Stratford upon Avon - Pencil Sketches

 Some of these blogs will have been written before a book has been written whilst in other cases it will be after the book has been written and published. In this case the blog post was written after the book had been written and it is now available to be purchased in Paperback and Kindle eBook formats.

ISBN 9780950871875

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This was a project for DMB Publishing that was 20 years in the making as an idea for a retirement project. Each day as I got up to go off to work I could see Joseph Pike’s second hand damaged book spine on the shelf just waiting for me to start on the project that I had planned since the day I brought it. The background to deciding to write the book is as interesting as the book.

It was 20 years ago that the author found in a Second Hand Book Shop in Stratford upon Avon a book titled “Stratford upon Avon. A Series of Pencil Sketches by Joseph Pike.” The cover was falling apart, the binding failing and the paper starting to age with brown spotting. But the pencil sketches inside were stunning. Joseph Pike captured the areas of Stratford upon Avon depicted in a way no modern photograph could emulate. For some reason a pencil sketch brings with it a nostalgic “aged effect” that sets your emotions back in time. The book had been published in 1929 so it nearly 100 years old. The concern for the author was that this master piece with its brilliant sketches could be lost forever with the detailed artistry of Joseph Pike never being available to future generations to admire. Joseph Pike captured both detail and perspective within his sketches that allows you to only wonder at his genius. You have to admire his powers of observation and precision in reproducing a scene just using a simple pencil. He is the master of the architectural pencil sketch with him managing to include just a hint of social history. There were twenty four sketches in the book to study. The decision was made to take an up to date (2019) photograph from the same artist’s viewpoint. These viewpoint locations were then detailed along with a recommended tour guide so should the reader be fortunate enough to visit Stratford upon Avon you can experience these settings for yourself. It is to the credit of Stratford upon Avon that all but two of the sketches could be accurately be reproduced as an almost facsimile photograph. In the two cases one building had changed due to the addition of an extension (Sketch 13) and in the other case the building had been demolished. (Sketch 23). But even in these cases the sketches allowed for, by the accuracy of their sketched surroundings, the location to be accurately identified.

 

So having seen the objective for the book it is worth considering some of the background to its creation. The one genre that has always appealed to me is the so called “then and now” book. It was often one of the purchases that I made on holiday when visiting a new holiday location. Oddly enough this only applied to United Kingdom holidays. It was relaxed holiday reading just flicking through the pages with ideally pictures taken at the same location showing the “then” and “now”. Usually the comparison was based upon photographs with often the “then” a postcard image. But books where the “then” was a sketch or painting often took you further back in time. My interest in the work of artists evolved from both my father and grandfather both being water-colourists. Their paintings hung on the wall of both my grandfather’s home and my father’s home as a constant reminder as to the hours of effort they put into these paintings. Some now hang in my home so every day I can see them and go up closely to see each brush stroke.

The interpretation of a scene through the eyes of an artist has always interested me. I always enjoyed looking closely at an original examining the pencil lines or brush strokes and visualising what the artist was thinking about at the precise time they moved the pencil or brush. What fascinated me was that my father was what I would term an “architectural” artist whilst my grandfather was a “naturalist” artist. So in my father’s case every brick, roof tile, window frame and door frame was perfectly represented. He had been a carpenter and joiner so he had worked with and made these things. My grandfather was excellent a trees both the trunks and the foliage. He was an engineering machinist so this ability to represent “natural things” was not down to career more down to his love of gardening. In my father’s case it was best he avoided painting people and sheep where they were poorly represented.

Joseph Pike was a brilliant architectural artist and a master of very fine detail. But he could also do nature with excellent trees and bushes pictured alongside his buildings. But what was so appealing about his work was the inclusion of people and cars in some sketches. They gave a 1929 social context to the scenes drawn. I am not aware as to where the originals are if they still exist. It would be wonderful to go up closely to an original and view each pencil stroke. I suspect these masterpieces are lost.

