Monks, deadly attired, in the shadow of the Cathedral . . .

We have just returned from three days (extremely cleverly chosen!) in the Pembrokeshire sun. This was remarkably restorative . . . but not what I am talking about today.

A few days before we left, we had reason to drive over to Hereford which is a city we are finding we like more and more as we discover more of the bits which do not give the feel of a ten-lane motorway!

Our business concluded, we paid a visit to a fantastic little chinese restaurant for a delicious lunch that my taste buds have been yearning for since our last visit . . . and then had a bit of a wander round.

A street market housed many stalls selling plants but our attention was captivated by one selling entirely wild flowers. Apparently the people concerned have obtained permission from all the correct conservation agencies to visit beautiful places around for the purpose of harvesting seed. The results were extremely beautiful and we could have bought the whole place!

We did come away with a number of beautiful plants which we hope will join the rest of the wild flowers that come up undemanded and without any help from us in our uncontrolled domain.

I became fascinated by one plant and took it home - despite protestations from Frances about the wisdom of importing a plant well-known for being deadly poisonous!

Here, therefore, are a couple of photos of my lovely Monkshood or Wolfsbane. What deliciously gothic names those are . . . only improved upon by the sight of the plant itself. The hoods on the plants look like a group of wickedly conspiring clerics on an operatic stage while the leaves are clearly demanding of mediaeval masons to be immortalized on decorated capitals throughout the Cathedral.

Oh, I know, its just a weed . . .

If anybody out there still remembers me . . . Hi!

I have been silent for about a month and that must be, I fear, a mortal sin in these days of instant and total communication! I don't tweet (should I say that I am not a twit?) and I keep ignoring folk who want me to join their Facebook (whatever that entails) and I certainly don't want any forum for myself which would demonstrate me to the giggling world as "Nicolas No-friends"!

When I started this blog, however, I did believe in it . . . and I still do. I enjoy posting something and I enjoy the occasional comment (how often do I comment when I visit friends' sites) but sometimes I just don't feel like it. It may be because I am really busy with one thing and another and sometimes I cannot think of anything interesting to say or, if I can, I fear I just cannot summon the effort to put it down in the little box. This blog will never be daily instalments of the History of Civilization as we know it and I can only hope that followers do continue to click the button every so often - even when the chance of there being anything new to see becomes vanishingly small!

I DO like taking photographs, however.

As there is, this evening, either too much to say or too little (if you understand), I decided that I would rush round the house and outside with my camera for a short time before the sun went behind the hill. I quickly took what I felt inclined to take and here are a few of them . . .

. . . just to say Hi!

A new collaboration with Natalie d'Arbeloff

Way back in 1999, we had the great pleasure of helping towards publication Natalie's amazing vision of The Revelation of Saint John the Divine. Many people thought it one of the most radical pieces of book production they had ever seen and it was widely exhibited in Libraries and Museums, especially during the year of the Millennium.




We have just published another unique book consisting of images by Nd'A and I cannot resist posting some of these here.





The more than amazing fact about these images is that they were done, in the 1950s, when Natalie was an art student in New York. They were filed away and only re-surfaced last year. The artist proceeded to post some on her wonderfully idiosyncratic blog, of which we are ardent followers. (See Link right)





The moment I saw these drawings, I felt that I would love to try to make a book of them. That book is now completed and I am happy with it . . . and so, I am relieved to say, is Natalie who came to stay with us a couple of days ago to sign the copies - see photographs above and below.





The book is of simple layout. For each of the drawings there are two full page spreads, giving an appropriate title, a Bible quotation and a 'comment' by the artist.





I have chosen this one of The Last Supper to enlarge here so the extraordinary strength of the ink line can be seen. This is one of my favourites (as is the one above showing Jesus talking to Pilate) but they are all marvellous).





We have a pdf about the book which we have just sent out as an email. Please ask if you have not received one. Full details will be on our website . . . as soon as I can get to it! In case of interest, however, the price of the book is £95 plus p&p.

Happily it was lovely weather when Natalie arrived so we tried to make the signing not take too long! This final photograph mixes elements of signing and nice weather outside . . . taken through the window!

Procreant Hymn bound

This, our latest venture, is described below.
Just to say that the binding of the first tranche of copies is now completed,
as this photograph from our friends at The Fine Book Bindery shows.
The next task is to collect the copies
and then Frances can begin to fulfil the happily substantial number of orders
already received from libraries and collectors.

I can however assure anyone who may be tempted/wavering
that there are still copies to be had . . .

. . . for now!

Eric Gill: Procreant Hymn

This is a time which we always enjoy (and usually feel we rather deserve!) . . . when a book has been completed and photographed and some promotion has been designed and despatched.

