September 2023

Testing colour combinations for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button from the designs by artist Dave McKean. I thought you’d like to see a few of the many, many, colour tests that Rich Tong does to see how they look. The book’s interior is rich with three colour relief letterpress prints by Dave. We’ll be announcing the book very soon!

With Arete we really wanted to give the best contemporary artists the opportunity to use very old print techniques, along with working with the most famous Fine Artists a chance to use very modern digital productions. The result has delighted us! As the log jam of the last year starts to dissipate, we are about to finalise a new book that we have been proofing for months; Dave McKean’s visualisation of a classic short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. This book is rich with Dave’s letterpress relief prints! An art book with tactile three colour letterpress prints. As Rich Tong develops the bindings, I thought I’d start to show some of Dave’s terrific interpretations of Benjamin Button.

On the press: Frozen Hell by John W Campbell Jnr with paintings and drawings by Gregory Manchess. Now available for pre-order at www.arete-editions.com

Each of these galleys holds six made-up pages of Frozen Hell, now on the press and available for pre-sale at www.arete-editions.com

Here’s what to expect if you have a Roman FROZEN HELL; a portfolio with an original Greg Manchess piece of art! https://www.arete-editions.com/

Colour proofs of the spectacular paintings made by Gregory Manchess for the Areté edition of Frozen Hell by John W Campbell Jnr. The book is now available for pre-sale at www.arete-editions.com

I enjoyed the hell out of this unboxing of our Words of Fire! Thank you Sean Lynch, as he says: “I know the rhymes are cheesy as hell and probably cringe-worthy at times, but this is probably the most fun I’ve ever had with an unboxing!”

Setting the typeface for FROZEN HELL, Phil, speeded up, setting the metal type we are using for the books, it is a time consuming and work heavy job, all the text and relief prints and the second colours are set by hand, extraordinary craftsmanship from Hand and Eye. https://www.arete-editions.com/