The Book of the Erinyes

Work on the letterpress side of the Book of the Erinyes is on temporary hiatus while I wait for the letterpress facilities of Brighton Independent Printmaking to re-open as Ink Spot Press in June. I’ve got 9 of the 13 chapters printed, so it shouldn’t take too long to finish them off when the facilities reopen.

In the meantime I’ve been planning out more lino prints (while simultaneously making some tentative moves to arrange the photoshoots with the two volunteers who are modelling for furies Alecto and Megaera).

This unavoidable period of inactivity has given me an opportunity to start thinking about what to do after the Book of the Erinyes is finished later this year. This Book has been a mammoth project that was conceived in 2007 and started in 2008. Three years later it’s still occupying all my creative time.

So I suspect my next few projects will be much smaller in scale — or at least achievable in a timescale measurable in weeks or months rather than years!

I was lucky enough to be on a business trip to New York again last week, and I so had the opportunity to visit the Center for Book Arts.

The Center is a great resource — they have a decent-sized Letterpress studio with several proof presses, an equally well-resourced Bindery area, an exhibition space (illustrated here in a photo from their website), and enough space left over for a small shop selling hand-bound chapbooks, broadsides, and exhibition catalogues.

But the main purpose of my visit was to see The Collaged Accordion — an exhibition of Star Black’s large-scale accordion books that merge found texts & photographs and ephemera.

Star’s  collaged accordion books are intricately layered with a fine sense of texture and the individual properties of the found images and materials. They combine echoes of Joseph Cornell’s boxes with a sensibility for the subtler textures and possibilities of paper.

I wish I could have spent a lot longer at the Center, but unfortunately I had to fly back to the UK that same day and had far too much to do.

If you get the chance to go to New York then the Center is definitely worth visiting.

Center for Book Arts: main website | Blog | Facebook Page | Twitter | Flickr | YouTube

Just a quick post to let you all know that I’ve been doing a few new lino prints and my first ever woodcut for the Book of the Erinyes.

Click on the thumbnails for larger images and to leave comments:

In early January I’m planning to print a number of Broadsides as related side-projects of the Book of the Erinyes.

As well as being appropriate to the whole atmosphere of the artwork, I’m also drawn to the often scurrilous history of Broadsides, from the 16^th century to the mid-19^th century. Their ephemeral nature—and the fact that they have been marginalised by some as “low” culture—means that we know far less about them than we should.

Anyway, I thought some of you might also be interested in what I’ve managed to discover:

Broadsides—sometimes called Broadsheets—are large sheets of paper printed on one side only, designed to be pasted onto public house walls or sold by street-vendors (traditionally for one penny).  They ranged from 13″ × 16″ (“foolscap” size) to over 5 feet in length.

They were the medium of choice for street literature from the 16^th century to the 19^th century, and were probably the very first “mass-media”. They fell out of use when Newspapers dropped in price enough to be affordable by common people.

According to the National Library of Scotland:

For almost 300 years until the mid-19^th century, broadsides filled the place occupied today by the tabloid press.

Originally they were single sheets of paper, printed on one side only, designed to be read unfolded and posted up in public places.

At first they were used for the printing of royal proclamations, acts, and official notices. Later they became a vehicle for political agitation and what is now known as ‘popular culture’, such as ballads and scaffold speeches.

Ballads were a popular subject for broadsides (and seem to be the most documented subject), but they covered a wider variety of material including:

• political comment & satire
• advertisements for merchandise
• news (frequently macabre) and recent history
• almanacs (annually-published tables of information about particular dates in the year)
• elegies
• poems

…often crudely illustrated with woodcuts (and later with engravings).

In her book A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720, Barbara J. Shapiro confirms the appetite for the macabre and sensational in the Broadsides:

…broadsides tended to report the unusual, the “monstrous,” and the sensational.  Strange animals, unusual weather, “monstrous” human or animal births, criminal behavior, or accounts of witchcraft were among the most common items of broadside “news” hawked on the streets of London.  Like the modern tabloid, these broadsides emphasized crime, violence, and wonderful cures. The sensational or “strange but true” were staples of broadside news and newsbooks.

In Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England, Douglas A. Brooks states:

For a penny, customers could purchase a religious primer, an account of the King of Scotland’s murder, a prayer for Queen Elizabeth, a description of a town-leveling fire, an epitaph of a London alderman, the complaint of a sinner, the ‘fantasies of a troubled man’s head’, or a political ‘flyting’ of a disgraced courtier—all inscribed in ballad verse and printed on a single sheet of paper.

The use of broadsides for advertising merchandise seems to have started with publishers printing broadsides listing their books.

I haven’t managed to find much information about advertising broadsides until the mid 19^th century. There exist quite a few collections of American advertising broadsides from the 1840s onwards — the Duke University collection (link below) is a good example.

I am presuming that this apparent lack of advertising broadsides until the mid 19^th century is actually because these items have not been preserved.

While Ballad Broadsides have long been collected—diarist Samuel Pepys collected over 1800 of them!—I suspect that advertising broadsides were considered as disposable as the many cheaply-printed flyers for double-glazing or takeaway food that are posted through my letterbox every day.

However if anyone does have any scans of, or information about, advertising broadsides from the 17^th or 18^th centuries then do please let me know.

Bibliography & Links

Related Books:

• Preston, Cathy L., and Preston, Michael J. (Editors). The Other Print Tradition: Essays on Chapbooks, Broadsides, and Related Ephemera. London: Routledge, 1995. Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk
• Shepard, Leslie. History of Street Literature: The Story of Broadside Ballads, Chapbooks, Proclamations, News-sheets, Election Bills, Tracts, Pamphlets, Cocks, Catchpennies and Other Ephemera.  Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1973.  Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Websites:

• The history of the broadside. From The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes, Volume 7 — Cavalier and Puritan, XVI. The Advent of Modern Thought in Popular Literature.
• The Word on the Street — Broadsides at the National Library of Scotland
• Broadsides (Special Collections, University of Glasgow)
• An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera (Rare Book and Special Collections Division, US Library of Congress)
• American Advertising Broadsides — from Duke University’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library
• Broadsides from the Colonial Era to the Present at the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina Thomas Cooper Library’s Digital Collections

As I’ve been working on The Book of the Erinyes I’ve been trying to work out who it’s likely to appeal to.

The problem is that it doesn’t fit comfortably in any one area. It sits between art and craft, between bookbinding and book art, between mainstream and underground. It’s art made in the interstices.

Personally I find interstitial art to be more interesting, but as an artist it makes it very hard to find existing markets in which to promote it.

When you’re trying to sell or promote artwork (or indeed anything) the first thing you need to understand is your potential audience, because this usually dictates how and where you market your artwork. There are many existing routes you can use if your work fits neatly into a genre or discipline, but if your work floats between established definitions then it’s far more difficult.

This chain of thought led me to the Interstitial Arts Foundation, which was founded by a group of literary, visual, musical, and performance artists for the purpose of developing and promoting interstitial art. There’s quite a lot to digest on their website, and I’ve only read a fraction of it so far, but I recommend it as a very interesting collection of ideas.

However I’m still left with the problem of how to get The Book of the Erinyes “out there” — how to raise awareness of it so that I can sell some copies of the limited edition handmade book and of the various other related artwork (I’m planning an unlimited paperback print-on-demand version, and various limited edition postcards, not to mention a free ebook version).

My personal view (and, please, if you have a different view, leave me a comment below) is that The Book of the Erinyes might appeal to two key audiences:

1. Book Arts/Bookbinding Arts — a more traditional arts audience, albeit still in a grey area between the more fine-art area of Book Arts & Artist’s Books, and the more craft-orientated area of Bookbinding. And of course it also involves Letterpress printing, which is another separate area!
2. Arty & Weird — this is my working name for a sub-cultural strand that seems to cross various boundaries, but can be broadly defined as those people who have an interest in art combined with one or more of the following interests:
   • graphic novels (particularly those by people like Warren Ellis and Neil Gaiman, and the Hellblazer series),
   • goth or alternative music sub-culture,
   • films by David Lynch or Terry Gilliam,
   • books by the likes of Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, and Jeff VanderMeer.

