The history of the Folly Cove Designers (1941-1969) – one of America’s longest-running artist collectives – is explored through their work. Folly Cove Designers (officially 1941-1969) was a mostly all-women block printing collective.

The group was founded by Caldecott-award winner and beloved children’s book author/illustrator Virginia Lee Burton Demetrios (of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel fame). Together the Gloucester, MA-based group produced over three hundred distinct designs conveying personal and regional narratives through the use of shared design principles and the compelling language of pattern. The group was propelled to international fame through commercial contracts with major retailers (F. Schumacher, Lord & Taylor, etc.), articles in leading periodicals such as Life, and participation in seminal fine craft exhibitions.

As the first comprehensive history of the Folly Cove Designers, Trailblazing Women Printmakers documents and celebrates the group’s tremendous success and the incredible artistry of its members. Through historical ephemera and photographs, Sarni explores the history, the work, and the group dynamics of the Folly Cove Collective.

Read more

With a foreword by Reece Shearsmith, this beautifully designed book highlights some of the most striking and amusing examples of the woodcut from the British Library’s collections. It provides brief commentary on the political and social background of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with frequent topics of illustration including monsters, witches, criminals, drinking, war and politics.

Read more

This catalogue accompanies a major exhibition of work by British artist Claudette Johnson (b. 1959) at The Courtauld Gallery. A founding member of the Black British Arts Movement, Johnson is considered one of the most significant figurative artists of her generation. For over 40 years she has created large-scale drawings of Black women and men that are at once intimate and powerful.

Read more

Eighty-three moving works from the four great print cycles ― The Weavers, The Peasant War, War, Death ― and more. “To see the beautiful examples of her work reproduced in this well-printed, reasonably priced volume is to sit at the feet of a great modern master.” ― School Arts.

Read more

A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year.

BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand, and look wonderful on a desk or table.

PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list; robust ivory text paper, printed with lines; and when you need to collect other notes or scraps of paper the magnetic side flap keeps everything neat and tidy.

THE ARTIST. Angela Harding is a fine art painter and illustrator based in Rutland, UK. The Salt Path was featured on the cover of the bestselling book (of the same name) by Raynor Winn, shortlisted for the 2018 Wainwright Prize and the 2018 Costa Book Awards in the biography category.

THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Read more

Collagraph printmaking is an accessible and environmentally friendly way of making striking prints with a unique texture. At its simplest it is a method of printing from collaged plates; at its most sophisticated, it is an innovative and exciting experimental medium. This book is a guide to the technique, with step-by-step instructions for creating and printing simple plates for the beginner, as well as tips, ideas and directions for those with more experience. There is advice on how to get started at the kitchen table; a guide to additional materials and equipment; step-by-step instructions for building collagraph plates and techniques for printing in monochrome using relief and intaglio methods.

Read more

From Edouard Manet’s portrait of naturalist writer Émile Zola sitting among his Japanese art finds to Van Gogh’s meticulous copies of the Hiroshige prints he devotedly collected, 19th-century pioneers of European modernism made no secret of their love of Japanese art. In all its sensuality, freedom, and effervescence, the woodblock print is single-handedly credited with the wave of japonaiserie that first enthralled France and, later, all of Europe―but often remains misunderstood as an “exotic” artifact that helped inspire Western creativity.

The fact is that the Japanese woodblock print is a phenomenon of which there exists no Western equivalent. Some of the most disruptive ideas in modern art―including, as Karl Marx put it, that “all that is solid melts into air”―were invented in Japan in the 1700s and expressed like never before in the designs of such masters as Hokusai, Utamaro, and Hiroshige in the early 19th century.

This book lifts the veil on a much-loved but little-understood art form by presenting the 200 most exceptional Japanese woodblock prints in their historical context. Ranging from the 17th-century development of decadent ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” to the decline and later resurgence of prints in the early 20th century, the images collected in this edition make up an unmatched record not only of a unique genre in art history, but also of the shifting mores and cultural development of Japan.

