Feather Plain and Fancy by Hilda Simon, with illustrations by the author The Viking Press, 1969, New York, USA | 2024 236 × 163 × 19mm

Hand-made paper, linen thread, Evacon R adhesive, pencil crayon and pigment foil.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd. Private collection

This text-block came to me in its original library stamped case binding, so the process of rebinding began by pulling, guarding and infilling the original sewing holes with Japanese tissue. The book edges have been lightly trimmed, burnished and waxed in the rough and has yellow hand-made paper endpapers. The book is bound in a semi-limp, hand-made paper book structure (a variation of kathy Abbotts Clip-on Cover II) to give the book a lightweight feel and for it to open well. The cover paper is hand-coloured with layers of different coloured pencil crayon. The image on the front cover is tooled in royal blue pigment foil using fourteen brass hand finishing tools that I’ve made myself.

Artist’s notes

My response for this book came not only from the text, but also from the person that commissioned it, who has a deep love and passion for bird watching. The design is based on a murmuration: a beautiful and power sight. My thoughts of birds are so often connected to their flight and the sense of freedom that their movement in the sky evokes. The colour and surface texture of the cover is a direct response to the vivid colours and the wonderful quality of the pencil drawn illustrations, with the aim of creating a harmony, connection and flow between the cover and the text-block.

The binding is signed and dated on the inside of the rear cover and is housed in a cloth-covered drop-back box with a blocked paper label on the spine. The original cloth cover is contained within a phase box in a pull-out shelf underneath the new binding.

Black Marigolds by E. Powys Mathers With line block images by Glenys Cour The Old Stile Press 2007, signed and numbered 196/200 The Printed on a special making of Zerkall paper 314 x 175 x 28mm

Hand-made paper, linen thread, Evacon R adhesive, acrylic paint and pigment foil.

Photography of first two images by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd, the remainder by the artist. Private collection

Bound in a hand-coloured hand-made paper-covered book structure with long-stitch sewing. The binding is signed and dated on the inside of the rear cover and is housed in a cloth-covered box, with a printed paper title label on the spine.

Artist’s notes My response to this book came as much from the physical attributes of the text-block as from the themes that run through the fifty translated stanzas and the bold illustrations. The text-block felt most suited to a paper binding, which led me to create a book structure, to echo the captivity of the young poet locked in a dungeon the night before his execution, during which time he wrote this love poem. The imagery across the front and back covers evoke the disjointed air of the stanzas, and the nature of reminiscence and retrospection. The nature of the lines reflect the poet’s love for the king’s daughter Vidya by honouring the curved lines of the female form and the flowing lines of the stanzas. The image is tooled in black pigment foil using a finishing tool to recreate the quality of a pencil, whilst also reflecting the strong black and white collage images throughout. Binding is book has given me the opportunity to develop how an image travels across and around a three dimensional form, further heightened by the ‘castle turret’ concertina cover that helps to create a dynamic quality to the image: it disrupts its flow, whilst highlighting the intangibility of human emotion.

The Seasons, with a Poem to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton, to Which is Prefixed An Account of his Life and Writings, by Dr Samuel Johnson.
By James Thomson
[C. 1829] | 2024 (TP)
147 x 80 x 167mm

Melinex, gold blocking foil.

First photograph by Prudence Cuming Ltd and remaining photographs by the artist. Private collection

Artist’s Notes

My starting point was to consider how to protect the integrity of this book in a way that highlighted and celebrated how well read it had been, made evident by the worn areas to the boards, spine and an ink splat to the front cover.
This led me to think of making a Melinex wrapper and whether I could gold tool on it. I considered what imagery I could tool across the wrapper and settled on the idea of an image reminiscent of a decorated Italian paper, travelling across the cover. I made the irregularly shaped finishing tool and already had a short pallet; these tools together loosely represent a clock and time passing as we move from one season to another.

Before making the Melinex wrapper, I consolidated the board edges, corners and loose paper on the spine with wheat flour paste. I also undertook a Japanese paper hinge repair with wheat starch paste between the front endpaper and title page to enable a better opening.

Shift Quartet | 2023
277(h) x 620(w) x 80(d)mm

Machine made paper, coloured pencil, Methyl Cellulose.

Photography of first two images by Prudence Cuming Ltd, remaining photograph by Artist.
Private collection

Artist's Notes

This ongoing drawing series is on one level an exploration of asemic writing, (Shift Quartet is a particularly good example of this). Although what I’m really attempting with each drawing, is to unlearn hand and arm movements, to let go of the muscle memory of letter form. Each drawing is made from one movement and cannot be seen until the movement is made. This process takes away my aesthetic notions of composition and the interaction between different colours and weight of line.

Shift Quartet is mounted on a structure created by Hedi Kyle called the Panel Book.

Overlap | 2023
320 x 320 x 2mm

Mouldmade paper, pigment foil.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates

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Artist's Notes
This is the first of a series of works on paper to explore mark-making from a different perspective; where the finished image is not pre-determined. This enables me to create aesthetic disjunction between colour combinations and the placement of tooled impressions,* the overlaying of colours, and the space between impressions and lines.

This is counter to the way in which I’ve spent years painstakingly mapping out and recreating images using the process of gold tooling on leather and paper, where there is no tolerance for mistakes or inaccuracy.

Overlap Series allows me to explore working more intuitively with this medium, whilst making images that couldn’t evolve in any other way.

