TRAVELLERS’ VERSE: over the past few months the only travel most of us have been able to undertake has been virtual: through books, films, and in our memories. Of course, whilst that’s problematic for the travel industry, it’s a blessing for the planet. This year, I had trips planned to Seville and Tbilisi in Georgia that didn’t happen, but this pause has been no bad thing. It’s made me think that the last time civilians were so restricted from travel was in the Second World War, unless they were servicemen and women being sent into fields of war. At that time, Fredrick Muller Ltd published a series of poetry anthologies edited by W.J.Turner and Sheila Shannon, which paired poetry with original lithographs by contemporary artists. They were a handy size and provided a luxurious colour book at low cost. The artists included major figures in Modern British Art such as John Craxton, John Piper, Michael Ayrton and William Scott. Edward Bawden was commissioned to create a series of images to decorate a book of ‘Travellers’ Verse’ chosen by M.G.Lloyd Thomas. It brings together verse by poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Milton, Lord Byron, William Shakespeare, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Ellliott, Lord Mary Wortley Montagu, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lawrence Durrell, and Anne French, Countess of Winchelsea. Bawden’s images take us on a journey from Norway, to Rome, Venice to Athens, onto Constantinople/Istanbul, into the Middle East and beyond. Bawden had travelled to Iraq and Iran as a War Artist, recording the Marsh Arabs, so he had some first hand experience, but really these images are completely fantastical - and suited to the imagination, as with the exoticism and orientalism of some of the verse. It is escapism of the first order, but these are delightful images. And as they are lithographs, they are effectively ‘original’ prints - here displayed on a Japanese fabric I bought in Kyoto. #edwardbawden #illustration #travel #modernbritishart #poetry #instabook #bookstagram #design #travelbook #travelbooks #travelwriter #1940sart #bawden (at Brighton and Hove) https://www.instagram.com/p/CCQWeWTlYQN/?igshid=178yjg18angk6