From mystical mountains to snowy passes, samurai swordsmen to sex workers in shop windows, each piece is explored as a work of art in its own right, revealing the stories and people behind the motifs. We discover the four pillars of the woodblock print―beauties, actors, landscapes, and bird-and-flower compositions―alongside depictions of sumo wrestlers, kabuki actors, or enticing courtesans―rock stars who populated the “floating world” and whose fan bases fueled the frenzied production of woodblock prints. We delve into the horrifying and the obscure in prints where demons, ghosts, man-eaters, and otherworldly creatures torment the living―stunning images that continue to influence Japanese manga, film, and video games to this day. We witness how, in their incredible breadth, from everyday scenes to erotica, the martial to the mythological, these works are united by the technical mastery and infallible eye of their creators and how, with tremendous ingenuity and tongue-in-cheek wit, publishers and artists alike fought to circumvent government censorship.

Three years in the making, this XXL edition presents reproductions of the finest extant impressions from the vaults of museums and private collections across the globe―many newly photographed especially for this project. Some 17 stunning fold-outs invite us to study even the subtlest details, while extensive descriptions guide us through this frantic period in Japanese art history.

Features:

The work of 89 artists, from the world-renowned to the unfamiliar

7 chapters organized chronologically to trace the history of the medium from 1680 to 1938

17 fold-outs, hand-folded due to their size and specifications

Exclusive reproductions from museums and private collections

An appendix listing all artists and works

Read more

A FLAME TREE POCKET NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year.

BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand, and look wonderful on a desk or table.

PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list; robust ivory text paper, printed with lines; and when you need to collect other notes or scraps of paper the magnetic side flap keeps everything neat and tidy.

THE ARTIST. Angela Harding is a fine art painter and illustrator based in Rutland, UK. She specialises in lino prints and her work is inspired by British birds and countryside.

THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Read more

Prints have played a unique and important role in the history of art and image. This engaging book explores the numerous ways artists have embraced printmaking over the course of three centuries. Each of the works illustrated has been selected to reflect the broad spectrum of techniques and purposes, which are explained in clear and concise terms. The featured artworks are among the highlights of Tate’s extensive but little-known print collection, a remarkable grouping no book has previously attempted to survey. Among the leading artists for whom printmaking has been an important and experimental part of their practice are William Hogarth, George Stubbs, William Blake, J.M.W. Turner, Pablo Picasso, Barbara Hepworth, Andy Warhol, Lucian Freud, Bridget Riley, Paula Rego, William Kentridge and Kara Walker. Yet printmaking remains somewhat mysterious as a topic, perhaps because original prints are often understood as ‘reproductions’, or wrongly given a similar status to preparatory sketches and archival material. In fact, prints are finished artworks, often the result of highly considered creative experimentation with print processes. Chapters are structured around different types of printmaking, allowing each section to reveal the various ways artists have engaged with the different techniques. In addition to complete reproductions of over 120 works, carefully selected details enable the reader to examine closely some of the remarkable visual effects seen in the prints.

Read more

Part of a series of exciting and luxurious Flame Tree Notebooks. Combining high-quality production with magnificent fine art, the covers are printed on foil in five colours, embossed, then foil stamped. And they’re powerfully practical: a pocket at the back for receipts and scraps, two bookmarks and a solid magnetic side flap. These are perfect for personal use and make a dazzling gift. This example features Hokusai’s famous and well-loved The Great Wave.
The most notable period in Hokusai’s artistic life was the latter part of his career, beginning in 1830 when he was 70 years old. He began the series of landscapes he is most famous for: ‘Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji’, which included The Great Wave, off Kanagawa, probably his most iconic image.

Read more

A FLAME TREE NOTEBOOK. Beautiful and luxurious the journals combine high-quality production with magnificent art. Perfect as a gift, and an essential personal choice for writers, notetakers, travellers, students, poets and diarists. Features a wide range of well-known and modern artists, with new artworks published throughout the year.

BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED. The highly crafted covers are printed on foil paper, embossed then foil stamped, complemented by the luxury binding and rose red end-papers. The covers are created by our artists and designers who spend many hours transforming original artwork into gorgeous 3d masterpieces that feel good in the hand, and look wonderful on a desk or table.

PRACTICAL, EASY TO USE. Flame Tree Notebooks come with practical features too: a pocket at the back for scraps and receipts; two ribbon markers to help keep track of more than just a to-do list; robust ivory text paper, printed with lines; and when you need to collect other notes or scraps of paper the magnetic side flap keeps everything neat and tidy.

THE FINAL WORD. As William Morris said, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Read more