#john crombie

[uispeccoll]

In this week’s Artists’ Book Shelf, we have seven books from John Crombie and Sheila Bourne (Kickshaws, Paris). They’re all from between 1988 and 1992 and feature bright, playful colors and imagery. The 1992 books, Gloom and Bloom and Old Wives’ Tale juxtapose the image of a hydrangea shrub with circular blossoms with deep, often dark personal narratives.

If you’re in the area, come check them out. If not, we wish you were here.

-John

xN7433.4.C66 A4 1988 

Crombie, John and Sheila Bourne. Wish You Were Here!. Paris: Kickshaws, 1988.

xN7433.4.C66 A4 1989

Crombie, John. Passages. Paris: Kickshaws, 1989.

xN7433.4.C66 A4 1991 

Crombie, John. Proofs. Paris: Kickshaws, 1991.

xN7433.4.C66 A4 1990 

Crombie, John and Sheila Bourne. Endgame. Paris: Kickshaws, 1990.

xN7433.4.C66 A4 1990a

Crombie, John and Arthur Rimbaud. Rimbaud : Une Illumination. Paris: Kickshaws, 1990.

xN7433.4.C66 G56 1992 

Crombie, John. Gloom and Bloom. Paris: Kickshaws, 1992.

xN7433.4.C66 O5 1992

Crombie, John. Old Wives' Tale. Paris: Kickshaws, 1992.

[rbolick]

Books On Books Collection - John Crombie

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[garadinervi]

From: John Crombie, Biobibliograffiti, Kickshaws, Paris, 1986, Edition of 130

[garadinervi]

From: John Crombie, Biobibliograffiti, Kickshaws, Paris, 1986, Edition of 130

[garadinervi]

From: John Crombie, Biobibliograffiti, Kickshaws, Paris, 1986, Edition of 130

[chancepress]

Kickshaws! I found out about John Crombie's Kickshaws press a ways back, although these are the only two books I actually own. The top one, Proofs, is a collection of proof sheets with randomly printed tidbits from a bunch of his other projects. It's sort of an anthology, but rather than compiling samples of his work, it barfs them all over you. I love pulling this one off the shelf, since I always see things that I hadn't noticed before. 

The second book, Neither/Nor, is pretty cool too. John Crombie is a big Oulipo practitioner (he produced the only English edition of Raymond Queneau's One Hundred Thousand Billion Poems with each line on a separate strip), and this book is a series of four letter words, with the constraint that each successive word may only contain one different letter than the word preceding it. The fish/fowl sponge prints also get progressively more saturated throughout the book.