num_pages: 80
description: Working a steel burin by hand through boxwood, copper, or steel is a skill that has been all but abandoned in our age of photomechanical reproduction. It requires patience, strength, and an unerring sense of how the whole will develop from lines that, once engraved, are not easily erased. And it is sad and sobering that one of our last century's masters should have died without the recognition he so surely deserved. Born in South Africa, and settling, aptly, in Newcastle-on-Tyne (the home of Thomas Bewick, who virtually invented the technique) Wyatt took up wood engraving after he turned fifty and continued producing distinguished work nearly until his death in 1981. He was a man who passionately loved the shapes and challenges of the Roman and cursive alphabets in all their infinite shapes and varieties, combinations and permutations. What we have attempted in this lovely, small volume, is to give a sense of the variety and virtuosity of Wyatt's engraved alphabets and sayings. He was a modest man, diffident, and self-deprecating. We hope his insecurity about his talents will be repudiated by this posthumous collection. Selecting what we feel are his best alphabets and aphorisms, we have printed them in four flat colors and prefaced them with a brief introduction to the man, his life, and the technique he made his own.
language: English
title: Alphabets & Aphorisms
titlecomplete: Alphabets & Aphorisms
ratings_count: 3
publisher: David R. Godine, Publisher