* ‘Tooled impressions’ are created using a number of heated brass tools which I’ve made specifically for this series. More generally ‘finishing’ or ‘gold tooling’ is a term used to describe the process of lettering and/or decorating the cover of a book with loose gold leaf, blind tooling or carbon tooling.

A Case of Conscience by Symon Patrick [London 1699] | 2022 215 x 164 x 9mm

Patinated vellum, Japanese paper, hand-made paper, Evacon R (EVA) adhesive, Methylated cellulose, Champayne gold leaf.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Ltd Nicholas Fisher Collection
Structure: the text-block has been enclosed in a semi-limp, patinated vellum cover, the structure of which is adapted from Hedi Kyle's Slipcase with Partial Sides. which allows for the text-block to be freely removed from the slot in which it is held.

On opening, the pages are supported by the joint folds in the covers, which are positioned beyond the (original) overcast sewing.
The vellum is lined with a burgundy Japanese paper to enhance the depth of the tone of the vellum. The structure has hand-made paper ‘paste-downs’ to match the text-block.

The image is gold tooled in Champayne gold leaf along the spine area of the front and rear cover, using 13 tools which I made to recreate the original pencil drawn image.

The binding is signed and dated on the inside of the rear cover and housed in a cloth-covered drop-back box, with a blocked paper label on the spine.

Artist’s notes The image for me evokes the active nature of this religious ‘non-debate’; which explores what it is to rant, when there’s a tendency for repetition; hence the repeat pattern of crosses, with each varying slightly, to evoke the sense that human nature is nothing if not flawed in its tendency at times to be inflexible and not to be open minded!

Field Notes A collaboration with David Clarke | 2022 Edition of 32 badges Birch polypore, stainless steel, recycled sterling silver. Each badge comes attached to a signed piece of card, which is housed in an origami cloth box. From 400mm (diameter of circle) to 105 x 40mm (largest irregular off-cut)

Photography by David Clarke Photography by Tracey Rowledge

Notes - Field Notes A three week collaborative residency with David Clarke in September 2021, resulted in the exhibition Field Notes at Wallénhallen, Leksands folkhögskola, September 2022.

On a visit to Leksand Museum, we chanced upon Birch Polymore, which was used to create a decorative motif on traditional rye straw mobiles. After harvesting some from the woods that surround Leksands Folkhögskola, we began to investigate it as a material. We created this edition in response to the generousity given to us - that of time, knowledge and local insights.

‘It is perhaps when we embrace the profound awkwardness within the other and within ourselves, when we give ourselves permission to be uncomfortable, that new pathways become visible, which have the potential to affect the ways we move through, and care for, the world.’ Extract from essay in exhibition publication, by Beatrice Brovia.

Land A collaboration with David Clarke | 2022 Archival carbon print on mould-made paper 770 x 645mm

Photography by David Clarke Photography by Tracey Rowledge

Notes - Field Notes A three week collaborative residency with David Clarke in September 2021, resulted in the exhibition Field Notes at Wallénhallen, Leksands folkhögskola, September 2022.

Working with found material, we explored the ideas surrounding the rural idyll. This found source material gave us the opportunity to show alternative views of the same scene, to highlight how a visitor sees something so differently to a local. This work explores insider and outsider perspectives and how a view can be made familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time.

‘It is perhaps when we embrace the profound awkwardness within the other and within ourselves, when we give ourselves permission to be uncomfortable, that new pathways become visible, which have the potential to affect the ways we move through, and care for, the world.’ Extract from essay in exhibition publication, by Beatrice Brovia.

Side-on A collaboration with David Clarke | 2021 356 x 73cm Relief print on paper Falun red exterior household paint, machine-made paper

Photography by David Clarke Photography by Tracey Rowledge

Notes - Field Notes
A three week collaborative residency with David Clarke in September 2021, resulted in the exhibition Field Notes at Wallénhallen, Leksands folkhögskola, September 2022.

Working lightly and without leaving a trace, we took an imprint from the ends of interlocked tree trunks that form the corner joints of the exterior wall of Wallengarden. Each felled tree was chosen carefully for the old school house, designed by G. T. Wallen. The exposed and worn tree rings are now like the fingerprints of this building.

‘It is perhaps when we embrace the profound awkwardness within the other and within ourselves, when we give ourselves permission to be uncomfortable, that new pathways become visible, which have the potential to affect the ways we move through, and care for, the world.’ Extract from essay in exhibition publication, by Beatrice Brovia.

From Panckoucke: Encyclopedie Methodique - The Tailor [c.1787] | 2022
255 x 214 x 6mm
302 x 233 x 7mm

Japanese tissue, hand-made paper, mould-made paper, linen thread, Liquitex acrylic paint, black typewriting carbon, Evacon R (EVA) adhesive, wheatstarch paste.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Ltd

Structure: Paper repairs were undertaken to the spine area of pages, the single folio is sewn to the peak of a hand-made paper concertina fold and each single leaf is attached to a concertina fold with Japanese tissue. The text-block has been over-sewn into an inner cover. The hand-made outer cover paper is tooled in black typewriting carbon using a decorative roll, it's then scored and folded and drummed onto the inner cover, with the endpapers then being drummed onto the cover.

Artist’s Notes Each binding contains glorious illustrated clothing patterns, so the tooled block shapes on the covers where made to echo these. I created a simple structure, with institutions in mind that need to securely house multiple single leaves.

