Circle Press – Tabernacle: Hole, Horse & Hell-box.
(Circle Press) Tabernacle: Hole, Horse & Hell-box. Designed and produced at Circle Press by Ronald King with verse by Roy Fisher. London. 2001. Presented in the guise of a small wooden type cabinet, 13″ x 9″ x 9″, with 7 cases or wooden drawers. Of these seven, three contain poetry, graphic material and historical commentary. Four cases have been designated for ‘audience participation’.
Case I: Hole is a 42 page bound book with verse, graphics, two pop-ups , and history concerning the first three generations and a foreword by George Szirtes.
Case II: Horse is a large double-sided folding print of the same size as the book containing verse, graphics and history covering the remaining generations.
Case III: A drawer containing 50 black magnetized letters reproduced from the original ‘found’ box of type on to an approx. 0.5″ base for free use in Case VI.
Case IV: A drawer containing 60 red magnetized letters reproduced and for use as in Case III.
Case V: A drawer containing 64 rubber-stamp letters cast from the originals and glued to a solid base 0.75″ high for printing with dye ink or oil paint.
Case VI: A folding double-sided metal-based display and storage box for use with the magnetized letters.
Case VII: Hell-box is a folding display box for one of 56 unique montage designs by the artist made from left-over material, in a folding box, to cover the present printing dynasty.
Limited Edition of 56 sets – No. 20 of 50 for sale and six for presentation to collaborators. Fine.
Ron King’s Tabernacle – The King family history of seven generations of printers
Tabernacle is a coming together of a life’s work under the umbrella of the Circle Press – and a worthy tribute to the preceding six generations of family printers and publishers. Tabernacle was originally inspired by the combination of two discoveries; the first that the artist-printer, unknown to himself, was descended from a long line of printers dating back to 1735, and the second, a chance gift by the curator of the Gutenberg Museum of a box of wooden type originally used in the family printing house.
King writes: ‘Like most of my projects Tabernacle has proved to be an unimaginably labor intensive project, preceded by a long period of experimentation (mainly because I had not used water-based inks before – only the fold-out print is printed in oil). Over 12,000 letters had to be printed or cast, cut, mounted sanded and stained, the whole operation being dramatically interrupted by the flooding of the studio and the machine room by a careless plumber working at the top of the building.”
Related items: Catalogue 37 - Summer 2009, Catalogue 40- Spring-Summer 2011, Fine Printing & Private Press, Circle Press, Ron King, Ronald King, Roy Fisher