Art of the New Naturalists: A Complete History. Peter Marren

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.

       5 Wild Flowers John Gilmour and Max Walters, 1954

      Colour design sketch for Wild Flowers in gouache and watercolour on layout paper with pencil notes (25 x 20 cm).

      The original jacket for Wild Flowers, by John Gilmour alone and designed in 1945, was based on arrowhead lily leaves and flowers. A few copies of this jacket were printed by Baynards, but they were never used.

      Wild Flowers was originally scheduled for publication in 1946, and, in that expectation, it was among the first batch of titles for which C&RE designed jackets. The then solo author, John Gilmour (he was also a member of the New Naturalist committee) had suggested two possible designs: a riverbank scene with arrowhead lilies and ragged robin or lords-and-ladies, or a woodland glade carpeted with bluebells, red campions and wild garlic. ‘These three plants,’ he commented, ‘are very typical of many woods in late spring, and would I think make a good design.’

      We discovered the artwork for the 1945 ‘Gilmour jacket’ in the Collins archive, evidently lost for many years because it had not been catalogued. The artists had fastened on Gilmour’s suggestion of the arrowhead lily, evidently admiring the bold forms of its leaves and the contrasting white, purple-centred flowers, the shape of the clubs in a pack of playing cards. Gilmour had a few criticisms: ‘He feels the leaf should not bulge,’ noted Ruth Atkinson. ‘He is also not sure whether or not there are buds in the right-hand corner, and feels they are too large.’ Gilmour and Billy Collins also thought that ‘the side of the jacket is not as good as the jacket and spine seen together, and would like to have more flowers on the side’ (RA to C ?, 26.7.45). The jacket was proofed and a copy survives to show us what the book would have looked like had it been published in 1946 instead of nearly a decade later. But Gilmour was overworked and unable to finish the book himself. It was not until he was joined by his Cambridge colleague, Max Walters, that Wild Flowers was completed and published in 1954. By then the series already had four botanical titles, British Plant Life, Wild Flowers of Chalk & Limestone, Wild Orchids and Flowers of the Coast, with a fifth, Mountain Flowers, just around the corner. Hence a new jacket was needed which C&RE were asked to make ‘more striking than the original’(R? to ce, 13.3.53).

      The artwork for a new jacket (with part of the title and the imprint stuck on) was designed eight years later. c&re also provided hand-lettered artwork for the title (see page 45), but the printed jacket substitutes machine lettering.

      After some experiment they designed a clump of primroses framed by trees, with a lake and a green hill rising in the background. The brilliant flowers sing out from their shadowy dell as if lit by a shaft of sunshine. The design uses two yellow colours, one of them ‘primrose’ to match the petals of that flower as exactly as possible. At first glance the tree trunks seem to merge into the black title band, but there is in fact a subtle difference in their respective tones. The spine shows two more woodland flowers, celandine and wood anemone, along with the primrose. The design is simple, clever and striking, although some might have found it unexpectedly dark for a book about wild flowers.