Stamp Album

Stamp Album is a new series of one-off books inspired by old stamp albums that belonged to my family. We would spend time on a Saturday afternoon browsing in the Stamp Shop and selecting ones to add to our own collections. Relatives who visited other countries would send postcards or bring back stamps for us.

Browsing through the albums now, I remember as a child I was particularly drawn to the stamps depicting exotic flowers or birds and I found the careful colour selections of different stamp values very appealing.

I pictured some of the stamps mounted on dark coloured card with wide borders, a bit like a painting hung in an art gallery. The idea for my handmade book Stamp Album then grew.

The cover is inkjet printed onto tracing paper, with an inside cover page of craft paper with an atlas page print. The next page features the original stamps mounted on to dark coloured card. The final, central page is my own text relating to the stamp, inkjet printed onto squared paper. 

The first in the series contains stamps from Canada with beautiful vibrant images of berries from Saskatoon. The following text is a recipe for jam!

The next album has stamps form Italy featuring Italian castles. The text includes a description of the castle and a story I wrote to accompany it.

There are only one of each album available. I plan to make more to add to the series. I have lots of stamps!

'Stamp Album' 2024

From cover 7x7cm.

'Stamp Album' 2024

Inside front cover, atlas style craft paper.

'Stamp Album : A Recipe for Saskatoon Jam' 1/1 

Page with original stamp on red card 

and title page.

'Stamp Album'

Centre page Ingredients and Method 

inkjet printed on squared paper.

'Stamp Album : Castles of Italy' 1/1 2024

Page with original stamp 

and description of the castle, 

and my own story based around the image. 

Here are a further two Albums I have added to the series. As with the others, there is only one of each.

'Stamp Album : New Zealand Plants' 1/1 2024

'Stamp Album : Butterflies' 1/1 2024

In This Grey Wind second edition

I have sold out of my book 'In this Grey Wind', so I decided to print a second edition. Fortunately I had a few sheets of Diana Wilbraham's paper 'blue' left for the covers and I was able to make an new edition of ten.

My book uses extracted text from 'Birds of the Grey Wind' by E A Armstrong, published in 1940. Armstrong wrote a beautiful account of his life spent bird watching in his native Northern Ireland. He describes the landscapes he visits, the knowledge he gleans from his hobby starting as a child, as well as wonderful descriptions of the birds he sees and their habitats. 

As I read the book, I picked out certain words or part sentences to form phrases or poems of my own. I wanted to create a series of poems that, when read as a whole, would form a narrative. Armstrong's writing was so beautifully written that I felt compelled to write a love story; one that would perhaps leave the reader thinking about both the relationships between humans and those between birds.

At times it was hard to focus on extracting the text because the book was so absorbing. However, I did finish it and then set about selecting and ordering my poems before printing them out, folding, cutting and binding them.

I hope to make more extracted text narratives from non-fiction and fictional books. 

'In this Grey Wind' Second edition of 10 books. 

2024

                              

                                I

                                sought out

                                the nightingale

                                the sweet air of

                                the

                                night

                                content

                                to know and love

                                attaining communion and

                                trusting implicitly

                                everything you have and are

             

  Excerpt of a page from 'In this Grey Wind'

2024

Walking Away

I really enjoyed designing and making 'Craving', which has now sold out, so I wanted to make another similar book using the same concertina style.

I love making the drips of ink on the paper and watching them roll down to form the streaks of colour.

Also like 'Craving', the text is quite powerful. It's always interesting to see viewers responses to the texts I write. (I have had two people cry openly.) I like to share some insights into my inspiration and processes, but sometimes when people connect so readily, the text speaks for itself.

'Walking Away' Front cover

Concertina book

6 x 54cm

'Walking Away' 

'Walking Away' Inside

the birds

'the birds' is a poem of extracted text from Christie Lefteri's novel 'Songbirds'.

The story centres on two people who are connected by the fragility of life. It's a beautiful story of love and hope, and partly focusses on the illegal trapping, killing and trade of songbirds. It was the sadness and thought provoking descriptions of trapping birds that inspired me to write the poem.

The postcard began with a black and white tinted photograph looking up into a winter tree canopy. This, and the poem was inkjet printed onto 270gsm paper. I then used India ink, pen and gold leaf to create the feathers. 

The choice of gold leaf is a metaphor for the beauty of songbirds both in appearance and song, with the darkening feathers representing their fate in the mist nets. The bare, faded grey branches allude to the birds' loss of freedom and life and suggest a sense of entrapment. 

'the birds' is an edition of nine, with the first postcard belonging to the 'In Praise of Birds' World Book Night 2024 Postcard Project.

'the birds' Postcard by Clare Rogers 2024

Extracted text from

Lefteri, Christy. Songbirds. (London: Manilla Press, 2022)

Wild Bird of the Ink

Wild Bird of the Ink is a new title that I'll now be using on my blog and at book fairs.

The name came about from a prompt on social media, suggesting to use predictive text to complete the title 'My autobiography will be called....' 

I loved the choices the predictive text offered of  'wild bird of the ink' as it summed up my love of printmaking and my interest in birds! Many of my handmade artist books feature themes around birds, so it fits perfectly.

I've printed some more of my Wild Bird book marks, which will be available for free at next years book fairs.

'Wild Bird of the Ink' bookmarks

7x6cm

 

Slipping through the Net

'Slipping through the Net' is a small concertina book with a poem inspired by a failed attempt to get an appointment at an NHS GP surgery.

I wrote the text to illustrate the sense many people feel of being forgotten or disregarded, as the UK struggles with the decline in NHS services.

One side of the book was made by monoprinting a piece of scrim (loosely woven net) on cartridge paper. The other side was a monoprint of textures from Anaglypta wallpaper. The ink is a mix of Prussian Blue and Bone Black.

The text is Avenir 10pt and was inkjet printed on newsprint paper, then cut and glued into the pages. 

The book measures 6 x 48cm.

'Slipping through the Net' title page

'Slipping through the Net' inside

The poem inside reads:

when did it start

this slipping

a shift

quiet in its carelessness

a lapse

a miscalculation

an oversight

of my own omission

or theirs

and anonymity named me

as the net gently

tracelessly

let me through

World Book Night 2023

I'm delighted to be a contributor to World Book Night this year, held at UWE, Bower Ashton, Bristol. 

The theme is 'We Remember'; a collection of shared memories, building a whole new mood of collective remembering.

My two handmade artist books 'Shadow Locations I' and 'Shadow Locations II' have been added to the collection and, after the exhibitions, will be in the permanent library archive at Bower Ashton.

Each book briefly describes a memory I have of a place I visited as a child, but the memory is vague, with sketchy details. There is no-one alive who is able to confirm the accuracy of my memory. I find this fragility of mind an interesting concept.

There have been 112 entries from twenty five different countries.

The exhibition opens on Friday 21st April, in time for World Book Night on Sunday 23rd April, and will run until Friday 30th June. It will then transfer to the Hong Kong Design Institute from July 30th - 30th September.

The books can be viewed via Instagram or UWE:

https://www.instagram.com/lsp_books/

https://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/news/#WBN2023

'Shadow Locations I & II'

Inside 'Shadow Locations I & II'