THE OLD SCHOOL PRESS

A listing of all our books, planned and in print

For details of our out-of-print titles, click on the 'history' button at left.

Use the 'in print' and 'plans' buttons to the left for indexes.

The Bricks of Venice

An important new text written and illustrated with watercolours by Peter Harris

Our first book, Venice Approached, was an excerpt from John Ruskin's The Stones of Venice, in particular the passage where he describes arriving in Venice from Padua, taking a gondola from the Brenta. This new title is, in its author's words, 'no parody of Ruskin's masterpiece, but offered in homage.'

Peter Harris lived and worked in Venice for seven years, with enough leisure to study in depth the architecture of Venice and to read extensively about the city. The Bricks of Venice was years in writing and in research, and is a memorial to his great love of the city.

You can read a chapter from the book, pretty much in the format that it appears in the book, by clicking on the 'excerpt' button to the left.

Harris achieves a pleasing balance between contemporary observation and historical context, and sixty-six delightful watercolours and six other images fill out the story perfectly - you can view two of the watercolours by clicking on the thumbnail above (but please note that faithful colour reproduction on displays depends on too many factors outside my control!). He wrote the following about his book:

The 96pp of text have been printed in 14/16pt Bembo on a large page of Magnani mould-made paper. These pages have then been bound into a volume with a hand-blocked paper on the boards - the paper has been prepared especially for the edition by Alberto Valese in Venice, using a pattern taken from the facade of Ca' d'Oro, one of the finest Gothic palaces on the Grand Canal, and just along from the building in which Peter Harris and his wife lived. Each illustration has been printed on a separate sheet of 225gsm Somerset paper made of 100% cotton , making it easier to follow the illustrations when they are called for in the text and also to frame and display them individually. To print the images I have used an Epson 2100 printer using pigment-based inks thereby assuring good longevity of the images. The seventy-two sheets of images are separated by chapter with sheets of brown Fabriano Ingres on which captions are printed to accompany the images. These sheets are collected in a solander box which is covered in another paper from Alberto Valese - a repeated tile pattern in grey. The solander box and bound volume are presented in a slip case in a pale yellow cloth with a spine label. Click on the button above to see a number of views of the book and its parts. (33cm high, 23.5cm wide, 8.5cm deep - 13in high, 9.25in wide, 3.25in deep.)

An exhibition of Harris's original watercolours was held at The Arts Club, London, and the book was published at the opening reception on 16 February 2005. There was another exhibition of the watercolours at the Palazzo delle Prigione in Venice, adjacent to the Bridge of Sighs, 10-28 January 2007. In January 2008 the book was centre stage at the Library of The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, where Francesca Harris, Peter Harris's widow, gave a reading from the book.

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There is a full paper announcement - if you are not on our mailing list, the 'contact' button on the left will allow you to request one.  (ISBN 978 1 899933 18 1)

The price of the book is currently £220 (E330, US$450). Shipping will be charged at cost as usual. Please call for trade terms.

Palladio's Homes

Andrea Palladio on building a home, and what others have thought of his

I have had a keenness for the domestic architecture of Andrea Palladio for some time - if one can refer to the villas he built for, say, the Venetian nobility as just 'domestic'. Anyway, we can say that he designed houses for people to live in as well as civic buildings.

Palladio designed about thirty domestic villas of which about nineteen survive (the exact numbers depending on how you count them). His influence on subsequent architecture in the UK and USA was considerable and remains to this day, and 'Palladianism' entered the vocabulary of architects world-wide. He left not only a legacy of fine buildings, but also a detailed exposition of his ideas in his I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura ('The Four Books of Architecture'), first published in 1570. Palladio prefaced his descriptions of his villa designs in I Quattro Libri with chapters laying out his general principles for the placing and design of villas. This new title, Palladio's Homes, will reprint those chapters in the original Italian together with a parallel translation by the English architect Isaac Ware who in 1738 provided, unlike previous translators, a faithful translation as well as accurate reproductions of Palladio's numerous original plates.

I Quattro Libri was considered so important by later architects that they would travel to Italy to see Palladio's work for themselves, scribbling their own views in the margins of their copies. This new title will include these and other reflections - not always complimentary - alongside Palladio's descriptions of his work. Amongst those quoted will be architects Inigo Jones and Sir Edward Lovett Pearce, Goethe, sixteenth-century power-walker Thomas Coryat (of Coryat's Crudities fame), and a more recent visitor, Witold Rybczynski, Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania, who recorded his own visits in the 1990s in The Perfect House. Professor Rybczynski is writing a new essay on Palladio and his legacy for Palladio's Homes.

The texts present a wonderful opportunity to celebrate Italian printing as well as its architects. We plan to print the text on an Amalfi hand-made paper using Giovanni Mardersteig's Dante typeface. Signor Carlo Rapp is preparing illustrations for a number of the villas included. More news on this title will emerge as plans progress - our occasional e-newsletter will keep you up-to-date.

An Italian Dream

Charles Dickens thinks he has been to Venice

Some years back I came across a wonderful description of the interior of St Mark's Basilica in Venice and discovered it had been written by Charles Dickens. It didn't take too much help from various search engines to discover that it was from his book Pictures of Italy and to find the text, in particular of chapter VII, online at Project Gutenberg. I squirrelled the text away planning to print it when the opportunity arose.

