The Colour Series: The Temperamental Rose, After Image, Occupied by Colour, Around the World in Colour
Vancouver, British Columbia: Heavenly Monkey Editions, 2007-2014.
Limited First Edition. Leather_bound. Possibly the first time Barbara Hodgson and Claudia Cohen's extraordinary Colour Series has been offered together in a complete set of all four volumes, each produced in an edition limited to 30 copies and signed by both artists, this collection includes The Temperamental Rose and Other Ways of Seeing Colour (2007), After Image: Playing with Colour in All Its Dimensions (2009), Occupied by Colour: Putting the Palette to Work (2012), one of only 8 deluxe editions containing a unique color analysis of an historical artwork, and Around the World in Colour: A Multi-Hued Tour of Rocks, Roots & Bugs (2014), one of only 8 deluxe editions containing original artwork.
Sparked in the summer of 2006 by the artists' first meeting and an impassioned conversation about color wheels, The Colour Series offers four utterly vivid, revelatory, and tactile ways of interacting with color: systematizing through 14 real and hypothetical color charts, from a pop-up of the colors of Purgatory in Dante's Divine Comedy to a medieval diagnostic urine chart, in The Temperamental Rose; playing alongside Renaissance thinkers and Russian avant-gardists on the veritable and often three-dimensional playground of 16 movable models in After Image; working through a survey of 17 color-filled careers from medieval illuminator to cutting-edge color forecaster in Occupied by Colour; and, finally, traveling and turning the world into color in 23 short essays, interleaved with 19 full sheets of paper richly dyed by the authors, on the raw materials of traditional palettes and pigments, from Mexico's cochineal red, a dye made of ground bugs that robed the Old World royals in red, to China's cinnabar, one of humanity's first mined pigments, in Around the World in Colour.
Each volume comes bound in gilt-decorated leather and paper by Claudia Cohen, housed in a multi-piece custom clamshell box, with accompanying materials: a set of 6 fine artist's pigments in wax-sealed glass vials are stored alongside The Temperamental Rose; a handmade three-dimensional construction by papermaker Reg Lissel, a hand-lathed wood spinning top, and a transparent flagbook are required for full participation in the antics of After Image; an equilateral prism, dyed thread samples, a hair-colour pamphlet, and more samples of colorful work ephemera assist Occupied by Colour; a piece of lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, three glass vials containing powdered dyes and pigments (including the dried cochineal insects of Mexico's cochineal red), and a nine-page sample swatch book of tints are stowaways on the trip entitled Around the World in Colour. Deluxe editions Occupied by Colour and Around the Word in Colour, each one of only 8 produced, both include unique materials: Occupied by Colour features an additional handwritten entry on another occupation: "Colour Analyst," and, after the work of Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, in her 1901 book Color Problems, a unique color analysis special to this copy of "The Leopard," a wall painting detail from Pompeii (Museum of Naples); and Around the World in Colour includes two unique sheets of the over a thousand papers dyed by Hodgson and Cohen, used as aides-memoire in the course of the creation of this project, and featuring the authors' hand annotations. These four different orientations to color unite in this complete set to form a bright, rainbow-hued kaleidoscope of color through book artistry, fine printing and handmade papers, lively and imaginative original scholarship, and hundreds of hours of extensive hand-coloring, paper-dying, and construction of movable assemblages by the artists.
Of the 30 produced of each volume, more than half are placed in special collections and held in such institutions as Yale, Harvard, Stanford, the Huntington Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Indiana University's Lilly Library, and the University of California, Los Angeles.
