Finding Mr. Kilburn

There hasn’t been a lot of time in the last week to do much on printing or planning, but I did spent a while squeezing more from the internet on the elusive Mr. Kilburn. An intensive web search did indeed yield more leads, and one exciting find. The lead comes in the form of a scarce book, held in various prominent collections (Smithonian, John Hopkins) titled Specimen of designing and engraving on wood, 1876 by Samuel Smith Kilburn. Needless to say, I will be hitting up some of my contacts at the National Library to arrange a possible interlibrary loan.

There are several references to Kilburn as an artist and engraver on many sites, both for institutions and private or commercial interests, since many books have, over time, been reduced to nothing more than individual prints. So he does turn up.

Most exciting of all, though, is a photo in the Tufts Digital Library showing Washington Street, circa 1874, Boston’s equivalent to London’s Fleet Street. Note the name on the upper right portion of the photograph:

Well, that’s exciting for me. That’s my guy, in living B&W. Needless to say, I’ll be in touch with Tufts for rights come time to do a book on Kilburn. For the portfolio I will list a reference only.

Tomorrow, inking up the press and taking more proofs of the blocks. I hope.

Kilburn Page Layout

Every book requires a layout. In this case not so much a book as a small eight page covered pamphlet to go into the finished portfolio. Work begins with the schematic as shown below. Click on the image to see in up close. You should be able to see the faint lines I used to guide my decisions about margins. The technique is the same used since the middle ages. In this case, I did not follow the geometry exactly, but adapted the text block size for leads I have already cut to a length of 20 picas, which will give me a text block about 18 picas wide.

Kilburn proofs

Here is the first of several proofs from the wood engraving case of the mysterious Samuel Smith Kilburn. The blocks probably date from the third quarter of the 19th century, if indeed they are all his work.

The only reason I can make an attribution at all is thanks to this block:

The inclusion of Kilburn’s change of address block is significant indeed, and the style and craftsmanship of most of the other wood engravings suggests a masterful hand.

A very cursory internet search has yielded very little about Kilburn, but he does turn up, and many book collections both private and institutional, list his name as an illustrator and engraver for the book trade. I have found the name of at least one apprentice, and his given and middle name as well.

At some point I’m keen to take a trip to Boston, dip into the archives there and find more about Kilburn. Once I feel I’ve exhausted what is known about the man and his work, I’ll print a book about him using his surviving engravings. The portfolio in production now will be designed to showcase the engravings with a pamphlet showing how they came to light, and into the hands of a letterpress printer. I’ve decided to do an edition of 50, hoping that will not be too few. The plan is to have it done for the Grimsby Wayzgoose and start marketing it soon after.

Kilburn Wood Engravings

December and January are gone, and it looks like February will be a printing month, or at least partially. I’m anxious to try out the newly de-glazed rollers on some type, to see if it makes a difference.

The next project will be the Kilburn portfolio. I can’t remember if I blogged about this or not in the past, but over a year ago, a stalwart citizen of Merrickville visited me in my studio, and showed me a display box of 19th century wood engravings that she picked up at an antiques store in Brockville. One block identified the maker, one assumes, as S. S. Kilburn, active in the Boston area in the mid-19th century. The blocks are stunning, and preliminary experiments printing them have proved modestly successful, although it is clear that some blocks will prove to be a problem, due to warping.

In any event, I’ve decided to move forward with a portfolio of sixteen prints from the Kilburn find. And that’s how I’m going to approach the project: to discuss the discovery of these blocks and to speculate on some of the mysteries that arise from this mysterious case and its contents. The portfolio will contain prints in a limited run of 50, plus a 16 page 8 x 10 booklet with text on the find, the blocks and attributions. Several of the smaller blocks will be printed in this as well. In a few years, after more thoroughly researching Kilburn, I will assemble the blocks again and do a hard cover edition. I realize this is doing things a bit backward, but there it is. The portfolio will serve to get work out about Kilburn, and if there is any information on this Boston tradesman, hopefully it will surface over time and come to my ears. At some point, when I am more flush, I will trip down to the US and rummage around the libraries and archives there. In the meantime, an internet search and some inquiries have turned up some scant information on the man.

Last week I blocked out the page size for the booklet. It’ll be a double column deal, since the booklet will open landscape rather than portrait. I haven’t yet designed the packaging, but it would be safe to expect a nod of some sort to Victorian style. I’ll be using papers at hand in the studio, so it might be a bit of a mix, but all good papers.

Here are some of Kilburn’s engravings:

A Light at the End of the Tunnel

One of the interesting and frustrating effects of using broad graphic strokes to draw and print is that sometimes the line between understanding and incoherence is just, well, just a line. One old fellow looked at the St. John’s print in my previous post and said: “What do we have here? A pirate ship?” People often pick it up and look at it sideways. Well, what can I say? If an image isn’t readily understood, is that the fault of the viewer or the artist? Is it deliberate act to challenge the viewer or the the result of an untrained hand. Sometimes it’s a muddle of all these things.

This print is very much in that muddle, yet it is probably the most intimate and personal print from the entire series. Most people who see it for the first time struggle to comprehend the jumble of white and black lines on the left. And that’s fine. The subject is very much about a struggle for understanding and coherence. It is based on a photograph I took in the early 1990s, on a trip to Halifax. Meg must have been nine or ten years old, and she’s shown here looking down one of the stone corridors that riddle the citadel in Halifax. I saved the photo, and when I looked at it I would see in it a questing soul, peering into the unwritten future, full of hope. Now, I like to think of it as a reflection: that Meg is the observer, seeing herself out of the darkness, and in the daylight beyond the tunnel.

