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.