High Street

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Some traders transferred their allegiance to the new labour-saving devices, like washing-machines, while others responded to the explosion of interest in home decoration and gardening that accompanied interwar suburban expansion. Numerous illustrations, mostly in colour, including all the plates from the original edition of the legendary High Street. Publisher's dark blue cloth, silver lettered to spine, pictorial title label to upper board, housed in matching slipcase.

Other discoveries have opened unexpected avenues and offered valuable insights into artist and work. Seventy years later, almost to the day, the Mainstone Press published what is effectively a facsimile of Ravilious’s now much-coveted last book, along with two twenty-first century commentaries. If you're interested in the history of the British high street, you might enjoy this extract from 'Eric Ravilious: The Story of High Street', which was published in 2008 by The Mainstone Press. there is probably no-one else who could have made these records at once so faithfully and imaginatively. This is the world Ravilious set out to explore in High Street, a world of defined spaces and roles that was already falling apart when the book was published.

O’Connor’s my favourite wood engraver of them all,’ wrote the American artist Vance Gerry to John Randle of Matrix twenty years ago.

copies of the book were printed, and doubtless more would have followed, but unfortunately the world had other ideas, with the original lithographic plates being destroyed in the blitz, which resulted in the original editions becoming extremely sought after. His works captures an England changing from the certainties of the early 20th century through to the upheavals and modernisation of the country as the Second World War broke out. There is about them the suggestion that you are looking in at a series of gay, old-fashioned parties from the matter-of-fact street in the present. His introduction is compelling and refreshingly direct, urging us to look closely but concluding, rightly, that there can be no correct interpretations of Ravilious, whose pictures still quiver with mysterious life.M. and Eric Ravilious [Eric William Ravilious (22 July 1903 - 2 September 1942) was a British painter, designer, book illustrator and wood-engraver. From about 1934 some publishers in the UK had experimented with the material as dust jackets over decorated boards. Follow these links for location maps you might like to look at if you're reading Ravilious in Pictures: Sussex and the Downs or Ravilious in Pictures: A Country Life. PROVENANCE: Paul S Sharp (1921-1998; Artist and graphic designer; Wakefield School of Arts and Crafts prize plate to front pastedown). First published in 1938, this classic book introduces the British high street, pairing the timeless illustrations of beloved artist Eric Ravilious with an engaging text by architectural historian J.