Poetry Books Introduction The recent poem (on right) is perhaps to be in an anthology by Piers out in 2012... a handmade book - PATRONS please come forward! (Apologies for squat'ness of image below) Since graduating from the Royal Academy Schools in 1975, Piers has carved out a reputation as a traditional land and more recently seascape OIL painter and colour Etcher in the Romantic, Palmeresque tradition when books and POETRY are involved. He never meant to be either an author, poet or book producer! It had first seemed a good way to unite a whole scenic area, The Lakes, The Dales, Shropshire, "under one roof" in long term projects suitable for indoor work on rainy days...till the bug bit and the beauty of unfading-in-daylight original prints set against lovely spacious type feel first took place. One can thus travel through different 'lights' in different seasons and drop TV watching for wallowing in fine Art in one's sitting room in evenings. His SIX books have each reproduced in them over fifty colour etchings - the 2008 SONNETS FOR A SIREN one has the least with 19 etchings/drypoints therein while the penultimate one, published 2002, the GLORIOUS TREESOF GREAT BRITAIN, has nearly 170 reproduced in it, a true Magnum Opus of 15 years work. TREES costs, at £10 off, £25 from Piers - or in 'his' galleries. Piers can sign & dedicate and for another £10 post one on direct to you. About 1000 of 4000 left. "WENSLEYDALE: ETCHINGS AND VERSE" (published by Ashford Buchan & Enright 1994) is likewise also extant and for £15 for signed copies with £7.50 for P&P and delivery wherever and to whoever dedicated you wish. Only about 100 of 4000 left in January '08. With 75 etchings of the Dale in all its seasons, moods and times of day, it has proved a best seller. THERE ARE BUT NOW IN SEPT '09 A HUNDRED COPIES LEFT and no more to find under any beds! "A SHROPSHIRE LAD" (4000 ed.& published by Ashford Buchan & Enright in 1988) was Piers' first handmade book (ed 25) and begun while at Art School in 1972 and finished 10 years later. Obviously it was unbound, photoed and mass produced - equally large at near 17 ins, and one, being donated to The Nat Trust in Shropshire, raised through a raffle a massive £5000 in the '90s too! - and this body did good deeds on Wenlock Edge with the cash. Though sold out Amazon seem to have a few always. The foreword is by the late great Kingsley Amis, its etchings were exhibited at the Royal festival Hall's Poetry Library in 1996, and under ETCHINGS on this site there are still some available as Piers, being once more energetic, made each edition of the 75 etchings therein in editions of 100. "AN ELEGY IN ARCADY", launched from Brewer's Hall in the City in 1989, has 5 copies of its second, edition left - 7995 sold, and is reproduced from small black and white engravings. £10 signed not incl P&P The Cambridge Book & Print Gallery has copies AND a complete boxed set of the original engravings with book. The boxes look really beautiful: there are 3 left @ £1950, and contain the 30 engravings . most about 4 x 6" high on handmade paper sized 14 high x 11 ins + a Book. The large, deep box has a cherry tree in silver on the front cover, is a Wimbledon green and handsome. Do ask to see photos - or go if in Cambridge! "WORDSWORTH: A LAKELAND ANTHOLOGY" (sold out) published by John Murray, foreword by John Mortimer, was equal first in the WH Smith Illustrated Book of the Year of 1991, and is sold out. there are still many original etchings available singly for sale in Piers' galleries or direct. "SONNETS FOR A SIREN" out now in 2008, is a handmade book, took 5 years to make, & contains 27 sonnets wherein Piers wrote about requited and unrequited love, and is set in a sea-orientated places. The 19 etchings (half in colour the rest in b&w) were first drawn in places like Zennor (Cornwall), Freshwater Bay, Shanklin or Tennyson Down (Isle of Wight) or on the Argyll coast. There are now, due to kindly Patrons buying in late 2007, but 13 left of the edition of 20. The pages are 18" high x 13" and the beautiful type, with much airy space around, was set, as with all Piers' handmade books, by the best, Hand & Eye Letterpress of London; the binding, three left with covers in calfskin, 10 with cloth, is embosed with silver images front and back was done by Shepherds, also in London. Of all three handmade books, this one is 'purest', being most dignified and the most classically simple. A little Brochure/Catalogue can be sent to you free by Piers. AT PIERS' great SEASCAPES Show, opening Oct 6 till Oct 10, 9.30 - 7pm daily at 54 THE GALLERY, Shepherd Market, Mayfair, LONDON, will be seen all the Sonnets etchings and a few of the handmade books. Piers will talk daily, from 1 till 1.30pm about the Oils and the few Etchings - and this handmade, latest book, at the gallery. Costs of SONNETS FOR A SIREN (which is not mass produced) are £3500 per leather book and £3000 cloth. The cost is nearly that to make each book as the binding and especially silver embossed jackets fore and aft cost over £500 