Sudden Blue: Verses and Etchings.

London: Susan Allix, 2012. No. 9 of 18 copies. 25 leaves, some printed, some cut, some folded, the three verses and etchings being interspersed with a variety of hand and mould made papers. Printed in 18 pt Centaur. 17 x 11 cms, bound in blue stiff wrappers with paste paper endpapers, printed label on upper cover, held in a bright blue wire and card clasp, housed in the original cloth and paste paper portfolio box.||Sudden Blue is a book that celebrates blue; how colour can inform memory and recollection. The starting point was two lines from a poem called Sudden Light by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and these are printed as a prelude in the book. They are followed by a Venetian inspired series of pages in colours from deep ultramarine to pale turquoise. These are of differing textures and seemingly random shapes and sizes, but in fact the sequence took time to develop satisfactorily and it is designed to complement the three prints and the typeset words.
The words and the etchings recall moments of Venetian blue (such as the Virgin’s cloak in San Zaccaria). The prints are small and rectangular like glass tesserae, one with added gold leaf. The letterpress is printed blue, in Centaur, on hand made ‘blued’ paper, and takes the form of short poetic lines that recall previous impressions of blue and bring them to the present.
| One of only 18 copies