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A title from The Old School Press Lowlands Away An oratorio in ten
parts by Adrian Henri with pastel images by Adrian Henri | |||||||
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About the book To provide an early focus for its work in printing poetry, The Old School Press published a series of five books, each consisting of new work by a contemporary British poet, accompanied by illustrations by British artists. Adrian Henri wrote ten poems as texts for an oratorio by Richard Gordon-Smith for soloists, chorus and orchestra, which has recently been recorded on CD by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. It tells the story of the loss at sea of the Thames and Medway barge Cynthia, commanded by the composer's great-grandfather, a century before in 1896, and of his last words to his wife, cast into the sea in a bottle and subsequently forwarded to her. In 2000, at the Six Chapel Row contemporary art gallery in Bath, I discovered that Adrian was also an artist and indeed had trained as one, and it seemed an ideal opportunity to have a poet's work in two forms in the same book. To that end there are eight images, reproduced by four-colour litho at the Senecio Press from Adrian's vibrant pastels. These drawings were the last that Adrian made, in hospital, before his death at the beginning of 2001 - sadly, he never saw the book in its final form, and indeed a couple of the images were unfinished. Yet they are full of life and vigour. About the edition The book follows the binding style of the series: quarter-bound with yellow cloth on the spine, with a hand-made paper from the Larroque mill covering the boards, this time a mottled celadon colour, black Canson end-papers, and the title embossed in gold on the front cover. The text has been printed in 14pt Monotype Gill Sans on Rivoli paper. 32pp. There are 410 copies, £64. (There were forty sets of sheets for binders (all sold).) In 2022 the Hand Bookbinders of California chose Lowlands Away as the set book for their 50th anniversary. The fabulous work of seventeen binders can be viewed here, and there was an online presentation of the bindings by the binders on YouTube. Some bindings are featured here through the button below. | |||||||
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Find out more about the book |
View one of Adrian Henri's images |
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View designer bindings of this book |
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What others have said about the book |
'The colours of the illustrations are outstanding’, ‘I always look forward to the arrival of these beautifully printed books’, ‘A valuable and welcome addition to the series’ |
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The story In early 2000 I had been to an exhibition at Six Chapel Row Contemporary Art Gallery in Bath and seen some paintings by Liverpool poet Adrian Henri. It occurred to me to invite him to offer some poems and illustrate them himself. I made this proposal that May. I did not know at that time how ill he already was, but found myself corresponding with his partner Catherine Marcangeli who was in Liverpool at weekends and in Paris (where she was teaching at the Sorbonne) during the week. Subsequently a sheaf of typewritten poems arrived with an offer to make a choice and suggesting the set with the sea as their theme, and, although I did not appreciate it at the time, within that sheaf was a set of poems that had formed the basis for an oratorio commissioned from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and set to music by Richard Gordon-Smith for soloist, chorus and orchestra. After some toing and froing, it was agreed in September that I would print the poems of the oratorio and Adrian would prepare a dozen images in charcoal or crayon to accompany them. I was not relishing the prospect of getting the four-colour litho work done but pressed on Soon a packet of pastel drawings arrived. I opened them and was quite shocked by what I saw: they were clearly the work of someone who was ill, but they were full of life and just the sort of vivid work I think a book can stand. One or two did not work and we agreed that Adrian would revisit them. As the weeks went past I had eight in front of me. Adrian was not improving and I rushed together a paste-up showing at least the structure of the book (though I suspect it was such an approximation that I scared those who saw it). The cliff scene was perfect for a full spread title page. It was clear that the choice of typeface was going to be hard. It would have to be strong to stand up to the weight of the images on the facing page and I went for 14pt Gill even though Catherine was not delighted by it. I chose the 24pt bold for the titles, again not wanting anything fancy. I did not feel that any of the display faces that I had in the Press did the job for the title, but I had found on my PC a font calling itself Matura Script and it felt as though it had the right way and character, though again Catherine was not of the same mind. I had small blocks made for it. Adrian, I was told, did not like any indentation and I held to that, but Catherine and I tussled a little over the layout of the running Ballad (finally done in italic down the recto pages), the placing of the poem titles, and the various typographical cues that indicate the book’s structure, but we got there in the end. One morning in early January I heard on the radio that Adrian had died. I had never met him or even had the opportunity to speak to him. I understood from Catherine that doing the images had been a reason for Adrian to keep going in his final days. It was terribly sad to have his last work in front of me. I went to Adrian Lack at the Senecio Press for the four-colour work on the illustrations, working on the digitisation with him on a couple of days until we had it as well as it could be. The Storm proved particularly difficult, with the black pastel coming out a very dark purple, something that probably could only have been corrected with a great deal of handwork on the digitised image. Also, the sky blue that Adrian had used was elusive for the four-colour process. Wet proofs followed, and finally I committed to 450 copies on 140gsm Rivoli. The 14pt Gill was all machine-set by Harry McIntosh on his Mactronic system. I had checked through the practicalities of getting him to cast from digital copy (emailed up to him) with the Some plans prospectus and was happy to get the type done this way. It had been my intention to hand-set from the case of 14pt Gill I had bought many years before but there were problems with it (including some mixed alignments) and we had a (vain) hope of getting the book ready for an exhibition of Adrian’s work at Six Chapel Row in the May. So machine composition looked a quick, if more expensive, alternative. But it really was too tight a timetable so I decided to relax and did the job at a sensible speed, finishing in the July. |
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