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A title from The Old School Press Figures in a Setting A collection of six
poems by James Kirkup, with line drawings by John Watts | |||||||
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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. James Kirkup is well known as a poet and translator, and he 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 appeared in various magazines in Britain, Japan, France and the USA, and he was a frequent obituarist for The Independent newspaper in the UK. We collaborated with Kirkup on two other books: tokonoma and TankAlphabet. Unfortunately we never met (he died in 2009) but correspondence with him was always a pleasure and one would receive a haiku or two occasionally in the post as well as a copy of a recent book. In this collection, I printed twelve previously unpublished poems on the theme of the figure, giving an opportunity of combining each with a full-page line drawing, commissioned from John Watts. There is now a website devoted to Kirkup's work. One of John Watts's images from the book
About the edition The text is set in 14pt Centaur italic. The line drawings were printed from line blocks. The edition is 185 bound copies signed by poet and artist, priced at £42 per copy. A further thirty sets of sheets were available for binders (all sold). 24pp. 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. The story David Burnett had written to me suggesting that I approach James Kirkup to see if he would offer some of his work. He sent a small batch of poems and I chose six that I felt would work as a set, and in particular as the second book in the Poetry Series. My first thoughts were about the choice of an artist, as I had already decided that line drawings would be right. I approached John Watts, suggesting to him something in the style of Richard Kennedy’s drawings for the Whittington Press Song of Songs. John, as I expected, came up with some fine interpretations, playing the Figures theme well. His drawing of Eliot and Woolf was, amazingly, done without seeing the photograph to which Kirkup was referring in the Vivienne at Rodmell poem. The poem’s text and John’s research were sufficient to recreate the scene from Vivienne’s eyes as she stood for the ‘snap’. I had wanted to do something in Centaur italic for some time and this set of poems seemed right. I fixed on the 14pt but too late in the day, after re-reading Pollard’s essay which Monotype used to display Centaur when it was first released by them, changed my mind to the 16pt which the display booklet praised for its value in printing poetry: Peter Sanderson at Whittington had already keyboarded the text. In the event it was probably the right size, as the 16pt would not have fitted so well on the page. When he sent his typescripts, Kirkup had signed the bottom of each sheet, and I found his signature pleasing, so it suggested to me that I should use it on the title page as a substitute for his name set in type. The idea went further and I asked him to write out the titles of all the poems, and I asked John Watts to provide me with his signature. The final element was the type for the book’s title. I had hoped to use the 60pt Centaur italic which looked so splendid in Simon Lawrence’s Baigneuses but time timed me out and, a lover of Gill Extra Bold, I decided it made a suitable display face (in the largest size I had) that complemented the Centaur and the writing on the title page. Some 8pt bold for the half-title finished the scheme. I chose a second colour for the drawings, a not entirely unconscious following of Song of Songs, and it worked. Some of the blocks were terrible to print as in a couple of cases the edges were just single lines, leaving me with difficult problems of roller pressure and ink squeeze, or, alternatively, weak inking. All the colophon sheets had to be freighted to Andorra and back, where Kirkup was living. Fortunately, they survived intact, despite being opened on the way out, presumably by suspicious customs official concerned at what these ‘printed papers’ might be printed with. Strangely, the parcel contained a pair of scissors on its return, presumably Kirkup’s. I have a major problem knowing how big an edition will actually turn out – there comes a moment when the colophon with its limitation has to be printed. I seemed to miscalculate, and although I thought I had managed 30 sets of sheets plus 185 bound copies and the two display copies, I found myself five copies short; a pair of sheets were clearly short on printing and perhaps it would be worth the effort of printing those four pages again to make up the edition, given that the type was still standing. Rachel James bound the edition in the yellow quarter cloth, this time using the gris Larroque paper, and tooled the title in gold down the front cover. Just before making arrangements with her for the binding it occurred to me that it would be wise to get her to buy the cloth for the entire Poetry Series just in case the supplier decided to withdraw it from their line. The same fear had led me earlier that year to buy from John Purcell, my usual supplier, stocks of the remaining Larroque colours. This was difficult as it meant deciding up front the size of each of the editions; nevertheless it seemed a sensible precaution as the unifying design theme of the Series would be lost if Larroque were to withdraw one or all of the colours. Unfortunately, I was too late with the binding cloth: the supplier had recently ‘rationalised’ his range and the yellow had been deleted! After looking at half a dozen other yellow cloths that Rachel James obtained, I chose a yellow buckram that, in its way, was better than the original – a more intense yellow, and perhaps a better cloth. My main concern of course was however that the series look was retained, so matching the cloth with that on Antigone was the most important consideration. Sufficient of the new cloth was then ordered for the entire Series! Of the 30 sets of sheets, twelve went to Sheffield University for a deal that I had struck with Owen Bradford, the Deputy Bindery Manager. There had been a discussion in the previous year on the Book Arts Internet mail group about the difficulty that students had in getting hold of real, i.e. new, sheets to bind at a reasonable price, in preference to disbinding old books in order to bind them anew. A correspondent suggested that an appropriate deal for a printer and students would be for the printer to supply each student with two sets of sheets; the student would bind both sets, keeping one binding for themselves and returning the other to the printer in exchange. Owen had replied that he would be interested in arranging such a deal, and when I was planning Figures I approached him (on e-mail of course) to follow up the idea. The deal was struck for six of his students, hence the twelve sets of sheets. The edition was of 215 (actually 210) copies. Copies 1-185 were quarter bound in yellow cloth, with Les Mouchetés de Pombié gris hand-made paper covering the boards, the title tooled in gold down the front cover. The text paper was 145gsm Zerkall mould-made, the end-papers Canson Mi Teintes black. The sheets for copies 186-215 were reserved for binders, with the Sheffield University students receiving the last 12 sets. Bound copies were £42, sheets £21. The book was on show at the August 30th 1996 Whittington Open Day in a trial binding, the main edition being bound over November and December by a pregnant Rachel James. | |||||||
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Find out about other titles in the series - click on the green blobs |
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