Artifex

In 1953, Baskin accepted a position at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, as professor of art, where he continued to teach for twenty years. There, he met Ted Hughes (1930-1998), later Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, and together they launched a fruitful, creative, partnership and loyal friendship that endured for the rest of their lives. They first collaborated in producing the broadside, “Pike: A Poem.” Some fifteen years later, they renewed their Gehenna Press working relationship to produce A Primer of Birds (1981), a book of Hughes’s poems illustrated by Baskin, and printed by the Gehenna Press in Lurley, Devon.

Pike: A Poem

“Pike: A Poem” was the first collaboration between Baskin and Ted Hughes. Gehenna Press printed the poem as a broadside, illustrated with a woodcut by Robert Birmelin. In the twentieth century the broadside format became a favorite means of publishing single poems in an artistic format.

A Primer of Birds

Between 1974 and 1983, the Baskin family lived in Lurley, in Devon, England, where Ted Hughes and his family were also living. Although he had given his printing equipment to Harold McGrath, his printer in Northampton, with every intention of taking a hiatus from printing, Baskin managed to acquire printing equipment in England. There, the two artists collaborated on their first Gehenna Press project in fifteen years. Baskin illustrated Hughes’s book, A Primer of Birds, with woodcuts.

Here, a series of three images depicts the evolution of the colophon page. Baskin has combined the crow and pomegranate, two symbols for the Gehenna Press, into a press mark. Baskin’s interest in birds, particularly raptors and other predatory birds, is evident throughout his artistic oeuvre.