IN Print and Business as Usual

The Open Studios have been and gone and were very successful. On the first morning, I received a copy of East Anglian Ex-Libris by John Blatchly. It covers bookplates related to East Anglia from 1700 to the present day and is a wonderful addition to the collection of anyone interested in bookplates. Dr Blatchly has included two of my engraved pictorial bookplates: my own that I use for larger books and the one that I engraved for Joan..




Since then, both presses have been busy as I have been working hard to complete jobs before I head off to thwe WEN gathering at Kildeer, IL.


As the engravings have dried, I have been sitting and signing and numbering them. I will feature this particular project in a couple of weeks time:


I am planning a project of my own to engrave in the US. So much of what I do is commissioned work that it will be a treat to do something for myself. This morning, I received a pair of wonderful boxwood "rounds" from blockmaker Chris Daunt. I use his blocks exclusively in my work. These are beautiful and, for me, the natural shape of the wood is a pleasure to work with. You may remember one that I engraved before.


I fly out on Saturday - so much more to be done.

Open Studio - First Weekend

This year's first Open Studio weekend was a very pleasant occasion with a steady stream of visitors and pleasing sales which, traditionally, go towards my purchase of printmaking paper for the next twelve months. The weather was beautiful, with the sun streaming in but not as hot as earlier in the week, when the rollers on one of my small Adana presses melted in the heat.

Inside the door, There was a wall of framed engravings, a browser containg the newly editioned prints from Freshly Picked and a folder of the engravings for Philip Pullman's A Outrance. This was followed by a group of sketchbooks to show how projects develop from the first pencil sketches to the final ink drawings:



The central table had wood engravings for sale in browsers:


Also on the central table was a disply of many of many of my engraved bookplates and some of the books that they have featured in:


At the far end, I was demonstrating engraving and carrying on with one of my current projects:


Moving through into the press room, there was another wall of framed engravings behind the smaller 1865 Albion Handpress:


The recently tidied shelves had small displays, including some of the engravings that I have made for wine labels:


"Red", the larger 1902 Albion was in use to demonstrate printing from engraved blocks:


I was able to get on with some work, enjoy the company of new and old friends and have a relaxing but surprisingly tiring weekend.

It all happens again next weekend and you will be most welcome to visit.

I made another short "Walk through" movie and, this year, added commentary as I walked around. Here it is:

Open Studios 2009

Once again, I am opening as part of the Cambridge Open Studio scheme. My studio will be Open from tomorrow (July 4th-5th and 11th - 12th) between 11am and 6pm.

I will demoinstrate engraving and printing on the Albion handpresses. There will be engravings for sale but there is no obligation to buy - feel free to come and look.

The details are here: http://www.camopenstudios.co.uk/ you can find them by searching for me in the "Artists" section. I will post photographs very soon.

In Print - And A Book Launch

I recently received an email from Lewis Jaffe, who many of you will know from his excellent bookplate blog, that he had written an article about bookplate collecting for Antique Week magazine, which featured the meerrkat bookplate that I had engraved for him on the cover of the Central and Eastern editions:

I have been tardy in catching up with my appearances in print so here is another, an article based on an interview in a book edition of a glossy magazine circulated in Hong Kong:

Freshly Picked was published last week and I was very pleased to attend the launch party in the wonderful vegetable garden of the Hackney City Farm in London. The food was wonderful, especially the giant chorizo, snail and sorrel paella:

The vegetable garden is a lovely space and a great setting for the book launch party. I made a few small sketches while I was there. Here is a selection of photographs:

Back in the studio, I have been working on another series of engraved bookplates and hope to feature some of these in my next post.

Linocut by Gertrude Hermes

I have always regarded the work of Gertrude Hermes very highly. Her lively cutting and wonderful textures makes her work a treat to behold. It was, however a unexpected pleasure to be offered one in a gallery yesterday. The proprietor had shown some interesting works and, knowing that I was an engraver, went to an upstairs room to fetch another print. It turned out to be a Gertrude Hermes Linocut.

The image is of a bullfighter. This is not a particularly sympathetic subject for me but her handling is masterly. The black image is printed over a textured background printed from another block (Click on the images to enlarge them):


The print was signed and dated 1955 and inscribed "Bullfight 4" and then "No.1". On the reverse were two labels, the artist's address and a second one informing the reader that this was the print in the original frame that was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1956.