It was decided to have some narrative in the book but to keep this to a minimum. In terms of presentation it was decided to adopt a sort of “social media” newsfeed style. An original sketch followed by a corresponding photograph followed by some relevant narrative. I wanted the narrative to “feel old” but understandable. So I decided to use a slightly modified copy of Frederick C. Wellstood original text in the original book. But whereas in the original book it was one continuous narrative I decided to “cut it up” and relate it to each specific sketch. Frederick C Wellstood in his style of writing manages to capture a sort of old Shakespearean or old English style. Much like Pike’s sketches I wanted to capture Wellstood’s prose.

In terms of taking the “now” photographs Stratford upon Avon is near to where I live and so visiting back and forth to take these pictures was a pleasure. The decision to make the book a “Tour Guide” was important since I wanted people to visit these sketch locations and do so in a time efficient way since to most people it would be a day’s visit. It took a number of visits over the summer of 2019 to complete the photography. Unfortunately the only sketch location I was not granted access to was the back of the Grammar School and Guild Chapel (Sketch 08). I am sure had a written formal letters requesting access that it would have been granted by the current school who has jurisdiction over the location. But these restrictions would be applied to my readers so I was not too concerned at not having the corresponding photograph.

It was such a pleasure writing this book particularly the fact that I was required to visit and photograph all the locations that I want to do another book in a similar genre. I constantly search the Second Hand Book shops looking for similar books. But it was over the internet that I sourced not a sketch book but one based upon photogravavure photographs that is an exceptional historic guide book. It was Arthur Mee’s Stratford Upon Avon Guide from 1950 part of a Series written by him covering a number of towns. This Stratford Upon Avon Guide included Bidford upon Avon, Compton Winyates and Hampton Lucy. The photogravure process itself is a unique print making process using an etched copper plate that produces outstanding images where they have very detailed continuous tones. They are more stunning than photographs to look at being a piece of artwork in their own right.

Arthur Mee’s King’s England series of books had always interested me because they are sometimes referred to as the modern Domesday Book since one was written for each County where they listed all the Towns and Villages. They were also very good at the detail relating to churches and local history. I own the Arthur Mee’s King’s England Series book for Warwickshire from 1947 which is an exceptional piece of work. So an idea is developing to write a book on the so called Shakespeare Villages which had some association with his life. The idea is to use some of the “then” type pictures with some taken from the photogravure images plus other images and photographs along with some “now” photographs. The text would be taken directly out of Arthur Mee’s book so as to capture the writings from 70 years ago. But looking at my workload this could be a 2022 project.

DMB Publishing - History

 DMB Publishing was actually started in 1976 with the first book “The Development of the Jet Fighter” selling for £1. Although I never used the name DMB Publishing in this book it was the start of a lifelong interest in writing and publishing. Importantly it used all my own photographs of each of the ten British and American fighters covered with a write up about each fighter. It was typed out on a typewriter with the photographs manually cut and pasted into the master copy which was then photocopied. They were stapled together and then black adhesive type was taped over the spine to finish it off. The front cover was a bit of a graphical masterpiece where I had produced black silhouettes of the ten fighters and this was covered with a clear plastic adhesive covering which extended over the back cover.

Marketing and selling was never my strong point. Oddly enough I displayed copies and tried to sell them in my father’s Hardware Shop in Kings Norton, Birmingham. I think I might have sold two copies. But it satisfied what I term the “writers appetite” in the need to commit something to paper and to try to get others to read it.

At the same time I was very interested in the actual printing processes and purchased an Adana Letterpress printing press with all the lead type. Setup in the garage I tried to get a small printing business going printing dance tickets and pamphlets. It was very labour intensive with all the type setting having to be undertaken in a “mirror” image of the final printed product. Like many things in life you never really understand something until you actually physically do it. I have always looked to see if old books have been produced by the letterpress process to visualise the effort that has gone into producing them.

 

The first real book from DMB Publishing was a book I wrote about Car Auctions. This was called the “Midland Motor Action Guide 1983”. This gave practical advice on how to buy a car at a car auction and it included a directory of Midland Auctions. It was a pocket guide measuring 4 inch by 6 inch with a stapled wrap around cover. It was produced on a typewriter and the master copy was photocopied. Attempts were made to sell it placing a small advertisement in the local paper. Once again very few copies were sold.

Around 1981 DMB Publishing decided to look at using computers to write books. A Sinclair ZX80 was purchased for under £100. Linked up to a black and white TV set with a cassette recorder to load programs and to save your work files it was a start. But it was impractical for both writing and publishing.

