Catalogue

Finally, this box of delights has been concocted where the identity of each Emblem-maker can be discovered in the booklet provided.  The catalogue is limited to 225 copies of which only 55 are available (170 copies are reserved for the participating artists and writers).  
If you would like to reserve a copy, please contact the Curator at Shandy Hall.
The catalogue has been produced for the Laurence Sterne Trust by Colin Sackett.  
Each contains an original, miniature marbled page by Payhembury Marbled Papers.

Price : £50 + postage and packing.

Exhibition notes

 Peter Coates - Marbled Page (60cm x 37cm)

Emblem 170

Information and materials

No further information.

Emblem No. 170 in an exhibition of 169? 

Sterne's 'emblem of my work' in the first edition of Tristram Shandy is marbled on the recto (p.169) and the verso (p.170)

The writer/artist responsible for Emblem 170 made a work that is positioned, most appropriately, at the end of the exhibition - yet is the first to be seen on the blog.

Emblem 169

Information and materials

This marbled page was created using water colour pencils. 

While the shape of the composition mimics the look of one of Sterne’s marbled pages, the melting colours strive to evoke the same irreverence and humour as Tristram Shandy, directing these dissenting attitudes towards the integrity of the printed letter. 

 

Emblem 168

Information and materials

Namah is a detail of one of the prints in my continuing series of intaglio "Black Angels" but she is also the first of the females to be depicted. As this series has now spanned over 20 years and continues to grow it is a fair enough (though very obscure) emblem of my work and the demonic maternal nature of Namah promises to help deliver yet more into the world.

Mezzotint on copper
printed on Rives de Lin with hand made ink

 

Emblem 167

Information and materials

Design uses oil paints (with the addition of gold paint) on carragheen moss size. The black-gold pattern is freehand swirls on craft paper.

Emblem 166

Information and materials

Alas, no further information regarding this Emblem.

 

Emblem 165

Information and materials

Each sheet of marbled paper is unique. Water based paints are dropped onto a size made from carragheen moss where they expand and float on the surface. With a stylus or comb they can be manipulated into patterns. A sheet of paper, which has been treated with an alum mordant, is then carefully laid over the pattern which immediately transfers. While each sheet of paper varies slightly, with care and skill a good match can be made. It is this variation which gives marbled paper its lively quality. 

 

Emblem 164

Information and materials

 

Iris, Light.

Dye destruction print

Homeland

Dartmoor

Emblem 163

Information and materials

Inkjet output on photographic paper – depicting the molecular backbone for Protein 13, a polypeptide whose molecular structure enciphers a poem written by the genetically engineered bacterium D. radiodurans :

“ the faery is rosy of glow…” etc

 

Emblem 162

Information and materials

Rubber stamp, ink on paper

Emblem 161

Information and materials

Pen & Ink

Description:

My mind constantly has creative ideas ticking over at a rapid rate…

The challenge is to pluck the rare ones that aren’t completely farcical, for that ‘Eureka’ moment.

Emblem 160

Information and materials

The emblem of my work is my ‘mini meadow’.

This picture has been created to look like a blooming meadow on a summer’s day.

It has been marbled on a very small tray using Designers’ Gouache paint, floated onto a substance called Carrageen moss.

Each meadow is one of a kind as every one is produced individually.

Emblem 159

Information and materials

No extra information.

Emblem 158

Information and materials

Our Aiguille

short story in pen and ink.

Emblem 157

Information and materials

In Tristram Shandy, marbling serves as an emblem of both uniqueness (no two pages are identical) and randomness (no two pages ever could be identical). One cannot predict how the oiled dyes will distribute and fix before the sheet is lifted from the bath. The same dynamic applies to our physiology: absolutely unique and the very definition of the individual, but always with aleatoric dispositions, unpredictable development, and singular configurations.

Accordingly, a page from the first edition of Sterne’s book is read here 'pataphysically', as if it were an example of microscopic anatomy, revealing the pathologies and interior structures unique to the copy that supplied the sample. The emblem is “motley”, as Sterne would have it: variegated in colour, but also composed of diverse and incongruous elements – all those chemicals and organisms and processes at endless odds in our interiors.

This page is dedicated to Doctor Joseph Perloff.

Emblem 156

Information and materials

Sometimes external events determine the shape and course of a project. In this instance I had written a bespoke text, musings on page 169, with a view to printing it out to stick in the box, job done. However my home printer was busted, so I was forced to use a local copy shop ‘second office’. Having sent them the writing as an attachment, they printed out some colour copies, but for reasons best known to them, beefed up the lower case into bold capitals, meaning that the text layout was now too long for the panel. Rather than waste this though, I got them to superimpose it onto a sheet of scrap I had with me, a blog post about generative systems. This palimpsest was then cropped and manipulated. The work was finished off with a faded medal ribbon from Wimbledon car boot sale. An emblem of my own!

