This work in progress for the book 'Everything Changes' is layered with collage, drypoint and some drawing. It will be ready for Oxford Fine Press Book Fair at the beginning of May 2027.

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We spent two days in Florence last January. I found hands as a language. I was looking for the open-handed gesture I had seen in 'the personification of the sea' in an antique herbal. The page had been too small to see and my paperweight distorted the image.

 
 

For 'The Year of Reading in Great Britain' printed books by young people are all in this window. Several years ago Simpson School in Milton Keynes provided an empty classroom for an etching press and workshops with young people. This generous support (thanks to Linda Kilman) was something I followed seven years later in schools in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire with a portable printing press. More books came into being. Starting with creations by the youngest, 'Winnie the Pooh' is stuck down a rabbit hole after eating too much honey and is drawn a second time on the same page. Outside the bear continues to listen to a story, reading to keep him happy. 

Inspired by reading Volumes 1 and 2 of 'Early Thame' (Archaeological Investigations at Oxford Road, Thame) I hung parts of a concertina book. I included an excavated oven found near the 'Monument' in 2015 in this window of the small and generous Cottage Bakery (their ovens reach way back behind the shop front). 

 

Here is the p's & q's table at the Oxford Fine Press Book Fair in May, with both concertina and envelope versions of Everything Changes pictured at the front alongside other books and prints from the press. 

These 'mirror/ice' prints are partly inspired by a Books2Eat tea party. One shortbread section is iced with melted glacier mints and another with cinder toffee. 

The prints for the envelope Everything Changes book are in a varied edition. The concertina version with chine colle and collagraphs will be editioned with fewer variations. 

A return to London Zoo on Saturday, 26 years post-publication of 'The Monkeys' Dream' showed us monkeys enjoying the freedom of the 1960s landmark aviary. We joined them. Other animals now also have new green spaces. The possibility of eye contact, that had first drawn me to draw animals in what were mostly confined spaces, still exists. 

Now that their natural habitats changing more dramatically, come and turn the pages of 'Everything Changes' in progress at the Oxford Fine Press Book Fair this weekend. 

Leonie loved to see the architecture of the aviary again and, of course, Lubetkin's now empty modernist Penguin House. Turn the pages of her colourful homage to the new town of Milton Keynes and other books inspired by cities at the fair. 

 

So disappointed not to be able to make it to this fair. Alfie the dog is too unwell to travel.

Some p's & q's Press books that began with drawing in the museum and works in progress for 'Everything Changes' will be shown by me at Thame History Fair on Sunday 20th October, 10-4pm at Thame Town Hall. 

The exhibition 'Write-Cut-Rewrite' at the Weston Library, Oxford cheered me up. Don't expect to see anything like these sellotaped or stapled pages at Ludlow, but Christina Rossetti's cutout line of poetry makes her book look so elegant, it seemed to me that I was now allowed to make changes to a book at any stage. 

This scraped-away, once-utopian etching, created but not printed for 'The Monkeys' Dream' was changed with chine collé for a section of 'Everything Changes' entitled 'Fire-Flood'. I had to design it to slide into an envelope for this very tactile book. With other pages it will now also fit into a concertina spine to create a second version of the book. The title page is a work in progress. I was inspired at the Ludlow Fair by Sarah Amatts work. Suminagashi will be part of both versions of a book to be published in 2025.