NASH, Paul. CURWEN PRESS. ~ A Specimen Paper Book of Pattern Papers designed for and in use at The Curwen Press.
Introduction by Paul Nash. No. 1 of 145 copies for sale in England (there were also 75 copies issued by Random House in America. 31 sheets of pattern papers printed at The Curwen Press, 10 of which produced from wood engravings each folded twice (4to) and bound in, all uncut at folds. Title page vignette, head-piece and decorated initial letter by Edward Bawden all coloured in green and pink using pochoir technique. 4to., original printed patterned cloth from a wood engraved design by Paul Nash with the title printed directly onto the spine. Cloth is rather rubbed with a little bumping to the corners and the top and bottom of the spine, dry mild browning to endpapers, otherwise very good, the specimens are remarkably well preserved and all uncut.
Nash’s introduction relates the history of pattern papers, noting the exquisite end papers produced in Italy and France and much later in Augsburg during the 17th and 18th centuries printed using both wood blocks and stencils. He declares : “the importance of the pattern paper does not lie solely in its simple useful relation to bookbinding, but as a humble part of the endless contribution to decoration which forms one of the most absorbing studies in the history of aesthetics.”
He describes these Curwen Press papers as hard, bright and resilient and being “the only important contribution in this country” - after noting the exquisite patterns on the endpapers in Pissarro’s Eragny Press books and a little work by Charles Ricketts.
The papers in this collection of specimens were all from designs reproduced by offset printing, each with the original key pattern being a line block reproduced from a drawing or a wood engraving, mostly produced later than those made from drawings. The draughtsmen used by the Curwen Press were Lovat Fraser, Albert Rutherston, Margaret James, Thomas Lowinsky, E.O. Hoppé, Edward Bawden and Paul Nash; the wood engravers were Paul Nash, Enid Marx, Eric Ravilious and Harry Carter.