This week we present a few of the wood engravings from the 35 wood engravings by the notable English wood engraver Peter Reddick (1924-2010) for the 1969 Limited Editions Club production of The Poems of Robert Browning, designed by John Dreyfus and printed at the University Printing House in Cambridge by University master printer Brooke Crutchley in a limited edition of 1500 copies signed by the artist.
After contracting polio in 1958, making it difficult for him to pursue his painting efforts, Peter Reddick turned to wood engraving as his primary medium. He illustrated more than 50 books and is especially noted for his interpretations of the works of Thomas Hardy. With the diminishment of wood engraving in the 1960s and 1970s, Reddick helped to sustain the medium during that time, and is credited, along with contemporaries such as George Tute, David Gentleman, and Simon Brett, with reviving the medium in the 1980s to its more elevated status today.
These two prints come from our recent acquisition 2020 Vision: Nineteen Wood Engravers, One Collector, and the Artists Who Inspired Them, compiled and introduced by collector Nigel Hamway, edited by English wood engraver Peter Lawrence, and printed in 2020 by Patrick Randle’s Nomad Letterpress at the Whittington Press in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, in an edition of 340 copies for the 100th anniversary of the Society of Wood Engravers. Hamway asked nineteen of his favorite engravers to choose a major artistic influence, write an introduction about why they feel this way and, wherever possible, to work on a new engraving which sits side-by-side in the book with an engraving or illustration by their inspirer. The result is a unique collection, linking past with present, and a fitting tribute to the skills of the engravers and the part played by the Society in the history of wood engraving. We will be showing more examples from this book over the next several weeks.
In chapter 19, English wood engraver Paul L. Kershaw writes about his inspiration, the British printer and founder of the Fleece Press, Simon Lawrence, a scion of the Lawrence family, manufacturers of fine engravers' boxwood blocks, and “a master printer” who “has set me the best example I could have hoped for; I’m blessed,” writes Kershaw. In an unusual presentation for this volume, the Lawrence example is a folded Fleece Press printing of these two wood engravings by Lawrence’s own inspirations: Piers the Dragon Slayer by George Tute and The Death of William Rufus by Peter Reddick. Of these two English engravers, Lawrence writes:
A few years before I found wood engraving, Peter and George collaborated on mythological subjects for the Reader’s Digest Folklore, Myths & Legends of Britain (1973). I couldn’t distinguish their work at that time and the two Bristolians seemed to form a strong regional style. These artists were among the few who kept the craft alive at a quiet time, & have always been among the brightest stars in the engravers’ firmament. The engravings have been printed by hand on my 1853 Albion Press, the type first printed on dry paper which was then dampened to take the engravings, as I always do. Simon Lawrence, March 2019.