per book each - about! Cambridge Univserity library and the Bodleian have bought copies. Do plz ask Piers for a SEASCAPES (Show in Mayfair in October) catalogue to be posted to you (from SEPT 8th) for £10 + £4 P&P as it's lovely and over 50 works illustrated Glorious Trees of Great Britain THIS HAS JUST BECOME ONE OF BRITAIN's FIRST 'E-BOOKS'! You can see every page (turning the pages is fun!) by logging onto: www.artists.ltd.uk/pb. Thanks to Bernie Cook, once Director of Vital Online of Harrogate, for doing this for the love of it. Last 1000 copies are all reduced by £10 to £25 and, for a reduced price of £10 extra, can be posted straight from the author/artist's home to anyone you wish, with a dedication and author's signature. Alternatively by appointment you may collect, or even go to one of Piers's gallerys stockists - see under ETCHINGS FOR SALE for lists, as you may more than likely find a few signed copies still at any listed in the OILS or ETCHINGS for sale files on the www. DAWYCK ARBORETUM in Peeblesshire now stocks the books. This incredible pinetum, mainly, was where Piuers etched some of the highest Douglas Firs in the whole UK. Wonderful shop and cafe and never crowded, the scenery around is startling (on a dry day!) with the young tweed in the valley bottom. But is is also the rare trees there that astound. The exciting walkways through the whole Pinetum is great for children to roam around too, what with little bridges and high and low level tracks, and all easily 'done' in half a day. The book contains nearly 170 reproduced etchings of trees in romantic landscape in the entire UK and Eire, and has been critically very well received. HRH Prince Charles wrote the Foreword and Prof David Bellamy each tree species' Chapter start - fascinatingly educative and witty with it! SOME ETCHINGS have sold out . Piers is always keen to show a grouping of some similarly framed small tree etchings in galleries ... galleries do enquire! As regards the books, please do telephone 01969 650434 to order quickly or email:piersbrowne@btinternet.com Melvyn Bragg: "I am full of admiration for Piers Browne's beautiful etchings in his latest book". David Astor, ex-chairman of the CPRE (which Piers wholeheartedly supports): "Only someone who is both an accomplished artist and who cares passionately about the countryside could have produced such beautiful etchings as seen in the Wensleydale" The Poetry Library bought a copy and had exhibited his etchings. Piers etches as much as paints - and still adores the Wenslydale landscape and British seascapes - but the fluidity and chance of immediate texture with oil paint is hard to beat. Other comments on his work; H.R.H Prince of Wales (after buying his wensleydale book): "I find the etchings hauntingly and evocatively beautiful. In fact, having seen your work, I hardly dare do any more painting myself" Giles Auty (for many years Spectator Art critic and now a critic in Australia): "Piers is a true Romantic, dedicated simply to his art." SONNETS FOR A SIREN A GOOD COPY IS AT 'MAGGS' IN BERKELEY SQUARE, LONDON and they would be pleased to show it to you. In July last year, the Bodliean Library in Oxford and Cambridge University libraries, along with 7 private 'patrons', received their orders of a leather bound book; edition 20, theirs is one of ten leather bound copes in the edition, with the remaining ren though similarly embossed with real silver on front and back jacket covers, are cloth bound, so a shade paler and $500 less than the £3500 asking price. This grandiose, classically simple but sensitively etched/drypointed and exquisitely bound - by Shepherds of London - HANDMADE book, contains 27 sonnets and 19 'illustrations' (half in colour), and all sonnets are made onto the bound paper with handset onto handmade paper by Hand & Eye Letterpress, London. So, 12 are left: 10 being on the paler blue-black, real silver embossed fore and aft CLOTH jacket covers @ £3000 each, and 2 left in the velvety, darker calfskin for £3500, which really shows off the silver. The book is sized 18" high x 13 wide The etching shown here - "I'll miss the lurch, spyrt, soar...." is one in the book totally about requited love !! - but many show the more devastating happenings which, misaligned, a love affair can produce.Most of the small etchings - the one above is 5" high x 6 across - are entirely sea with some landscape orientated, and about 6 are larger at about 8 x 6 inches, with all 19 printed directly from the handinked plate, (handinked by the artist only) onto this large book's every other left hand page. As each original print costs around £175, and the fantastic length of time and cost of printing and then binding was about £2000 each book, each Handmade Books must surely be a bargain, especially as in the hands of an Agent/gallery the books could rocket in price. If wishing to have a free BROCHURE and CATALOGUE, please e mail: piersbrowne@btinternet.com. or tel 01969 650434....or, if in London, do go to the renowned fine booksellers MAGGS in Berkeley Square