Art of the New Naturalists: A Complete History. Peter Marren

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      It is surely Clifford and Rosemary Ellis, as much as anyone, who established the ‘brand image’ of the New Naturalist series, and helped to make it the most long-running, and latterly also the most collectable, library of books in the natural history world. In return, the books have kept the work of C&RE alive and made their images some of the most eye-catching and distinctive in modern publishing.

      HOW THE JACKETS WERE PRODUCED

      There is no written record of the exact process in which the first New Naturalist jackets were printed, and there are unlikely to be any living witnesses to remember. We know, however, that they were printed by Baynard Press in London and by offset lithography. Further clues survive among the correspondence, which, though as it survives is one-sided and often cryptic, reveals at least that the method was based on photography. Using their great experience of the lithographic medium, C&RE always did their level best to make life as easy as possible for the printer.

      Lithography is a method of printing from a flat surface. The name comes from Greek words meaning ‘stone-writing’, for lithographic prints traditionally used a flat stone surface to transfer the image from artwork to paper. The artist drew with a crayon on a slab of carefully prepared limestone. After the drawing has been prepared, prints are taken from it by dampening the stone and charging it with greasy printing ink. The technique is based on the principle that oil and water do not mix. From the early years of the 20th century the process was mechanised by the ‘flat-bed offset machine’, in which the paper received the print from an intermediary process, a smooth rubber roller. Offset printing prepared the ground for the flowering of poster art in which graphic designs from serious artists appeared in the hallways of railway stations and London Underground, and on advertisement hoardings originally intended to hide unsightly development.

      The advantage of lithography is that it enables the artist’s work to be reproduced in limitless numbers without any alteration of the original design. Among the outstanding printers and proponents of colour lithography were Curwen Press and Baynard Press, both of which had close links with the London art schools and printed posters by contemporary artists, including Clifford and Rosemary Ellis. From 1935, Baynard Press employed one of the best-known craftsman-printers of the day, Thomas Edgar Griffits (1883–1957), known as ‘the Indefatigable Griffits’, who shared the secrets of his craft in two mainstream books, The Technique of Colour Printing by Lithography (1948) and The Rudiments of Lithography (1956). Griffits was a skilled interpreter or ‘translator’ of other artists’ work. He was also something of a lithographic missionary.

      Once Collins had decided to use the Ellis designs, the question was where to print them. During October 1944, Ruth Atkinson costed the alternatives of photogravure or lithography before deciding on the latter. She met Thomas Griffits, who advised her that the most cost-effective way of printing the jackets would be ‘photo-litho with a deep etch for the line’, and for the prints to be made on rough paper (presumably using matt printing inks). He was also ‘most decided about the fewer colours the better’. Hence Clifford and Rosemary designed most of their New Naturalist jackets as ‘camera-ready artwork’ in four colours or fewer, relying on tones and overlaps to tease out more colours. Finally, Griffits advised that they produce artwork at exactly the same size of the printed jacket, for otherwise ‘a great deal of the subtlety of detail’ would be lost (remarks conveyed to C&RE by Ruth Atkinson, undated but late 1944).