In this chapter, Dickens describes his visit to La Serenissima as if remembering a dream that happened between two other, more prosaic stops on his tour. 'In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream, I took but little heed of time, and had but little understanding of its flight. But there were days and nights in it; and when the sun was high, and when the rays of lamps were crooked in the running water, I was still afloat, I thought: plashing the slippery walls and houses with the cleavings of the tide, as my black boat, borne upon it, skimmed along the streets.'

The text has been set automatically from the digital copy by Harry McIntosh at Speedspools in 12pt Poliphilus. Poliphilus is a type based closely on that cut by Francesco Griffo and used for Aldus Manutius's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, published in Venice in 1499. The text has been printed on a dampened hand-made paper from the Carteria Amatruda in Amalfi, a stock of which I bought from Christopher Skelton's estate some years back. Complementing that are end-papers of Magnani Firenze, another Italian hand-made. The book consists of a single section of 16pp sewn into boards. The front cover carries a photograph, digitally manipulated, that I took on a rather misty day from Dorsoduro, towards San Giorgio, though the latter was not to be seen. The edition is 135 copies. The price is £36 (€42, US$70).

Jump of the Manta Ray

A poem in Spanish by Carmen Boullosa, translated by Psiche Hughes, with images by Philip Hughes

Inspired by the sight of a giant manta ray leaving the water, Mexican poet Carmen Boullosa has written this epic and erotic poem for which Psiche Hughes has prepared an English translation. The two texts run in parallel, interspersed with twenty-nine images by Philip Hughes. A further twenty images accompany the book in a portfolio.

Hughes has worked before with Boullosa on a cycle of lithographs to accompany her epic poem The Elysian Garden, also translated by his wife Psiche. For this new collaboration he has prepared over fifty photographic images, digitally manipulated, echoing the imagery of the poem, and taken from seas and sea-shores around the globe. The Tate Gallery in St Ives and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London have shown exhibitions of his work in 2000 and 2001.

Copies have already been purchased by the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, and the British Library Special Collections Department, London. A number of major collections in the USA have also obtained copies.

The book was short-listed for a British Book Design and Production Award in the 'Limited Edition / Fine Binding' section in November 2003.

When we first received the texts and images from Philip and Psiche Hughes it was clear that a powerful image needed a robust design. Choosing a typeface was hard. It needed strength with dignity, and the only metal face that I could imagine working was Will Carter's sinewy Octavian. This was easier said than done: only three sets of matrices were sold by Monotype for the face, which was only ever cut in 14pt - an ideal size for this book however. (For more of the story behind this, click on the button above to read cuttings from our newsletters.) The result has been very gratifying, the face printing beautifully on the heavy Somerset paper we have chosen to complement the Somerset Velvet which is the chosen paper for giclée printers. A bright red solander box and one of Claire Maziarczyk's bold silver grey checks on the book and the portfolio carry through the theme of strength. The images pack a real punch, the vibrant colours looking wonderful in the Iris prints - and 100% cotton papers and the latest in archival-quality inks mean that longevity is assured.

A solander box in red cloth holds the book and a portfolio. The text is printed letterpress on 175gsm Somerset paper, making a handsome book of about 340mm (13.4 inches) high and 300mm (11.8 inches) wide. Twenty large images (170mm square) have been printed on an Iris giclée printer on 330gsm Somerset Velvet paper: they come on separate sheets in the portfolio, all signed and numbered by the artist. Two other images, also Iris-printed, act as frontis- and tail-piece for the book. Twenty-nine smaller Iris-printed images (70mm square) appear throughout the text. All the images are listed in an index locating them to the sites where Hughes took the original photographs, from Scotland to Antarctica. A Maziarczyk paste paper covers the boards of the book and the portfolio, each of which has a grey spine. The edition consists of 60 copies of which 50 are for sale. Each copy is signed by the poet, translator, artist and printer.

The price per copy is £1,500 (UK), €2,500 (continental Europe), A$3,800 (Australasia), or US$2,500 (rest of the world) according to country of purchase. Carriage and insurance are included. (For trade terms please contact us.)  (ISBN 978 1 899933 15 0)

More images and some samples, exhibitions, and talks about the book . . .

Between 20 July and 22 August 2004, Jump of the Manta Ray was on show at Association artothèque, in Château La Nerthe, near Châteauneuf-du-Pape, France.

The book and the images that went into it were exhibited at the Star Gallery on Castle Ditch Lane in Lewes, Sussex, in March 2004. Click on the blue pointer for images of the show and of the collaborators.

Amongst the images in Jump of the Manta Ray are some from Antarctica, taken when Philip was there as an official artist. His major one-man exhibition In Antarctica was held in September /October 2003 at Francis Kyle Gallery. You can see and purchase Jump of the Manta Ray at the gallery.

Tonge's Travels

The diary of an Oxford undergraduate: the Mediterranean by cargo steamer in 1857

I have always enjoyed travel writing, especially when it shows travel in its true light: general awfulness punctuated by moments of great pleasure. Some years ago I acquired a manuscript diary which, a recent handwritten slip inside suggests, was written by George Tonge who went up to Lincoln College, Oxford in 1856, and subsequently entered the Church.

