Fleece Press ~ England
(Simon Lawrence)

Bibliography of Fleece Press
Work regarding John Buckland Wright

Barnett Freedman: The graphic art
By Ian Rogerson
With an essay on Freedman as a master lithographer by Michael TwymanHuddersfield, England: 2006. Edition of 500.

9.5 x 12.9"; 254 pages. Set in Miller Display. Printed in Sheffield. Bound in full cloth. Paper used Monadnock Dulcet (an uncoated paper chosen to allow the grainy effects of Barnett Freedman's lithographic work to be shown to advantage). 85,000 words; 260 plates. Includes a DVD with a copy of the film The King's Stamp (a film made by William Coldstream which features Barnett designing his famous stamp). DVD housed inside the rear board.

Fleece Press: "Years in the planning, conception, and now approaching birth (September 2006) this first book on a major artist who died in 1958 is probably one of the most important the Press has tackled. Barnett Freedman was born in 1901 in the east end of London, to parents of Jewish-Russian origin, who had come to Britain in 1896 as political refugees. His childhood was punctuated by lengthy bedridden periods of illness but he later recovered enough to gain a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. Freedman endeavored to survive in the 1920s as a painter in oils but was forced by starvation to move into book illustration. Sassoon's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, 1930, gave him a direction which lasted throughout his career, and his numerous book jackets and illustrations, mostly executed by stone lithography, are highly distinctive, in fact unique. Add to this his philatelic design (principally the 1935 Silver Jubilee issue), work for the Curwen Press, posters made for London Transport, the General Post Office, Shell and the Lyons lithographs, and it can be seen that he has left us a truly phenomenal amount of very fine commercial art. Ian Rogerson's text traces the Freedman's output and provides a checklist of the book art, while Michael Twyman has written lucidly of the lithographic technique which Freedman developed for his art, and in which he surpassed his contemporaries."
$425

Bookplates by Richard Shirley Smith
Text by Brian North Lee
2006. Edition of 275.

7.5 x 11"; 104 pages. Of the edition, 40 deluxe and 235 standard copies. The paper is T. H. Saunders HP, the type Van Dijck set at Whittington by Peter Pugwash Sanderson. The reproductions of the bookplates were printed by Smith Settle, who also bound the book.

Brian North Lee, renowned bookplate scholar, authored this presentation of Richard Shirley Smith's bookplates, recognized by many as among the best of modern design. Sixty-five of the bookplates are illustrated here: nine printed from the wood, twelve (drawn plates) from line-blocks, and the remainder finely reproduced by Smith Settle.

Richard Shirley Smith, who studied at The Slade School of Fine Art and in Rome, has had more than twenty one-man shows. Twelve mural commissions were completed between 1975 and 1990 in London's Eaton Square, Princes Gate, and Kensington Palace Gardens. In 1985 he was given a retrospective exhibition at Britain's oldest public museum, the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology.

Standard version bound in quarter cloth and patterned paper over boards. In slipcase. $295

The Golden Reign
By Clare Sydney Smith
With a new introduction by Malcolm Brown
2004. Edition of 500.

8 x 10" oblong, 183 pages. Set in Miller Display. In full bull cloth with Lawrence's initials blind-stamped on the front board and paper title on spine. With 45 illustrations, from the original as well as others.

An account of T.E. Lawrence's life after his return from India. Lawrence was placed under the wing of an old acquaintance, Sydney Smith, the commanding officer at RAF Cattewarter, near Plymouth. Lawrence began to enjoy a sort of family life with Sydney, and in particular his wife. This publication is based on Clare Sydney Smith's original 1940 edition about their friendship with Lawrence.
$230

Fleece Press has published a series regarding the work and engravings of John Buckland Wright. "Endeavors & Experiments" is the fourth in the series and "To Beauty" is the fifth.