"The Temperamental Rose is a collection of our favourite real and fictional colour systems; After Image serves up colour toys we like to play with; and Occupied by Colour imagines multi-hued careers we want to try. We play with colour and work with it, and now, in this fourth and last book and with the same personal approach, we are travelling around the world for it." — Introduction to Around the World in Colour
The Temperamental Rose, with Prospectus: Edition limited to 30 numbered and 5 A.P. copies, of which this is 24, signed by Barbara Hodgson and Claudia Cohen. 8 5/8" X 7 1/8". 39pp. Bound by Claudia Cohen in early 20th century European embossed paper over boards, over which circular leather overlays in black, yellow, red, orange, and pink are placed, with yellow and blue leather to fore-edge and spine backed in red leather, titled in gilt over a black leather label. Housed with a set of 6 dry artist's pigments in wax-sealed glass vials, in a gray linen three-piece clamshell box, titled in gilt over a black leather label to spine, with leather cemicircle onlays. Some chipping to wax seals on glass vials of pigments, and some faint spots to linen interior of clamshell box, else fine. Accompanied by the two-page prospectus for this title, front lightly smudged from off-setting, with red, yellow, and blue pigment circles to front, and Goethe and Schiller's "The Temperamental Rose" color wheel inside, hand-colored. Printed letterpress on Arches Cover and BFK Rives by David Clifford at Black Stone Press.
After Image: Edition limited to 30 numbered and 5 A.P. copies, of which this is 17, signed by Barbara Hodgson and Claudia Cohen. 8 5/8" X 7 1/8". 36pp, [viii]. Bound by Claudia Cohen in half black leather with gold tooling over brightly colored paste papers over boards, red and yellow to upper board and blue and orange to rear. Housed, along with a three-dimensional construction made from a design by papermaker Reg Lissel on Lissel’s own coloured handmade paper, a hand-lathed wood spinning top required for several of the constructs, and a transparent flagbook, in a multi-piece clamshell box of cream cloth with blue edges, titled in gilt over a black leather label backed in yellow and orange cloths to spine. The postcard questionaire issued with this title is present within original letter on Byzantium stationery, signed by Barbara Hodgson with reminder to fill out and return, with special After Image postal art included. Some faint spots to orange cloth interior of clamshell box, else fine. Printed at Black Stone Press in two colours on Arches watercolour and handmade papers.
Occupied by Colour: Edition limited to 30, the first 8 of which form the Deluxe Edition, of which this is 7, signed by Barbara Hodgson and Claudia Cohen and containing an original colour analysis of a historical work of art and an additional piece of color ephemera. 8 5/8" X 7 1/8". 41pp, plus bibliography, color analysis, and handwritten "Colour Analyst" entry. Bound by Claudia in full blue Morocco, ruled in studded gilt, embossed with circular designs, with colorful leather inlays of pink, yellow, orange, and red, and spine lettered in gilt over a blue leather label. Housed, alongside an equilateral prism with rainbow ribbon, a Courtauld's Ltd. Dye-test Card for Thread, a hair-colour pamphlet with hair samples, and piece of color ephemera, "Calcogene Red Brown RCF" with samples from the Calco Chemical Company, in a clamshell box of bright red linen, with red paste paper to spine and edges, lettered in gilt over a black leather label to spine. The color analysis special to this copy of the 8 deluxe editions issued is of "The Leopard," a wall painting detail from Pompeii (Museum of Naples), consisting of squares of hand-colored paper, after the work of Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, in her 1901 book Color Problems. Printed on dampened Arches paper by Rollin Milroy with the handpress at Heavenly Monkey. "Although both of us are—frankly—mature, our research was so exciting that we frequently considered changing careers and becoming optical physicists or weavers."
Around the World in Colour: Edition limited to 30, the first 8 of which form the Deluxe Edition, of which this is 7, signed by Barbara Hodgson and Claudia Cohen and containing a piece of original art from the project. 8 5/8" X 7 1/8". 50pp, plus bibliography and three additional pages for original art. Bound in full pink Morocco, with multi-colored leather triangle onlays, ruled in studded gilt and titled in kind over a black leather label to spine. Housed, alongside a piece of lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, three glass vials containing dried cochineal insects and powdered dyes and pigments of Carthamus tinctorius (safflower) and Maya blue, and a 9-page sample swatch book of tints, in a multi-piece clamshell box of navy silk with crushed blue paper interior and gilt-decorated pink leather onlay to spine, titled in gilt to black leather label. This deluxe edition includes original artwork: two sheets of the thousand dyed by Hodgson and Cohen, featuring the authors' hand annotations and used as aides-memoire in the course of the creation of this project. Stray fibers and faint dust soiling to clamshell box, with faint darker spot to left upper corner of binding, else fine. Printed on Arches Velin by David Clifford at Black Stone Press. Near fine. Item #15397
Price: $30,000.00