Book Artisan Gerard Brender a Brandis

Photo via WEN blog
 (the Wood Engraver's Blog)

Local artist, printmaker and bookmaker Gerard Brender a Brandis is a legend. He makes his own paper from plants he grows himself; he does glorious he has a press upon which he makes his prints and produces books of his own and those he creates alongside his sister, also a prolific author; he has an artist's studio which is open to the public for part of the year, and where you can see his artistic process and talk to him directly. 

There's a beautifully in-depth visit and interview with him posted by a visitor to his studio recently - lots of images of his stunning work and his charming self. Check it out!

He also has many books that have been published by various Canadian small presses, highlighting his art in different ways. Porcupine's Quill Press, which is located quite close by, has put out a few titles by Gerard Brender a Brandis, and I'll highlight two that I own and that I've just gone through again. 


A Wood Engraver's Alphabet is a perfect introduction. He's an expert on botany and many of the prints you can buy at his studio are studies of flora in its many guises. (The only print I own is a small lily of the valley which is so delicate and superbly beautiful). This book takes the structure of an abecedarium and illustrates it with multiple floral images - a multitude of options here. 

A brief introduction explains his choices and why he made them, as well as giving a lovely nod to his writer sister, Marianne Brandis. It's a  pretty book which really highlights his skill at this art and rewards close observation. There's not any text besides the intro, so this small book (61 p.) is really just for visual delight.

A Gathering of Flowers From Shakespeare (with quotations selected and interpreted by F. David Hoeniger) (143 p.) is exactly what it sounds like. 

It's the perfect Stratfordian mix, with many images of Shakespearean settings and botany alongside mentions of those flowers in the plays. If you want something that evokes Stratford and its best known arts, try this book! 

Hoeniger gives excerpts of a few lines of play, and then explains the import of the plants that Shakespeare chose to refer to -- why they might be important in context, what the deeper meanings were to each reference -- all in brief companion pages to the images. Most are florals, though as you can see from this cover there are also a few others; houses, sundials, bridges, interiors. It's charming and a must-read for Shakespeare aficionados. 

Stratford really is an artistic place, and I'm fortunate enough to know many artists and authors here. I'm happy to share these two books by an artist whom I admire for his kindness and his skill. 

Two By Atwood

Hag-Seed / Margaret Atwood
Toronto: Knopf, c2016.
320 p.

Atwood's latest in an entry in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, of retellings or reinventions of Shakespeare's plays. Hag-Seed takes on The Tempest, and it does a better job of it than some other Tempest inspired reads I've encountered in the past.

In her take, Prospero becomes Felix Phillips, once the artistic director of the prestigious Makeshiweg Festival, before he was ousted by his scheming assistant, Tony. There are many parallels to Stratford here, and I'm not sure how comfortable the Stratford Festival would be with this -- though they did have her speak here in October -- strangely unadvertised though... 

But seriously. Felix is a sympathetic character so all his bluster and his revenge plot never tip you over into outright dislike. After being manoeuvred out of his directorial role, he retreats to lick his wounds. He finds a shack off the grid and holes up there for a decade, with only his dead daughter as company. Miranda died as a toddler, and in his guilt over paying more attention to his job than her, he thinks of her as always accompanying him, growing up to the age she would have been, there in spirit. And as his isolation grows, so does her reality to him. 

But eventually, he must move in the world again, and he sees an opportunity to take a small, part-time, low paid job as a literature teacher for male inmates at a local prison, the Fletcher Correctional Institute. The woman organizing the position recognizes him, but agrees to keep his secret as he is willing to teach Shakespeare without any conditions of the job changing -- ie: a great bargain for her. 

It's when Felix is interacting with the inmates that the depth of the story shows. They talk about the plays they are studying and eventually performing, they deconstruct the text and relate it to modern day life, and to the troubled facts of their own lives as well. The power of this process shows in the inmates over time; literature is indeed a healing tonic. 