In the old days this involved a physically-printed card or leaflet and it was the postman who brought replies, the whole process taking quite a time. In the computer age, however, things are very different. Once I have completed a leaflet with photographs and the necessary facts, Frances will do her wizardry with her address list and the thing will whizz off in all directions. Results are almost immediate but seldom very productive at that early stage . . . involving such automatic information as the fact that suchandsuch librarian halfway round the world is on holiday for two weeks! One has to wait a bit longer for the joyful bit, the "that looks really good, yes please I would like to order a copy" sort of reply.

Happily there has already been a goodly number of such reactions so we are relaxing a bit when thinking about our considerable investment this time and feeling that all the labours were justified.

So, what is this project about which I have said so little here or elsewhere?

ERIC GILL
the complete copper engravings for
Procreant Hymn by E. Powys Mathers

This is our Preface to the two books:

When, in 1926, Procreant Hymn, by E. Powys Mathers (1892-1939), was published by Robert Gibbings at The Golden Cockerel Press, there were printed 175 numbered copies for sale with a further 25 copies for presentation. There was also a notice, loosely inserted at the end of the book, which stated ‘Subscribers may be interested to know that three alternative designs have been engraved for this book and may be obtained separately from the artist’.
In the publication there are five images, all copper engravings by Eric Gill. These are known to be titled God Sending, Earth Waiting, Earth Inviting, Dalliance and Earth Receiving – although the titles are not printed in the book. As advertised in the notice, Gill made alternative plates, although there were actually four of these rather than three. They basically follow the composition of the published versions but the male and female figures, already naked in the published versions, are presented in a state of realism which would clearly have been unexpected (and, in many quarters, unacceptable) at that time.
We at The Old Stile Press have been entrusted with all the copper plates that Eric Gill engraved for this book and we have decided that the most interesting form in which we can make them available to book collectors, is to provide two complete copies of the book – one following the model of the Golden Cockerel book (now hard to track down and expensive) with the other breaking completely new ground by substituting the alternative plates to produce a book that has never been seen before.
Our books follow the pagination of the Golden Cockerel book but uses a much larger page and, importantly we think, are set in Aries, a beautiful and little-known typeface designed by Eric Gill himself.

This Old Stile Press edition of Procreant Hymn was prepared and
printed during the winter months of 2010. Nicolas McDowall
designed the publication, set and printed the type, at
Catchmays Court, Llandogo, Monmouthshire NP25 4TN, UK. The
intaglio printing, directly from Eric Gill’s copper plates, was
by Martyn Grimmer, Masterprinter at Spike Print in Bristol.
The paper is 200gsm Vélin Arches Blanc and the type is Aries.
The binding was by The Fine Book Bindery and incorporates
patterned papers designed and printed by Nicolas McDowall.
The Edition (which consists of separate copies of the book
in its two distinct forms, housed together in a lined slipcase)
is restricted to:
60 numbered copies for sale
together with 15 copies hors commerce.
For orders received before May 31st 2011,
the price of the complete item will be £850 plus p&p.
Thereafter it will be £950 plus p&p.


Below are the bindings of the two books - with printed papers designed and printed here

and here is how the books sit within their slipcase.

If anyone wishes to hear more, please email.

Centenary

This is one of my favourite photographs and I really want to post it here
this morning, February 22nd, 2011.

It is of my mother who was born in 1911,
one hundred years ago today.

Sadly she did not hang in for her telegram from the Queen
but the photograph helps me to remember/imagine her doing
what she most enjoyed doing in those early days before WW2,
sailing in the Solent with her new husband.

Actually, I might myself have been around, in one form or another,
when these photographs were taken . . . or very soon after!

We are ready for our close-up, Mr Grigor!

New readers may not know that Frances and I are both graduates of St Andrews University (in the distant past) and were friends then . . . although we only 'got together' at a later date! Another friend of both of us back then, and subsequently, was Murray Grigor who was making films as a student but who has honed an increasingly starry name for himself as a maker of seriously beautiful (and beautifully serious) documentary films as well as designing art exhibitions and running film festivals.




What you also need to know is that St Andrews University is coming up to its 600th anniversary. Yes, that is correct . . . it is older than any foundation in the UK with the exception of a college or so at Oxford and Cambridge. No doubt there will be any number of jamborees of all sorts to celebrate the event but, just for now, Murray Grigor has been commissioned to make a major documentary about the history of the place and the people who are alumni.






Living folk can be interviewed in various ways but dead ones cannot. The really good plan that Murray has come up with is that extant graduates should not only talk a bit about themselves but also about an earlier graduate no longer with us.






One of Frances' gifts to me in the early days lay in sharing with me the work of Gavin Douglas - whose translation of Vergil's Aeneid was completed in 1513 and first published in 1553. [The book had to be printed in London, incidentally, because the arts of printing had not quite reached Scotland.] His translation was hugely enhanced by the Prologues he wrote to each of the Books which often give delicious descriptions of Nature and country living of the day. This feeds so clearly into the subjects that we find valuable in our lives and in our work that Frances suggested to Murray that Douglas should be 'our chap'.