It is a first take. Next year I’ll tackle it again, possibly as a wood engraving. I hope there will be more light and less darkness in it by then.

Back Porch, Queen’s Road, St. John’s, Nfld.

This is the centerpiece of my 2008 series. It measures about 9 x 11″, making it the largest print this year. I based this cut on a drawing I did back in 1988 when I spent a brilliant summer in St. John’s, Newfoundland house-sitting for my sister and writing a ghastly novel. Marie’s townhouse was on located on Queen’s Road, a central artery in the city, but still part of the distinctive jumble of brightly coloured houses that step along the steep roads climbing up from a lovely harbour. From my third storey window, I could see Signal Hill.

I smoked in those days, and as much as possible I took my bad habit out onto the back porch, which looked over an alley and what little remained of a lane from earlier decades. The back view had a lot of character, so I did a sketch which worked out well, and I presented it to Marie as a gift on her return from Toronto.

I liked all the angles and roof lines going hither and thither, with telephone lines and clothes lines criss-crossing every which way. In the original, there was only the lower line of laundry; the rest I have added in homage to the three lovely young nurses who shared the townhouse next door, and had a laundry line that went right across Marie’s back porch. So, whenever I went out for a smoke, I was frequently treated to a display of their skimpy underthingies, along with the usual apparel one finds on a line. Is there anything less unselfconscious than a clothesline? They kept strange hours – an occupational hazard, I suppose – and so did I, so our paths rarely crossed.

The original drawing is far more representational; the block cut is warped to convey, I hope, the character of the time and place, and the cooling winds that ever blew in off the Atlantic Ocean.

Not a very Christmassy post, but there you go. Best wishes to all, and hopes for a wonderful new year.

Big, Big Sea

This cut, along with the remainders in the series, are more personal and related to my life, as opposed to exercises and experiments. Big, Big Sea is based on a photo I took in 1993 at Peggy’s Cove of my sister Marie and daughter Meg staring out to sea. Aside from the few white lines at the bottom and very loosely defined squiggles to represent the figures on the shore, the rest is all done free hand with the cutters. I had no idea how it would turn out, and even after taking a proof I was uncertain of any success, but at Holly’s urging I ran a small edition. People seem to be responding to it (it has sold well) and it’s growing on me too. It was one of those artistic leaps of faith that so terrify me, but the end product is more ‘honest’, in an artistic sense. Of course, being honest does not, by any means, ensure success, however that may be defined, but sometimes that absence of contrivance adds a quality that people seem to pick up on. (I remember this well from my years at the Upper Canadian trying to understand, and then writing intelligently about, folk art.)

A lot of people associate the turbulance in the image with the characteristic pounding surf that is usually the status quo at Peggy’s Cove. I am told that every year that force of nature plucks one or two unlucky tourists off the rocks, making them very wet and very dead. However, on the day I captured this image, it was calm as a millpond (to quote the captain of the Titanic) and we were able to go out to the very edge of the shore line. It was a pleasant but hazy day in mid August, if I recall correctly, and when I developed the photo I could not discern where the sea ended and the sky began. A great shot, if I do say so myself. My print, on the other hand, is a visual speculation on the power that churns beneath the calm in a sea that reaches right up to the sky. How small we are in the face of all that might. And when one thinks about it, how lucky we are that it isn’t angry with us all the time. Not yet, at least.

The metaphor runs deeper, of course.  I certainly had Meg in mind when I cut this, both as a moody ten year old and as the adult she is today, struggling with her own storms.

The Castle Keep

While this cut is officially part of the 2008 series, it really dates back over a year earlier, to the spring of 2007. It was a doodle executed during a particularly riveting Merrickville Artists’ Guild meeting. I liked it enough to cut the lino, but didn’t get around to printing it until this past fall. Medieval naive style is harder to duplicate than one might think. There is a sophistication to it that one takes for granted at one’s own risk. The assumption that this style is simply child’s play can lead to one’s drawing looking like child’s work… literally! I have more success with medieval buildings than I do with figures, as a rule.

I like this little castle. I had the early middle ages in mind, although it seems the villagers have moved into this mott and bailey keep. It must be in a fractious area, if everyone feels the need to live, work and worship behind the walls. Someone asked me about the drawbridge; it’s on the other side, near the base of the tower which offers better cover from above. (That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!)

I’ve done a couple other larger cities, and am casting thoughts toward three 18×24″ sheets of lino, thinking ‘big canvas, baby!’

Here’s a couple of the earlier efforts:

Chandelier

It’s easy for those who know to jump to the conclusion that this is one of the hundreds of chandeliers hand-made by Peter, Holly’s father, while he had his reproduction lighting business. But it’s not. During my tenure for The Upper Canadian, I photographed thousands of antiques of all kinds. Most of the shots were pretty pedestrian; the readers didn’t really want to see art shots. At least, not at that time. But sometimes I could get away with it, as in this composition. The important thing in my mind was its folky nature and crusty old paint on this turn of the 20th century Dukhobor chandelier, so I got to play with the arms overlapping and reaching out of the frame.The over-all effect of the block cut captures, I hope, that time-worn, folk quality.

I’ll do one of Peter’s chandeliers in the future. I think wood engraving would be the suitable medium to match the precision and artistry he achieved in creating his lamps.

Arch March

Another example of experimentation with beats in architectural form.