Today I worked well – the picture fell off the brush. The artistry of Leslie Cole
by Malcolm Yorke
Leslie Cole, who trained under Bawden and Ravilious at the Royal College of Art in the 1930s, produced some of the finest paintings when appointed an Official War Artist, and his watercolours are especially fine, many in a Ravilious mould. Cole travelled through Germany (recording the scenes of horrific trauma at Belsen a week after its liberation), France, Malta and the Far East, where he recorded the action in Borneo and Singapore, a theatre of the war largely forgotten by Europeans today. Cole’s work was the equal of any other war artist, and yet he was unable, for personal or other reasons, to maintain the momentum after the war, when he seems to have slid very slowly downhill, and his early promise was unfulfilled.
Cole’s wife Brenda had a very colourful teenage history, being the chief prosecution witness for the Church of England when they prosecuted the Rector of Stiffkey for importuning young girls. She disguised this past very ably through her life and may not even have told her husband. Her identity – kept secret even when the BBC tried to find her in the 1980s – was revealed to friends before she died, and for the unconvinced, a meticulous genealogical investigation by Christopher Whittick and Julian Moore ties up the details very neatly.
200 pages with over 130 colour illustrations, the book is quarter bound in cloth and beautiful blue marbled paper made by Louise Brockman. There are 500 copies, price £212, plus £6 postage. A prospectus is available on request.
Eric Ravilious: Landscape, Letters & Design
by Anne Ullmann, Christopher Whittick and Simon Lawrence
The acclaim which met Ravilious at War has spurred the preparation of a companion volume showing all Ravilious' murals and painted work which he produced upto the outbreak of war in 1939. Ravilious at War began with the group of six paintings of chalk figures in landscape settings, and it is appropriate that the new book ends with this group, a high-point and at the same time, turning-point in Ravilious' career. The text is comprised of selected correspondence: from Ravilious' early art school days (when his irrepressibly humorous friend Douglas Percy Bliss wrote to fill him in with news of college life), through friendships with Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn, Helen Binyon, Edward Bawden, Percy Horton, John and Christine Nash, and many more (some more intimate than others). The letters relate a little less directly to the paintings than in Ravilious at War, but give us a very good view of the artist's life in all its aspects. A separate prospectus is available while supplies last.
The book is a phenomenal 528 pages in two volumes, and contains about 300 images with 180,000 words. The collected letters give a deep and honest insight into Ravilious' personality and his perception of his world, and also give us a broader understanding of the 1930s, with the inexorable progress to European war. Of course for many people, the illustration of every known painting by this unique artist with a great many associated images, is what they will initially buy the book for, and this aspect alone makes the book so important. It has been a profound pleasure to publish this collection of words and images. Reviewing the book in the Times Literary Supplement, January 30th 2009, Miles Symner wrote: 'the care that has been devoted to designing and producing these two revelatory volumes matches that evident throughout Eric Ravilious's work. The result is enchantment.'
Two volumes bound in coloured cloth with a gilt spine, 528 pages printed in Sheffield by J.W. Northend Fine Print, with twelve tipped-in plates, bound by and housed in a slipcase made by the Fine Book Bindery in Wellingorough, price £355 (postage £14). At the end of 2011 there are just eight copies remaining.
To War with Paper and Brush: Captain Edward Ardizzone,
Official War Artist
by Malcolm Yorke
Published in October 2007, this is another of the major four-colour books printed out-of-house but entirely conceived, organised, designed and typeset by one person; together with the author Malcolm Yorke, whose earlier book for the Press on Edward Bawden was so successful, I believe we have made an important new book, and in fact its design is perhaps the one which gives me most satisfaction. Ardizzone's Diary of a War Artist has hitherto been the only book relating to his wartime experiences in many British locations as well as on the front line in France, Belgium, Italy, North Africa, Sicily, Denmark and Germany; it consists of the edited diaries which the artist kept. To War with Paper and Brush traces and assesses his extraordinary wartime path, and is illustrated with a great many original watercolours, line-drawings and photographs.
The book runs to 162 pages, and in true Fleece Press style is very heavily illustrated. Printed in Sheffield by J. W. Northend on the uncoated but smooth Monadnock Dulcet paper in an edition of 600 copies (the colophon mistakenly reads 700), all copies are bound in full Record Leinen cloth with an accompanying slipcase. The book is £212 (slipcase included), with postage £6.
Copies of the book block, sewn but without boards or endpapers, can be supplied for binding; see the Special Offers page.
A detailed prospectus has been made for this book and will be sent on request. For a perceptive review of the book and assessment of the Press' books, see the Spectator review by Paul Johnson here: http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-magazine/columnists/3454556/and-another-thing.thtml
for sale: Barnett Freedman's personal stock of designs, proofs and finished work
I don't think there will be another opportunity for me to disperse such a fascinating, important collection such as this, and while it is also my first effort at being a book, manuscript and printseller, I have striven to direct the work in this collection towards collectors' hands. Barnett Freedman died in January 1958 – four months before I was born – and a substantial amount of material passed from his family through his solicitor's hands and ended up forming the Barnett Freedman Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University Library. It would be reasonable to say that that material is largely documentary, while the present material offered on his family's behalf is a rich assortment of original illustrations (many from the mid 1920s while at art school), proofs of printed work including dustwrappers and sheets of illustrations, jazzy posters for trains and buses, lithographs made for Guinness and Lyons Tea Shops, and more. There is a healthy sprinkling of Barnett's famous Christmas cards. Included are a dozen original illustrations made for Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, Freedman's first and possibly most triumphant book illustrations.
*** Tone, texture, light and shade, a Barnett Freedman Album is detailed on the next page: 160 pages of his wonderful work, and a few standard copies are available, price £192 plus £6 postage.
A preliminary listing was made in November 2008, and a subsequent listing will be added quite soon. Available items are mostly shown on the PBFA website, which can be found at www.booksatpbfa.com/ click 'sellers' and key 'Simon Lawrence' in the box; then, finally, click 'browse'. There are usually about 250 items listed, some duplicated so you need not fear being too late! Pictured is Freedman's Window Box lithograph made in 1954 for Lyons. In ten years of looking for a copy I didn't find one; here is your chance to join me and revel in Freedman's mastery.
In similar vein I have assumed responsibility for representing the family of the late John O'Connor, painter and wood engraver who trained under Eric Ravilious, and who was regarded at the time by Ravilious as his best student. I will shortly be listing work of all kinds for sale.
Simon Lawrence, The Fleece Press, 95 Denby Lane, Upper Denby, Huddersfield HD8 8TZ.
Telephone 01226 792200.