THE LORD TOOK 10,000 OF MY SHEEP Printed by Aurora De Armendi at UICB (University of Iowa Center for the Book), 2009 | 2022 Printed on Mohawk text paper, a gift from R Press, 8/22 copies. 294 x 197 x 12mm

Goatskin, hand-made paper, machine and mould-made paper, linen thread, wheat flour paste, Fraynot cloth, scrim fabric, Evacon R adhesive, polyester thread, Liquitex acrylic paint, coloured pencil and pigment foil.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd Private collection

Bound in maroon goatskin, with leather-jointed hand-coloured hand-made paper endpapers and doublures. The book is sewn into a narrow concertina and is rounded only. It has hand-sewn endbands and laced-on laminated paste boards. The binding is tooled on the front and rear cover in white blocking foil. On the rear cover the tool used is a repeated square shape, on the front cover the tool is a repeated and overlapped pallet, with a textured face and sides (that I made myself). The binding is signed and dated on the inside of the rear cover and is housed in a cloth-covered drop-back box, with a printed paper title label on the spine.

Artist’s notes This text is an anonymous ‘exchange’ between an artist and a gallerist, where they two proceed to talk at each other, with no apparent interest in what the other is saying. They only appear interested in expressing what feels like two well versed monologues. My response was to make ‘white noise’ endpapers, as it seems each persons voice became white noise to the other. The images on the front and rear cover inhabit the positive and negative space of a grid, so if overlaid they’d create a void, symbolising the futility of this missed opportunity.

A Little Treachery
By Libby Houston with water-coloured dry-point by Julia Farrer
Circle Press Publications 1990 | 2022
295 x 201 x 12mm

Hand-made paper, mould-made paper, Fraynot cloth, linen thread, Evacon R adhesive, Liquitex acyrlic paint and pigment foil.

Bound in a laminated hand-made paper structure, with an inturned triangular spine. I created the Pivot binding specifically for this single section book. It was hand-coloured endpapers, the binding is tooled in grey pigment foil and is signed and dated on the inside of the rear cover. The book is housed in a cloth-covered drop-back box, with a printed paper title label on the spine.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Ltd

Artist’s notes This single section book contains an exquisite poem, expressing the strange and exciting tension and energy of a new relationship, which is so eloquently explored in Julia Farrer’s fold-out hand-coloured dry-point. In the image I’ve created on the covers I wanted to home in on the limbo like quality of being on the cusp of something new, my colour choices both draw on the colours Julia used and also I hope help focus the mind on the reverberating quality time has when centred on the uncertainty of where a decision will take you.

Sylvæ by Ben Verhoeven & Gaylord Schanilec | 2021 Woodcuts and wood engravings by Gaylord Schanilec
Midnight Paper Sales, Wisconsin USA, 2007, 8/10 (in sheets), printed by Ben Verhoeven & Gaylord Schanilec.
305 X 212 X 31mm

The book is sewn with a continuous link stitch; the paste-board covers are sewn on as the first and last sections. each paste-board is covered with brown canson mi-teintes paper. the spine is lined with hand-made paper and then hand-toned japanese tissue. the concertina cover is made from hand-coloured, st armand paper.
The binding is housed in a cloth-covered drop-back box, with a printed paper title label on the spine.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Ltd

Artist’s notes This book is a stunning account of the twenty wooded acres surrounding Midnight Paper Sales in western Wisconsin, USA. It documents the journey of Ben Verhoeven and Gaylord Schanilec into the woods to create a work not only about these trees, but of these trees. In all 24 species have been catalogued through image, historical anecdotes, and notes taken during the cutting, milling, engraving and printing. The 53 images consist primarily of long grain and end grain specimens which have been taken from the land. In each case the image is manipulated through either colour, impression, engraving, or some combination of the above to emphasise a certain characteristic of a species. The texts vary, focusing on what role each played in the local history and in this project.

I created this book structure to evoke the atmosphere of being under the canopy of a tree in dappled shade . On opening, the narrow concertina that forms the outer cover becomes a flat platform on which the book can fully open.

Cherry Tree by Philippe Jaccottot, translated by Mark Treharne | 2021 Printed at The Carpathian Press for The Delos Press, 1991 (this copy is signed by the author and translator and is un-numbered) 208 x 268 x 12mm

Bound in mid-blue goatskin, with leather-jointed hand-coloured machine-made endpapers and doublures. All three edges are rough gilt; the book is sewn onto a stub, is rounded and backed, has hand-sewn endbands and laced-on laminated paste boards. The binding is gold-tooled across the cover using a series of pallets and small irregularly shaped finishing tools. The binding is signed and dated on the inside of the rear cover and is housed in a cloth-covered drop-back box, with a blocked leather title label on the spine.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Ltd Private collection

Artist’s notes The image I created for the cover resonates with the particular passage where the author speaks of “a star that has exploded inside us one day, long ago, scattering its dust. That a small amount of dust might light up in a gaze is perhaps what we find most disturbing, magical and confusing; yet after careful consideration, this is less strange than suddenly to encounter its brilliance, or the splintered reflections of that brilliance…“ I chose mid-blue for the cover as on one level it acts as the sky and on another it connects with the author’s reflections on breathing, for example where he writes “a breath like a breath behind leaves, clouds, sailing boats..”. For the endpapers I chose a repeat cherry pattern, painted with Liquitex acrylic, as a way to connect with the visual focal point of the book, which triggers the author to take a journey of reflection about dreams, imagination, nature and how the changing light leads his mind to make many connections with past memories. The cherry pattern also gave me the opportunity to explore painting and surface decoration: what is in the foreground and what is in the background and the dynamic quality of the negative space between the cherries.

