We had the great pleasure this week to attend the lecture by Robert Gillmor and Peter Marren at the Nature in Art museum near Gloucester. The lecture recapped the history of the art work used as the dust-covers of the iconic New Naturalist Series of books, published since 1946 by Collins. The original job of producing the wrapper artwork by Clifford and Rosemary Ellis has been taken over since 1985 by Gillmor who unveiled his most recent linocut print for the forthcoming edition on Badgers and took the audience through a brief description of his method of multi-block printing from carved lino.
While we were mainly interested in Gillmor's work and process, both Rosie and I have a number of the New Naturalist Series from both Ellis and Gillmor eras. By contrast, the audience at the lecture consisted mainly of book collectors rather than printers or naturalists, so for example, in our seats near the rear of the lecture room we sat next to a couple who owned several complete, perfect and unread series of the books to the approximate value of £25,000 per set. We were told that a few copies of readable, i.e. battered copies were in their possession, but "I've never actually read one". It was an interesting evening, most informative to collectors, printers and readers alike.
The next day, we visited Robert in his temporary studio where Nature in Art provide space for an artist in residence. Around the walls he had unsurprisingly set out a wide range of his well known and excellent linos from the book series and from other projects. On tables and desks e had set out series of lino blocks which exemplified the process of producing a colour image from multiple blocks and multiple inkings. He was also working on a fiendishly complex image which was in a partially cut state and to date involves about eight seperate blocks from which the finished image will result. Having learned our reduction process , in part from workshops given by Ian Phillips at his studio in Machynlleth, it was exciting and informative to be able to spend time speaking to Robert Gillmor and exchanging ideas. We learned a huge amount in a short period of time, particularly about his registration process and colour overlay technique. We have been unhappy with the inconsistency of the inks we have been using up to now, and will probably try out the Schmincke variety from Great Art.