According to his diary, George Tonge (if indeed it was he) had decided that the Long Vacation at the end of his first year would be spent on some form of voyage, and, in the event, on 15 July 1857 he boarded the screw steamer Avon which was headed for the Mediterranean in search of a cargo of currants. The 282 manuscript pages of his diary take us on a ten-week journey to Gibraltar, Genoa, Pisa, Naples, Vesuvius (avoiding falling debris), Pompeii, a detour on foot and horse to Corinth, Athens (which clearly made a deep impression on him), Vastitza ('began loading early and shipped about 80 tons of currants', 'had a bathe close to the vessel with a man looking out for sharks'), and back via Algiers. Stowaways are put back on land, the rigging breaks, the engineer blows himself up, and bandits are avoided. For a flavour of the diarist's writing, click on the 'excerpt' button to the left.

There is a single edition of 290 bound copies plus forty sets of sheets reserved for binders. The book is in a generous landscape format (230mm high by 300mm wide) to allow the text to run in double columns and provide the right shape for twenty-four water-colours and sketches by John Watts, much as a traveller of the day might have committed sights and thoughts to paper where today we would use video and digital images. John's illustrations have been reproduced by off-set litho at BAS. Printing a diary also gives us another excuse for using the written as well as the printed word in the book: snippets of Tonge's account have been hand-written by calligrapher Patricia Gidney and printed letterpress.

The text has been printed letterpress in 12/14pt Monotype Centaur on Mohawk Superfine eggshell finish paper, and copies are bound in full cloth with a dust-jacket bearing one of John Watts's line drawings. 114pp. A four-page announcement, with two of the watercolours and a sample text page, is available on request: just send your name and postal address via our contact form using the 'contact' button on the left.

The price is £95 (€160, US$185) for bound copies, and £50 (€90, US$105) for sheets. (ISBN 978 1 899933 08 2)

American binder Nancy Bloch of the Lemon Tree Press has done a fine binding of Tonge's Travels which has featured in a major exhibition - Women in Letters - at the Clark Library at UCLA in 2007.

The Fell Revival

The story of the revival of the Fell types in the 125 years from 1864, by Martyn Ould and Martyn Thomas

Anyone turning the pages of Stanley Morison's splendid volume John Fell, the University Press and the 'Fell' Types published in 1967 would be justified in thinking that the last word had been said about Oxford University Press's Fell types. But Morison and his collaborator Harry Carter were mostly concerned to chronicle the origins of the types. After their 'rediscovery' at O.U.P. in the form of punches and matrices in the 1860s, the types saw a gradual revival, started mainly by the Reverend Daniel at Worcester College, Oxford, who obtained some founts and used them for fifty books of poetry. By the time Hornby had also acquired some founts and used them for ten books at his Ashendene Press at around the turn of the century, O.U.P. saw the potential in the types for their own use and for others, and there began a revival which continued until the close of the Printing House at Oxford.

The authors of this new book started with the modest aim of cataloguing titles printed in Fell during that revival. However, as their researches progressed in the O.U.P. archives, at Worcester College, in the Morison and Meynell archives at Cambridge, and at the Bodleian Library, they found themselves uncovering a fascinating story of the revival: of the problems faced by the O.U.P. Type Foundry in casting new type from the 'ancient' and often faulty matrices, of the use of the types by the 'amateurs' Daniel and Hornby and some other surprising names, of the impact of Horace Hart's management on the operation of the Press, and of life at the Press around the turn of the century. Before long, the intended handlist with short introduction had become a major book with a list as an appendix, a list that surprisingly exceeds 250 titles.
We have been delighted by the way the book has been received by our customers. Adjectives used to date include outstanding, marvellous, breathtaking, splendid, superb, beautiful, handsome and wonderful.

The book is printed litho in 11.5/15pt. ITC Galliard CC on demy quarto Mohawk Superfine paper. There are 350 copies for sale, each of which contains eight tipped-in type samples printed at The Old School Press on hand-made papers from pre1989 Oxford University Press stocks using the remaining founts of Fell type, together with 18 pp. of photographs of archive materials. 204 pp. Approximate size 290mm by 220mm.

BINDING A. ALL SOLD Fifty copies bound in quarter-leather, the boards covered with paper marbled by Ann Muir in a seventeenth century style but with a twentieth-century flavour. Each copy contains an additional portfolio of about twenty type facsimile and original pages printed using Fell type, including displays of the remaining Fell flowers; all the new items are printed at The Old School Press, except one from a Daniel Press book which is printed by the authors at the Bodleian Library on the Reverend Daniel's hand-press. Book and portfolio come in a slip-case. £180 (US$300). (ISBN 978 1 899933 07 5)

BINDING B. Two-hundred and fifty copies bound in full blue cloth and numbered 1 to 250. Endpapers and dust-jacket are in Colorplan. Paper spine label. £75 (€130, US$130). A further fifty copies, numbered 251 to 300, are reserved for binders in folded and collated sheets. £45 (€80, US$80). Trade terms are one third on Binding B. (ISBN 978 1 899933 06 8)

Stanley Morison & 'John Fell'

The writing and printing of Stanley Morison's book John Fell, the University Press and the 'Fell' types

While researching The Fell Revival, Martyn Thomas and I found ourselves following threads just off the main theme but equally interesting. One of them related to the writing and printing of Stanley Morison's great work John Fell, the University Press and the 'Fell' types, a book which was first suggested to Morison in 1925 but which was not published until 1967, on the very day after his death.

