Campbell, Ken – Firedogs

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(Ken Campbell) Firedogs. Artist’s book by Ken Campbell. 1991. 86p. 15” x 10”. Printed by polychrome letterpress deploying handworked zinc plates, type-high nails and sandpaper. Text set in monotype Spartan, Stephenson Blake Bodoni, and a variety of woodletter types. Pages divided into four vertical columns and five horizontal, with six poems set in Bodoni printed within the largest rectangle so created, and with textual echoes in 6-line san serif within the dark margins. Outer areas impressed with type on its side. Endpapers printed deeply from the heads of nails hammered type-high into a base. Printed boards and slipcase. No. 2 of 33 copies signed and dated by Campbell, plus 7 A.P. copies. Fine.

“Firedogs is a rich, dark, bloody book, full of threat and doom and yet intimating redemption by virtue of its own coher- ence and integrity … Before anything else, [it] is a gorgeous feast for the eyes, luxuriating in a limited palette of rich and glossy colours veering from warmth to chill …” – Cathy Courtney: Art Monthly, October 1991, London.