A Book of Automatic Drawing

Hardcover. Folio. (17" x 12" - 43.2cm x 30.5cm) (40pp.) Quarter black cloth with black paper-covered boards and title and design by Spare gilt stamped on front board. Printed on Abbey Mills white laid paper. Edition limited to 350 hand-numbered copies. Spare finished the work in 1925, but his attempts to publish it himself failed, and it remained unpublished until it was printed by the Catalpa Press (London) in 1973. The book is a magnificently-crafted reproduction of Spare's original manuscript sketchbook and comprises a decorative title, contents, and end pages, plus twelve full-page plates and an Introduction by Ian Law. The sheets of this Catalpa Press edition were beautifully produced by an art-printer in two issues: a "trade edition" printed on white laid paper and an "edition deluxe" on hand-made paper. A number of unbound sets of sheets from these original 1973 printings were recently rediscovered, and have been bound up and reissued by the Teitan Press. This copy is one of the trade edition, of which only 350 numbered copies of this new release have been issued. Included with each copy is a 12 page booklet by Keith Richmond, recounting the complicated history of the book. The book is a superb production. As might be expected with sheets that are nearly 40 years old, there is the occasional minor blemish, but over all the book is NEW in Fine condition