Ace Jet 170

Michael and Len

 

 

Len Deighton is 90 today. 

International man of mystery, no other author has had such a constant presence in my life, and not just for his works of fiction. The film adaptation of The IPCRESS File is high (sometimes at the top) of my top ten favourite films, with the book remaining in my top ten favourite books since the first time I read it a long, long time ago (I've re-read it numerous times).

His love of fine food has been a contributing factor to this presence – the books this spawned have not been uninfluential too. I have a number of his cookbooks, including his iconic Action Cookbook, which I blogged about here way back in 2006.

His famous cook strips (below) expose both his interest in good food and his skill as an illustrator. The latter is another factor that makes the man so interesting.

After spending his National Service in the RAF, Len studied at Saint Martin's School of Art (now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design) alongside the brilliant Richard Hawley, who would go on to design covers for Deighton. After graduating later from the Royal College of Art (for which he won a scholarship in 1952) Deighton worked (surprisingly) as an airline steward for BOAC and then (less surprisingly) as an Art Director in New York, before his writing career took off.

Clearly, a man of facetted talents and passions; Deighton's life story is littered with revealing anecdotes…

It is rumoured, for example, that his interest in spy stories began in 1940 when the 11-yr-old Len witnessed the arrest of his next-door neighbour Anna Wolkoff, a British subject of Russian descent who turned out to be a German spy.

The image above was taken during the filming of The IPCRESS File. The story goes that when Michael Caine came to do the omelette making scene he couldn't get the hang of cracking an egg with one hand (I've mastered the art now) so it's Deighton's hand doing it in the movie.

 

Redacted

 

It was Culture Night. My eldest teenager was heading into Belfast with some 'friends' to wallow in the free culture dripping from every corner and crevice of the city centre.

I'd never been to Culture Night in Belfast, even though I'd heard it's a great night to be out in; I'm too miserable for such free and easy public expressions of culture. No, The Night of Culture is a night for me to stay home and close the curtains. Batten down the hatches in case some culture breaks free and catches the bus out to the suburbs where we live – I keep a large stick by the front door just in case some culture comes a'knocking.

Of course, my son was really out talking to girls, his interest in an evening of extreme free-roaming culture thinly masking his real motivation.

At least my other son was safe at home.

Not for long. His mate Patrick rang and asked if he'd like to go to Culture Night. Wrenched from the comfort of our comfortable sofa (with matching very large food stool – it's soooo comfy) we head city-centre-wards; the two children too young to roam free on Crazy Night without an adult within rescue distance.

Once in town I was soon abandoned and wandered the cultural streets in search of a familiar face. Instead I discovered a familiar place –  Keats & Chapman open late to cash in on the culture punters, so in I went, with cash (K&C is the city's finest book cave and it flipped my evening better side up).

Top find: This Penguin Education edition of 'Academic Freedom', circa 1974, with a top notch cover by Omnific/Peter Thompson.

 

読書

 

My summer read. 

Japan is stalking me. From the corner of my eye I see it, spying on me; following me. From the shelves of a shop; from a painting; whispering, it calls to me through my phone's podcast app…(the flipping weirdo); I bump into it, disguised as a postage stamp that just 'happened' to be passing my way; it sends my son models (better call the police).

It tricks me into letting it in by wearing a rather attractive jacket. 

I was talking about Japan with a friend of mine recently, around a camp fire, as it happens – so I was reminded of Jun'Ichirō Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows which Rob and Jon recommended via the North v South podcast.

I was telling Mike about Seth's Gundam habit and Mike was telling me about his mate that worked out there for a few years. Specifically, Mike remarked about quite how different his mate found the culture – for example, when travelling on the tube, unless you know the language it's incredible hard to recognise your destination by the station signs.

Reading these short stories gives you an inkling of the differences too; in the lifestyle and also in the format and style of stories.

The collection is compiled to demonstrate a broad Japanese brush so stories range wildly from matters of culture and honour to family, sex and nature with some translated from nineteenth century texts and others from modern work. So far, all are beautiful and 'other landly' – even the gruesome description of a Samurai's ritualistic suicide in 'Patriotism' almost moved me to tears, wrapped as it was in his motivation for such an extreme act and his wife's devotion and support…best you read it yourself, I can't possibly do it justice here.

 

The cover design is by Matthew Young and uses an illustration – Local Training the Country from Don't Give up Japan, 2012 by Hiroyuki Izutsu.

