Books
Book: Art and Print
Books
The Curwen Studio is renowned amongst architects, designers and aesthetes of a certain age. Established in 1948, the studio was essentially a professional facility for print-makers, providing them with the equipment and encouragement they needed to make their own editions - the likes of Howard Hodgkin, Terry Frost, Elizabeth Frink and Barbara Hepworth all produced editions there.
see a selection of pages from the book
The Studio had its origins in the Curwen Press, a product of the early Twentieth Century Arts and Crafts Movement and the renewed interest in industrial art that accompanied it. Both Studio and Press revelled in the technological process of printmaking, the history of type and the creation of innovative, 'courageous' printing.
'The World's dead tired of the drab dullness in Business Life,' exhorted Harold Curwen in a 1920 advertisement, and through his East London-based company he set out to challenge the orthodox aesthetic.
Within a few years, the Press had become renowned for its association with Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, bringing about a quiet but powerful revival of the illustrated book, the sheer delight in craft and process shining through. The Curwen Studio that followed was no less influential.
Historian Alan Powers - also an accomplished printmaker - presents a satisfyingly rich history of the Curwen Story, replete with reproductions of page after page of elegant prints.
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Art and Print: The Curwen Story by Alan Powers
Tate Publishing, £14.99
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