In the words of Vivian Ridler, who was Printer to the University when the book was finally printed, 'Morison had a very strong journalistic streak in him, he wasn't an innate scholar, he was rather of the "publish and be damned" school. He reckoned his job was to do some pioneering work. He used to say "get it all down and published and let other people come along and go over it." The scholarship was Morison's but Harry Carter did a lot of quiet putting right.' The topic was vast, and others were enlisted to assist in various aspects: John Simmons as Printer's Librarian, Mr. Bill from the Bodleian Library, Dr. Voet at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, and Miss Margaret Crum, also from the Bodleian.

Work on John Fell had to fit in with all of Morison's other activities and was interrupted by his bouts of illness, so the work proceeded with agonising slowness. At one point Ridler was prompted to write to Morison 'Do you think that . . . some way might be found of moving the Fell opus again? . . . even if I am spared, I have only another nineteen years to go.' Printing this vast work - itself all hand-set in the Fell types - became a major project for the Printing House, requiring sets of pages to be type-set, proofed, corrected, and printed, before the type could be dissed ready for the next set.

This new monograph tells the story principally through the archives at Oxford University Press, and the Stanley Morison Room papers in Cambridge University Library, but also through interviews with some of those directly involved: John Simmons, Vivian Ridler, Richard Russell, and John Bowley. (If you would like to listen to recordings of our interviews with Vivian Ridler, please click here.) It gives a fascinating insight into Morison and his dealings with colleagues, and of the workings of OUP over the period. The chapters are The book described, The 1900 Hart catalogue, The 1925 Chapman folio, The 1930s Johnson specimens, The 1950 Batey keepsake, The 1953 Morison fascicules, The 1967 Morison book, End-game, Production, Publication, and The type-faces in 'John Fell'. Click the 'excerpt' button above for a 12pp extract from the book. There are four tipped-in leaves of books set in the Fell types, plus a dozen splendid photographs of those involved over the four decades. A two-page announcement is available on request: just send your name and a postal address via our contact form using the 'contact' button on the left - if you would like to be sent some sample pages as well, just let us know.

In January 2004 I presented a paper to the Printing Historical Society conference Printing and the World of Learning in Cambridge. Why not read a transcript of my paper (157K PDF) - it will give you a feeling for the scope of the book itself.

240 copies have been printed letterpress in 12/14pt Monotype Van Dijck on a demy quarto page of Mohawk Superfine, to match The Fell Revival in size. 144pp.

BINDING A. ALL SOLD Fifty de luxe copies are bound in quarter burgundy leather, with a marbled paper by Ann Muir on the boards. They are signed by Vivian Ridler, and Morison's collaborator John Simmons. Like the de luxe of The Fell Revival, these copies come with an additional portfolio of material, some printed in Fell; you can click here to download a PDF of the portfolio's contents. The book and portfolio are presented in a slipcase. £160 (€270, US$270). (Trade terms on de luxe copies are one quarter.) (ISBN 978 1 899933 17 4)

BINDING B. 170 copies are case-bound in burgundy cloth with a dust-jacket carrying a drawing of Morison. Twenty copies have been reserved in sheets for binders. Bound copies £80 (€135, US$135), sheets £50 (€90, US$90).(ISBN 978 1 899933 10 5)

If you are interested generally in the history of Oxford University Press, I recommend On the Press, a new book about the people on the shop floor at OUP, written by one of its former employees, Mick Belson.

Harry Carter, Typographer

A tribute to an unsung English typographer, by Martyn Thomas, John A Lane, and Anne Rogers

Harry Carter was one of the foremost typographers of the twentieth century, and one of the least celebrated. Sir Francis Meynell described him as 'one of the least-known best-known men in the world of books. He has chosen nearly always to be an accompanist, rather than the soloist he could be.'

Carter was a meticulous scholar. Stanley Morison famously said of him 'The man's a pedant! The man's a pedant!', but Morison's great book John Fell carries the acknowledgement 'with the assistance of Harry Carter' on the title page, and in his preface Morison says that Carter 'carried unflinchingly the massive burden of editorial drudgery'. In reality, Morison would never have completed John Fell without Carter's deep knowledge of ancient types, his unerring eye for detail, and his passion for accuracy.

Carter's Emerald (6pt) Bible type designed for OUP.

Carter's career spanned the Monotype Works, the Kynoch and Nonesuch Presses, H.M.S.O, and the University Press, Oxford. His designs ranged from a Curwen pattern paper, to the lettering for the route blinds on London buses, Monotype Russian Baskerville, a Hebrew type, and a new Bible face for O.U.P. His main legacy, however, lies in his many publications. Carter's breadth of work was remarkable. His translation of Fournier on Typefounding is the standard work, as is his translation of Herodotus for the Limited Editions Club. But it is his many books and articles on type design and type history that are especially valuable to typographers and lovers of fine printing today.

