“We are shaped by the sound of wind, the slant of sunlight” Barry Lopez
A friend of mine is helping to plant a wood. It is an initiative in my local area called Harmony Woods which aims to connect children with nature and the power and importance of trees.
A recent study of 585 young adults in Japan reported on their moods after walking for 15 minutes, either in an urban setting or in a forest. Those who walked in a forest experienced less anxiety, hostility, and fatigue, and felt more calm and energised compared to those who had walked in an urban area. Shinrin-yoku, or Forest bathing in the rather clumsy English translation, is essentially harnessing the power of nature to restore a sense of vitality and well being. The garden co-designed by the Duchess of Cambridge at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2019 was influenced by the practice of shinrin-yoku. Taking notice of nature, walking for its own sake are ways in which we can feel more connected to the land and often inspire us to slow down and take stock.
Last month I went to visit an ex-colleague of mine from our Salisbury teaching days, the artist and wood engraver, Howard Phipps. I had been reminded of Howard’s meticulous and lyrical responses to the local landscape of Wiltshire and Dorset on a visit to the recent Wood Engraving exhibition at Salisbury Museum.* I was keen to know more about his approach and practice and he was kind enough to let me visit his home where he creates and prints his images.
We started by talking about the land which Howard walks repeatedly and with the familiarity of an old friend. He is a companion to and within the landscape, recording its folds and furrows, attentive to the subtle changes in the geology and topography of the Nadder, Ebble and Wylye valleys. Droves which were once the super-highways of many living creatures, not just humans, are lovingly followed and found in his carefully crafted views of the landscape.
We talk about Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious; admire Nash’s sensitivity to the land and the way he expressed his feeling for its forms and the layers of time captured within them. Paul Nash loved trees and treasured their forbearance and dignified presence in the too often over-managed landscape. He wrote to a friend in 1912,
“I have tried…to paint trees as tho’ they were human beings…because I sincerely love and worship trees and know that they are people”.
We talk about Clarendon Palace; how it would have witnessed the cathedral being built. To walk amongst its ruins is to imagine walking on the Queen’s Pavement covered with tiles made close by, in Laverstock - the then leading centre of tile production in C13th England.
Howard picked up wood engraving when he was at school. He had been interested in lino-cuts and his teacher gave him a block & the tools for engraving wood. On leaving school he studied Fine Art at college in Cheltenham. More focused on painting, wood engraving fell by the wayside for him for a while. He came back to it when he started teaching and had a few of his engravings included in a Teachers' Show at Exeter Museum. When this led to a mention in The Guardian, suggesting that his work might be suitable for illustration, Howard thought he might be onto something. He has since collaborated with Fine Press publishers and Country Life magazine.
A wood engraving typically takes Howard a few weeks. Having chosen a drawing to print from, he paints the surface of the block with Quink, onto which the design is traced from a drawing, so he works light into dark, revealing the areas that will be left white in the finished image.
The tools are sharp and pointed, in some instances like miniature chisels, quite unlike the gouges used for woodcuts. They evolved from the burins used in metal engraving and enable a clear, precise linearity with tonal nuances articulated by different marks. The cuts while not deep are long lasting so that the resolution of the image is preserved. Each tool has a separate purpose. The Spitsticker is good for curves. The Lozenge Graver is designed for making a clear, straight line and the Bullsticker works well for textures and tones
The paper Howard uses for his prints is a German Zerkall printing paper. Its smooth quality doesn’t disrupt the fine lines of the print. The prints are made on a magnificent Albion Press from 1862. Albion, the poetic word for England used by Pliny the Elder, seems appropriate for the production of these quintessentially English images. From his explanation of how the press works and the vigilance required to prepare the print bed, it is apparent just how much work has to be put into the production of a single print.
Wood engravings are, by the nature of the material, very small. This is because the wood used for engraving is a hard wood, like box, or sometimes lemon. These trees whose wood is dense and hard do not grow very big and it is the end grain which is used - the slice through the middle, or width, of the tree, rather than the length where the grain has to be accommodated. The wood itself has been seasoned for 4 to 5 years and the prints themselves reward a long time of looking.
A member of the Society of Wood Engravers, Howard is part of a tradition and aesthetic, revived by William Morris, of the Artist Craftsperson, which saw a renaissance in fine art printing at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries not seen since Gutenberg. A reaction against the poor quality of Victorian printing, this private, often solitary way of working finds expression in many of the private presses still running in England. One of these is the Whittington Press, run by John and Rose Randle, who have published many of Howard’s work, including his book on the Ebble Valley which contains a magnificent engraving of an oak tree. A tree, you can imagine, people have seen and rested beneath for hundreds of years.
Movement, or that controversial word, ‘progress’ is not always in a forward direction - Thomas Hardy knew this, measuring not how far we have travelled but how much we have left behind. Robert Frost and Edward Thomas’ poetry too, speaks of those elusive moments in time of which we do not always understand the significance. The views in Howard’s wood engravings often stretch far into the distance, as if searching for something that lies just out of reach. They are exquisitely detailed, but not forensic - they are too magical for that.
*The exhibition of Howard's work at the Salisbury Museum continues until April 3rd.
More of Howard's work can be viewed on his website
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