ABCD July 2022
Eight members of Artists’ Book Club Dove met in the print studio on Saturday.
Janine brought her beautiful and very tactile triptych “Sanctuary”: collage and machine-embroidery on green silk. Front and back views:
Jane has been to the Henry Moore exhibition at Hauser and Wirth. She brought a weighty and beautifully-produced book “Back to a Land” about Moore’s work in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
I (Ama) have now finished my hand-written Khadi paper book of Graeme Ryan’s poem “O”. The individual pages are pamphlet-stitched onto the mountain folds of an accordion fold, the outer ends of which form the covers. Then I sewed the spine with indigo-dyed thread using the 2-needle Coptic method. All the colours are derived from plants. The black walnut ink was made by a friend. Closed, the book measures roughly 15x21x2.5cm.
Here are my latest small editions (of 26 and 50 respectively), both of them graced by the lettering of John Rowlands-Pritchard. One is an elegy, the other a response to The Waste Land in its centenary year.
Thalia has been inspired by a recent visit to Iceland. She’s begun by sketching on a folded strip of paper.
Judy has made several books. Here are two blank hard-cover books, one with a buttonhole binding and marbled paper on the cover, the other with mokuhanga prints covering the boards, and an interesting rune-like pattern of stitching on the spine.
Here is an ingenious small book that Judy made on a course with Ewan Clayton. Do have a look at his website.
Judy’s intricately folded sculptural book, “Glimpses of the Sea”, using mokuhanga prints, with folding techniques taught by Guy Begbie.
This mokuhanga print by Judy now hangs on my studio wall and reminds me strongly of a sailing trip with daughter Mary in the Hebrides in 2019. Thank you, Judy!
Here is Bron‘s latest fold-book using methods of obtaining blue from red cotinus leaves, learnt from Elisabeth Viguie-Culshaw. Another website well worth a look.
Bron writes “I’ve been asked to produce a 3 part work for an exhibition of exquisite corpse – or picture consequences as I call it. So here is the Cotinus bird with Malvolio yellow stockings of bamboo (very sustainable.)”
Clare has been doing more knitting than book-making. All of us wanted to stroke this gorgeous jumper made from a mixture of Jamieson’s wool from Shetland, and Jillybean yarns.
Carol was unable to be with us, but she has sent photos of her very exciting work-in-progress, a book of alchemical birds.
We had our picnic lunch in the new field-shelter in the Tree-house corner of Dove Meadow. A place of dreams! Jane’s summer pudding was irresistible. The resident wasps enjoyed licking our plates clean.
Our next meeting will be some time in October. But before then some of us will be exhibiting in the print studio for Somerset Art Weeks on the themes of Sanctuary and Alchemy. I’ll end, as usual, with a selection from my notes:
July Dove-droppings
if you wait long enough it sinks
pressing bones into clay
starting with the word
Kimmeridge Bay is like another planet
a silk sanctuary
a handwritten book
I went to Iceland
it’s a little beginning
a different landscape
a brand new island
shapes reappearing
as if they are moving
an iron blanket
yes but no
it wouldn’t fit in the box
meadowsweet yellow
a yarn made from seaweed
to find the way back
the deer ate my roses
let’s go down to the trees
I know you all by your trees
coming up through the cracks
the first wasp of summer
think how big a wasp’s mouth is
on the equinox
the alchemy of
canoeing in North Saskatchewan
each page talks to the next
the blueness
sinking back into the landscape
If you’ve read this far, congratulations! And thanks for reading.
barleybooks 
Very rich pickings this month from the Dove’s beak.
I especially liked ‘Glimpses of the sea’ for the subject-matter, the print (I’ll look up mokuhanga) the folding and the assymetric shape of the ‘book’.
And sister Clare’s jumper of course – how diverse are her creative skills!
x Pat
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Thanks, Tricia!