Pintorinterest

 

What was I doing last August? The one in 2017. Whatever it was it must have been all-consuming because I completely missed the publication of Moleskine's Giovanni Pintori monograph. Actually, that Moleskine published anything was news to me!

Pintori and Olivetti are, as you may know, bound together as tightly as the pages of this monograph. In the days when the typewriter was king, Olivetti was the Commander in Chief and Pintori was its…erm…Field Marshal. Armed with an ammunition box full of colours and shapes (and typewriters) the Lance Corporal Designer General would charge into battle, decimating lesser typewriter regiments with a frenzied volley of sub-machine artwork.

It would be fair to say that Pintori is the man that set the standard for the company's marketing activity, raising it head and shoulders above its competitors and visualising Adriano Olivetti's product vision. Pintori left the company in 1967, a few years after the death of the man, although continued to work for Olivetti on a freelance basis while growing his own independent practice.

The monograph brings together many of Olivetti's iconic ads along with original artwork and sketches then other commissions the designer carried out after leaving Olivetti.

If you're not so familiar with Pintori's work then a quick PinterSearch will yield much delicious fruit.

Is that Switzerland in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

My interest in cartography intensifies inline with the concentration of cartography. Sheets are lovely but an atlas! With an atlas comes a frenzy of map-joy. And a pocket guide! A small, maption-packed book…with cloth-bound, foil-blocked cover…and a plethora of tipped-in fold-out maps. Man alive! 

On a recent drive to Galway (a four hour slog from Belfast) I listened to an episode of the BBC's Seriously podcasts. It was a spliced together collection of recordings of Roald Dhal, talking about his past. It's great. Amongst all the things he touches on is what an adventure travel used to be. It still is, of course, but not like it was back in the day.

Obviously, you might still purchase a pocket guide for your holiday – and that guide might still be a thing of beauty, albeit super-efficiently mass-produced – but may I suggest that the reduction in adventurial magic that Mr Dahl refers to is directly proportional to the reduction in production investment in pocket guide production. Needless to say, I'm sure the cover price also reflects this difference.

Depero Futurista

I just got an email from Russell from Designers & Books. In October they launch a Kickstarter to re-publish Depero's Bolted Book. So, nothing really important then. (Oh my god! They want to re-publish the Bolted Book!).

More here.

Man v Robot

To summarise Marty Neumeier’s 2013 book Metaskills: when the robots rise up to conquer, our only hope, our last line of defence, will be to hit them good and hard with a hefty dose of creativity. It’s our last chance, a full-on, hardcore assault of creative power, right where is hurts. Boom!…Or, at least, I think that was his point…don’t quote me though.

As we automate and roboticise more and more tasks that we really just can’t be bothered to do ourselves, in the end, all we’ll have left to claim we are still superior – that we still have mastery over the machines – is our ability to think outside of the lidded vessel – to think and act unorthodoxically…irregularly…nonconformistically…offbeatedly……as they say.

Not for the first time I’m joining the many voices that have expressed, more elegantly and in much greater detail, that original thought is our most valuable gross international product. And, literally, thank God (or Darwin, if you’re less spiritually inclined) because without that, without ‘new ideas’, let’s face it, we’re robot fodder.

Now I for one, have what neuro-types might call a “growth mindset”. None of us have to rely on what talent or skill we already have and infact we’d all do well, better actually, to expand our abilities through conscious, mindful, concerted and continual training.

Dorte Nielson and Sarah Thurber's book The secret of the highly creative thinker is an aid to just that. Sub-titled "How to make connections others don't", the book guides you through the theory then the practice – the conscious, mindful practice – of connection making. Building on what people like James Webb Young began fifty plus years ago Nielson and Thurber continue the de-mystification of the creative process with the science and provide numerous exercises to help anyone expand their abilities.

It's a handsome volume, easy on the eyes and pretty quick to work through up to the exercises which you can spread out for as long as you like. It's one of those "I wish this was around when I was starting out" kind of books.

In our modern era of near-androidian supremacy, as singularity inevitably approaches and those in the know – those beyond the "creative industries" – elevate creative thinking to a prized status, teaching like this is welcome and valuable.

If nothing else, it means we’ll be ready for the robots.

Over 900 Years Tall

In the May 6 edition of Daniel Benneworth-Gray’s Meanwhile (you do subscribe to Meanwhile don’t you?) he featured Jan Tschichold’s The Form of the Book. Amongst the details Daniel drew out of that was what Jan said about “Deviant formats” – formats that don’t work. JT mentions formats that are too big, too wide and too heavy. He doesn’t, fortunately, mention too tall.

