Timeless and Priceless

Look at what I received in the mail today! Totally unexpected but so, so welcomed.

In my previous post about Cressida Campbell I mentioned she recently had published a limited edition book of her woodblock paintings. By the time I came to her exhibition the first edition was sold out and they were not sure of a second printing.

I put an order in with Readings on the off-chance and thought no more about it.
This afternoon I received a big parcel in the mail and inside was this wonderful, huge, colourful, exquisite book.

Nearly three hundred images have been assembled here, carefully edited into nine distinct sections. It’s a book that displays a sensitive and introspective imagination at work, a book which allows the pictures to speak for themselves.

"It took about three years to put together," Campbell says of the book. "I initially said I couldn't be bothered. I just wanted to keep doing what I was doing rather than endlessly sifting through my old pictures.

"I eventually drove the book's designer completely mad, of course. I treated it like a picture in and of itself."

Nonetheless, Campbell is happy with the result. "We chose thick, high-quality paper because we wanted the book to have a real tactile element to it," Campbell says, handing me the weighty tome. "There's nothing glossy about my work and we wanted that lithographic feel to the pages."

It's heavy and smooth and has a lovely new smell to it - I'll have to make a slip cover to protect it and keep it away from the bookshelves that have paperbacks and coffee cups deposited on them.

This has been one of the nicest surprise I've received in the mail for a while.