The Simple Line SIGNED LIMITED EDITION

Vancouver, British Columbia: Heavenly Monkey Editions, 2007. Limited Edition, First Edition Thus. Hardcover. Very good +. Limited Edition, First Edition Thus. Hardcover. Edition limited to 50, of which this is number 10, signed by Charles van Sandwyk to colophon. 13" X 9 3/4". 10 pages, unpaginated. One of 25 copies bound by Claudia Cohen in natural linen over boards, with a printed title label to spine. Faint spot to top edge of text block, stray fibers to cloth, and whiff of cigar scent to pages, else fine.

A "love of line" is the inspiration behind this essay about the approach to etching taken by Canadian artist Charles Noel van Sandwyk (born 1966), author of The Parade to Paradise, How to See Fairies, and Sketches from the Dream Island of Birds, and illustrator of the Folio Society editions of The Blue Fairy Book and The Wind in the Willows. Originally penned as the introduction to Twenty-One Years, Twenty-One Prints, a privately issued retrospective limited to just 13 copies, this Heavenly Monkey edition was handprinted in two colors on 250 g Arches Cover paper, comes signed by van Sandwyk, and features the five tipped-in prints of Charles' earliest etchings, plus a new etching created just for this edition and a title page featururing a new drawing pochoir colored by the artist, fittingly of an antelope. The artist writes in his essay: "I have always had a love of line. From the day the first caveman scratched an austere mark on a cave wall, the simple line has remained the distillation of ancient artistic expression. It is the purest and most freely accessible form of communication, and is so effective that several thousand years later, all the charm and finesse of a tastefully rendered antelope on a piece of rock can still be admired and talked about. Just think - simple linework, well preserved, guarantees a visual story for millennia!