The Space Inbetween | 2021
201 x 155 x 13mm

Gold leaf, goatskin, Gemini millboard, kraft paper, wheatflour paste, Evacon-R adhesive.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Ltd

Artist's Notes

This work explores how we read and interpret a surface image, by seeing how space can be divided up into separate parts to form a dynamic whole. The gold tooled image on black goatskin creates an interplay between the background and foreground to question which is which, as they are seemingly interchangeable as both positive and negative space: each component part highlighting how highly charged this relationship can become. The gold tooled image aims to amplify the play between a series of repeated shapes by placing them within a grid. This format sets out to throw the eye, with the three repeated shapes forming an almost decipherable text, so that you might instinctively follow the shapes row by row, as if reading, whilst at the same time being thrown diagonally across the image by the negative gridded space.

On another level, this work sets out to use my knowledge and understanding of bookbinding materials and techniques to explore the strong union between art and craft.

Shelved | 2020
A collaboration with David Clarke 148 x 105mm x 2

Bank paper, graphite, mount board, colourless fixative.

Photography by David Clarke
Private Collection (sold through Artist Support Pledge on Instagram: a not for profit company founded by Matthew Burrows Studio in 2020, to support artists and makers during Covid-19)

Each day is different | 2020
700 x 508 x 14mm

Acrylic, gesso, ink, millboard.

Photography of first four images by Prudence Cuming Ltd, remaining photographs by Artist.

Explore this work further in conversation with Joanna Bird.

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Artist's Notes

During the Covid-19 pandemic, I was invited to create a self portrait for Joanna Bird’s exhibition, Autoritratto, 2020. This exhibition gave me the opportunity to focus my thinking on the nature of time. My sense of self was brought into sharp focus, with an awareness that my past, present and future had for the moment been compressed, with time feeling more like a state of suspension. I think it was impossible not to think about time any differently then, there was a conscious need not to drift, even though we'd been un-moored by the pandemic. What felt vital was the need to develop an inner balance to sustain mobility of mind and creative practice.

This exploration enabled me to take an idea in a direction that has for a long time been in plain sight, but without my understanding its critical importance to my creative bearing.

The knowledge and skill I gathered as an artist and bookbinder have combined to form a very particular direction of travel in my practice. At the core is drawing and the exploration of mark-making: how spontaneity can be expressed through a non-gestural process such as gold tooling on leather, or how a work resonates conceptually by altering how a material, such as graphite, is used. This knowledge and experience had become a thing in itself, just waiting to be used, to explore how I might make objects that evolve in a more intuitive way.

This wall-based work explores mark-making as surface: a grid flows over and across the separate and overlapping planes, creating the appearance of a unified whole, with the mesh like grid forming a covering of sorts. These visual elements aim to align to one’s displacement through circumstance and the re-gathering of self.

Portrait | 2020 165H x 165W x 100Dmm

Gemini millboard, archival kraft paper, cartridge paper, 9b graphite stick, colourless fixative beeswax, Fraynot cotton, Liquitex acrylic, hand-made paper, Renaissance wax. Portrait is housed in a black cloth-covered drop-back box with the title hand lettered on a paper label down the spine.

Photography by Tracey Rowledge
Private Collection

Figured | 2020
80 x 30 x 50cm

Glass, Pewter, wood, Acrylic Paint

Photography by David Clarke

Artist's Notes
Figured was once a part of Room. However, we had the opportunity to show this pair of figures separately and so reconfigured – they became a piece in their own right.

The human forms are not complete, limbs are missing as a result of the lack of control during the casting process, enabling us to explore the vulnerability of the human form. The ghostlike figures are housed within Victorian glass domes. Each dome is internally painted with acrylic washes, creating fine blooms of colour to look through.These works sit together, yet are set apart, exploring the nature of human display: how we choose to present ourselves, togetherness, isolation, how presentation alters and shifts our perception and way of seeing; ultimately to explore vulnerability and differences as a strength, not a weakness.

Renascence | 2019
71 x 44 x 28mm

Found mirror fragment, Geminin board, Manilla paper, handmade paper, graphite, wheat Starch paste and Evacon-R adhesive.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

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Artist's Notes
This work was made in response to Virginia Woolfs novel Orlando and will be exhibited with Madeinbritaly at Collect 2020. The exhibition entitled Orlando, curated by Valentina Buscicchio & Marco Venturi explores her 1928 novel in which Virginia Woolf makes a joyful case for transgressing all limits on desire, curiosity, and knowledge. Woolf seems unwilling to acknowledge the political edge in her playful skewering of gender roles, and in her creation of a protagonist who is bound by neither of the two forces that define us as human: sex and death.

Orlando feels like an artefact from and for the future, a character who refuses to be bound by conventions, and who invites us to consider the possibility that all of our certainties are in fact contingencies.

The exhibition embraces exactly this perspective by creating a seamless fluidity of gender, time, identity, contexts, definitions and conventions in which extremely decorative aesthetics coexists with a minimalistic one. Function and Beauty are interconnected with grace and profound truth within the same narration which, through the love of oddities, of the paradoxical, the grotesque, virtuosity and exaltation, ultimately ends up being the “the longest and most charming love letter” ever written.