Christopher Buckland Wright: "In the 1930's, 1940's and early 1950's three artists did a great deal to launch British engraving into the exciting waters of contemporary European art: the New Zealander John Buckland Wright and two Englishmen William Hayter and Anthony Gross. They all had French attachments and were quite independent of the influences of earlier and highly successful schools of British engraving. Buckland Wright helped Hayter to found his famous Atelier 17 in Paris. At this workshop, in which artists experimented at novel methods of printmaking, JBW (as became known by his initials) worked with artists such as Matisse, Chagall, Picasso, Miró, Dali. Later when teaching at the Camberwell and Slade Schools of Art, he was able to communicate to his pupils his experience of how these artists worked.

"JBW's work is characterized by the portrayal of the sensuous nude, in which the female form is depicted with grace and charm. The source for his artistic expression has its origin in his experiences during the First World War. Having joined the Scottish Ambulance Service, he was seconded to the French Army at Verdun, the sector in which the French suffered the greatest devastation during the First World War. There he witnessed harrowing scenes of human devastation while rescuing wounded and dying men from the front line trenches. Following the war, JBW found relief in drawing the female figure that incorporated the romantic ideal of Greek philosophy into the very essence of the emotional expression of his work. Through his art he was able to come to terms with the horrors he had experienced during the war and to restore unity and tranquility to the devastated landscapes, to repair the damage that war had wrought on his love of nature. Once more he would fill his world with beauty of a timeless quality he had experienced in the gardens and countryside of New Zealand and England. He found his emotional renewal through his art. It was in this way that he was able to express his fundamental belief in the renewal of life and of the human spirit and to rediscover the joy he felt as a young man in nature's soothing beauty."

To Beauty
John Buckland Wright's work with Joseph Ishill of the Oriole Press
By Christopher Buckland Wright
West Yorkshire, England: Fleece Press, 2006. Edition of 246, of which six are not for sale.

6.2 x 9.25"; 56 pages. Fifteen engravings plus six tipped-in plates. Printed on Saunders mould-made paper by Simon Lawrence. Text set in Garamond at Whittington Press. Marbled paper made in Venice. Quarter cloth binding and solander box made by Smith Settle. Tipped-in plates printed by J. W. Northend Fine Print (Sheffield).

Simon Lawrence: "Number five in the collaboration between John Buckland Wright's son Christopher and myself, making books using the blocks left in the artist's studio at his death, sees an exciting new book relating the story of JBW's friendship (conducted entirely postally) with Joseph Ishill, printer and owner of the Oriole Press in New Jersey. A Romanian by birth, Ishill created many important books, including two volumes of Free Vistas … and a small book of poems by John Evelyn Barlas titled Yew-Leaf and Lotus-Petal: Sonnets for which JBW engraved nine delightful blocks. One of these blocks remained with the artist and the other eight belong to Florida University Library who have graciously allow them to be printed here. Christopher Buckland Wright outlines the evolution of the friendship between the two men, conducted at considerable distance and with the time delays incurred in transatlantic postal travel. JBW cut and in several cases re-cut the illustrations for Ishill, and their correspondence throws considerable light on their personal circumstances, the making of books, and the times in which they lived."
$245

Endeavors & Experiments
By John Buckland Wright
2004. Edition of 300.

31.5 x 23cm, 71 pages. Bound using a patterned paper derived from an original design by the artist. This is one of 54 copies in the edition bound in quarter vellum, patterned paper over boards, in a drop-back box. Accompanied by a loose print of Cafe Dansant no. 2, laid in brown paper wrapper.

John Buckland Wright's essays in woodcut and colour engraving, together with other blocks remaining in his studio. The Fourth in a series of Fleece Press books on Wright's wood and copper engravings found in his studio at this death in 1954. This volume contains the 'free' or autonomous prints not published in the previous volumes, book illustrations, commercial work and designs for cards, announcements and publishers' marks. Included is a descriptive account of all the rejected and unfinished blocks in the studio.
$800