Book/Hansjörg Mayer: The Smell of Ink and Soil – Bronac Ferran

Publishing legend, artist, visual poet Hansjörg Mayer...here's the most recent book about his publishing house Edition Hansjörg Mayer; as well as being a good overview of his whole career.  Amongst others he's published Richard Hamilton, Dieter Roth and Tom Phillips. There are many colour plates illustrating work by him and those he's published. Although being enamoured by print shop reject material as a youngster he became famous in the 60s with his use of the clean Futura type. I find his 'rougher' work inspired by that early print experience particularly interesting. Noteworthy books with Dieter Roth now fetch a high price but such is the way of art books. I could only dribble over (not literally, of course) them in a shop earlier this year. As publisher Mayer specialised in working with artists and given them total freedom, thus pushing the boundaries in terms of format. He also taught at Watford School of Art. You can see the results of two projects from those days here and here on my other blog.  This book's highly recommended.