Jubilate Agno, 2012
Old Stile Press, Monmouthshire, Wales, UK
By Christopher Smart. Woodcut and linocut images and an afterword by Angela Lemaire.
Christopher Smart (1722–1771) was a major poet of great learning. Fascinated by the occult and the supernatural and Freemasonry, his poetry ranged over subjects which earned him a reputation of being mad. The ‘Jubilate Agno’ is an edition of ‘Kit’ Smart’s wild and wonderful hymn of yearning and adoration for Creation in all its multifarious detail. It expresses his exuberance and overflows with his enthusiasms and blessings. He began writing this work in 1759 when his ‘wild behaviour’ (which now we might call a nervous breakdown) had caused him to be locked up in St Luke’s Hospital for the Insane. In his praise of all Creation he lists people, animals, birds, insects, fish, all of whom are blessed. His knowledge of the natural world is encyclopeadic and nothing is omitted! A section of it provides the text for Benjamin Britten’s ‘Rejoice in the Lamb’ – a cantata which will be familiar to many if only for the music about ‘my cat Jeoffry’. Angela Lemaire writes that she sees Smart, in one particular woodcut in the book, as a singing bird glimpsed through the obstructing branches of a tree.
The book came about after an encounter by Frances and Nicholas McDowall of The Old Stile Press with a copy of the ‘Gutenberg Bible’ and it can be said that the design, the imagery, the palette of rich colours were all influenced strongly by that early masterpiece of printing with moveable type which was enhanced by the decorations of scribes. There are woodcuts and linocuts throughout the text, some are printed in more than one colour, some in a single colour; there are initial capitals among the pages arranged in two columns, all to pay tribute to the design of Gutenberg.
Paper is 225gsm Paper is 225gsm Vélin Arches. Type is Truesdell. Woodcut and linocuts printed directly from the blocks cut by Angela Lemaire. Seven different colours of ink are employed in the printing. The book is bound with a suede spine and its sides are covered in terracotta paste papers printed in gold and silver designed by Nicolas McDowall using Angela Lemaire’s blocks. For the main edition there is a slipcase lined with suede and a printed label of ‘my cat Jeoffry’.
380 x 290mm. The Main Edition consists of 100 copies, numbered and signed by the artist.
£325 (plus P&P and insurance)