I've always had a good reaction to the Penguin Poets I've posted. If you're interested in seeing more I've put them all on Flickr now, which is quite timely because Gerry McFarlane has just pointed me toward this site dedicated to Stephen Russ. Thanks Gerry!
And I have to say I'm thrilled that the amazing Ray Fenwick has already visited them and left a comment. I'm not worthy.
A while back I mentioned the Penguin Collectors' Society and suggested that if you're interested in Penguin Books then it's well worth joining. Their journal, The Penguin Collector, is published twice a year, June and December. This is great because it's just infrequently enough for me to forget it's coming so it's always a nice surprise when it drops through the door, the December edition especially because it arrives just before the Christmas holiday so I get plenty of time to scrutinise it.
The latest edition is packed full of interesting stuff: It kicks off with a Fletcher obituary (he designed both Penguin and Pelican covers); then there's an article about collecting ephemera by Jo Lunt (who, incidentally, is a great source of Penguin first editions); a damning review of Richard Doubleday's Jan Tschichold, Designer, by Phil Baines (welcome because that's one I might otherwise have bought); an excellent article on Penguin's Designer Classics by Steve Hare ; a short article on the Penguin Classics 60th Anniversary Campaign with contributions from Al MacCuish and Darren Bailes from Mother.
But the best bit for me, and the reason I'm rambling on about it here, is the article by Graham Moss on Elizabeth Friedlander who, I now know, designed the pattern for this cover as well as this one from months back. Freidlander was forced to leave Germany, then Italy and came to Britain in 1939, where she forged documents for British Intelligence (what a great job!). In '48 Tschichold introduced Penguin to Freidlander partly because she'd designed patterned papers for Curwen Press.
It seems that she was rarely credited; I've certainly never come across her name before - there's no mention of her in these books. I could and will guess at others she might have designed; she apparently did lots of Penguin Music scores too although I don't know if she did these (I'd guess she did the Mendelssohn).
Freidlander's covers are clearly quite different from those of Russ*; his are quirky and fun, her's are "traditional" but always beautiful.
* Incidentally, it was Russ who drew the illustration for the Penguin edition of Lady Chatterley's Lover, basing it on a sketch by Lawrence apparently.
I'm suddenly conscious that I've still got a pile of these to show. Just because it shows a certain humour I suspect, but don't know for sure, that the Manley Hopkins cover is by Stephen Russ. Pretty confident the Dryden isn't but it's a striking cover anyway.
Don't think I've ever mentioned it before but if you're at all interested in Penguin Books, particularly from a design or historical point of view then it would pay to sign up to the brilliant Penguin Collector's Society. It doesn't cost much and you get their periodical full of fascinating and often intimate details of Penguin history, access to the Society's other, more irregular but equally revealling publications and even opportunities to attend occasional events.
"I'm not worthy" springs to mind: A little while ago I mentioned that Adam Russ, grandson of Stephen, had got in touch and had very kindly offered me scans of the unbound covers he has framed on his wall. Well here they are. I'm very excited and grateful to Adam.
Poetry of the Thirties, Adam's favourite, is particularly interesting and is a bit of a departure from the more usual* repetitive patterns.
Click on each cover to see them in much more detail.
* "Usual" seems such an inapropriate word.
This is one of my favourite Stephen Russ covers; it's not just a nice pattern it's an idea. I think that's what, often, makes his covers stand out from others in the series, even those patterns for Comic and Curious Verse and More Comic and Curious Verse are "idea-based", i.e. they reflect the genre rather than are purely decorative like the Matthew Arnold book.
Special "thanks for the support" to Lena Corwin for including a link to Ace Jet 170 on her blog, I've had lots of reffered hits since.
A short while ago I posted the Penguin Poetry book, Comic and Curious Verse. Here's the sequal. Another brilliant cover by Stephen Russ.
Earlier in the week I was very excited to get a comment from Stephen Russ's grandson Adam who has very kindly emailed me a scan of one of the many unbound copies that he has. I'll post what he's sent next week.
Isn't this a wonderfully comic pattern? By the masterful Stephen Russ of course. More Penguin Poets to come.
This was actually my first Penguin Poet; the one that caught my interest. It's a Stephen Russ pattern and amongst my favourite colour combinations: Ochre, Black and White. The motifs are rather like Emigre's Whirligig font. Like many PPs, this startling design is particularly appealling and whenever I stumble across a copy I find it almost impossible to resist shelling out the one or two pounds that they usually cost.
Talking of repetitive patterns: during the 50s and into the 60s Penguin published their poetry series wrapped in sometimes beautiful, sometimes surprising and always stylish covers featuring such patterns. Without doubt the most interesting and creative patterns (and as far I can tell from the 20 or so Penguin Poets that I've found, the only ones credited to a designer) are by Stephen Russ.
This one isn't credited so perhaps isn't by Russ but is one of the most startling, non-credited covers and as good a starting point as any for what will be an irregular series of posts.
But it's not just the patterns that make these so striking, it's the combination of the ivory coloured, uncoated paper with it's subtle texture; the black black type with the subject set in a "Modern" italic and the credit and publisher set in it's equivalent Roman; that discrete and perfectly positioned star and Tschichold's logo printed in the lead colour; all set within the multi-line bordered label-like box.
