Book This Space

This is 'Home Details by Christine Tacq' now showing, with other altered books, until the end of February 2011 in the 'Book This Space' exhibition at Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury. I chose the biggest discarded book on offer so as to start to make a model of the room I need to draw for my next book. Then, although I knew they would not be seen, I couldn't resist overprinting and changing the other rooms in the book originally called 'Home Details'. I was also inspired by the Giacometti exhibition at the Pompidou Centre a year or two ago and a couple of versions of 'The Palace at 4 a.m.' I love the title and the story behind it ..."We constructed a fantastical palace in the night - a very fragile palace of matches."

Altered Books

The Big Draw in October (www.campaignfordrawing.org) just gets better and better. This year, to coincide with the Sparksartist-curated 'Book This Space' exhibition at Buckinghamshire County Museum, we were there drawing 'books in pyramid, tower and flying formations'.

Also, altered books and banners made with local schools are shown here at Oxfam's wonderful bookshop in Thame. The themes were 'A Day in the Life' and 'The Importance of Water', celebrating Oxfam's work in the world and looking at sketchbooks and diaries. Drawing in altered books (damaged books provided by Oxfam, Scrapstore and Lord Williams's School) revealed hidden texts. "House full of books... Inky fingers and all... School each night... Music... Should be a voluptuous treat... Like a deep hot bath..." Lucy. Drawings made with scissors and found materials, then printed as banners, included a version of the quote "A great library contains the diary of the human race", George Dawson 1866.

City Cypher: Berlin

At the London Art Book Fair at The Whitechapel Gallery this year Leonie launched the third in her series of architectural city guides, City Cypher: Berlin.

Sonnet XLIII, second edition

This second edition of Sonnet XLIII with a dos a dos binding was inspired by the e-motion exhibition which it was intended for. It will be shown for the first time at the Whitechapel fair. Above is the book being printed.

London Art Book Fair 2010

p's & q's press hope you can join us at the preview for the London Art Book Fair, don't forget to RSVP!

Art Review magazine

October's issue of Art Review magazine includes details of Leonie Lachlan's City Cypher books. The third in the award winning series will be shown for the first time at the London Art Book Fair at the Whitechapel Gallery. Images of the new book will follow shortly.

Illuminated printing

Inspired by the colours created by acid, I have printed the second of the three Blake plates in an edition of 25 colour prints which I am calling 'Illuminated Printing' as each one differs slightly.

Heard on the Green

This is the book I am making with Oliver Clark and Incline Press. I spent two days at Greenside School in Shepherds Bush, which was designed by Erno Goldfinger. One day was spent with some of the children so that I could see the school through their eyes (they each made a drypoint print for the book) and the other day was spent drawing. The book, created to raise money for the school, is available at Collinge & Clark bookshop.

Thame Arts and Literature Festival

Sparksartists were invited to exhibit in the Town Hall where part of Thame's inaugural Arts and Literature Festival is taking place. Here is the banner we printed at p's & q's press for the event.

Experimental etching

I am experimenting with William Blake's method of creating plates for 'illuminated printing'. No-one really knows what this was, but I have tried the technique I was shown at the Tate Gallery on three plates and finally it works. This is a newly etched plate. I love the colours on copper freshly out of the acid.

Sonnet XLIII

I have worked out how best to edition Sonnet XLIII. The idea for it was first formed in response to looking at the Tudor painted ceiling in Thame's new museum and drawing it as part of The Big Draw in October last year.

Shakespeare's words when most I wink then do mine eyes best see describe an aspect of drawing while the intricate painted pattern on the ceiling is like a visual equivalent of the language of the sonnet.

Paper Casts and Chapel Row Exhibition

All day today I have been making the very last paper cast insert for Sleep Walking Through Trees (boxed) using this mould. If you zoom out through the studio door you might find the weeping ash that inspired the mould. In a week or two the whole edition (45 copies of which 15 are boxed) will be complete, having been bound at the Fine Book Bindery. The earliest copies of this letterpress edition started to be collected about four years ago, and printing began not long after my printing press arrived from Brighton. I should celebrate...


I love the way The Chapel Row Gallery in Bath has exhibited our books for their recent exhibition. They were laid out to make looking and handling such an easy pleasure. 'Sleep Walking' is there on the table. Small books were in open cabinets.

Thank you Fine Press Book Association for organising this show! I wish there was a permanent space somewhere so I could finish reading Neil Boulsford's engraved 'Cycle' images, arranged in chapters on the right hand wall. It would be so good if the V&A (who have his book) kept a permanent changing space for books to be seen.

A Storm of Stars

I've been spending more time coming up with book shapes, less in the etching and printing rooms (thanks to book fairs!) It is a real privilege for a visual artist to have such creative interchanges. At the very busy Oxford fair time just flew by. At a much smaller fair in Cirencester the week after, I sold the only completed A/P copy of 'Recovered ; A Storm of Stars Vol. 1' So there's a chance for a rethink before I go into production...


This book (in three small volumes) about 12 women in 1912 and about display, in the shapes of hats and print, needed a new form. The emerging new one (in this photo with its hatbox) is much more about 'display'.
The earlier version (see last year's blog entry) will still exist in it's more secretive form, for research and biography that is still being 'Recovered' and that can be hidden away and rediscovered between pages held together by wooden, printed and sharpened hatpins.

I was delighted that the new book form, which came about totally through expediency because I wanted to put pages into a hatbox, also formed itself into star shapes. One hatbox will hold 'A Storm of Stars' in three volumes. The book's title was taken from a poem by Marina Tsvetaeva.

Here is an invitation to an exhibition in Bath in February during the Bath Literature Festival.

Berlin City Cypher

Leonie Lachlan is shortly going to print the next book in her award winning City Cypher series with p's & q's Press. These images show the lino cuts for City Cypher: Berlin in progress in Leonie's Tea Building Studio in Shoreditch.


The architectural codes for the City Cypher series are taken from Leonie's drawings from tall buildings in cities across the world.