Humbert

Hhumbert

Humbert

Publication date September 2022

Published by the Talfourd Press in association with Blundell Studios in a limited edition of 175 numbered copies signed by the artist and 16 lettered copies Hors de Commerce

The binding is in red goatskin leather with gold foil blocking to front, spine, head and tail bands, and top edge gilt. It is presented in a green cloth solander box with red foil blocking to front and spine.

The book measures 184mm x w124mm with 320 printed pages
The solander box measures h273mm x w 202mm xd52mm:

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Notes on this work

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Solander box Humbert in presentation solander box Humbert Title Page Humbert Title Page Humbert Introduction Humbert Introduction ping-pong ghosts Ping-pong ghosts, found newspaper fragment green inked additions Humbert page with inked additions (detail)  page with collage Humbert page 73 with collage

Shortly after I began work on A Humument I acquired copies of Humbert Wolfe's Cursory Rhymes (Ernest Benn Ltd 1927) whose short and mostly meretricious verses were presented, in the manner of fancy poetry books of the period, amidst almost criminally generous margins. Luxurious blank pages are also present as well as, less fortunately, horrid illustrations by Albert Rutherston.

That this was understandably a cheap and frequent occupant of the poetry shelves of secondhand bookshops made it fairly easy (especially with the help of my great finding friend Patrick Wildgust, the warden of Shandy Hall) to amass a quantity of copies ready for action and ripe for abuse.

As the work developed from tentative beginnings in the seventies it took the form of a set of verbovisual diaries. I gave them titles (e.g. Money Matters, Going Places, A Night at the Opera) to indicate their subjects though some were not entirely self-explanatory. Café Society referred ironically to the various worker's cafes, now dwindling in number where I have lunch, and Ziqiqu Ziqiqu was a dream diary the source of whose wonderful name I cannot now remember (though Ziqiqu would be handy for scrabble).

The books, as they were filled and replaced, were to act as a kind of autobiography in word and image akin to those exploded diagrams one sees in technical magazines.