[Screen goes all wobbly and we jump back in time].

In the dim and distant and dim past – so long ago, in fact, that no one quite knows when it was – someone or other decided it would be a great idea to put a church on a thirty acre island in the Thames known for its thorny bushes.

By the 10th century (those in the know now know) there’d been a Christian church on Thorny for quite some time although there’s no trace of it today. When Edward the Confessor ascended to the throne in 1042, Thorney’s status as a sacred place was well established and he saw to it that the construction of a new, more fancy church was begun. This grander building – probably the largest Norman church of its time – was consecrated on Holy Innocents Day 1065. And not a moment too soon! Just a few days later Edward made his last confession and departed for that even grander church in the sky.

The Abbey continued to rise in national importance as Kings were crowned and later buried within its walls. Although Edward is credited for establishing Westminster, it was Henry III who imagined what we can see today – partly because by Henry’s day, those pesky French were knocking up some really fancy cathedrals and we all know that kings are covetous creatures. So in 1245, Edward’s church was respectfully (Henry was one of Edward’s biggest fans) pulled down and construction of Westminster Abbey began in ernest. Not surprisingly, the building work took much longer than the time Henry III had on the planet and a whole bagful of kings and queens came and went, each making all sorts of additions and modifications to the plans, before the job was done.

[Screen goes all wobbly and we jump forward in time].

In 1965, the 900 year anniversary of that original consecration was celebrated in a year of events and commemorated in a very tall book that I suspect even Tschichold would have approved of. It's mighty tall but just a few pages in and it makes so much sense. Very tall photos of very tall things give way to very tall text columns and then more very tall photos of more very tall things. When tallness doesn't cut it, the designers (Roger and Robert Nicholson, London) turned to a 90° turn for a wonderfully long and shallow vista instead.

The book should have a fancy and rather audacious dust jacket but my low cost copy had already lost it's coat of many colour. No matter – the modest hard cover with that beautifully positioned and thrifty sans type will do nicely for me.

There's a few copies on eBay I notice and they don't all cost that much. Watch out though, there's a low cost paperback version but the overall design is lovely so even one of those would be good.

Getting under your feet

The latest (and over-sized) Pentagram Paper is a celebration of the ignored; ever-present but invisible to many, the ubiquitous maintenance cover is a hatch to a world below our feet that our feet will never explore. The paper is a collection of reproduced rubbings taken from street covers found around London. It was designed by Marina Willer and printed in dayglo inks. You can read more about it here.

"The little typographical adventure…"

That’s how William Morris pitched his, long-time pondered printing enterprise some time after 1888. Finally tipped over the edge by an inspiring lecture to the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in November that year, our hairy faced friend gathered around him a crack team; a finely-tuned, hand-crafted group – a punchcutter, a papermaker, an ink-maker, an engraver and a master printer were invited to join the fanatical craftsman at the Kelmscott Press.

52 works in 66 volumes were produced with the Kelmscott Chaucer being generally considered their masterpiece. Morris himself designed the types, title page, borders, frames and 26 initial words while his Pre-Raphaelite comrade Edward Burne-Jones produced 87 pencil illustrations, that were translated into line and engraved ready for print.

Whether it killed him or kept him alive I don’t know enough to say but Chaucer was issued in June 1896 after a two year slog and Morris died the following October.

In 1975 a facsimile copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer was produced by the Basilisk Press, following production methods that mirrored, as closely as was possible, that of the original A-Team (K-Team, actually). This time it took three years with the original volume being accompanied by a second that reproduced, for the first time, Edward Burne-Jones’ pencil sketches. 'Reproducing the Kelmscott Chaucer' is an article in The Penrose Annual from 1976. It tells of the troubles encountered by the new team: the impracticalities of using hand-made paper in the quantity required, the challenge of printing onto paper with a deckled edge, the difficulties of matting the ink and even the dangers of boredom during such a painstaking and laborious task.

During the early to mid-seventies phototypesetting was becoming standard. While they reproduced Chaucer using letterpress, the volume of drawings was produced using litho and the best phototypesetting available. That’s a huge but understandable leap from one method to the other, in craft and result. The Basilisk team went to super-human lengths to reproduce Chaucer with a spirit and effort worthy of Morris.

Now, of course, the gap between the techniques of the arty-crafty Morris and contemporary production methods is even greater. All the more admirable then that a few finely-tuned, hand-crafted individuals endeavour to keep the art of letterpress alive and relevant today.