King, Ronald

The Song of Solomon

      Circle Press, 1990. New This mint, limited edition, ( 3, 000 ) HARDBACK, half-sized edition ( of the 150, 1969 unbound edition ) is in pristine condition because it is in a box. The cover is brilliant scarlet cloth with a gilt design on the front cover and gilt lettering to the spine. The book size is 6.75” w x 9” h with 70 pristine pages on beautiful high quality paper. The designs are wonderful and would make beautiful gift. ISBN 0901380652. “ The cut paper screenprint technique he used here was employed on his first major book, Chaucer's PROLOGUE TO THE CANTERBURY TALES, which launched Circle Press in 1967. The Prologue received a second printing in 1978, by which time Circle Press had extended its activities and involved a number of other well known artists such as Allan Reynolds, Ian Tyson, Norman Ackroyd, Arthur Boyd, John Furnival, Michael Kidner, Stanley Hayter, Tom Phillips and Michael Peel. During the seventies the press produced spectacular editions of various major texts and with Brigit Skiold's CHIMES by Rossetti Circle Press was awarded the coveted Golden Eagle Award at the Nice Festival du Livre. King had now developed a complete work-shop capable of handling work of immense complexity such as his own BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE in 1972 which is one of the seminal cross-bred works in English pop-up book design and the various more ascetic three-dimensional folding alphabets. King's wife, the sculptor Willow Legge, produced three books of delicate relief sculpture and John Christie's highly inventive photographically derived images for a series of books, culminated in an award at the Leipzig Print Fair for his production of BETWEEN THE DANCERS with verse by Ken Smith. King's favourite contemporary collaborator is the poet Roy Fisher, responsible for the BLUEBEARD text and various others. Their NEIGHBOURS WE'LL NOT PART TONIGHT and The LEFT HANDED PUNCH are more decorative and riotous than usual. The mutual high-spirits of artist and poet abet and exhort ach other to