At Last - and to Great Rejoicing - the Oxford Fine Press Fair 2022 opened its doors. By Griselda Heppel.

Wood Engravings by Peter Holland

I may have mentioned before.... that while my books are published in the modern, mass-produced way, my husband goes to the opposite extreme, commissioning fine, hand printed and bound books using traditional letterpress. Two years ago he, together with wood engraver Pete Lawrence, brought out 2020 Vision: Nineteen wood engravers, one collector and the artists who inspired them, beautifully printed by Pat Randle at Nomad Letterpress and handbound by Roger Grech. Produced to celebrate the centenary of The Society of Wood Engravers, all that was needed was the biennial Oxford Fine Press Book Fair to launch it in March 2020, and …. 

But you know the rest. The pandemic happened and the Book Fair didn’t. Not in March, nor in November 2020. 2021 came and went, with not a rustle of antique page or handmade paper in Oxford (oh, except for business as usual in the Bodleian, of course). In November 2021 a flutter went through the book world as Ludlow Book Binders ran a mini Fine Press Fair on Ludlow Race Course (a venue not unknown to bookmakers), which proved a great success. But it wasn’t the same. 

Oxford Fine Press Book Fair 2022

And so it was, to great rejoicing – and thanks to deft organisation by Henry Gott and Blackwell’s Rare Books team – that last month, on the weekend of 5 and 6 March, the Examination Schools at last opened its doors for the Oxford Fine Press Book Fair 2022.

Printers, binders, dealers, wood engravers, designers, papermakers and book lovers of all kinds descended on Oxford. Starved of each other’s company – a universal love of books gives this world a friendly, almost collegiate atmosphere – stallholders and punters arrived from all corners of the UK, from Holland, Germany and other European countries and from as far away as the USA.

You might think that, two years too late to launch 2020 Vision (most copies of which had been snapped up by book collectors in the meantime), my husband wouldn't have much to do at the Nomad Letterpress stall....

....Er, you’d be wrong. 

He’s barely got going. 

With Pat Randle he’s planned a series of books on individual wood engravers, beginning with the man who first inspired his love for the medium, when he himself was knee high to a woodblock.

Peter Holland, the father of Nigel's childhood friend, Simon, never in his life exhibited or sold a wood engraving.

 

Some of the wood engravings by
Peter Holland, printed by Anna Parker.
Handmade box by Roger Grech

An architect by profession, he taught himself the art in his spare time, producing over 80 finely executed, closely observed images, mainly of the natural world: plants, wild animals and birds, views across hop fields and downs and country churchyards. With his family’s help, Nigel gathered them together, skilfully printed from the blocks by Anna Parker at Nomad Letterpress, into a beautiful box made by bookbinder Roger Grech, which uses coloured Holland engravings for cover and lining. 

Completed by an introduction to the artist by his sons, John and Simon, the box and its contents constitute the most ravishing work of art, and at the book fair it attracted a lot of attention from collectors and dealers alike. Half a dozen sold immediately and more are likely to, once the box – which literally arrived from the binder on the first day of the fair – is made available online. 

Nomad Letterpress stall at the Oxford Fine Print Book Fair 2022

 

Not bad for an artist totally unknown until now. 

I think Peter would be pleased. 

And amazed.

OUT NOW 

The Fall of a Sparrow  

FINALIST in the Page Turner Awards 2021

and the Wishing Shelf Awards 2021 

by Griselda Heppel, author of 

Ante's Inferno  

www.griseldaheppel.com  

https://griseldaheppel.wordpress.com