Campbell, Ken, 1939-2022, Father's hook , c1978
- Title(s):
- Father's hook / Ken Campbell.
- Published/Created:
- [Bath [England] : K. Campbell], c1978.
- Physical Description:
- [31] p., [6] folded leaves of plates : ill. ; 33 cm.
- Holdings:
- Rare Books and ManuscriptsPR6053 A4874 F38 1978+ OversizeYale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon FundView by request in the Study Room [Request]
Note: The Study Room is open by appointment. Please visit the Study Room page on our website for more details. - Copyright Status:
- Copyright Not Evaluated
- Full Orbis Record:
- http://hdl.handle.net/10079/bibid/3174364
- Classification:
- Books
- Notes:
- BAC: Boards and rubber bands removed from this copy and placed in case.
Cover title: Father's hook : songs from a living son.
"Copyright Ken Campbell 1978. Printed letterpress by him at the Bath Academy of Art"--p. [2]
"[It] is all to do with the rigour of my [dockworking] father's life. I was going to do the most severe typography I could but without a grid, each poem set absolutely in the page, and [make] the book as rigorous and severe as possible ... In the print room of the British Museum I found a long, Oriental silk called 'Admonitions to the Ladies of the Court.' Its visual structure and aesthetic seemed to me to be a source for much of what was good in modern British graphic design of the late fifties--the confidence to float images in colour fields and working within structures of feeling rather than structures of injunction. To attempt that aesthetic while describing a life of grinding labour was, and always will be, irresistible ... [The book] is on very fine Chinese paper, it's almost like shirt cloth--it's the first time I fell in love with paper, it's sensuous ... I cut two pieces of lino and worked and turned them on a press, and got as rigorous images as I could from this ... It has pages that are folded to open up, because the backs of these things were very beautiful. The paper was so thin and the pressure was so great that ink went right through the paper and came out the other side, and I looked at it and I thought, that looks very nice. There are various other devices through the book, but ... it was designed only in that there were a couple of formal principles to hold the book together; every page was considered entirely, and pages were moved around, poems moved around, to get some kind of decent form from it. Very delicate, almost fleshy book, which was the idea."--Ken Campbell, from The word returned.
Edition of 100. Printed letterpress, in black, yellow, orange, green and red from Akzidenz Grotesk type on double leaves of Chinese hand-made paper. Stitched Oriental-style, held between two pieces of varnished plywood, secured by elastic band.
Original archival material related to this work is available in the collections of the Yale Center for British Art, Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts (Ken Campbell Collection, MSS 25).
Campbell, K. Ken Campbell: an artist's books, 1
Word returned: artist books by Ken Campbell, 3 - Subject Terms:
- Artists' books -- Great Britain.Bath (England) -- Imprints -- 1978.Campbell, Ken, 1939-2022.
- Form/Genre:
- Artists' books -- Great Britain.
- Export:
- XML