Wood Engraving Wednesday
LINDA HOLMES
Presented here are five original wood engravings by English engraver Linda Holmes (1950-2015) created as illustrations for a translation of a monologue entitled My Justification by the 17th-century Transylvanian Hungarian type designer, punchcutter, printer, and Hungarian patriot Totfalusi Kis Miklos (known in English-speaking countries as Nicholas Kis, 1650-1702). The text and blocks for the translation were printed by British designer Colin Banks (1932-2002) and inserted between pages 112 and 113 in Matrix 13 (Winter 1993), printed at the John and Rosalind Randle’s Whittington Press in Risbury, Herefordshire, England.
Kis was trained in Amsterdam by punchcutter Dirk Voskens (who likely cut many of the punches for the Fell types). Kis became one of the leading punchcutters of his time before returning to Hungarian Transylvania to print bibles. His Roman fonts were purchased and used by Anton Janson, which led some to believe that they were his creation rather than Kis's. The so-called Janson typefaces recut in the 20th century are so-named because of this confusion. Kis felt beleaguered in his own time and thus wrote this monologue in his frustration.
Wood engraver Linda Holmes originally worked as a journalist for the BBC. In 1985, she and her husband, BBC journalist David Holmes, retired from London to Walpole, in Suffolk. In 1989, Holmes attended Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts (now Camberwell College of Arts) to study wood engraving under Simon Brett and Yvonne Skargon. Holmes enjoyed a 25-year career as both a wood engraver and a painter until her death from pancreatic cancer at the age of 65.
Click or tap on the caption for each image to see the monologue they illustrate.
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