B-Side | 2019
75 x 75 x 4mm

Laminated Gemini board, covered in red goatskin, with royal blue goatskin back-pared onlays. Lined on the rear with hand-toned hand-made paper and signed and dated in blind on the bottom of rear of panel.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd Collection of Neale Albert

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Artist's Notes
This commission gave me the opportunity to think about music and how different songs and genres of music resonate with different times and people in my life. The more I thought about the influence music has had on me, the more the subject broadened in my mind. I began thinking about how I listen to music, this idea then developed into image making. I might choose to put on particular music as background sound, for when I'm wanting to create a particular environment for concentrating. At the other end of the spectrum, I’ll put on a piece of music in order to be fully absorbed by it. It’s this play between background and foreground that I explored within the language of painting, I then transcribed this image into the medium of bookbinding materials and techniques. The play between what's the background and what’s the foreground is further amplified with the colour combination of bright red and royal blue. I wanted to create a dynamic object, one that felt larger than itself, drawing a parallel with the way music has the ability to fill a room.

Leçons | Learning...
by Philippe Jaccottet with an English version by Mark Traharne | 2019
Delos Press 2001
218 x 218 x 17mm

Bound in black goatskin, with black leather-jointed, machine-made paper endpapers and doublures, hand-coloured with Liquitex acyrlic. Solid edge colour treatment to all three edges in Liquitex acyrlic. The text-block is sewn on a 3mm hand-made paper concertina, acting as guards to the backs of sections. The laminated pasteboards have an inner spine chamfer to fit the round of the book. The book has hand-sewn single colour polyester thread endbands and has a rounded-only spine. The front and rear cover is tooled in 23.5 carat red gold leaf. The book is housed in a black cloth-covered drop-back box.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Private Collection

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Artist's Notes

The poem is about reaching the end of life, whilst also reflecting a life lived. Each painted mark on the endpapers symbolizes a breathe taken, whilst the image gold tooled on the cover evokes a journey and the faltering steps taken toward the end of life. The gold tooled image was done using two hand finishing tools, which I made specifically for this binding, to recreate the nature of my original pencil drawing, with the face and edges of the tools being slightly textured.

The pasteboards create a lighter weight binding, which felt right for the subject matter. The hand-made concertina gave the additional swell needed to create a good round, whilst protecting the spine folds from the adhesive of the spine linings. The rounded-only spine gives the look and feel of a traditional fine binding, without the necessity of backing it and with the boards staying in position from the under chamfering.

ROOM
A collaboration with David Clarke | 2019
232 (L) x 120 (W) x 354 (H) cm

Second-hand postcards of Europe, Fraynot cloth, bookbinding cloth, Gemini board, Eva-con R adhesive, glass, cast pewter, acrylic paint.

Photography by David Clarke

ROOM publication with an essay by Linda Sandino (Download)

In conversation with Linda Sandino (Download)

Artist's Notes

David Clarke and I began working together in 2009, when we made Thrown: 15 impact drawings and lead objects.  Alongside our individual practices, we have found that working together has become vital, enabling us to test each other and to coax different meanings from our artistic interventions. We are intrigued by the role objects play in our lives: how familiar objects become strange and the strange become familiar; how the passage of time affects the way we relate to things, and how context can change the way we value objects. 

In 2016-2017 we undertook a residency at Tunbridge Wells Museum, Library and Education Centre. Funded by Arts Council England as part of the second development stage of the Cultural & Learning Hub in Tunbridge Wells, we spent much of our time foraging in the museum collections and library archives as well as discovering the town and its people.

Taking on the role of the curator ourselves, we gathered our own collection of objects purchased from local charity shops or donated by local businesses. Together we reconsidered each object, reworking them in different ways and giving them a new opportunity. They were exhibited as Shelved: nine collaborative artworks, exhibited at Tunbridge Wells Museum, Library, Adult Education Centre and the Dog’s Trust charity shop.  This work was later re-presented at Gallery S O, London.

In 2019 we exhibited ROOM at Collect Open, Saatchi Gallery, London, funded by Arts Council England.  This work is both a room and a space: it creates a site for encounters and the imagination, but as an installation, it also takes on the qualities of the transitory and the nomadic. Room doesn’t claim a specific identity or function: it establishes a transient identity through its siting within the context of an exhibition destined to be dismantled. Equally significant is the absence of walls or boundaries. Consequently the space is always remade depending on its visitors, who pass through but also inhabit it. It aims to become a memory, a place where things happened, where people came together to ponder the meaning of ‘stuff’ and its making.

Our collaborative working is ongoing.

Hoppus’s Practical Measurer, [1848] | 2019
169 x 74 x 25mm

Hand-made paper, coloured pencil, Evacon-R, methyl cellulose and wheatstarch paste.

