Fleece Press ~ England
(Simon Lawrence)

Work regarding John Buckland Wright

Today I worked well – the picture fell off the brush
The artistry of Leslie Cole
told for the first time by Malcolm Yorke
with a note on the interesting life of Brenda Cole
Upper Denby, England: Fleece Press, 2010. Edition of 500.

11 x 9.25; 208 pages. Type is Miller Display. Printed by Northend Creative Print Solutions. Book design by Simon Lawrence. Bound in quarter cloth and marbled paper.

Fleece Press: "Leslie Cole's wartime career was nothing short of extraordinary. Malcolm Yorke and I met at the Imperial War Museum a couple of years ago to see the collection of Ardizzone paintings, and while we awaited the curator's arrival we saw several paintings by Cole in a temporary exhibition. A student of Bawden and Ravilious at the Royal College of Art, Cole's watercolour technique could in some cases be mistaken for that of Ravilious. Cole saw action in Britain, Germany (he recorded the liberation of Belsen) and Malta (experiencing the harrowing, prolonged bombing which that island suffered), before going out to the Far East. All the time he painted what he saw, often highly complex pictures which rely on a strong sense of pattern for their impact. Malcolm has unearthed a great deal of material on an artist whose later career never quite matched the sheer brilliance of his wartime work. Malcolm Yorke's authorial skills are among the finest employed by the press in the past thirty years, and each of his books is eagerly awaited by readers and scholars alike. Cole's wife Brenda played a significant part in the downfall of the Vicar of Stiffkey in the early 1930s, a true cause celebre; he was unfrocked for consorting with prostitutes but died after being mauled by a circus lion while proclaiming his innocence, and this fascinating story is told afresh in the book. Brenda successfully reinvented herself and concealed her origins very well, becoming a gifted potter, and some of her work will also be shown."
$350

Bookplates by Richard Shirley Smith
Text by Brian North Lee
West Yorkshire, England: Fleece Press, 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
West Yorkshire, England: Fleece Press, 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.

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."

Endeavors & Experiments
By John Buckland Wright
West Yorkshire, England: Fleece Press, 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