On Books: The creative work of Susan Allix with a Catalogue Raisonné.

Simon Shorvon. Old School Press. 2023.
Pages 197 ISBN 978 1 899933 48 8

Susan Allix has been making Fine Press Artist’s books for fifty years and in this time has produced seventy-seven titles, as well as nine children’s books and special bindings for thirty-eight other books. A graduate of the Royal College of Art and a recipient of the Prix de Rome, she has been called ‘the greatest bookmaker of her generation’ – a claim that calls for this timely authoritative work on Allix and her books. On Books is a detailed appreciation of her output, background to her life and training, coverage of her collectors, booksellers, and auctions, and a list of ninety-nine public collections around the world that hold her work. The second part of the books is a fifty-page comprehensive catalogue raisonné of her entire output/

Allix is unique in creating her books in their entirety. She designs and prints all the images by hand, prints all her text by letterpress, binds her books often in complex and spectacular leather designs, mixes her own pigments, writes some of the text, has created several new letterforms, and on occasions has included her own hand-made papers. Her intaglio and relief images are made with a startling variety of techniques, often in complex combinations in one image. Her bindings frequently involve different types of leather and paper with superimposed silver, other metals, and found objects. She uses many decorative and printing papers in her books. She is a colourist creating colours of deep intensity and feeling. The themes of her books include the relationship of time and space, travel, the cycles of nature and transience of beauty, and the ancient world. Some texts are literary and scholarly, with a penchant for the antique, the orient and the classical, architecture, and poetry.

The text of On Books has been set in Monotype Dante and Optima on a generous page of 270 mm by 215 mm, with sixty coloured and black-and-white illustrations of her work supporting the text. Just 100 numbered and signed copies have been Indigo printed on 140 gsm Fedrigoni Arena. The full-cloth, sewn, and cased binding carries the title on the spine and comes in a laminated dustjacket.

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Chapter 1: Marmalade sans serif
Chapter 2: The early books
Chapter 3: The Almorah Road years
Chapter 4: A certain recognizable aesthetic
Chapter 5: the business of the books
Catalogue Raisonné
University and Library Collections
Bibliography
General Index
Title Index