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Apologies for the poor reproduction if this rather fine brochure, but it's the best I could do with my limited technical know-how. If you want a proper one, please contact the Fry...

Ravilious at St Bride Library

A wonderful evening in store at the St Bride Library, off Fleet Street. We'll be talking about the fantastic interwar boom in auto-lithography - a form of lithography that involves artists working directly on the stone or plate - and showing all kinds of fabulous pictures.

Joe Pearson is the author of 'Drawn Direct to the Plate', which tells the story of Noel Carrington and the Puffin Picture Books, while Alan Powers has written books on the Curwen Press and related subjects. I'm looking forward to seeing what pictures they dig out of their archives and bring along...

I'll be talking about 'Ravilious: Submarine' and showing both the prints themselves and a selection of preliminary drawings - some of them beautiful works of art in their own right. Do come along and support the work of the St Bride Foundation, a unique institution devoted to typography, print culture and graphic design - past and present.

Eric Ravilious: V&A Study Day

Eric Ravilious, The Wilmington Giant, 1939 (V&A/DACS)

Eric Ravilious

Saturday 17 November, 10.30-17.00

Painter, illustrator, muralist and designer, Eric Ravilious was one of the most talented and versatile artists of his day. He is also one of the most distinctively English of the artists of the inter-war generation. His wood engravings for pottery, glass and book illustrations incorporate a strikingly personal and charming naivete. And his watercolours of English rural subjects, that often include everyday objects like watering cans and greenhouses, are characterised by their delicacy and innocence. This study day reviews Ravilious’s contribution to British art and design. Topics include book illustrations, wood-engravings, his work as a water-colourist and a War Artist, and his relationship with contemporaries like Edward Bawden. Speakers include Alan Powers, Brian Webb, James Russell and Gill Saunders. The event is organised to mark the 70^th anniversary of Ravilious’s death and the publication of a new facsimile of Ravilious’s classic book, High Street.

Tickets:  £45, £35 concessions, £15 students

To Book: Call 0207 942 2211 or visit www.vam.ac.uk/whatson

Programme

10.30       Introduction and Welcome

10.40       Ravilious at the Royal College of Art, Alan Powers

11.20       Tea/Coffee

11.40       Eric Ravilious: Painter in Peace and War, James Russell

12.20       Ravilious as Engraver: A Great Range of Textures, Jeremy Greenwood 

13.00       Lunch Break

14.00       Ravilious and the Submarine Lithographs, Brian Webb
       

14.40       Ravilious and High Street, Gill Saunders

15.20       Tea/Coffee

15.40       Ravilious and Bawden, Peyton Skipwith 

16.20     Discussion

Country Life names 'The Story of High Street' in 2009 Best Books

Country Life magazine has picked 'The Story of High Street' as one of the Best Books of 2009. Peyton Skipwith wrote:

Alan Powers's and James Russell's Eric Ravilious: The Story of High Street not only reproduces Eric Ravilious's lithographs and JM Richards' 1938 text from 'High Street' (Country Life) - copies are rare because the plates were destroyed in the Blitz - but includes informative essays that put it in context, as well as identifying for the first time a number of the shops, bars and restaurants depicted. These are nostalgically evoked in the original words and pictures, but, as Mr Powers says, Richards and Ravilious 'have left us with the key to unlocking forgotten rooms in the mansion of English culture in the 1930s'. A rare case of having one's cake and being able to eat it as well.