Yale Center for British Art

Creator:
Campbell, Ken, 1939-2022
Title:
In the door stands a jar / Ken Campbell.
Published / Created:
[Oxford, England] : K. Campbell, 1987.
Physical Description:
[44] p. : chiefly col. ill. ; 24 x 25 cm.
Collection:
Rare Books and Manuscripts
Copyright Status:
Copyright Not Evaluated
Classification:
Books
Notes:
"There's usually some kind of formal problem in books--I mean a way of dividing space up for good clear reason and for making things work in sequence. I had a notion of putting a double spread, which is a designer's term for an opened book, on one page and putting the same double spread reduced on the other page, so you're looking at two double spreads as a kind of visual pun ... There was also a notion that this produced very large dark borders, and I had started to play with borders. I wanted to bury words in those borders as a kind of visual echo of the words being used in the poem, as almost a metaphor for where words come from in one of the ways of creating poetry, hearing echoes of sound and meaning from other places. I don't know where the figure--the jar--came from. I carved a female form from a background of zinc and wood, and then cut it in half so that there were four blocks, which were then manipulated and printed in a variety of colours ... The jar that stands in the door is both a woman's thick body and a jar which is cut up, dismembered and moved around, but I don't think cruelly so, I think it celebrates the shape. It was almost a tilt back to my designer past making a page move in almost a cinematographic way through the book, in the spaces between the two verses. It was a very formal piece, a very sculptural thing to do."--Ken Campbell, from The word returned.
Subject Terms:
Artists' books -- Great Britain. | Campbell, Ken, 1939– -- Publisher
Form/Genre:
Artists' books -- Great Britain.