Artist’s Notes

The original sheepskin binding was detached and the leather had greatly deteriorated. The sewing was reasonably sound, so I created a paper-covered book structure that could be secured to the text-block, with the addition of a hand-made paper flyleaf, to act as a buffer between the text-block and cover. The structure forms its cover and spine lining in one and the image across the cover is drawn in coloured pencil to echo the incisions left on my fathers carpenter’s saw-horse, whilst also having a visual relationship to the marbled edge.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Private Collection

Leçons | Learning...
by Philippe Jaccottet
with an English version by Mark Traharne | 2018
Delos Press 2001
220 x 221 x 17mm

Bound in black goatskin, rough-edge gilt, with black leather-jointed machine-made paper endpapers, hand-coloured with black coloured pencil in the spine fold and around the edges of paper doublures. The text-block is sewn on a 3mm hand-made paper concertina, acting as guards to the backs of sections. The book has hand-sewn black endbands and has a rounded-only spine.  The front cover is tooled in gold leaf using seven hand finishing tools I made specifically for this binding, to evoke the nature of a pencil drawing, with the face and edges of the face of the tools being slightly textured.   The book is housed in a black cloth-covered drop-back box, with a paper label to the spine.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Private Collection

Greeting From Tunbridge Wells
A collaboration with David Clarke | 2018
966 x 655mm

Paper

Photography by David Clarke

Notes - Shelved
A one-year collaborative residency with David Clarke resulted in the exhibition Shelved.

Greetings From Tunbridge Wells is one of nine works first exhibited at Tunbridge Wells Museum, Reference Library and Adult Education Centre.

"Tracey and David found common points of interest and got to know the collections through discovery, research, public and private discussion and reflection. It was the things that ‘tripped us up’ and piqued our curiosity, which resulted in a comprehensive new body of work."

Uniquely, they also creatively contributed to the development of the borough’s new Cultural & Learning Hub. Serving as project team members, they contributed their creative thinking to the planning, concept and realisation of the Hub, helping to ensure that the arts remain at the core of the redevelopment of the museum, library and adult education buildings in the civic centre of Tunbridge Wells. 

Their progress was recorded on a blog on the Tunbridge Wells Museum website.www.tunbridgewellsmuseum.org.uk

Housed (1-3)
A collaboration with David Clarke | 2018

Pewter, paper, leather

Photography by Nigel Green
Photography by David Clarke

Artist’s notes
Housed are tiny pewter sculptures exploring the housing of precious items. Their forms moulded from model ceramic buildings, then cut into two parts and covered with leather. Here the boxes are the work with the interiors being voids.

Notes - Shelved
A one-year collaborative residency with David Clarke resulted in the exhibition Shelved.

Housed (1-3)is one of nine works first exhibited at Tunbridge Wells Museum, Reference Library and Adult Education Centre.

"Tracey and David found common points of interest and got to know the collections through discovery, research, public and private discussion and reflection. It was the things that ‘tripped us up’ and piqued our curiosity, which resulted in a comprehensive new body of work."

Uniquely, they also creatively contributed to the development of the borough’s new Cultural & Learning Hub. Serving as project team members, they contributed their creative thinking to the planning, concept and realisation of the Hub, helping to ensure that the arts remain at the core of the redevelopment of the museum, library and adult education buildings in the civic centre of Tunbridge Wells. 

Shelved (1-6)
A collaboration with David Clarke | 2018

Ceramic, glass, paper, wood, wax, plasti dip, graphite

Photography by Nigel Green

Artist's Notes
Shelved is a series charity shop objects, each modified and worked on in different ways, with the aim to challenge the meaninglessness of consumerism and what it means to collect. How working with a pre-existing object can give it more resonance and add to it’s physical and emotional reverberations, so that we feel we need to keep looking. The drawings behind the objects sets the scene for the work, exploring the nature of display within a museum/gallery context.

Notes - Shelved
A one-year collaborative residency with David Clarke resulted in the exhibition Shelved.

Shelved  (1-6) is one of nine works first exhibited at Tunbridge Wells Museum, Reference Library and Adult Education Centre.

"Tracey and David found common points of interest and got to know the collections through discovery, research, public and private discussion and reflection. It was the things that ‘tripped us up’ and piqued our curiosity, which resulted in a comprehensive new body of work."

Uniquely, they also creatively contributed to the development of the borough’s new Cultural & Learning Hub. Serving as project team members, they contributed their creative thinking to the planning, concept and realisation of the Hub, helping to ensure that the arts remain at the core of the redevelopment of the museum, library and adult education buildings in the civic centre of Tunbridge Wells. 

Their progress was recorded on a blog on the Tunbridge Wells Museum website.
www.tunbridgewellsmuseum.org.uk

Still Life
A collaboration with David Clarke | 2018

Bookcloth, black carbon, pewter

Photography by Nigel Green
Photography by David Clarke

Notes - Shelved
A one-year collaborative residency with David Clarke resulted in the exhibition Shelved.

Still Life is one of nine works first exhibited at Tunbridge Wells Museum, Reference Library and Adult Education Centre.

"Tracey and David found common points of interest and got to know the collections through discovery, research, public and private discussion and reflection. It was the things that ‘tripped us up’ and piqued our curiosity, which resulted in a comprehensive new body of work."

Uniquely, they also creatively contributed to the development of the borough’s new Cultural & Learning Hub. Serving as project team members, they contributed their creative thinking to the planning, concept and realisation of the Hub, helping to ensure that the arts remain at the core of the redevelopment of the museum, library and adult education buildings in the civic centre of Tunbridge Wells. 

Their progress was recorded on a blog on the Tunbridge Wells Museum website.
www.tunbridgewellsmuseum.org.uk

Zoo
A collaboration with David Clarke | 2018

Ceramic, rubber, wood, metal

Photography by David Clarke

Notes - Shelved
A one-year collaborative residency with David Clarke resulted in the exhibition Shelved.

