Drawn by Hand: A Retrospective of Auto-Lithography Printed at The Curwen Press, Plaistow, 1920–1950 — Curwen Gallery Exhibition Catalogue, 1966

Title: Drawn by Hand: A Retrospective of Auto-Lithography Printed at The Curwen Press, Plaistow, 1920–1950
Publisher / Institution: The Curwen Gallery, London
Date: 1966
Edition: First edition
Exhibition: Curwen Gallery, 7 Colville Place, off Charlotte Street, London W1, 2 June–2 July 1966
Format: Folding exhibition catalogue
Printing: Privately printed
Stock Code: 004189
Location: Ephemera Drawer, Bookroom
Sleeve: Design A

First edition of this attractive and important 1966 Curwen Gallery exhibition catalogue devoted to three decades of auto-lithography at the Curwen Press, one of the most influential British printers of the twentieth century. Entitled Drawn by Hand, the exhibition was held at the Curwen Gallery from 2 June to 2 July 1966 and surveyed work printed at the Curwen Press, Plaistow, between 1920 and 1950, when the Press played a central role in the revival of artist-drawn commercial lithography in Britain.

The catalogue is itself a finely conceived piece of Curwen ephemera, printed in blue and black on textured grey paper with deliberately deckled edges and opening to form a multi-panel display. The introductory essay, “Auto-Lithography at Plaistow”, provides a concise contemporary history of the development of the process at the Curwen Press. It recalls Harold Curwen’s invitation to Claud Lovat Fraser to work directly in the printing works, and describes the subsequent encouragement of artists to master lithographic techniques themselves rather than merely supply designs for translation by craftsmen.

The text identifies the early collaboration between Curwen and artists as an important revival of direct artist involvement in commercial lithography. It notes the interruption caused by Lovat Fraser’s death in 1921, the subsequent revival of gay printing — to use the contemporary terminology of the catalogue — by Harold Curwen and Oliver Simon, and the celebrated lithographs by Spencer Pryse and Sir Frank Brangwyn for the 1924 Wembley Exhibition publication Pageant of Empire. By the 1930s the Curwen Press had developed a particularly distinguished group of artists working directly with lithography, among them John Piper, Barnett Freedman, Eric Ravilious, Edward Bawden, Graham Sutherland, John Nash and Edward Ardizzone.

The exhibition comprised 29 works, demonstrating the remarkable range of artists and commercial commissions associated with Curwen during the period. Exhibits included:

Barnett Freedman — Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Anna Karenina for the Limited Editions Club, together with work for Imperial Airways and Emily Brontë binding cloth;
John Piper — The Colour of English Country Houses and English, Scottish and Welsh Landscape;
Edward Ardizzone — Ali Baba and Great Expectations for the Limited Editions Club;
Claud Lovat Fraser — work including the celebrated Eno’s Fruit Salt poster;
Edward Wadsworth — South Kensington Museums poster for the London Passenger Transport Board;
Graham Sutherland — London Transport and Contemporary Lithographs work;
Edward Bawden — London Transport posters including Kew Gardens and Country Houses, as well as book, wallpaper and commercial designs;
John Nash — Men and the Fields for B. T. Batsford;
Ben Nicholson — lithography for Kingsway Reproductions;
Paul Nash — Landscape of the Megaliths for Contemporary Lithographs;
John Hitchens — Flowers for Contemporary Lithographs;
Eric Ravilious — Newhaven Harbour for Contemporary Lithographs;
and John Banting — his Natural History Museum poster for London Transport.

The catalogue is particularly useful as a primary document for the history of British commercial lithography, because it was produced while many of the personalities involved in the Curwen Press’s inter-war flowering remained within living memory and only sixteen years after the chronological end point of the exhibition. The Bodleian Library’s Curwen Press archive records this precise exhibition catalogue among the Press’s surviving exhibition material, confirming its place within the documented history of Curwen printing.

The exhibition also occupied an interesting moment in Curwen history. The Curwen Gallery had opened only shortly before, in 1965, while the revival of fine-art lithography associated with the Curwen Studio was developing into one of the most important British printmaking enterprises of the post-war period. Drawn by Hand therefore looked back deliberately to the Press’s earlier achievements and to the generation of artists whose direct involvement with lithography had helped establish the Curwen reputation.

The catalogue is in fine condition, exceptionally fresh for a fragile folding publication of this type, with the printing sharp and the paper clean and well preserved. Now housed in a clear acetate sleeve, Design A, for protection.

Fine.

A particularly attractive piece of Curwen Press and British modernist printmaking ephemera, documenting an exhibition which brought together work by many of the most important British illustrators, designers and printmakers of the inter-war period, including Edward Bawden, Eric Ravilious, Paul Nash, John Nash, John Piper, Barnett Freedman, Graham Sutherland, Edward Ardizzone, Ben Nicholson and Claud Lovat Fraser.

Stock code: 004189. Location: Ephemera Drawer, Bookroom. Sleeve Design A.

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