News & Work in Progress

A Flowery Mead

A Flowery Mead

Our mower is bust at the moment! I hate to imagine how Autumn will bring sharp brambles to our upstairs windows as we two Sleeping Beauties are finally lost to the jungle all around . . . but, for the moment, the Spring has great charms to offer. Lady's Smock and...

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Nd’A and God

Nd’A and God

We were unable to get to this launch, sadly, but I take this opportunity to urge anyone who has not yet seen this wonderful book to mend the situation asap! Natalie d'Arbeloff's enterprise with The Old Stile Press has been mentioned on this Blog, together with images...

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Only there for a moment . . .

This photograph happens to bring together a number of things I like . . . especially paintings and photography and light and theatricality and recognizing that I must rush to do something (eg get my camera) NOW, or a moment will be lost for ever. A painting by Michael...

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Welcome Blessed Spring.

As I was clicking the buttons for the greeting below, I suddenly remembered a similar year whose winter had (for me) not been up to much and the fact that I had produced the above as an act of rejoicement . . . using some wood letter that I had unearthed and as a...

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An image for Good Friday

An image for Good Friday

We have not been church-goers for many years but early memories are very powerful and the richness of Christian iconography, architecture, church music, painting and so on is extremely powerful. Of the piles of CDs in my printing office (see earlier photograph!) a...

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Welcome Blessed Spring.

Welcome Blessed Spring.

As I was clicking the buttons for the greeting below, I suddenly remembered a similar year whose winter had (for me) not been up to much and the fact that I had produced the above as an act of rejoicement . . . using some wood letter that I had unearthed and as a...

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Mozart and the Stone

Click to Play This is a first experiment - after ages of frustration as described below!If you go here, you can see it full-screen which is much better but you have to let it load sufficiently otherwise it stutters and breaks up. With grateful acknowledgement and...

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April Moon’s Fool

April Moon’s Fool

Someone told me that, if you cut a round hole in some blue-black material, draw a bit of a horizon line on it and put it up behind something in the foreground like a tree, it would photograph just like a full-moon coming up. Well, I tried and tried and got nowhere...

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a day or two at the seaside . . .

a day or two at the seaside . . .

We popped down to our favourite part of Pembrokeshire at the beginning of this week. Partly business of a sort but we did get down to the sea . . . and enjoyed some unexpectedly glorious sun. I really DO love just walking and looking but I cannot resist searching for...

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p.s. to the flood

p.s. to the flood

Knowing, as I do, that half the world is agog to discover every feature and happening of 'our' river, I felt that I must waste a moment of your time with the following! This photograph, and the one below, have little point without my stating 1: this dead tree is so...

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In the Printing Office . . .

In the Printing Office . . .

. . . things are beginning to bubble up nicely! At the beginning of work on any book it seems that weeks if not months of solid work go by and nothing seems to have been achieved. I print text on one side of a sheet but I know that that sheet must have text on the...

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Harry Brockway: Sculptor & Wood Engraver

Harry Brockway: Sculptor & Wood Engraver

As a recent visit here allowed me to take a photograph of our long-standing friend, Harry Brockway, I thought I would embarrass him by putting up a selection of lovely things that he has done for and with us over the years. When you see examples of his work in his two...

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It’s been raining a bit in Wales . . .

It’s been raining a bit in Wales . . .

. . . so we're a little flooded. Happens each year (more with global warming, no doubt!) and does not matter to us for the good old builders of our house built it safely up the side of the valley rather than in the flood plain which seems to have been the fashion...

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Back from San Francisco!

Back from San Francisco!

Hi! This is Frances, for a change. You might get the idea from all the swans and sheep that life is rural and gentle at The Old Stile Press. However, this last month has been hectic and full of contrasts for me. First, the Works on Paper Fair at the Royal Academy...

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How I wish this book was one of ours! . . . 3

How I wish this book was one of ours! . . . 3

This is one of the most entrancing books I have ever held in my hands. I put it like that because it is really is delicious to hold. It is smallish, as my comparison shows, but is by no means a miniature. It also delights in the tall format that has been a great...

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Off she goes again!

Off she goes again!

As I write this, Frances is preparing to fly off to San Francisco. Indeed I am typing this so as not to get in her way for it is past the point where I can help. It is just a touch unkind of Fate that, on the one day we have to leave the house in the middle of the...

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Jolly funny sheep!

Jolly funny sheep!

Such a lovely morning here . . . I thought it would be fun to take a photograph (to be entitled "Sheep and swans may safely graze") to point out the contrast between what I am doing and what dear, wonderful Frances is doing on her trip to London and the Royal Academy...

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Artists’ Books at prestigious Art Fair in London.

Artists’ Books at prestigious Art Fair in London.

Covered! is the title given to an exciting new addition to the Watercolour and Drawings Fair at the Royal Academy of Arts, 6 Burlington Gardens on 1 - 4 February. It is part of the Modern Works on Paper section which fills the ground floor with prints, photographs and...

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What’s on the press at the moment?

Black Marigolds by Powys Mathers is an amazingly sensuous poem of love remembered and yearned for. The original was written by Chauras, a young Brahman poet, about nineteen hundred years ago but it was in 1915 (while in wartime 'hutments' on Salisbury Plain) that...

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What’s on the press at the moment?

What’s on the press at the moment?

Black Marigolds by Powys Mathers is an amazingly sensuous poem of love remembered and yearned for. The original was written by Chauras, a young Brahman poet, about nineteen hundred years ago but it was in 1915 (while in wartime 'hutments' on Salisbury Plain) that...

read more
Charles Shearer

Charles Shearer

We went to our friend Charles Shearer's most recent exhibition (at the Galanthus Gallery in Wormbridge, Hereford, UK) armed with my trusty camera but unfortunately without checking its battery. It succeeded in taking the striking, if surprising, image above - among a...

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. . . for Books that Never Were

. . . for Books that Never Were

We have been very pleased to read an article about our activities in the January 2007 issue of The World of Interiors, by Bridget Bodoano, which incorporates a kind review of this book. Among Nicolas and Frances’s artist friends was Bert Isaac, who, as a contemporary...

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Welcome!

This post is directed particularly at anyone who may have received a Christmas Card from us with a little note attached and felt constrained to drop everything to find us here! You are very welcome and here to greet you is a little poetic license! With the weather...

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Welcome!

Welcome!

This post is directed particularly at anyone who may have received a Christmas Card from us with a little note attached and felt constrained to drop everything to find us here! You are very welcome and here to greet you is a little poetic license! With the weather...

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How I wish this book was one of ours! . . . 2

How I wish this book was one of ours! . . . 2

Natalie d'Arbeloff is a one-off if ever we've met one! For decades she has been lauded as one of the most interesting of those artists who choose to express themselves by creating unique or tiny edition books. This is one of the former. Its title Dream and Variations...

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Christmas Cards 2

Christmas Cards 2

For the Christmas after our great friend and guru, Robin Tanner, died, I made a card by 'pasting-up' various of the delicious decorative elements he had added to an earlier Christmas letter. A second 'Robin Tanner' created card was made for Christmas 2004 associated...

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