It was not until 1988 DMB Publishing decided to look at using computers to publish books when the ownership of a DOS based clone of an IBM PC came within budget. It was a second hand one made by the Tandon Corporation. It was decided to look at creating a book publishing software package that allowed DMB Publishing to publish its own books whilst the package itself could be sold to other publishers. It was decided to use a database package called DataEase running on an IBM PC. I specified the design of the system and a colleague at work (Halfords) called Barrie Walker wrote the programmes in DateEase in his spare time. The design was based upon it being a “generic book publishing package” tailored to produce different book sizes. A small book called a “MiniBook” sized at 4 inch by 5 inch was the first product.

The first MiniBook was produced for a local second hand car dealer called Inkford Motors. It advertised their business and included a list of the cars offered for sale. It was produced at no cost to them to test out the concept. Essentially it required them to buy a PC and our software package and learn how to use it. Needless to say this never happened.

At about this time DMB Publishing decided to go back to printing. This time it was by purchasing a Gestetner Rotary Printer that printed from a stencil. You loaded the stencil in a typewriter and typed your text into it. Errors were corrected with a pink correction fluid which once it was dry you over typed. Getting images into a stencil was another story. You used a so called stencil digitiser to take the original and cut the stencil. This never proved very successful and I had to use the services of the local print shop to cut the stencils with images for me. This proved reasonably successful but the printed output was certainly not book quality. So the next move was to try lithographic printing.

So a lithographic printer was purchased. This was a very big machine where getting it back to the house (Atcham Close, Redditch) and into the garage itself was an exercise in the movement of large machinery. Knowing nothing about the subject of lithographic printing the first mistake that was made was purchasing the machine having the wrong plate size. It was not the common plate size but an extra-large version so getting the plates cut by a plate cutter printing outfit was to become difficult and expensive. Once a plate had been cut came the task of mastering lithographic printing. What a nightmare. It depended upon the fine balance of water and ink flows. It was also very temperature sensitive. At the same time as trying to master this I was doing my full time job (Halfords) and running a cake shop. (Cake and Bake, Redditch). Something had to give and it was going to be lithographic printing so the machine was sold off to avoid me dabbling any further. So printing was abandoned and it was back to writing.

A huge effort then went into a new book called “Step Inside A Computer” in 1994 which was designed to teach the reader how a computer worked. Once written it was decided to pay for a professional printer (Welton Print, Leamington Spa) to produce several hundred paperback copies. Local adverts once again generated no sales. Many of these copies are still stored in my loft. Much of the narrative remains just as relevant in 2020 so it may be worth updating it and publishing.

It was in 2000 that I found myself out of work having been made redundant. It seemed the right time to attempt to start two business. One based upon Internet Training and one a software house producing another Book Publishing Software Package. The Internet Training business was launched in partnership with Viv Harley from Business Network Ltd whilst a software house was created to produce a product called Active Publisher. Unfortunately after a reasonable start the Internet Training business was brought to a halt by the New York 9/11 disaster in 2001.

The Active Publisher software house was a business undertaken with my son Alan Bannister and a programmer work colleague (JBA), Dawn Baggott, who had also been made redundant. Technically the decision to build the book database in XML was way ahead of its time but the decision to code the solution in Microsoft VB not so clever. It took a long time to develop and it was a struggle to get it running correctly. But it eventually developed excellent capabilities to produce books in a variety of size. It was distributed on a CD disc contained within a CD Case with an attractive insert design. Once again the plan was to sell the package to organisations allowing them to create their own books. Marketing and selling once again proved the stumbling block. Towards the end we started to see the need for internet and web integration. In its final days we realised the front end could create websites just as easily as produce books. We also realised that writing our own word processor at the front end was a big mistake when we should have just used the output from something like Microsoft Word. But it was too late we had all run out of money.

My career moved into private employment training (Mouzer), back to computer project manager of an S21 ERP implementation (Stoneridge Pollak) and then after another redundancy into the public sector (Probation). The need to write once again emerged. So a complex technical book called “Digital Workflow” was written outlining an obsession I had developed for the importance of workflow based systems. The decision was made to use the up and coming Print on Demand internet systems to print it. So Amazon KDP was used when it was primarily an American based solution. Published and sold through Amazon in 2010 once again sales never took off.

