SUTHERLAND, Graham

Signature: A Quadrimestrial Of Typography And Graphic Arts No.9 July 1938 (With Original Graham Sutherland Etching)

Description

Signature: A Quadrimestrial Of Typography And Graphic Arts No.9 July 1938 (With Original Graham Sutherland Etching)

Graham Sutherland etching ‘Clegyr-Boia’ (Landscape in Wales) is bound in as the frontis in plain paper wrappers with text printed in orange, with tissue guards. 54 pages.  Vol 9. July 1938, from the Original Series of Signature, a thrice yearly journal devoted to typography and graphic arts. Limited to 750 copies. Printed at The Curwen Press. Illustrated throughout to include illustrations of book bindings and  two collotypes illustrating Paul Nash’s work.Other articles include ‘Mr.Whatman, Papermaker’  by James Wardrop; ‘A Survey of Modern binding’ by Desmond Flower; ‘Openings’ by Paul Nash; ‘Swelled Rules and Typographic Flourishes’ by P.H.Lang.  The Graham Sutherland etching is unsigned, as issued. Still, now rarely,  in its original published state.

The volume is a fine copy with the original receipt made out to a ‘George Plank’ loosely inserted. The book is bound in original plain card wrappers with original text . A fine copy housed in the original Curwen Press slip case with a cloth spine and paper covered boards designed by Barnett Freedman with the number ‘3’ neatly written in ink at top of the canvas spine.

Image size 19.8 x 15 cm (7.8 x 5.8 inches)
Sheet size 24.5 x 18 cm (9.5 x 7 inches)

Book size 24.5 x 18.5 cm (9.5 x 7.25 inches)

Item details

Reference:  Tassi 33,Man 37.

This extraordinary, brooding etching of a Welsh landscape was created in 1936 and published in Signature 9 in July 1938. It was this work, with its obvious debt to Samuel Palmer and Edward Calvert, and its anxious overtones of threat and destruction, that set the template for the entire Neo-Romantic movement. This is one of Sutherland’s rarest and most important prints, in lovely condition. There is a copy in the Tate Gallery. According to Carey & Griffiths, Avant-Garde British Printmaking, the obliterated word on the plate is “herons”, the title having been originally intended to be Herons Ghyll.

Oliver Simon records that 1000 copies of each of the first six numbers of Signature were printed, which was reduced to 750 for the next eight issues, and finally just 550 copies for the last volume.

Item details

Publisher: Signature
Date: 1938
Condition: Very Good
Illustrator: Graham Sutherland
Book ID: 60003148