High Street

Product Information

In this context the Mainstone Press is pleased to announce the publication, in early December 2008, of The Story of High Street. When one could watch the butcher cutting the meat, enjoy the smell of the coffee grinder and the baking of bread. Contains 100 printed pages of text featuring all 24 of Ravilious's illustrations in exquisite colour and includes an essay by Gill Saunders, Senior Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum. I won't say it was worth the wait, as somebody should have resurrected this lost classic decades ago, but as soon as I got my copy it was clear that we'd been missing something special for a very long time. If you need one more excuse to own this book: At the time of publication, only 2000 copies were produced, and sadly the lithographic plates were destroyed during WWII.

The illustrations by Eric Ravilious, which have been taken out and reproduced in separate editions by English art houses, are charming. His four-volume series 'Ravilious in Pictures' (Mainstone Press) celebrates the life and work of English designer, printmaker and watercolourist Eric Ravilious (1903-42), exploring the stories and characters concealed behind his mesmerizing paintings. First published in 1938, this classic book introduces the British High Street, only 2000 copies of the original book were printed before the lithographic plates were destroyed in the London Blitz.Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. for The story of High Street, after the publisher had observed that the ‘Knife Grinder’ lithograph looked better when printed on the more generously-sized pages of Country Fair (The Country Life Annual, 1938).

This beautiful facsimile edition features all 24 of Ravilious's colour illustrations, and includes an essay by Gill Saunders, Senior Curator of Prints at the Victoria and Albert Museum, that sets the book in its historical context.Although it mainly featured his watercolour landscapes, the highlight for me was seeing a set of lithographs created during the war, showing life and work aboard a submarine. Always mannerly-but-never-stodgy, Ravilous' characters are stalwart, earnest and maybe-a-bit Python-esque. Size 23 x 15cm (I did break the book decades ago, but I still have the covers and some of the spine. 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.