Zoo is one of nine works first exhibited at Tunbridge Wells Museum, Reference Library and Adult Education Centre.

"Tracey and David found common points of interest and got to know the collections through discovery, research, public and private discussion and reflection. It was the things that ‘tripped us up’ and piqued our curiosity, which resulted in a comprehensive new body of work."

Uniquely, they also creatively contributed to the development of the borough’s new Cultural & Learning Hub. Serving as project team members, they contributed their creative thinking to the planning, concept and realisation of the Hub, helping to ensure that the arts remain at the core of the redevelopment of the museum, library and adult education buildings in the civic centre of Tunbridge Wells. 

Their progress was recorded on a blog on the Tunbridge Wells Museum website.
www.tunbridgewellsmuseum.org.uk

Vacant
A collaboration with David Clarke | 2018

Brass, glass, pewter, plastic, precious metal clay (PMC), resin, bookcloth, tin plate, paint

Photography by David Clarke

Notes - Shelved
A one-year collaborative residency with David Clarke resulted in the exhibition Shelved.

Vacant is one of nine works first exhibited at Tunbridge Wells Museum, Reference Library and Adult Education Centre.

"Tracey and David found common points of interest and got to know the collections through discovery, research, public and private discussion and reflection. It was the things that ‘tripped us up’ and piqued our curiosity, which resulted in a comprehensive new body of work."

Uniquely, they also creatively contributed to the development of the borough’s new Cultural & Learning Hub. Serving as project team members, they contributed their creative thinking to the planning, concept and realisation of the Hub, helping to ensure that the arts remain at the core of the redevelopment of the museum, library and adult education buildings in the civic centre of Tunbridge Wells. 

Their progress was recorded on a blog on the Tunbridge Wells Museum website.
www.tunbridgewellsmuseum.org.uk

Limbo
A collaboration with David Clarke | 2018
500mm²

Wood

Photography by David Clarke
Photography by Jen Lindsay

Notes - Shelved
A one-year collaborative residency with David Clarke resulted in the exhibition Shelved.

Limbo is one of nine works first exhibited at Tunbridge Wells Museum, Reference Library and Adult Education Centre.

"Tracey and David found common points of interest and got to know the collections through discovery, research, public and private discussion and reflection. It was the things that ‘tripped us up’ and piqued our curiosity, which resulted in a comprehensive new body of work."

Uniquely, they also creatively contributed to the development of the borough’s new Cultural & Learning Hub. Serving as project team members, they contributed their creative thinking to the planning, concept and realisation of the Hub, helping to ensure that the arts remain at the core of the redevelopment of the museum, library and adult education buildings in the civic centre of Tunbridge Wells. 

Their progress was recorded on a blog on the Tunbridge Wells Museum website.
www.tunbridgewellsmuseum.org.uk

Landed Gentry
A collaboration with David Clarke | 2017

Pewter, glass, pigment, steel

Photography by David Clarke

Artist’s notes
Landed Gentry are cast in pewter from the interior of second-hand ceramic figurines. By replacing ceramics with metal, these vague copies of themselves question the status of one material over another within craft and how to avoid judging one another on face value. To raise the status of these objects, Landed Gentry are placed on underlit used paint pots from Tunbridge Wells Adult Education Centre, which stand as subtle and physical emblems of the creativity of local people.

Notes - Shelved
A one-year collaborative residency with David Clarke resulted in the exhibition Shelved.

Landed Gentry is one of nine works first exhibited at Tunbridge Wells Museum, Reference Library and Adult Education Centre.

"Tracey and David found common points of interest and got to know the collections through discovery, research, public and private discussion and reflection. It was the things that ‘tripped us up’ and piqued our curiosity, which resulted in a comprehensive new body of work."

Uniquely, they also creatively contributed to the development of the borough’s new Cultural & Learning Hub. Serving as project team members, they contributed their creative thinking to the planning, concept and realisation of the Hub, helping to ensure that the arts remain at the core of the redevelopment of the museum, library and adult education buildings in the civic centre of Tunbridge Wells. 

Their progress was recorded on a blog on the Tunbridge Wells Museum website.
www.tunbridgewellsmuseum.org.uk

Lost Souls
A collaboration with David Clarke | 2017

Leather, black carbon, 9 carat gold

Photography by David Clarke

Notes - Shelved
A one-year collaborative residency with David Clarke resulted in the exhibition Shelved.

Lost Souls is one of nine works first exhibited at Tunbridge Wells Museum, Reference Library and Adult Education Centre.

"Tracey and David found common points of interest and got to know the collections through discovery, research, public and private discussion and reflection. It was the things that ‘tripped us up’ and piqued our curiosity, which resulted in a comprehensive new body of work."

Uniquely, they also creatively contributed to the development of the borough’s new Cultural & Learning Hub. Serving as project team members, they contributed their creative thinking to the planning, concept and realisation of the Hub, helping to ensure that the arts remain at the core of the redevelopment of the museum, library and adult education buildings in the civic centre of Tunbridge Wells. 

