Paul L. Kershaw

WINGS TAKE US

The book is printed on Zerkal mouldmade paper, 170gsm, using an Albion handpress for most of the work. Other presses used were cylinder presses; a FAG  and a Vandercook SP15. Printing started in mid January 2009 when I still lived on Skye. There are 130 copies in the edition. The setting is Octavian, with Stone Serif & Sans for the poems. Binding in dark blue cloth was undertaken by Stephen Conway Bookbinders Ltd.

A quote from the preface explains more:

This book came about because of our love of birds. We have an enduring and life-long passion for their magic. Birds are so many things; beautiful and unreachable, powerful and fragile, elusive and stark, agile and clumsy, gaudy and subtle. Above all what we cherish is their movement and flight, which engage our dreams and uplift our thoughts.

    Our work has, deliberately, no particular structure other than the synthesis of word and image. Poems sparked off the process and it was a shared pleasure to see how things evolved. Some are shown in just the way they were written down, then combined in a layout with additional graphic elements. Others are more fully integrated into a new setting. Throughout there is a visual theme provided by the use of two elements; marbling, where ink on water is breathed into a fugitive pattern of lines, and machined wood, which has a more earthbound, textured appearance. These have been used with a light touch as resources in the creation of composite relief prints where plates have been made from marbling experiments and from prints taken off thin sheets of wood. There is some wood engraving, too.