JOHNSON, Arthur, binder. PICASSO, Pablo. ~ Picasso’s Erotic Gravures.
29 x 28 cm. Large 4to., bound by Arthur Johnson in 1975 (signed and dated on the lower turn-in) in a mosaic binding of red goatskin with onlays in purple, orange, tan, black and white goatskin, yellow endpapers, spine lettered in gilt along its entire length. Housed in the original red cloth, felt lined clamshell box. In remarkably good condition.
The bold design with a very keen sense of colour is a typical example of Johnson’s work, which always achieved drama and witalongside superb technique. He has made a fabulous stylised and abstract take on a Picasso erotic engraving in leather.
Arthur Johnson (1920-2004), along with Edgar Mansfield, Sally Lou Smith and others, was instrumental in changing the course of bookbinding in Britain, being one of the founding members of the Hammersmith Guild of Scribes and Bookbinders in 1950 which was intended to start a new movement in British bookbinding. These binders were reacting against the domination of established binding firms whose binders had excellent technical abilities but whose designs Johnson felt were ‘deplorable’ for their fussy, insipid aesthetic: “their covers were reminiscent of carpets and chocolate boxes”. The Guild, whose fellow members included Britain’s greatest binders such as Philip Smith, Bernard Middleton, Elizabeth Greenhill, Trevor Jones and Ivor Robinson, went on to become the Guild of Contemporary Bookbinders and then the Designer Bookbinders we know today.
Avant Garde was a magazine renowned for its graphic design by Herb Lubalin. It was published in New York and ran for 14 issues between January 1968 and July 1971.