Their progress was recorded on a blog on the Tunbridge Wells Museum website.
www.tunbridgewellsmuseum.org.uk

An Answer to a Satyr Against Mankind [1679]
by Edward Pococke | 2017
322 x 237 x 17mm

Bound in black goatskin, sewn on a stub, all three edges solid edge gilt, with leather-jointed endpapers, rounded and backed and tooled in gold leaf.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Nicholas Fisher Collection

Artist's Notes

Every detail of this work, is as much my answer to my binding of A Satyr Against Mankind (bound 1999) as it is my response to this text.  The image on each of these bindings takes a different position/stance through drawing and mark-making. The grid is a key element in each: for this image, I’m using the positive space of a grid, filling the space that was left in A Satyr Against Mankind.  The grid’s irregularity is emphasized by being gold tooled with two different thicknesses of line, to create the particular kind of energy and tension I was looking for.

Fables by the Late Mr Gay, London [1823] | 2017
141 x 93 x 18mm

Hand-coloured, hand-made paper binding using original boards and paste-downs.

Artist’s Notes

The front board was detached and the cords attaching the rear board were weak, the sewing was sound but it didn’t open well due to it being a tight-back. I felt it was important to re-use the boards, so designed a structure to do this. I first removed the leather covering the spine and the boards and attached a one-on one-off hand-made paper hollow-back. The cover is made from hand-made paper which I decorated with oval shapes stencilled with acrylic paint. The cover includes a glued hinge/fold, which is the depth of each joint and which sits between the joint and the inner edge of the spine edge of the board; it’s from here that the covers articulate. The paper cover is only attached to the hollow-back, with the turn-ins adhered underneath the original paste downs.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Around  | 2016
143 x 130 x 2mm

An eight page book containing graphite drawings, housed in a cloth-covered folder.

Mound-made paper, HB pencil.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

Private Collection

Group |  2016
Each cube measures 100mm²

Fifteen coloured pencil drawings on paper-covered cubes.

Hand-made paper, mould-made paper, Gemini board, Evacon R glue, coloured pencil.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

----------

Notes
"In Group Rowledge uses the simplest of elements to alert our attention to shape, volume, colour, tone, surface, edge, texture, depth. The fifteen identical millboard cubes, meticulously papered over with individual drawings, are the building blocks of hand-made mark. Colours chosen from the range of a Caran D’ache pencil box allow for a surprisingly wide repertoire.

The sculptural forms are engineered with complete precision to draw the eye to detail: a sliver of brilliant colour worked down a seam where two sheets of paper abut, or the deliberate mismatch in the join of fine line over an edge, for example. The paper cubes could be seen as the basic components of a blank 3D codex on which the artist performs an ever-expanding range of mark-making. Colour is used pure or overlaid in densities to achieve luminosity against the soft white of Saunders Waterford and the gentle hand dyed pigments of McGregor handmade papers.

The skill of a good binder is one of translation, an artist must produce something that is signature. This work shows Rowledge returning to the basics of pencil and paper to alert us to familiar things that we often do not perceive."

Emma Hill, Eagle Gallery, London.

Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
(The Rampant Lions Press 1996, 52/200) | 2014
384 x 292 x 32mm

Bound in black goatskin, rough-edge gilt, with leather-jointed hand-made paper endpapers, rounded-only spine and tooled in gold leaf.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Private Collection

Artist's Notes

This is the second time I have bound a copy of this book printed by the Rampant Lions Press.  The first was in 1997, when my response was guided by the knowledge that T. S. Eliot did not like images on the covers of his books. This led me toward mark-making that responded to the flow of his writing, rather than creating an ‘pictorial’ image.  Ivor Robinson was my mentor at the time and in an article for The New Bookbinder (Vol 20, 2000) he chose that binding as one of his ‘Desert Island bindings’ - which was a huge honour for me. 

Binding this book for a second time was made all the more poignant for me, as I was part way through it when Ivor passed away.  The image on this book responds to the text, to my first binding of the book, but also, and for me just as importantly, this image is my thank you letter to Ivor.

A Little Treachery
by Libby Houston with dry point by Julia Farrer
(Circle Press Publications 1990, 20/120) | 2014
296 x 208 x 15mm

Bound in purple/blue goatskin, sewn on a stub, with leather-jointed hand-coloured endpapers, rounded and backed and gold tooled in Palladium leaf.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Collection of Boston Athenæum, USA

A Little Treachery
by Libby Houston with dry point by Julia Farrer
(Circle Press Publications 1990) | 2014
296 x 201 x 8mm

Bound in a hand-coloured, hand-made paper book structure with an inturned triangular spine. I created the Pivot binding specifically for this single section book, which has hand-coloured endpapers and is gold tooled in Palladium leaf.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Collection of Fidelity, London

Select Fables of Esop and Other Fabulists
by R Dodsley [c. 1788] | 2013
175 x 109 x 24mm

Bound in hand-coloured boards, using hand-made and hand-coloured paper, coloured linen tape and thread.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd
Private Collection

Imperatoris Iustiniani Institutionum Libri IIII [1625] | 2013
114 x 59 x 22mm

Vellum spine piece, gold-tooled in Moongold leaf and added to the remains of original binding.

Photography by Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd Private collection

Artist's Notes
This book was in my possession for some years before I began working on it. The structure of the binding was sound, the original boards were still attached to the alum-tawed thongs on which the book was sewn: it had just at some point lost its leather covering material. 

My ‘making’ involved creating a method of securing a vellum spine to fit around the alum-tawed thongs. The small triangular image gold tooled in Moongold leaf is my celebration of what I saw in this book; it was always my intention to secure the integrity of the object, so that its physical attributes were in the foreground. My contribution was to be able draw your attention to the intrinsic qualities of this object. In a way, I completed what at some point had become unfinished.