Typographer, author, boat-designer, teacher & sailor, John Lewis wrote extensively on the things he loved. His pioneering study on Printed Ephemera, and the two books he wrote on Type and Illustration for the Ipswich printers, W.S. Cowell, remain classics in their fields. He first came to see us at White House Farm soon after I joined the firm in 1979. On hearing my plans to specialise in fine printing and typography, he invited me over to his house in Woodbridge where we both lived. In no time he was offering me thinnings from his library: not the main treasures of course, but some very nice examples of 20thC European printing for which we shared a passion (I can still hear him gently correcting my mispronounced 'Tschichold'). Our paths were to cross in various ways over the next fifteen years. W.S. Cowell's factory was at the end of Silent Street where we had our shop. George Arnott, the Woodbridge auctioneer and historian whose wonderful collection of local ephemera featured strongly in John's book on the subject, also became a great friend and his Suffolk ephemera eventually came to us. Fellow-typographer Ruari McLean, a long-time friend of John & Griselda Lewis, likewise became a good customer who was to sell us many books from his library in that benign fashion inspired by the desire that his 'old friends should go to a good home'. So I am pleased to offer here a small collection from the Lewis library which includes the Bodonis he loved so well; an inscribed Eragny we sold him back in c1980; a nice collection of Lion & Unicorn Press from the RCA where he taught; and his classic 'Handbook of Type & Illustration', inscribed to his wife on publication. |