"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!