The book combines a 50pp biographical sketch by Martyn Thomas and Anne Rogers with a comprehensive bibliography of Carter's published work originally compiled by John Lane, including books, articles, reviews, and lectures, as well as reviews of his work by others. 240 copies have been printed letterpress, uniformly with Stanley Morison & 'John Fell'. Each copy of the book contains eleven photographs of Carter through his lifetime, a sample of the pattern paper he designed for Curwen, a self-portrait when aged 13, a triple wood-engraving portrait of him by George Buday, and a printed sample of his 'Emerald' Bible type. 128pp. There are two bindings, both executed by The Fine Bindery:
BINDING A. ALL SOLD Fifty de luxe copies are quarter-bound in green goatskin with a Cockerell-style marbled paper by Ann Muir on the boards. Each copy also contains an additional volume of three hitherto unpublished essays by Carter: two sections he drafted for the putative second volume of his history of Oxford University Press, and an essay he wrote on Baskerville as a typeface. The additional volume is printed in Romulus, as the main volume, but here on a Van Gelder hand-made paper. The two volumes are presented in a slipcase. £160 (€270, US$300). (ISBN 978 1 899933 19 8)
BINDING B. 170 standard copies are case-bound in green cloth, with a dust-jacket of green Hahnemühle Bugra Bütten carrying a line-drawing portrait of Carter by John Watts; £80 (€135, US$160). Twenty copies have been reserved in sheets for binders; £40 (€70, US$85). (ISBN 978 1 899933 11 2)

The book was published on 26 April 2005 at a talk entitled 'Harry Carter - Man of Type' given to the Friends of St Bride by co-author Martyn Thomas, at St Bride Library, London.

I thought it would be fun to record all the stages in making the book, so as work progressed I took a sequence of photos which you can reach by clicking on the 'the story' button above. (Please bear in mind that the images are up to around 100KB in size and hence could take 30s on a dial-up line.)

Three Pieces

Three hitherto unpublished essays by Harry Carter

During their researches on Harry Carter's life and work, the authors of Harry Carter, Typographer came across about 150pp of typescript material that he had drafted towards a second volume of his history of Oxford University Press. Unfortunately, that volume was never to see the light of day, but we have taken the opportunity to publish two of the essays in that typescript. The first, Bradley’s Observations, describes (in Carter’s words) ‘the worst dereliction of duty in the history of the Press’ and is fascinatingly tied up with the £20,000 prize offered under the Longitude Act of 1714 for an accurate way of determining longitude. The second, Thomas Bensley as a Partner, is a tale of fraud and deception at the Press.

In August 1932, Carter sent an essay on the influence of John Baskerville on type design to Jan van Krimpen for inclusion in the first issue of a proposed successor to The Fleuron, but that also never came to fruition. Carter's essay on this most influential of English type designers - whose tercentenary is in 2006 - makes the third item in this volume of his work.

We originally published these three essays as an extra volume in the de luxe copies of Harry Carter, Typographer, but it was evident from the speed with which those sold out that there would be a demand for the essays on their own so we have run on a small edition.

The text is printed in 12D/15 Romulus on a hand-made Van Gelder paper. (I rescued this paper from the defunct print-shop of the Carthusian monastery at Parkminster in Sussex. The ream had a single worm-hole running through it and some copies have this hole as a feature on one or more pages, though mostly in the margin or gutter. I think it adds a touch of romance to the book.) Case-bound in green cloth with a label on the front-board. The title page carries a photograph of Carter. 28pp. There were eighty copies of which about fifty were for sale at £35 (E65, US$70). These are all sold but I have a few copies that were 'overs' from the de luxe edition of Harry Carter, Typographer. They are exactly the same but are out of series (ie not numbered) and have a redundant pocket in the back of the binding. I am selling these for £20 each (E30, US$40). (ISBN 978 1 899933 20 4)

Blue Lagoon

A portrait of Venice in cyanotypes

The traditional media that accompany letterpress include wood-engraving, copper-engraving, pochoir and line blocks. I had wanted to try combining the tonal range of the photographic emulsion with the binary tones of ink on paper, but had been put off by the fact that most photographic printing papers seemed a world away from letterpress printing papers, and a mixture of the two felt to me to be an uncomfortable combination.

Until, that is, I remembered having experimented successfully with a photographic printing method called cyanotyping. This involves preparing a rather lethal-sounding emulsion and coating a suitable paper with it. 'Suitable' here means almost any paper that one might consider using for letterpress. The paper is then dried and used immediately by contact printing with the negative. Unused emulsion is washed out, the print dried and – hey presto – one has a print with full tonal range in a splendid blue. I have a large field camera that takes a 10in by 8in negative, and so the idea was born of combining a group of large cyanotypes with texts set in large typefaces. The precise format is not yet finalised, though it is likely to be quite big and in a landscape format, and I anticipate using six to eight images to illustrate texts with the Venetian landscape as its theme. I shall issue a separate prospectus for this item when details and prices are clearer. Please let me know if you would like details then - you can use our contact form via the 'contact' button on the left.

Fedor Tiutchev

A Russian poet and a Russian illustrator

Poetry has a natural attraction for the private press. There is the opportunity for special treatment of the text, without the sheer quantity of printing necessary to put, say, a 150pp book through the press. Since we acquired our Western proof press a few years ago, longer texts have become more practical propositions, but it is pleasing to drop a 'slim volume' into our production schedule to leaven the fare, especially when it comes with some strong engravings.