While reading these parts of the book, the text started to feel quite familiar to me. Why? I realized as I went along, and especially when I got to the acknowledgements at the end of the book, that these scenes were strongly influenced by Laura Bateman's Shakespeare Saved My Life, a book about Shakespeare in prisons which I read some years ago but is very memorable. I hope it makes more people search it out and read it -- it's very inspiring.

Anyhow, Atwood follows the Tempest plot fairly closely, and has interspersed bits of rap performances by the inmates (reminding me of the Chorus in her Penelopiad). She uses her setting well, and Felix has the chance, finally, to stage The Tempest and by doing so wreak revenge on those who originally ousted him. Of course, everything ties up very neatly in Felix's favour, but after all, he is Prospero. There is plenty of Atwoodian wryness and ridiculous humour that keeps our characters from taking themselves too seriously. The final scenes are really over-the-top but in the end, it does all work. And I thought this version really made sense in the setting she's created. 

It was a good read, which highlights an important cause (literature in prisons) that I've been following for a while now. Recommended. 



Angel Catbird / Margaret Atwood; illus. Johnnie Christmas
Toronto: Dark Horse, c2016
80 p.

Now, unfortunately, no matter how much I like Atwood's writing or how much I support her work for birds and cats and so forth, I just did not gel with this book.

It was a mix of light entertainment, retro visual style, and earnestness.

The bump-out facts and figures about cat populations and so on at the bottom of some pages felt very "teachy" and the story was so tenuously held together. I'd call this one an old-fashioned comic book, not a graphic novel per se. 

The characters have silly names (ie: our hero Strig Feleedus) or ones that are painful puns; the story is pretty basic, there's a very villainous villain and a pretty girl who saves the day, and well, I just didn't love it. It's just kind of meh.

I prefer Atwood when she sticks to the writing she does well, like Hag-Seed & other novels. If you're in the right mood for a light and campy story, though, you might still enjoy this one.

Shakepeare's (Beautiful) Gardens

Shakespeare's Gardens / Jackie Bennett, photographs by Andrew Lawson.
London: Quarto UK, c2016.
192 p.

I was offered a beautiful book for review recently, and didn't hesitate on this one. It's called Shakespeare's Gardens, and although it is a coffee table book heavily laden with glorious pictures, it also includes a fascinating text full of historical tidbits. It's a great combination!

My husband and I both enjoyed paging through this one. I loved the history of gardens from Elizabethan times to the present, at all sorts of homes associated with Shakespeare -- from Anne Hathaway's cottage (the most painted/photographed home in England) to Shakespeare's home New Place (which was torn down by the owner in a fit of pique at the municipal government in 1759, an act which led to the locals ostracizing and driving him from the village). All sorts of fabulous historical fact and gossip in this one! It explores five gardens that Shakespeare would have known, all currently cared for by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

I personally loved the history of Elizabethan knot gardens, and how they were influenced by and had their own influence on the Jacobean and blackwork embroidery popular at that time. Since embroidery is one of my own hobbies, I found this section particularly intriguing. The illustrations around this topic were inspiring. My husband, who is the real gardener around here, loved the whole book, and appreciated the info on Victorian gardens, a style he is drawn to.

An interesting inclusion was a section on the meaning of herbs and flowers, both medical and folkloric, that Shakespeare mentioned in the plays. This helps modern readers to understand more of the allusions and double meanings of plants in the plays, and I thought it was brilliant.

This was a perfect book to read during the Stratford Festival's Opening Week, in this 400th year since Shakespeare's death. It was quite educational, apart from being gorgeous to flip through. It makes me wish I knew more about gardening...but as my favourite part of a garden lies simply in looking at it, this was the perfect book for me!

If you're interested in more info about this book, and some unbelievably gorgeous photos of the gardens mentioned, visit the blog Reep for an account of a talk by the author Jackie Bennett.