I asked the price of the print and was told an acceptable sum. I decided to go away and think but, in the end, decided to buy the piece and add it to our collection. Once broght home and cleaned, we identified a suitable spot and I hung the linocut.



Gertrude Hermes taught Sarah Van Niekirk who taught courses that I attended in the early 1990s. Hermes was married to Blair Hughes-Stanton, who taught my former colleague Pat Townshend, who first showed me the ropes of engraving. As a result, I have always felt that Gertrude Hermes was part of my printmaking ancestory and, having enjoyed her work in museum collections, I have, for a long time, hoped to acquire a piece. I am very happy.

Freshly Picked

I received my advance copy of "Freshly Picked" this morning. I have already shown the blocks and some images here but this was the first time that I saw how my engravings had been used.

Here are a series of photographs of the book - click on them to enlarge.


The book is handsome (I didn't design the cover):


My engravings have been reduced and used as endpapers. I am very pleased with the end result; the engravings look good in green:

Hwere is a selection of the engravings:

Introduction:


Basics:


Summer (One of my favourites):


Autumn (My favourite):


Growing potatoes:


Far Flung Food:


All in all, I am very pleased with the result. This is my first "High Street", rather than fine press book project. It covers both the growing and cooking aspects of growing ones own veg and I'm looking forwards to reading it. It is published on June 4th.

Our own vegetable production is coming along nicely and things are stirring in the new raised beds:

Recent Work: A Outrance

A Outrance ("To The Death") is a chapter from "Northern Lights" by Philip Pullman. It is being reprinted by Oak Tree Fine Press, whose books raise money for organisations assisting children living with or affected by HIV/AIDS. Click on the image below to find out more and express an interest in purchasing this book.


My original contribution was to collaborate with Chris Daunt and Harry Brockway to produce six full-page illustrations. My two were "Lyra consults the Alethiometer" and "Bears Fighting". The latter shows the point where two armoured bears fight at a dramatic moment in the story. My sketch had elements bursting out of a narrowed frame:

However, I engraved the image to the full frame so that it fitted in with the other engravings:

*Click* on any of these images for more detail.

I was asked to produce some further images and managed to fit them into a tight schedule. These included three decorated initial letters.

Letter A shows Lyra sitting out on an Oxford rooftop. Here is the sketch, followed by the engraving:
The Letter F shows an armoured bear:

Here is a stage in the engraving of the final one:


I was very pleased to capture the measured gaze of this powerful and thoughtful bear:

The next engraving was designed to be used at the end of a part page of text. Here is the engraved block, followed by the final image:



The most exciting part of this project was a large title page. Here is my sketch:


This involved buying the largest endgrain block that I had used. I have engraved larger images, but never on wood. Here is the block:


The drawing was transferred (in reverse) to the block which had been darkened with diluted ink and, slowly, I started to engrave:


I reworked the bear at the top of the image to make him much more powerful and fierce:


The central part of the block had to be cleared. I had drawn out the title by hand in an uncial style so that it could be made into a printing block. I divided the central area into small squares and cleared them one at a time with an alternation of round and square scorper:


After I had finished that, I squared the area up and repeated the job. It took two full days to clear and I ended up with my fingers covered in sticking plasters to try to avoid blisters as I worked:



Eventually, I was happy that I was ready to take a proof from the block and it was clamped into the bed of "Red" the 1902 Albion handpress:


Here are proofs drying on the ceiling rack:


And here is a proof from the block. Click on the image to enlarge it. I am particularly pleased with the powerful muscularity of this leaping bear:


Finally, I engraved a small press device as a gift for the publisher:

I really enjoyed working on this project. I thoroughly enjoy re-reading Philip Pullman's remarkable books and applaud the efforts of the Oak Tree Fine Press to raise funds for such an important cause.

Recent Work: "Freshly Picked"

I started my working year with a large illustrating job. This was to engrave nineteen illustrations for "Freshly Picked" by Jojo Tulloh. Many of the images were set in allotment gardens and so this was pleasant and sympathetic work for me

Here are the nineteen blocks. I will try to print a group of them together on the larger Albion to make an image the size of a small poster, possibly with some wood type text.

*Click* for larger images.

Here are some proofs printed from the blocks:
I will be choosing some of the images to edition in the summer. I will announce them here when I add them to my main website. I have to confess that there is a lot of new work that needs to be added to it.