Redundancy once again from the Public Sector in 2014 lead to me forming a partnership with a work colleague (Halfords) from many years ago called George Szubinski. Internet based we looked to develop a variety of software solutions calling ourselves ZigZag Digital Associates Ltd. The obsession I had with workflow and process planning lead to eTube which had to be renamed eFlow after a copyright claim by London Transport. We also developed a sales and marketing solution called Adcard. Unfortunately George died in April 2020 from Covid-19 so ZigZag partnership had to be dissolved since he provided the programming capability.

So with the capability to produce original software solutions gone it was back to writing. So DMB Publishing initially focussed upon the industry based subject of Organisation Change – Japan based upon my experiences at Stoneridge Pollak an American business adopting Japanese manufacturing techniques.

 It was then decided to incorporate the eFlow process flow methodology that ZigZag had made internet enabled into an eBook format. This resulted in the publication of both Traditional Project Management and then Agile Project Management as Kindle eBooks.

After considerable experimentation with many eBook “open systems” publication packages I decided to return to Amazon KDP which had moved on since I first used it in 2010. It had become a brilliant free to use book creation, printing, marketing and selling infrastructure supporting both the creation of Print on Demand (POD) paperbacks and their Kindle eBooks. Amazon had brought together all the things DMB Publishing had experimented with over the last 50 years into one cloud based solution. It was now possible to just focus on being a writer leaving all the technology to Amazon.

An interest in art particularly pencil drawings and water colour paintings lead me to write a book about Joseph Pike and in particular the twenty four pencil sketches he created of Stratford upon Avon in 1929. The decision was made to turn this into a Tour Guide so anyone visiting Stratford upon Avon could look to visit the sketch locations on a “then and now” basis. Each sketch had a corresponding photograph included in the book taken from the same artists location and these locations where marked on a street map. Published in both Paperback and Kindle eBook formats it was highly thought of by those that purchased a copy.

Then it was whilst in the process of writing another industry type book called Digital Documents that DMB Publishing ventured off into two different types of book. The objective was to try and incorporate external digitised resources into these books narrative. It became a new concept to have an eBook as the nucleus to using the internet’s digitised resources to enrich the experience whilst not detracting from a book’s prime objective of fully occupying the mind of the reader.

These books are one historical book called “The Domesday Book” and one geographical book called “The Devon Estuaries”.

At the same time DMB Publishing has developed ideas in terms of how the digitised Social Media entity is capturing writer’s imaginations whilst the integration of this work into more permanent contemporary publishing is being overlooked by these writers.

It is inevitable that DMB Publishing will remain a nonfiction publisher but it has plans to try and develop a wider appeal moving into areas of my thinking processes and consciousness which I have called “A Digital Thought”. Essentially writing about all the thoughts I have on a variety of random subjects. Just digitally recording these thoughts without there being an underlying “theme”. It is recording my consciousness as it zigzags itself here, there and everywhere. In this respect I have always had an interest in writers who produce daily output in a variety of mediums, but increasingly social media, to a set theme.

But it goes without saying that DMB Publishing will always look to extend the technological boundaries of the publishing process. This has acquired its own theme that I have termed Digital Creative Thinking. The very subject of creative thinking has always been an interest of mine. The power of ideas. My own reading focusses upon the creators, inventors and authors who have identified and ideally brought about change. In this respect the writers of today and particularly those from previous centuries appeal to me. The human brain has changed little over the last 2000 years but the thinking that brain could undertake was often defined by the technologies that existed at the time. Lift that brain from say 0020 AD and bring it to 2020 AD, that is 2000 years, then let it explore and use today’s technologies. It is likely that within a few months he (could be a she) would be no different from the way we think. In fact he might think very differently and surprise us by his capabilities. Using a smartphone with Google and Wikipedia he would be very quickly be able to fill up the brain’s memory banks. Then very quickly he would be posting on Social Media having acquired an instant capability to publish and communicate with the rest of us their own thoughts and ideas.

DMB Publishing remains an evolving stream of thought. The desire to bring readers along this journey with me remains just as strong 50 years after I started. Watch this space.