#a floating diary

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Marbled Monday

For this week's Marbled Monday we revisit a book we've shared aspects of before—this is A Floating Diary: A Collection of Words and Wood Engravings Following a Week Afloat on a Narrow Boat by Linda Leatherbarrow. The book was published in London by Little Bird Press in 1980 and contains lovely wood engravings of riverside scenes documenting the author's journey by boat. While a couple of the wood engravings are included here, we shared the rest of them in a previous post which you can find here.

The marbling on the covers is a nonpareil pattern, which is often used as a base for more complex patterns like peacock (also known as bouquet) and feather. This pattern was created using maroon, tan, and several shades of blue.

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-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager

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Wood Engraving Wednesday

LINDA LEATHERBARROW

This week we present a few small wood engravings by the Scottish-born author and illustrator Linda Leatherbarrow from her chapbook A Floating Diary: A Collection of Words and Wood Engravings Following a Week Afloat on a Narrow Boat, handprinted in London by Leatherbarrow in an edition of 100 copies at her own Little Bird Press in 1980. 

An award-wining short story writer, Leatherbarrow also trained as an artist at Hornsey College of Art and Walthamstow School of Art, and in the late 1970s started Little Bird Press for her own writing and that of her friends, illustrated with original prints in wood engraving, linocuts, and silk screen. “I began,” she writes, “with an Adana hand press on a table in a corner of my bedroom then progressed to my own workshop above a car showroom on Tottenham High Street,” and would well her books “at Covent Garden Market, craft fairs and bookshops throughout the UK.” She continued illustrating and handprinting until the mid-1980s, when she began writing short stories to great success.

Leatherbarrow has also worked as a librarian, a literary festival organizer, and a university lecturer. In 2010, she retired from lecturing, but continues to write from her home in southwest Scotland.

View more posts with women wood engravers.

View more posts with wood engravings!