Читать книгу Art of the New Naturalists: A Complete History - Peter Marren - Страница 19

Britain’s Structure and Scenery – or, as per the title band, ‘BRITAIN’S Structure & Scenery’ – is Dudley Stamp’s account of the physical structure of the British Isles. His working title, The Build and Building of the British Isles, provides a better sense of the book’s main themes: the rocks that underlie and shape the land, and the way mankind has subsequently moulded the landscape. Dashed off in the textbook style in which he was so accomplished, Dudley Stamp’s book was a great success; its use in schools, colleges and libraries made it the surprise bestseller of the series with 62,000 hardback copies sold, plus many more as Fontana paperbacks.

Structure & Scenery is densely illustrated with landscapes from a lost wartime Britain with minor roads snaking through what were then known as beauty spots without a sign or a car in sight. The artists were normally sent the first chapter and its accompanying illustrations, and the one that might have given them an idea for a jacket is Plate II, a black-and-white aerial view of the chalk coast of Dorset, with the sea stack of Old Harry rock in the foreground. c&re’s design is not Old Harry, though it is made of chalk. It is, rather, a surreal rock of their imagination which seems to metamorphose into a half-completed classical monument: ‘build and building’ all in one. The artists were interested in the way objects change shape when viewed from a different angle, and to this phantasmagoric rock they added a chalk cliff viewed from above which runs along the spine, with white touches indicating gulls flying up. Extraneous detail is sacrificed for a simple, strong image that says what needs to be said. And, as usual, c&re’s sense of colour is impeccable: by letting in a lot of white, the design needs no more than a cool blue, grey and buff, with overlaps to create depth and shadow.

Unlike the first three, this design was approved without modification, apart from the hand-lettered title which was changed at the last minute after Dudley Stamp had had second thoughts about Build and Building. The oval colophon has one of the Ellises’ least successful mini-drawings, strata underlying a notional landscape, like a slice of sponge cake.