John Lennon’s first ever print on display at Cornerstone Gallery’s latest exhibition

Jun 5 2009 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

Lennon’s first ever print features in a new exhibition of fine art lithographs from the Curwen Studio. Laura Davis reports

IT’S a simple black and white print, fairly inconspicuous if it wasn’t for the hand that scribed it. One that would become one of the most significant in history as it plucked the strings of its owner’s Rickenbacker guitar.

Alphabet, John Lennon’s first ever print, was created at the Curwen Studio in Cambridgeshire and is one part of an exhibition at Hope University’s Cornerstone Gallery to mark the studio’s 50th anniversary.

“It’s a print with no image on at all, it’s all handwritten in black,” explains Jenny Rowland, Curwen’s managing director.

“It starts with ‘A is for...’ right down through the alphabet. It’s like a poem in effect.”

Also included among the 30-or-so images on display are prints taken from photographs of the Cavern, snapped by the relative of another Beatle, Mike McCartney.

“They are printed using a process to that’s unique to us,” explains Jenny.

“It allows us to print a photographic image from a negative into continuous tone so that it’s not made up of a lot of dotscreens as a lot of reproductions are.”

Unfortunately, the images of Little Richard and Gene Vincent are not available to be published with this article. Nor, due to the poor quality of the original, is Alphabet.

When the Curwen Studio was established in 1958, it was the only one of its kind. Before then artists would have to go as far as Paris to created printed works and deal with complicated import procedures in the meantime.

The firm was expanded from the Curwen Press, which printed books that often featured the work of artists as illustration.

As demand for fine art printing grew, it seemed a natural progression.

“The ethos of the studio has always been the same – to provide facilities for artists to work on a collaborative basis with printmakers to create unique works of art,” says Jenny.

“Some of the processes and materials we use weren’t around 50 years ago but the very basic ideology is the same.”

Curwen mainly produces original art works, which are the result of a collaboration between the artist and the printers.

Within just a few years of opening, famous names including Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron, Henry Moore, John Piper and Graham Sutherland were working with Curwen Studio’s co-founder Stanley Jones to produce fine art prints in limited runs.

“Most people tend to think that artists do prints because they can print multiples of them but actually they choose the process to suit the work they are trying to do in the same way they would choose painting in watercolour or oil depending on what the subject matter was.” explains Jenny.

“Screenprinting and lithography are very flexible processes from an artist’s point of view because on the whole they would be using tools that they would use if they were drawing or painting.

“It’s very easy for an artist to adapt to, unlike etching where they have to use a metal needle to scratch away at a surface which is a different technique.”

The artists hand-draw each colour separation and the print is built up in layers with a single colour on each one. The exhibition at the Cornerstone includes one of the plates used, to give visitors an idea of how the works are created.

Other works on display include Paula Rego’s The Unicorn Artist, specially created to mark the Curwen Studio’s 50th anniversary, as well as Basil Beattie’s Demonic Stomp, which was created using screen print and lithography.

The background of red, yellow and blue shapes are printed as lithographs and the black image on top is a screenprint.

“Each print medium offers something slightly different to an artist,” explains Jenny.

“Screenprinting tends to be more suitable for solid blocks of colour because you use a much thicker layer of ink.

“Lithography is, I think, the most flexible of all of the printing mediums on the grounds that it can do solid colours and you can get very thin layers of ink where one area’s printed over the other.

As well as original art works, there are occasions when the Curwen Studio creates straightforward prints of existing works.

The firm produced limited editions of Princes Charles’s watercolours which are sold to raise money for his charitable foundation.

“With the first ones he came up here and worked with us so he could really understand the process,” says Jenny.

“Subsequently we do the proofing of the image, send him a variety of different proofs, he looks at them and says ‘I like this, I don't like this, can you do this’, and signs it off when he's happy with it.”

CURWEN Studio at 50 opens at the Cornerstone Gallery today and runs until September 4. Further details at www.hope.ac.uk/cornerstonegallery