Pheasant Moon

I recently finished this book, Pheasant Moon, which is part of my Whistling Copse series. It's a neat little thing, and my first completed book project in about ten years that wasn't printed digitally. I've been immersing myself in the alchemy of Lithography and getting pretty reasonable results. It's very much a "don't run before you can walk" situation, however, and I've been fairly strict about setting myself a very simple project that I can have some chance of completing and learning something from. That said, there are two plates involved here, one for the book-body itself, which is a sort of reverse prefect-binding, with the foredges individually glued (there are only 4 folios, so this is an acceptable amount of labour).

Within, it's based on ceramic decoration, printed in a blue colour reminiscent of Spode and with designs reflecting both my (newish) interest in ceramic decorations, and the research I've been doing on Whistling Copse and poaching. The cover, as you can see, is printed in translucent white on blue card, and looks, if I may say, rather dashing. I'm rather pleased, which probably presages dreadful difficulties with my next book. We shall see.

(This drawing is printed in blue in the original)

I'm also rather glad to have finished it in time to be able to show it at my upcoming meeting at the Victoria and Albert Museum (National Art Library) on Friday. I'll be meeting with Jennifer Farmer, Andrew Russell and Margaret Timmers with the intention of introducing them to my work and making their acquaintance. I do rather wish I had a little more stock to show them, but I'm pleased to have this little thing to show them.

Of course, going to London also means I'll have the chance to do a little research (again at the V&A) and perhaps see a couple of exhibitions. I'll be travelling with L, whose kind friends M&F have offered their hospitality for a few days. It's a little holiday for me, and the weather couldn't be nicer. The one fly in the ointment is the necessity for me to do some more work on outlining my PhD proposal. However, it won't intrude too much into what promises to be an exciting trip.