We had been told some time ago to expect a lightning visitation and it was on Monday evening that Murray (and the other part of this brilliant but lean team, his Director of Photography, Hamid Shams) arrived here having photographed wild boars that day (don't ask me why, it is a long story!) and Alex Salmond, Scotland's First Minister, the day before. They stayed a couple of nights and we had great fun. The 'spaghetti' enveloping Hamid's camera will tell its own story! They then rushed off to the next in a long line of St Andreans and will, very soon, be interviewing a pair of rather high profile graduates whom I am not at the moment allowed to mention!

. . . oh yes. I almost forgot to mention. There is to be a narrator throughout the show. A chap called Sean Connery . . .





The fact was remembered that I had spent most of my time at University acting and directing with The Mermaid Dramatic Society. I rashly mentioned that I still had an old scrapbook . . . and that led to Hamid scanning old photos. As some of these are now on my desktop, I had better give you a laugh with me as David King in A Sleep of Prisoners and a couple as Creon in Oedipus at Colonus. The former was performed in the University Chapel (that's me in the pulpit) and the other in the ruins of the Castle. (Note to audience, bring your own blankets!)

Up the Wye with a makeshift Claude glass

One day last summer, Frances and I went on a trip in a motor boat up the River Wye, from Chepstow to Tintern and back again. The event was designed of course to give some of the flavour of the Picturesque Trips taken by the oh-so-romantic followers of the Rev. Gilpin and painters such as Turner, Palmer, Cox and Varley.

It was great fun and interesting from many points of view. I did of course take my camera and had dreamed of stunning shots of cloud and lightning effects after John Martin and tangled masses of vegetation that I would immediately recognize as the precursors of the neo-romantic. Sadly it did not work quite like that. The weather was totally bland and I had even forgotten to bring the polarizing filter that I use so much. Restriction to the deck of a small boat forces on a photographer the role of the 'click at anything that passes' passive tourist. In search of a photograph, I will always seek to get under the subject . . . or behind it or see it through something else. This is not possible in the middle of a river. Frankly I had hoped, nay expected, to carry home a load of stunningly 'artistic' studies with which I could amaze the favoured followers of this site . . . but this was not to be.

I have revisited the file and find that the shots of the 'sights' please me no more than they did . . . but I give a number here, mostly as an introduction to what follows.

So, starting at the grandeur of Chepstow Castle (above), we progress . . .




















. . . we progress until we sight Tintern Abbey







Now we come to the real point of this post. I have always been fascinated by the concept of the Claude Glass, so beloved by the artists and the just arty among the travellers up the Wye. Hard to describe, so I call upon the good offices of Wikipedia . . .


A Claude glass (or Black Mirror) is a small mirror, slightly convex in shape, with its surface tinted a dark colour. Bound up like a pocket-book or in a carrying case, black mirrors were used by artists, travellers and connoisseurs of landscape and landscape painting. Black Mirrors have the effect of abstracting the subject reflected in it from its surroundings, reducing and simplifying the colour and tonal range of scenes and scenery to give them a painterly quality.


Just before we were leaving home for this adventure I suddenly had the perhaps crazy idea of experimenting with a photographic equivalent. I grabbed my trusty small diminishing glass (invaluable in the business of designing book pages) and hoped I could back it with the black scarf I was already wearing.

I have read that the Claude glass users were ridiculed for turning their backs on the subjects the purported to admire so much as they stared into their glasses and I feared that I must look very strange holding my camera in one hand and taking a photograph OF the other!

Anyway, here are some of the results which, after the passage of time, I find more interesting as the 'straight' photographs seem more pedestrian. I leave them to have whatever effect on you they do.

Last minute entry. An exhibition for your diary

After so many weeks struggling with snow and ice and the general process of keeping life going in the wilds of the Wye Valley, our thoughts now turn to events where our books can be seen and handled. As we have often said, books really need to make physical contact and their pages need to be turned before their full impact can be felt .

There will be a number of major opportunities during this year when we shall be showing Old Stile Press books. Each occasion attracts very different people and this we find stimulating. It is good to see the books in the midst of painting, printmaking and fine art generally; also as a modern expression of the world of fine books throughout history;and not least when we are with other people working at present in a manner similar to ours.

The first is almost upon us. We were offered a table at the Watercolour/Works on Paper Fair somewhat at the last minute. We have shown at this fair before but they moved to the Science Museum where it seemed there was no suitable space for Artists’ Books or Private Presses. However, this year they have altered the layout so that we can be included (appropriately, next to a Columbian Press) - apparently we were missed!

SO, if you are in London or can make the trip, it is usually a very good and lively show. Details are below and an invitation which allows free entry can be sent to you on request







Later in the year we expect to be Downstairs at the Olympia Exhibition Centre for the London International Antiquarian Book Fair from Thursday 9 - Saturday 11 June.