Jonny Hannah – Stoker Thompson’s Boxing Glove – Signed Limited Edition Linocut 13/50 – Cakes & Ale Press – 2008

Description

A particularly strong original colour linocut by Jonny Hannah, entitled Stoker Thompson’s Boxing Glove, dating from 2008.

The work measures 49.8 × 29.8 cm and was issued in a limited edition of only 50 impressions. This example is number 13/50, signed and dated 2008 by Jonny Hannah in pencil, with the numbered edition device and Cakes & Ale Press imprint clearly visible beneath the image.

Printed in a restricted palette of pale blue, cream and deep red, the composition takes the form of an exuberant boxing bill or hand-printed fight poster. A large red boxing glove dominates the centre, its elongated wrist carrying the bold hand-cut wording:

KILLER DILLER

Around it Hannah arranges an accumulation of names, phrases and graphic fragments including:

STOKER THOMPSON
BOXING GLOVE
PICK UP A PAIR AT McVOUTY’S

The whole print has the deliberately energetic appearance of a vintage boxing poster, sporting-goods advertisement and piece of fictional commercial ephemera combined.

Stoker Thompson and The Set-Up

The title has an important cinematic source.

Bill “Stoker” Thompson is the ageing professional boxer played by Robert Ryan in Robert Wise’s 1949 film noir The Set-Up. The film follows the 35-year-old fighter over the course of a single evening as he prepares for a bout without initially knowing that his manager has agreed with gangsters that he should lose.

Stoker refuses to surrender his belief that he can still win. That combination of battered optimism, boxing mythology and film-noir fatalism gives Hannah a rich subject for reinterpretation.

Importantly, this is not a film poster or reproduction of publicity artwork from The Set-Up. Hannah takes the fictional boxer’s name as a point of departure and creates an entirely new object around it: an imaginary piece of boxing and retail ephemera.

Boxing, Cinema and Popular Graphics

Hannah’s treatment of the subject avoids conventional portraiture.

There is no literal depiction of Robert Ryan or a scene from the film. Instead, the boxing glove itself becomes the portrait. Its oversized form occupies most of the composition, while the surrounding lettering evokes fight bills, gym notices, shop advertisements and inexpensive sporting posters.

This method is characteristic of Hannah’s broader practice: cultural figures and references are often approached through the objects, typography and visual culture surrounding them.

Here, boxing and cinema are filtered through the language of hand-cut commercial graphics.

“Killer Diller”

The words “KILLER DILLER” are cut prominently into the glove.

The phrase belongs to the slangy, exuberant language of twentieth-century American popular culture and adds to the print’s mixture of boxing bravado, jazz-age phrasing and advertising hyperbole.

Rather than presenting the glove as a realistic sporting object, Hannah turns it into an emblem loaded with lettering — almost a shop sign or oversized product label.

McVouty’s

The wording:

“PICK UP A PAIR AT McVOUTY’S”

introduces another layer of Hannah’s characteristic imaginary-commercial world.

Whether read as an invented retailer or as part of Hannah’s broader fictional graphic vocabulary, it gives the design the feel of an advertisement for boxing equipment from a long-vanished shop.

That tension between real cultural reference and fictional commerce is central to Hannah’s work. Stoker Thompson belongs to an actual film, but the surrounding shop-sign language transforms him into part of Hannah’s own visual universe.

Linocut Technique

This is an original colour linocut, not a screenprint or later reproduction.

The linocut process is particularly effective here. Hannah’s broad cut lettering, broken textures and slightly irregular contours create the rough immediacy of hand-printed sporting ephemera.

The pale-blue ground is overlaid with cream and deep-red forms, while the intentionally uneven ink coverage gives the surface a lively, tactile quality.

These slight variations are inherent to the original relief-printing process and form an important part of the finished work.

Typography and Composition

Typography carries almost as much visual weight as the central glove.

The enormous block letters of STOKER, the irregular THOMPSON, the fragmented BOXING GLOVE and the theatrical wording surrounding the glove create a composition that can be read almost like a poster from top to bottom.

The restricted colour palette gives the densely lettered design coherence, while the tall 49.8 cm format reinforces its resemblance to a vintage fight bill or shop advertisement.

Date and Edition

The print dates from 2008.

This example is:

13/50

from a limited edition of only 50 impressions.

The relatively early date, compact edition, distinctive boxing subject and connection with Robert Wise’s The Set-Up give the work particular crossover appeal for collectors of Hannah, cinema, boxing and twentieth-century popular culture.

Condition

Very good to excellent condition overall.

The pale-blue, cream and deep-red printing remains strong and visually effective, with the lettering and central glove retaining excellent definition.

There is only minor natural handling and paper irregularity visible. Small areas of broken or variable ink coverage are characteristic of the original linocut process and should not be mistaken for later surface loss.

The pencil signature, 2008 date and edition number 13/50 remain clearly legible.

Please study the photographs carefully as they form an integral part of the description.

Artist: Jonny Hannah
Title: Stoker Thompson’s Boxing Glove
Date: 2008
Medium: Original colour linocut
Edition: 13/50
Edition size: 50
Signed: Yes, in pencil
Dated: 2008
Size: 49.8 × 29.8 cm
Imprint: Cakes & Ale Press
Subject: Bill “Stoker” Thompson / The Set-Up / boxing / cinema
Format: Original limited-edition artist’s linocut
Unframed: Yes
Modern reproduction: No

Authenticity

This work has been handled, inspected and catalogued in-house at Hornseys before being offered for sale.

The pencil signature, date, edition number 13/50 and Cakes & Ale Press imprint are all clearly visible beneath the image.

It is an original signed and numbered Jonny Hannah linocut from an edition of only 50, not a later reproduction.

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