September 2021

Red ink. Hand and Eye has started printing ‘The Case of Death and Honey’ by Neil Gaiman and ‘The Adventure of the Creeping Man’ by Arthur Conan Doyle which inspired Neil. Editions are being printed on their FAG proof press and their Heidelberg cylinder press. Currently available for pre-order at www.arete-editions.com

Here’s an image from our Fine Edition of ‘The adventure of the Creeping Man’ by Arthur Conan Doyle. The image didn’t change that much from the sketch that Gary Gianni first sent, he did consider putting a flower in the mad Professor’s hand, but was quickly rejected. I really like these sketches, they are rarely seen but I think there is a spontaneity to the picture which should be seen. Phil sent over a photo of the print of the picture.

A slight digression from our books, London Book Arts is a fantastic resource in London, they have created some new bookmakers for a decade now and is one of the few places that you can learn the craft of bookmaking, from typesetting to binding. I know, both you and I, want to spend money on new books, but if you can help out, anything helps:

The Adventure of the Creeping Man by Arthur Conan Doyle, the story that inspired Neil to write The Case of Death and Honey, for the frontis illustration that Gary first designed, for our Fine edition three pass hot metal type letterpress edition, was an evocative mood piece, when we placed the original idea in the draft of the book we both felt that it should really have Holmes and Watson, Gary’s next sketch did just that and still included the evocative mood of the first idea.

I love these sketch images, and giving you all an insight into the long creative process that goes into making an illustrated book.

Phil Hand and Eye sent a picture of the plates for Neil’s The Case of Death and Honey… they look pretty cool.

Phil, co-publisher of Arete Editions is about to give a talk. The master at work…

Keeping with Gary Gianni’s art for now while we await news on the physical production of the books. Here we wanted to have a literal page turner within Death and Honey, I always wanted a double page where you could see The Adventure of the Creeping Man shown, as the incident that Holmes uses to find the solution to Mycroft’s challenge in Neil’s story, the first image we played around with, (actually we tried it in different spots through The Case of Death and Honey) was to be a bit meta, and use the Strand magazine, as if Holmes was reading Watson’s stories. But we ended up using a key moment. At first Gary had the professor stretching out across the panel, but I always wanted to make a book with the original art as part of a book, which meant that each page wouldn’t work if separated, so Gary adjusted the double page spread to make it work as a spread but also each page works unto itself.

From Phil(Hand and Eye)!

Here’s an interesting development of ideas, we wanted a stamp on the numbered edition of The Case of Death and Honey, we knew that we had the idea of Death, bees and honey, these are images that Gary and myself went through during a process of finding the right symbol and graphic and colours. Initially we wanted it on a black background, however when Rich showed us the black textured Coral fabric that we ended up using, the black background against the black fabric did not work, so we ended up using a vivid red, and using the black background leather for the interior of the Artist’s Edition Solander box.

Well done Rich! Amazing! Next year… The Case of Death and Honey! 😄