|
A title from The Old School Press Antigone A narrative poem by Desmond Post, with wood cuts by Inger Lawrance | ||
|
| ||
|
About the book One of the books in our series of British Contemporary Poets. The daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, Antigone was sealed in a cave by her uncle Creon after she had, against his command, tended the body of her brother who had died fighting to succeed Oedipus. Desmond Post's poem is an imagined soliloquy as she awaits death in her tomb. Writing of his work, Desmond Post says 'Antigone, of all the royal house of Thebes, is the most deserving of recall. There was a need that I should cast her within the character that Sophocles made noble, so her words are spare and acute, and her spirit, questioning and defiant, does not succumb to the creeping despair. Her death is an affirmation of her self against the pitiless Fates.' A sample page from the book
About the edition The text is hand-set in the 14pt version of Stephenson Blake's casting of Eric Gill's Perpetua. The edition consists of 112 copies, signed by poet and artist, of which twelve sets of sheets were reserved for binders. £42. 30pp. The series is to a uniform external design: quarter bound in yellow cloth with boards covered with a hand-made paper from the Larroque mill. The Larroque paper comes in a range of delicate colours, and a different one is used for each title in the series. Each book bears its title embossed in gold on the front board. The text paper is either 145gsm Zerkall or 170gsm Magnani mould-made paper, and the end papers black Canson Mi Teintes. Each book is about 265mm high and 175mm wide. | ||
|
Find out more about the book |
View a designer binding by Rachel Ward-Sale of the book: |
|
|
The story Out of the blue I was sent a poem by Desmond Post, who enquired whether I would publish it. He had seen my entry in the catalogue for the 1994 Oxford Fine Press Book Fair, and had had no luck with other publishers on account of its length. I had already considered doing a series of six books of contemporary British poetry – the number six set by the number of shades of Les Mouchetés de Pombié hand-made paper that I had had in a swatch set from John Purcell Paper. Taken together they were a beautiful set of shades and begged for a series in a uniform design. Antigone was the first in that series. After some discussions with Rachel James I close a bright yellow cloth for all the series: it seemed to work well with each of the six shades. For Antigone I chose the Brique colour as, together with the yellow cloth spine, the exterior of the book would suggest warm climes. On opening the book the black Canson Mi Teintes end-papers were designed to throw the reader into the cave where Antigone faced her end. A trial binding suggested that it would work well, and on one visit to Rachel James to discuss things I suggested that she tool the book’s title in gold into the paper as an experiment, one that worked very well and offered a way of giving some texture to the books – I was assuming at this time that there would be no spine labels. Desmond Post had mentioned in an early letter to me that Antigone’s words were ‘spare, acute, tense’ and I took these as my guiding light when thinking about the typography and the illustrations, for the series would all be illustrated. I had seen a couple of Inger Lawrance’s abstract wood-cuts in books of David Burnett’s poems and remembered that she had done some work for The Old Stile Press. I ordered a copy of their The Seafarer and was struck by how well they worked without being representational. I sent Desmond some examples of her work for his approval. He approved and I agreed with Inger that she should do five illustrations for the text. I bought the cherry-wood blocks for her and agreed a royalty percentage. When the blocks subsequently arrived from Inger I discovered that she used a weak acid to etch the grain in the wood’s printing surface: a block left on my (steel) stone overnight etched a rectangular patch which promptly rusted, having had the working patina taken off! Getting the wood grain to print was interesting; Inger had sent some proofs which I found I could match for colour whilst getting the detail of the grain out well. The blocks used a lot of ink which meant re-inking about every fifteen impressions during the print run. The text was set with the minimum of fuss that I could achieve: the body of the poem in 14pt SB Perpetua, and supporting text in other sizes. 145gsm Zerkall mould-made, each page an eighth-sheet. Printing almost got off to a bad start: I set the sparse title page, spacing out the letters carefully, and was about to start printing when I noticed – almost by chance – that I had set the author’s name as Desmond Stone – heaven knows why that came out of the case, and heaven knows how I managed not to notice it for so long. Printing was completed in August 1995, but having collated all the sheets ready for binding I decided that one of Inger’s woodcuts was simply too cramped on the page and spoilt the book. I had felt this whilst printing but did not want to go back to her to ask for something different. In the event I had to do that anyway. As a result publication had to be postponed until the next printing season in 1996 – fortunately I had not assumed it was going to be finished as well as The Phoenix so I had printed the title page bearing the year 1996. A display copy was ready for the Whittington Press Open Day on September 2nd 1995. Final binding was done by Rachel James in May/June 1996 and the edition was signed by the author on 24th June 1996. |
||
