Burin, Box & Board: Lennart Forsberg
Burin, Box & Board: Lennart Forsberg
A book full of prints.
The wood engravings, wood cuts and linocuts of the Swedish graphic artist Lennart Forsberg are at the centre of Burin, Box and Board. The book contains thirty-nine prints, all printed from the original wood or lino, and a photo of the artist taken beside his 1873 hand press. These prints, along with the text, reveal the many aspects of Forsberg's long working life as an engraver, designer and printmaker.
Please note, the copies for sale are bound in Sarah Bodman marbled papers rather than this cover shown here.
Burin Box & Board, inspired by Jan Tschichold's principles of asymmetric typography, is one of our most innnovative designs. We have chosen a clear aqua for all titling and a soft grey for the text to allow the the black and white wood engravings to take centre stage. The text is set in Gill Sans, including the rarely seen alternative letterforms cut in the 1930s to conform to other sans serif designs. The book is about 10 inches square (260 mm), 57 pages in all and hand bound in printed-paper over boards with a cloth spine.
The text sets the work in context. First with an introduction by Professor Nils G. Stenquist from the catalogue of Forsberg's 2005 retrospective exhibition in Stockholm, there is also a short memoir by the artist himself, a translation of an article about Forsberg as a stamp designer, and Thorsten Sjölin's description of his visit to Forsberg's Stockholm studio.
The book includes 14 wood engravings from the book Ryska Minnet (Russia Remembered) and 11 from a Swedish translation of The Canterbury Tales. An extract from the Swedish text with its English translation accompanies each image. Also shown are three engravings from the Vasa series, inspired by the 17th-century ship on display in Stockholm, linocuts, two multi-colour wood cuts and one of his wood-engraved bookplate designs.
The standard edition is now out of print although we have a few copies of the book in sheets for hand binders; and copies of the beautiful special edition described below:
We printed forty specials, each housed in a drop-back box, with an additional portfolio of six signed and numbered prints (five multi-coloured and one black and white) printed specially for the edition by Lennart Forsberg in his studio in Sweden. A copy of the 23-page illustrated catalogue published for Forsberg's 90th Anniversary Retrospective Exhibition and a photograph of the artist at his proofing press taken by Thorsten Sjölin in October 2005 .