unique/ large format

Large format books have a presence that honours the long tradition of book-making, as well as the pleasures of the child, whose early books are mostly large. These books are sculptural objects: found, constructed and manipulated, created  without concern for the dictates of the market.

On Being an Artist: or, Another Oak Tree

Peter Morgan

I bought Michael Craig-Martin’s book On Being an Artist and read it from cover to cover. I enjoyed its jargon-free clarity, sprinkled with humour. As soon as I finished reading it I had an urge to cut out an oak tree through the covers and all the pages. Inside the presentation box is a text derived from the book’s uniformly positive reviews, printed in red.

Hardback edition of On Being an Artist by Michael Craig-Martin’s book with oak tree cut out. 304pp, 160 x 235mm. In presentation box with enclosed text. Edition of One. A roadwork, November, 2016.

SOLD

Pressed

Judy Kravis & Peter Morgan

Collecting wild flowers was what you did when you were eleven in 1958, if you were a girl. If you were a boy it was likely to be stamps. The western world was rich in weeds in 1958. You couldn’t find half of them now. Prints of JK’s pressed flower collection, with introduction and portrait of JK aged eleven. With 30 tipped in laser prints.

60 pp, handsewn, 280 x 340mm, hbk, cloth cover, slipcase. Edition of one. A one-off book, 2007.

Pages from the powder magazine

Judy Kravis & Peter Morgan

Rimbaud’s explosive inner life among the cryptic rocks of West Cork. Free translation of fragments from Rimbaud’s poem ‘Jeunesse’ face painterly photographs of rocks beside an old copper mine.

20pp, handsewn, 330 x 270mm, pbk, french flaps, tracing-paper endpapers, 10 giclee prints, slipcase. Edition of 3. A highway book, 2006

Day Lilies

Peter Morgan

Daylilies, as their name suggests, flower for a day, but in quick succession, each flower drying and falling into a different, balletic, configuration. The photograms were made by exposing the dried flowers to light under the enlarger, in groups of one or two.

258 x 258mm unfolding to 830cm. 30 sliver bromide prints, 165 x 165mm. Handmade hbk book, marbled paper covers, ribbon tie. Edition of one. 2004

For all your hang-ups and great off-the-wall value

Peter Morgan

On the 29th December we walked to the garage to get milk. The roads were icy, with a light dusting of snow. On the way home I skidded and fell on my back, milk spilling out. I lay there laughing, and there beside me on the R618 Cork/ Macroom road, I found a wallet of photographs and a business card: For all your hang-ups…

210 x 210mm unfolding to 2044mm. 10 colour photographs. Handmade hbk, marbled paper covers, ribbon tie. Edition of one, 2003

From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn

Henry M. Field D.D. 1876

Found in derelict cottage, west of Ireland, 2003. Open at Chapter II: Ireland – its beauty and its sadness. ‘There is never but one first impression; all else is second in time and in degree. It is twenty-eight years since I first saw the shores of England and of Ireland, and then they were to me like some celestial country.’

360pp, 112 x 200mm, hbk, tunnelled by woodworm and bookworm, chewed by mice, reduced by damp and fatigue.

Mongrel

Peter Morgan

The compost heap as artist and curator. Magazine bought in 2001, discarded in 2002, partly decomposed and retrieved in 2003. Considered a health hazard and refused public exhibition in 2008. Mongrel it was and mongrel it remained until 2015 when it was exhibited at LIPS in Limerick.

300x200mm, number of pages now obscure, ragged edges, discarded 2002, retrieved 2003.

Ping

Peter Morgan

I was staying at the Hotel du Lac, in Northern Italy. It was a drizzling, misty day; across the lake a flag fluttered in the breeze. Later that day I walked towards the fluttering flag until I reached Switzerland. No sound rang out until I found PING.

185 x 185 mm unfolding to 1007mm. 4 b/w photographs 120 x 120mm. Handmade hbk, marbled paper covers, ribbon tie. Edition of one, 2001.

Sketching in New Bethesda

Judy Kravis & Peter Morgan

Our friend Roland drove us to New Bethesda down forty miles of dirt road. The town nestles, if you can nestle in the desert, in the Karoo, in South Africa. As soon as the town came into view, Roland stopped the car and cracked open a beer. The dump is great here, he said, some great stuff. It was the first place we visited. We found this sketchbook pack, lovingly warped, eaten by heat, painted with dust, and brought it home.

400x200mm, sketchbook with pocket for pencil, indeterminate number of pages, found in 1999.

Egypt or Welcome to where you are now

Judy Kravis & Peter Morgan

Handmade box, 530 x 655 mm, with Egyptian silk detailing on front, sides and internal pocket. In the manner of an Egyptian pyramid, the box contains 9 cibachrome prints, black window mounted, of collaged photographs and drawings, and, in the internal pocket, a clothbound, hardback book, printed white on black, like the stars.

The box opens out flat and reveals when empty a gold line drawing of pyramid and stars on black cloth framed with blue.

Hallo my friend! Welcome to where you are now.

Edition of one, 1995