Fedor Tiutchev (18031873) published poems off and on from 1829, notably between 1836 and 1840 in Pushkin's journal The Contemporary, but he belonged to no poetic group and attached little value to his own verses and none to their publication. Only two books of lyric poetry appeared during his lifetime. apparently thanks entirely to the good offices of his friends including Turgenev. Avril Pyman has prepared translations for fourteen of Tiutchev's poems. Of Tiutchev and his work, she writes 'He was influenced in youth by the Latin poets, and by Pascal and Lamartine, but later by Goethe, Schiller, and Heine. Yet it is perhaps to Tiutchev's years of semi-retirement on his estate near Moscow and to his love for Elena Deniseva who bore him three children, that we owe many of the most inspired poems. In his work, religious impulse alternates with nihilism, veneration for ensouled nature with awful glimpses of the void, and a sensual love of cosmic order with intense, self-destructive attunement to the fascination of 'ancient chaos'. Always sonorous, his language is never artificial or pompous, his poetry conveying fleeting but profound existential insights.'

Tiutchev's poems are accompanied by strikingly cut engravings on perspex by Kirill Sokolov. He was born in Moscow in 1930 and worked and exhibited primarily as an illustrator, engraver and lithographer until he and Avril left Russia. In England, he illustrated two Russian classics for Oxford University Press and several books of poetry, made a series of cover designs for the poetry magazine Stand, and exhibited with the Society of Graphic Artists and Society of Miniaturists. He worked in a wide range of materials and in the 1980s experimented with various techniques: silk-screen, sugar aquatint, dry point, various forms of flat-bed printing, and engraving on plastic blocks, the last of these for a series of engravings for Akhmatova's Requiem (Black Cygnet Press). Sadly, Kirill died in May 2004.

For this rare presentation of Tiutchev in English, the poems have been printed in hand-set 14pt Monotype Octavian on a large page of heavy Somerset mould-made paper, folded on the fore-edge, wrapped in covers of green Fabriano Tiziano, and sewn with tape. There are 100 copies of which sixty are for sale. The price is a very modest £20 (€40, US$40). (ISBN 978 1 899933 16 7)

The Stuff of Jane Austen

Extracts from the novels and letters of Jane Austen around the topic of 'stuff'

The second book from the Press was a collection of extracts from Jane Austen's novels and letters on the theme of 'fruit'. It was a nice opportunity to commission some delightful small wood-engravings from Simon Brett.

This new book takes as its theme the dress of her time, in particular the many different fabrics that were used for different items of clothing. In her book Jane Austen Fashion, Penelope Byrde lists twenty-seven different ones, and we plan to feature each as many as we can with an extract and a sample of the fabric concerned.

Plans will develop, but I am currently planning to use our 14pt Caslon (as for the Fruits of Jane Austen). We also have a number of hand-made papers which we've purchased over the years in anticipation of the right project. One such tranche is about 800 half-sheets of an Amalfi hand-made which came from Christopher Skelton's September Press. It's a paper with a wonderful crackle, quite hard, but which I think will make a nice match for the Caslon when printed damp. And of course it will be very tempting to use a nice silk for the binding. The next thing is to track down sources of as many of the fabric types as we can and think about how they can be worked into the book. Whatever happens, I'm sure it will be fun, especially for Austen lovers. I'm anticipating an edition of no more than 100 copies.  

If you want to express an early interest in this, please let us know via our contact form using the 'contact' button on the left. As details appear they will be circulated in our occasional e-newsletter which (if you aren't on the list already) you can also request via the contact form.

tokonoma

Twenty haiku and tanka by James Kirkup with wood cuts by Naoko Matsubara

For something rather different, the Press collaborated with Canadian artist Naoko Matsubara in the making of an editioned piece that presents a collection of twenty haiku and tanka by James Kirkup, whose collection of poems Figures in a Setting we published in 1996. Each verse has been printed letterpress in large foundry Perpetua on a sheet of Japanese hand-made paper specially made by Masao Seki and accompanied by a striking woodcut by Naoko Matsubara. The images have been printed in one, two, or five colours by Alan Flint in Canada under Naoko Matsubara's supervision.
In issue 5 of Parenthesis, Reiko Yamanouchi wrote 'The result is brilliant and beautiful, deeply satisfying to the senses. Martyn Ould is to be congratulated for having published . . . such a sumptuous work, embodying the best of handwork and a perfect harmony of art and poetry, and also presenting a world in which European and Japanese cultures are subtly and happily merged.'

The verses are complemented by a short essay on the writing of haiku and tanka by James Kirkup and on the concept of tokonoma itself. A tokonoma is an alcove in the home in which, for instance, a picture or scroll can be placed for meditation. To achieve the desired effect, the sheets are housed in a box constructed to allow one verse at a time to be displayed, much as one might display a photograph or favourite picture. The twenty-five sheets (each about 33cm by 26cm) are held in a tray covered in black cloth with a perspex lid. The back of the tray allows it to stand so that the top sheet is displayed. A slip case protects the whole. This hybrid of book and picture means that the poetry and pictures need never be fully hidden as they would be in the pages of a shelved book, but can be changed with time or whim. Every copy is signed by the four collaborators.

There is an edition of 105 copies of which 85 are for sale. Price is £490 for mailing to a UK address, €850 to an address in the Eurozone, Can$1,200 to a Canada address, and US$900 to elsewhere in the world. Postage, packing & insurance are included. (Please call for trade terms.) (ISBN 978 1 899933 05 1)

A four-page prospectus with reduced, colour reproductions of two of the sheets is available on request : just fill in our contact form using the 'contact' button on the left.

