which is how they will be received by their eventual owners, those who obtain one of the Special ten copies.

The photograph at the head of this post shows Michael at the most recent exhibition of his paintings in America.

Liebestod in Pembrokeshire

I've been playing around again . . . at what is becoming one of my favourite forms of relaxation, setting a video of some aspect of the natural world against one of my favourite pieces of music. Although I have chopped it around a bit for the purpose of this film, the 'raw material' started life as a single take of about 29 minutes, which was a bit tiring but remarkable to do.

I am aware that I am 'borrowing' this music without permission so, if I offend copyright in so doing, please let me know and I will take it down.

This actual recording, in the form of a little 45 rpm disc, was known by certain of my friends at University as Nicolas's Catharsis Music! It was used often, sometimes more than once a day, when student angst was upon me and it often did me much good. I think that the water would have helped!


Sorry! This went up but was such a feeble shadow of what it should have been, that I have taken it down . . . pending the time when I learn how to do it properly!

It is going to be a beautiful Autumn day . . .

The Girl from the Sea

I spent this morning preparing and imposing three blocks, proofing and adjusting for evenness of printing surface, depth of ink and so on and, finally, printing a sheet from the actual edition. This is the fifth time that this sheet has gone through the press so I was keen that everything should go well.

My usual behaviour after reaching this point is simply to put a nice opera on the CD player and bash on with printing the whole edition. On this occasion I was so thrilled I thought I must get it on the Blog. Here, therefore, is the title spread, the spread with the Singer's Prologue to the play and a close-up of one of the 'selkie' blocks that take up pages before and after the play itself. On each occasion the image is by Michael Onken - soon to make a short trip from the US to his beloved Orkney, not least so that he can sign the copies in the UK!

I have a lot still to do but now the excitement mounts to see the finished book.

Just for the moment, though, I must haul myself down from this high and settle down to print the remaining 200+ sheets of this particular printing!

Things coming up!

The beginning of October has regularly been the time for Oak Knoll Books, (in New Castle, Delaware, USA) to host a Fest . . . for those of us who produce books to meet with librarians, collectors and local book lovers in the wonderfully relaxed early autumn sunshine to talk about, handle, admire and acquire the most recently produced books.

The bookshop itself has several floors of wonderful collections and it is open all weekend offering amazing discounts.

There are talks and discussions held in various parts of the historic town where William Penn first landed in America and, especially, there is a hall filled with tables each manned by one or more of the creators of the books on sale.



The Old Stile Press has travelled over there for many years now - and we always relish the opportunity to meet again those of our US collectors who visit and, each time, there are new people to whom books from the UK are unfamiliar. When I say The Old Stile Press . . . that usually means Frances since Nicolas does not take much pleasure in travelling and he would rather be at home printing another book! So this October F. will collect up some books - especially of course the newest (A Christmas Sequence - see photographs above) and we hope that it will create an excitement similar to that on this side of the Atlantic.



Meanwhile, Nicolas will continue to print George Mackay Brown’s ‘play for voices’ - A Girl from the Sea. This progresses excitingly. The text is printed and now the woodblocks engraved and cut by Michael Onken in Carbondale, Illinois are creating the images of Orcadian life, seals on the shore line and a croft which gradually rings to the sound of children playing.

The December issue of House and Garden is using its specialist profile page to talk about The Old Stile Press. Jennifer Goulding has written enthusiastically about what we do and aspects of the printing office were beautifully photographed by Andrew Montgomery who makes it look wonderfully atmospheric and 'old world'! Andrew kindly said that we could use some of the photographs in blogs and such . . . so watch this space!



This photograph is of some proofs of the two-page article.

Jennifer Goulding thinks our books are ‘a delicious secret for the privileged few’. We would be very happy if a few more folk could be introduced to the delicious secret!