NASH, Paul. ~ Places. 7 Prints reproduced from woodblocks, designed & engraved by Paul Nash. With illustrations in prose.
7 woodcuts and tailpiece by Paul Nash. No. 126 of only 210 copies (there was also a special edition of 55 copies) Pp. 22, with text as a reproduction of Nash's handwriting with his decorations. 4to., original black cloth backed printed boards with Nash woodblock print and lettering on the upper cover and lettering and monogram on the back. Cloth on spine mostly lacking, boards rather marked but a good, strong intact copy and clean and bright internally.
Very rare. The seven woodblock engravings and "illustrations in prose" convey Nash's intense feelings for his 'spirit of place", particularly ancient places in Southern England. The cover engraving "Meeting Place, Buntingford" was the home of the parents of Nash's great friend Claud Lovat Fraser, who had died tragically young the year before.
The other woodblock prints are of specific very English places: Black Poplar Pond in Iden; Garden Pond in Wittersham; Dark Lake in Iver Heath; Hampden in Winter; Paths into the Wood in Whiteleaf; Winter Wood in Hampden and a Tailpiece depicted Iden.
Nash’s poetry accompanies several of the prints, some of which are reasonable, but the stars of the book are his astonishing woodcuts which exhibit Nash’s strong modernist approach to the pastoral English landscape and his pull towards places where the 'relationship of parts creates a mystery, an enchantment, which cannot be analysed'.