TankAlphabet

An alphabet book of tanka by James Kirkup

In 1924, the bookseller-editor René Hilsum commissioned the great poet Paul Valéry to write twenty-four prose poems to accompany lettrines (ornamental capitals). The letters K and W which are rare in French were omitted. The series, representing the twenty-four hours of the day, were engraved by Louis Jou. Valéry published a few of these alphabet poems, but the collection itself remained unfinished and unedited.

Drawing on the archives of Valériana in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, Michel Jarrety established an edition under the title Alphabet, published in 1999. For certain letters, more than one prose poem was composed, some of them accompanied by the poet's own delicate watercolours. James Kirkup has been inspired by this unique literary/ typographical concept to compose a tanka sequence, twenty-nine in all, on the letters of the alphabet. The use of the 31-syllable Japanese tanka form in 5-line stanzas gives the concept a unity somewhat lacking in Valéry's interpretation.

Kirkup's delightful and poised verses are printed in Monotype Fournier Molé Foliate initials on a stock of Renage près Rives hand-made paper originally bought by the Carthusian Monastery at Parkminster, Sussex. The verses and introduction are printed on five half sheets of the Rives, and each half-sheet is folded to form four horizontal panels, the folded sheets then being wrapped in a cover of heavy hand-made paper from the Larroque mill in a delicious blue-green and tied with a ribbon. There are 190 copies. (£15, €30, US$30) (ISBN 978 1 899933 09 9)

De Sitv Dvnelmi – On Durham

The last poem in Old English, translated and introduced by David Crane, with a nineteenth century wood-engraving

The last extant poem in the Anglo-Saxon poetic tradition is The Old English Durham Poem. It tells of the site in the North of England on which the city has been built and the relics of the saints assembled there. David Crane has provided an introduction to his new translation of the poem, a translation that matches the metrical structure and alliteration of the original. It is printed in hand-set Stephenson Blake Caslon Old Face (including the 10, 12, 14, 18, 22 and 30pt) on Zerkall mould-made paper, and sewn into a wrapper of heavy, hammered Zerkall.

The trade edition of about 250 copies (ISBN 978 1 899933 02 0) has 12pp and is available at £6 (€10, US$10). A nineteenth century wood-engraving, found in the stock of a Durham printer, has been printed from the wood. An ordinary edition of about 50 copies (ISBN 978 1 899933 03 7) also contains an additional line drawing by Wendy Batt of an interior from Durham Cathedral and an additional wrapper of kozo handmade paper, £18 (€35, US$35). Sheets of the ordinary in a slightly different collation of two gatherings of three sheets each are available for binders for £10 (€20, US$20).

The Phoenix

A translation by Eddie Flintoff, from the Latin of Lactantius, with pochoir by Peter Allen

When he sent me the manuscript for Punting to Islip which I published in 1994, Eddie Flintoff enclosed his translation – the first for almost a century – of the poem De Ave Phoenice by Lactantius. The Phoenix is an early indicator of the kind of religious revolution that was going on in the time of Constantine, the very era that saw Christianity's ascent as a major world religion. Roman religious feeling was searching its way towards a philosophical reinterpretation of the old myths and legends, hoping to stabilise ancestral ways of thought that were looking increasingly threadbare, by reinterpreting them as moral allegories.

Lactantius was an early Christian theologian and professional rhetor, who attempted to align Christian symbolic teaching with aspects of the old culture, claiming that the church would be the inheritor of the best of classical culture. His claim that Christianity was the true heir of Roman civilised ideals must have seemed no more than bare-faced cheek in the fourth century when he was writing. He offers the symbol of the Phoenix and its mythical rebirth from the ashes of its own death as a symbol of Christ – and thereby as a symbol of the soul's rebirth into immortality.

The poem is vivid and colourful and provides a splendid opportunity to bring together a number of media – and contributors – in presenting Eddie's translation. Calligrapher Alun Briggs has written the text in a hand based on a mid fifth-century Italian manuscript, and it is from blocks made from his writing that the text has been printed. The poem demands coloured illustrations and Peter Allen has designed and pochoired five very striking three-colour full-page illustrations to accompany the text. Finally, to provide context to the poem, its subject matter, and its author, Dr John McGuckin, Reader in Patristic and Byzantine Theology at the University of Leeds, has provided a new introductory essay. The Press is following a long tradition: Aldus's heirs published a Lactantius edition including De Ave Phoenicein 1535, as did Claude Garamont in 1545.

The edition consists of 150 copies. 135 copies have been bound in full black cloth by The Fine Bindery, and a further fifteen sets of sheets were reserved for binders (all sold). The standard edition of the book is 213mm by 240mm on Zerkall mould-made paper. The introductory essay is printed in 12pt Monotype Perpetua italic, and supporting material in foundry Perpetua italic. 37pp. Ordinaries (ISBN 978 0 9522335 6 5) £63 (€110, US$110).

The twenty-five de luxe copies have all been sold; they had a gilt top edge and end-papers of the beautiful Vega Blanc hand-made paper from the Larroque mill, a white paper with gold flecks; each de luxe copy also contained a portfolio of the pochoir illustrations signed by Peter Allen held in a folder of Vega Blanc, all contained in a slipcase.