Emblem 155

Information and materials

The period is the typographic representation of an end.  It is neither an expression of humour nor of sentiment.  It simply is what it is.  The image was printed using a Vandercook letterpress machine. Letterpress allows typography to sing and so while the character has passed, the letterpressed period signifies a poetic reminder to the reader of his previous existence. 

Definitions were taken from The American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition, published by Houghton Mifflin Company, copyright 1993.

 

Emblem 154

Information and materials

Indian ink and splattered gouache, to depict assassination by custard pie.

 

Emblem 153

Information and materials

AH with HA pencil.

My ‘emblem’ I suppose reflects my interest in the play between reality – illusion – allusion and the attempt to make Hybrid abstract / figurative images and discover unexpected visual possibilities that can only be found in painting.

AH/HA can be an audible response on seeing an unexpected visual idea – anything between a revelation, or a knowing finger below the eye.

 

Emblem 152

Information and materials

Title: World Political (detail)

Date: 2011

Medium: Ink on paper

 

Emblem 151

Information and materials

Medium:

Winsor and Newton ink with Grog Full Metal paint

Biro

Watercolour paper

I love old maps, where everything’s squashed together.  Reminded me, doing this, of the pure creativity of making art as a kid with the cynicism of adulthood in biro added later.

Emblem 150

Information and materials

No extra information.

Emblem 149

Information and materials

TITLE:           THE RAINBOW EARTH: LIFE, LOVE & NATURE

SYNOPIS:     ABSTRACT SNAPSHOTS OF THE THINGS MAN CAN’T ESCAPE:

                        BIRTH/ RIVERS/ TREE GROWTH RINGS

                        CELLS/ MOUNTAIN/ BIRD FEATHERS

                        SEA/ STEPS/ WAVE

                        LEAVES

                        DESERT/ SUN/ WHEAT

                        LOVE/ MALE/ BEACH

                        LAVA/ CAVE PAINTING/ SPERM.

MEDIUM:    MARBLED ACRYLIC ON PAPER WITH GLOSS VARNISH.


 

Emblem 148

Information and materials

Heeding Sterne’s ‘motto’ I sought inspiration in what lay hidden, scavenging sleeplessly far & wide.  At the point of exhaustion things at last became clear.

In accordance with the oldest traditions, I floated the regimented weave off a section of the paper, combed it line by line with the finest brush & having let it settle under the sweet breeze of late summer – fanned gently by hand – re-set it in the leaf.

 

Emblem 147

Information and materials

In collaboration with my daughter. One black on black and this one white on a grubby white. Same as it ever was.

Emblem 146

Information and materials

Watercolour on Paper

Emblem 145

Information and materials

Collage

Two emblems by George Wither (1634) which hang on the walls of my former home.

Though the meaning of the verses is similar, the images show contrary and complementary events, and are arranged like an hourglass or infinity symbol, to mirror the continual cycle of growth and decay, reaping and sowing, and the turning seasons.

The Georgian brooch, an ouroboros surrounding an apple tree, is of great sentimental value, and also seems to prefigure a large part of my work and the life in which I now find myself.

 Amor et labor

 

Emblem 144

Information and materials

I knew at once, when I saw a reproduction of this figure, emerging from the stone, or returning to it, that it was something I had long been familiar with; that, in fact, it, or something like it, had haunted all my work. The book in which I found it describes it as a ‘praying figure’, but the hands could equally be raised in horror. My son David transferred the image onto the sheet provided.

Emblem 143

Information and materials

Pencil drawing on paper with, in the shape of the number 2, a printed scan of the marbled page from my first edition of Tristram Shandy.

Emblem 142

Information and materials

Because the places I’ve been to and experiences I’ve had comprise my life and work, I decided to make the piece from pieces of my own. They are mementos, ephemera which I cannot bear to get rid of in a clear-out, but ones which are essentially worthless without the memories I’ve attached to them. I hope they will find a new life as part of something which can be enjoyed by others who are not bound by such sentimentality to these journeys.

I think Sterne would have appreciated the pieces of text, symbols and numerals obfuscating the central message itself, appropriated from him. Some of the objects will be familiar to others; I’ve always felt that creative work is full of small clues about its creator, a sort of code, and none more intriguingly so as when those creators are anonymous….

 

Emblem 141

Information and materials

I used watercolour and three dry brushes – 14, 10, and 8 (pony hair). My original ideas and earliest attempts, used the shape and name of rivers important to me – the Severn, the Suir, the Tawe, the Thames – but simpler is usually the better – so it all came down to this. The line is from a long poem called ‘The Source’.

Emblem 140

Information and materials

Maybe we see a portrait of Laurence Sterne. In any case we can see some of his marbled & important thoughts, which are leaving his brains beyond his wig.

Technique: Acrylic on Somerset paper

Emblem 139

Information and materials

A whiskery lion and rose – wood engraving

Emblem 138

Information and materials


Waverley nib; Indian ink; magic pencil; watercolour.

