A rare survivor

In his day Eric Ravilious complained that his watercolour paintings didn’t sell well enough at exhibitions. Like many an artist before and since, he made much of his living as a teacher, taking on such commissioned design work as came his way, a jobbing artist. Among it all were several jobs for London Transport, successfully using his talent as a wood engraver, building on the illustrations he had cut, particularly those for the Golden Cockerel Press.

This pamphlet focusses on one of the two Griffins he cut as black line engravings. Of the two, this Griffin passant lived on into the late 1960s. The original wood engraving does not seem to have survived, only proofs from it in London Transports’ archives. Letterpress printing of engravings relies on metal copies made from an original proof impression. London Transport and the printers it employed used these, and after two thorough changes in printing technology, even they are rare survivors. One of these has been offered to us for printing and our text explains how it was created and what it was used for, illustrated of course with our original prints.

Our title page design is based on London Transport packaging, and in addition we have included a black impression on a tipped in plate. The text is hand set in Blado and Poliphilus types, in an edition of 225 numbered copies. The handmade ledger paper we have used is watermarked T H SAUNDERS 1962, when use of this image was still current. The pages are sewn into a card cover with a titled wrapper.