Six Contemporary British Poets

A series of collections of new work by British poets

To provide a focus for its work in printing poetry, The Old School Press is publishing a series of six books, each consisting of new work by a contemporary British poet, accompanied by illustrations by British artists. The first five are now ready.

If you would like to take all six titles please let me know. 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 six 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. If you buy a copy of the entire series, I will send a slipcase for the set with my compliments when the final item is published.

Antigone

A narrative poem by Desmond Post, with wood cuts by Inger Lawrance

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.'

In asking Inger Lawrance to provide five of her striking wood cuts (cut on cherry wood), I think I have found a complementary visual voice about which the words 'spare' and 'acute' can also be used. I first came across her work in illustrations for The Old Stile Press and she publishes in her own right at The Windmill Hole Studio. 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 but are now out of print. A few bound copies remain. £42 (€75, US$75). 30pp.(ISBN 978 0 9522335 8 9)

Figures in a Setting

A collection of six poems by James Kirkup, with line drawings by John Watts

James Kirkup is well known as a poet and translator, and he has also published three novels, six volumes of autobiography, plays and essays. He has been published in particular by the Sceptre Press, Rockingham Press, Hub Editions, and the University of Salzburg Press. His work appears in various magazines in Britain, Japan, France and the USA, and he is a frequent obituarist for The Independent newspaper in the UK. A substantial new collection of poems, The Patient Obituarist, has just been completed. The University of Salzburg Press is currently issuing his poetry in six volumes, and two anthologies of translations.

In this collection, I have printed six new poems on the theme of the figure, giving an opportunity of combining each with a full-page line drawing, commissioned from John Watts and reproduced by line block. The text is set in 14pt Centaur italic. The edition is 185 copies signed by poet and artist, priced at £42 (€75, US$75) per copy. A further thirty sets of sheets were available for binders but are now all sold. (ISBN 978 1 899933 01 3). 24pp.

Chesil Beach

A poem by David Burnett, with a wood-engraving by Christopher Wormell

Number three in the Poetry Series contains a single poem by David Burnett, whose collection Twelve Poems the press published in 1994. The poem is accompanied by a fine new wood engraving of Chesil Beach commissioned by David Burnett from Christopher Wormell. The text is set in hand-set Stephenson Blake's Caslon Old Face in a variety of sizes, with the poem in 18pt. The edition is of 215 copies, all signed by poet and artist. £24 (€45, US$50) (Sets of sheets have all been sold.) (ISBN 978 1 899933 00 6)

As part of a collaboration with binder Owen Bradford, six students at Newcastle University were each given two sets of sheets of Chesil Beach to bind, one set for themselves and one set for The Old School Press. Some of the students' work can be viewed at the site for the Gallery of Bookbinding in the North East. This is the second time the Press has had this arrangement and the results have been splendid.

Lowlands Away

An oratorio in ten parts by Adrian Henri with pastel images by Adrian Henri

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 before his death at the beginning of this year. The new 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. 410 copies are bound by Rachel and Richard James at Bristol Bound, and forty sets of sheets are reserved for binders in three sections. £64 (€110, US$105) for bound copies, £45 (€80, US$80) for sets of sheets. A single-sheet announcement is available on request: just send us your name and postal address to ask for one, via our contact form using the 'contact' button on the left (ISBN 978 1 899933 12 9)

Each of the eight illustrations from the book is also available in the form of editioned prints. The Senecio Press are printing fifty copies of each with the latest in fine art ink-jet printers, using archival inks on 330gsm Somerset paper. Copies are available unframed at £90 (€145, US$150) each, plus P&P at cost. The sheet size is 500mm by 400mm. We have been amazed by the quality of these prints: the rendering of the pastels is so good that one is afraid of smudging the image!

A Long Story

A four-part poem by Andrew Motion, with wood-engravings by Simon Brett

For the fifth title in our series of the work of contemporary British poets, we are fortunate to have the opportunity of printing an extended four-part poem by the Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion.

Writing of his work, Motion says 'A Long Story assembled itself over several years into a loose sequence of four sections, none of them rhymed, and all are written in a very loose, rambling rhythm. I began with the wish to identify certain memories in my childhood which I've always considered to be 'spots of time' - ie, moments which have a self-contained interest and drama - and ended up with scenes which anticipate (even predict) certain moods and attitudes I have as an adult.'

To complement Motion's narrative style, we have turned once more to leading wood-engraver Simon Brett, whose ability to tell a story in a single sinewy image we greatly admire, and who has cut four wood-engravings for the book.

The text was hand-set in 14pt Fournier italic and printed on 170gsm Magnani mould-made paper. The book follows the series binding style: quarter-bound with yellow cloth on the spine, this time with a rich dark green hand-made paper from the Larroque mill covering the boards, black Canson end-papers, and the title embossed in gold on the front cover. Rachel and Richard James at Bristol Bound have bound 210 bound copies, and twenty sets of sheets are reserved for binders. All copies are signed by poet and artist. 44pp. A single-sheet announcement is available on request: just send us your name and postal address to ask for one, via our contact form using the 'contact' button on the left.

The price is £72 (€125, US$130) for bound copies and £45 (€80, US$85) for sheets. (ISBN 978 1 899933 14 3)