This little picture is dedicated to the memory of Brian Robb, friend & mentor & creator of (in my view) the best set of illustrations to Tristram Shandy.

Emblem 137

Information and materials

Inkjet print of photographs of lichen on road signs

Emblem 136

Information and materials


My working 'method':

Write, rewrite, correct, go back, make same mistake, rewrite, cross out, give up, come back, keep going, rewrite, correct, realise, abandon, return, resolve.

Materials:

Blank paper, coloured felt tip pens, pencils, Rexel staples

Emblem 135

Information and materials

Black ink. I have no other information to provide.

Emblem 134

Information and materials

Vesti la Giubba is the tragic aria of the clown (alias poor Yorick) in I Pagliacci, Mascagni’s popular one act opera.  Usually translated as On with the Motley (to use the conventional rather than Shandean spelling) it refers to the clown’s dressing up yet again to amuse the crowd even though his heart is breaking.  The motley used here is from the marble page provided (in two sizes) to make the musical stave with the suggestion of random notes.  I often think (although my heart is seldom breaking) of the clown’s ‘on with the greaspaint’ (which is part of the motley) when setting out my palette with colours for the day; and music is always at the centre of my enterprise.

Collage, pencil, watercolour have been used though the main feature of the work is recycling, a constant aspect of what I try to do…


 

Emblem 133

Information and materials

“Asterisk”, created for ‘The Emblem of my Work’ uses antiquated dry-transfer lettering applied one at a time to create a melancholy emblem of the passing of time.  Once ubiquitous in business and graphic design, dry-transfer lettering is now a cultural artefact denigrated to artistic production.  Using only full-stops, dashes and asterisks, “Asterisk” celebrates the absence, the unstated, the censored and the long-forgotten.

For art in the age of mechanical reproduction, the forgotten is “The Emblem of my Work.”

Emblem 132

Information and materials

Hand-crafted marbled paper.

India ink.

Long friction and Shandean incumbition

 

Emblem 131

Information and materials

Rubber stamp

Ink pad

& an air of Authority

Emblem 130

Information and materials

Commentary:

(Sterne’s parenthesis, anagrammed as my hope for ultimate absorption into anonymous tradition: ‘bow’ as onstage gesture, and as Art)

There follow anagrams of seventeen titles from my work, listed chronologically, each anagram accurate to one or other aspect of the work itself.

its sequence of effect. We could have a ‘quatrain’:

 O Menace, O Fright

                                                of eco-nightmare

                                                Ace moon-freight

                                                of magic thereon

its central process of human transformation

its female lead embodies its title metaphor in drastic sense

its meaning; with shift of one word (‘not’ to precede ‘ashore’),  its story-line

as it suggests, the old gods bide their hour

the suppressed letter, not present in its title, would make visible the taboo that is its theme

i.e  we the audience do

as its protagonist will surely have been

so he surprisingly becomes

she is

its principal process

could have been an image in his Ken Russell film

his schooling, repression: their fruit his distinctive art, often with religious overtone

my sentiment exactly

------ a rather Genetesque one in fact

what, in his last line, the play’s creature promises to do

he is

LAST WORDS OF Tristram Shandy DONE IN GREEK

Emblem 129

Information and materials

Marbling by Lucy Stewart aged 12

Words by W.B. Yeats.

Emblem 128

Information and materials

“Who were you?”  Initialled answers.

These hand-drawn pencil monographs of nineteenth century people, possibly made for the crest on the family silver, are enigmatic.  The letters remind me of a play by Dodie Smith, “Dear Octopus”, in which there is no escape from relationships.  Novelists of course weave their own fantasies – and realities.  The monograph artist had to show pride and confidence in his labyrinthine statement.  Gradually over the generations the crest would be smoothed from sight by polishing.  I found these initials in an old box.  They could be German.  One of the reasons for engraving silver was to make it unusable in someone else’s house, or to be claimed if stolen.  Wedding-gift silver would be entwined with the initials of bride and groom and would become heirlooms.  The most entwined marriage initials are possibly Henry VIII & Anne Boleyn in King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. They are everywhere.

Emblem 127

Information and materials

Porcelain, paper, water, rolling pin, knife, paint brush, iron oxide, hands + heat. 

I make these ‘labels’ as a verbal record of a visual object. They name the basic material, ingredients that create colour, texture, surface. Yet a gulf divides the two – the words & symbols can’t begin to evoke the visual effects brought about by chance, temperature, atmosphere. But for me they retain an image in the mind’s eye of the first time I saw it.

 

Emblem 126

Information and materials

Uniball pen

Emblem 125

Information and materials

Paper, Printer Ink, a computer and thousands of years of Western Musical Theory.

By chance, the opening bars of a new score soon to be an ancient code.

Perhaps they are.....

Emblem 124

Information and materials

Ink and watercolour

Today this tree with face is the motley ‘emblem of my work’. Its randomness and lack of meaning is – as far as I can see – in keeping with Tristram Shandy’s marbled emblem.