HARRY ECCLESTON, PPRE
b. 1923

LIMITED TO 25 SETS

Harry Eccleston: The Caponfield Suite
1997
Limited to 25 copies with 10 etchings, one in colour
Introduction by Jolyon Drury. With justification
The Portfolio is in green buckram with gold-blocked labels, 29 x 23 x 1¾ inches.
£1000

Harry Eccleston succeeded Paul Drury as President of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1975 and retired from the post in 1983.

There will hardly be a person in Britain over the age of 25 or 30 who has not already looked closely at Eccleston's work, for he designed our bank notes from 1958 to 1983. The extraordinary discipline required for such work and the strains that impose themselves on bank-note designers can be (and have been) a mortmain upon artistic creativity.

But with Eccleston the reverse has proved to be true. The discipline which required such exact focus and observation has caused a breakthrough in perception which enabled the artist to show us things which we may have never seen before but which we will meet with a strong sense of recognition.

THE CAPONFIELD SUITE
1974-1980

Perhaps it is only in Britain that a major suite of prints by the president of its national printmaking society should never have been exhibited as a whole, nearly two decades after its creation. There have been a couple of excellent articles about these prints by Michael Blaker (Printmaking Today, November 1994 and Printmakers' Journal, No. 8, 1986) but no exhibition.

One of the problems in bringing the prints to public attention is that they quietly but firmly elude any attempt to be reproduced. There is a reason for this. The achievement of these prints lies not only in the elegance and astringency of their design and the beauty of the logic of their construction but also in the extraordinary and delicate texture with which the forms are invested. The textures of the steel paraphernalia are every bit as vital to the prints' ordinance as the dramatic juxtaposition of the forms. It is the texture which defies reproduction. They have to be seen to be believed.

The suite developed from prints made at the Caponfield Steel works in the Black Country. The earliest print in the series dates from 1974 but Eccleston's particular relationship with that landscape or skyscape had started when he was a boy some 40 years before. He writes:

My first small paintings of the cupolas must have been about 1935. They were derelict because of the '30s slump. They were torn down after the war as the site was redeveloped. They kept on changing continuously until they were torn down in the very late '70s. The only thing which remained virtually unchanged was The Gantry. My last print was 1980 so I worked on that spot for 45 years!

This suite of etchings is much more than the assemblage of a group. It is the development of a theme which results from the artist returning to the same spot, seeing and studying it as for the first time, and focusing deeply on a particular facet of the changing environment.

The result is like the narrative of a musical score which traces the industrial logic of a changing skyscape, demolishing and replacing itself by some unseen Titanic will.

Jolyon Drury's deceptively simple introduction brings both a profound understanding of the technical skills required of the etcher and an engineer's understanding of the physical elements depicted.

The suite carries 10 etchings (one in colour) boxed in a green buckram solander box with gold-blocked labels. Each print is signed, titled and numbered from the edition of 25. The etchings are printed by Tony Dyson at the Black Star Press on 300 gsm Somerset mould-made paper.