A Christmas card by Laurence Bell

 

This is all starting to look like an end-of-term report. I have finally dug out my Christmas card designed by Laurence Bell for his publisher, Burlington Fine Arts. The most important aspect to all this is not so much the brightly-coloured print as the spelling of his Christian name and what it says on the inside page (below). Firstly, in my opinion, this is the way the signature reads: a, u, r, e. It is easy enough to read 'w' but here we have contemporary printed evidence that all of us appear to have been spelling the name wrongly. 

Secondly, this does not mean that all Bell's prints were coloured by hand but it does suggest why so many are so bright. It is up to readers to decide for themselves because the card is the only work I have seen by Bell. But if you look closely, it should be obvious whether or not he has used pigment and where the colour overlaps the keyblock.

The card provides one further clue in the way linocut was spelt. In 1923, Allen Seaby always wrote linoleum cut and never used the short form 'lino'. Claude Flight did and in 1927 went out of his way to spell it Lino-Cut in the title of his book - not sure why but then I could say that about so many things Flight wrote. I will have to check earlier spellings!

There are at east three readers who own work by Bell and they may be able to detect signs of hand-colouring on some of their own prints. Either leave your comment below or send it on to me. The advantage to leaving comments in the box is that they stay with the relevant post. Either way, between us we have made some progress.