   I promise I’ll try to think of a better name for this imperfectly-defined audience  — if one already exists please let me know!

So, having worked out who I think might be interested in The Book of the Erinyes I now have to find ways to reach them.

And this is where you, dear reader, come in. I’m soliciting suggestions and ideas as to how to reach my target audiences.  Please leave me a comment below if you have any ideas.

EDIT: Thanks to the Interstitial Arts Foundation for citing & discussing this post.

I’m making very good progress with the Letterpress part of the Book of the Erinyes at the moment — I’m managing to fit in 2 sessions of work at Brighton Independent Printmaking each week, and I’m really on a roll.

Proof prints for chapters 6 and 7 below (click through to see larger versions & leave comments):

I thought I’d share a very short video I put together from some clips of me printing out a page of the Book of the Erinyes.

At some point in the not-too-distant future I’ll put together something a bit better, but in the meantime:

Just a quick announcement that I’ve replaced the “Artwork” page on this site with a great little gallery script called Plogger. I’ve uploaded all the artwork so far, and will keep adding to it over the coming weeks.

Anyway, check out the new artwork pages and see what you think.

Yesterday I spent the day in London doing a whistle-stop tour of a few exhibitions as background research for the Book of the Erinyes.

Bookbinding at the V&A

First stop was the V&A in South Kensington to see a small display of Fine Bindings for the Man Booker Prize 2009 designed by the Society of Designer Bookbinders.

It’s only a small display (6 books) but it’s well worth seeing these bindings “in the flesh” as they’re great. The display can be found in Room 74 (20^th Century section) of the V&A until 21^st March 2010, and admission is free.

The binding illustrated here is by Rachel Ward-Sale. More information about all six bindings, their binders, and the techniques & materials used can be found on the Society of Designer Bookbinders website.

Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption

After the V&A I headed up to Soho to see Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption at the Lazarides Gallery in Greek Street — an exhibition of political comic book and graphic novel work by artists and writers including Dave McKean, Pat Mills, Peter Kuper, Janek Koza, Dan Goldman, and pop culture figures Lightspeed Champion and V V Brown.

I’m particularly fond of Dave McKean’s artwork—especially the magnificent Sandman covers—so it was great to see some of his larger-scale collages close-up.  His artwork on display was about the widespread corruption surrounding AIDS relief to villages in China.

Ctrl.Alt.Shift Unmasks Corruption is on until 28^th November 2009 at the Lazarides Gallery, Greek Street, London.  Admission is free.

I’ve been putting some hours into the Letterpress side of the Book of the Erinyes recently, and have made a fair bit of progress.

Yesterday evening I managed to print out the text for the first section (there’s only one page of text per section).

I’d spent an evening the previous week meticulously setting most of the type (shown inked up and sitting on the press, below), which just left me to finish it off this week and start printing.

After a handful of adjustments for typos or overly-worn letters I was lucky enough to get a decent print on the first real attempt.

In some ways it’s strange — I could type and print the text for this page on my computer in less than five minutes, so why spend six hours slowly picking each individual letter, arrangingthem, inking it up, running test prints…?

The answer is in the finished result.  If you’ve ever seen a piece of letterpress-printed type you’ll have noticed the way the metal letters slightly indent the paper and the shine of the oil-based ink (it sparkles just a bit when it catches the light).

The Book of the Erinyes is being printed on a heavy (220gm) cartridge paper, which is probably the thickest paper I can get away with putting through the press. The body text is 12pt Goudy Old Style, with larger sizes of the same font being used for headings.

The combination of letterpress printed type and a good quality paper makes the finished page really enjoyable to handle and hold.  I was thinking of scanning a copy, but a scan just can’t catch the tactile qualities of the paper or the look of oil-based ink sitting on the surface of it.