sewn paper
ART / Canadian
April 2006
144 pages
ISBN 0-88984-290-6
$21.95

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A Gathering of Flowers
from Shakespeare

G Brender à Brandis, with
F. David Hoeniger

`Brender à Brandis' delicate illustrations evoke tremendous texture for a medium as difficult as wood engraving, and have a wild, almost Art Nouveau quality.'
    -- the Globe and Mail

In this remarkable volume, wood engraver Gerard Brender à Brandis has collaborated with F. David Hoeniger, distinguished professor of English, to create a work of art and scholarship both beautiful and informative. Sir Phillip Sydney, one of the earliest of English literary critics, claimed that the purpose of `poesie', or literature, was `to teach and to delight'. A Gathering of Flowers accomplishes both with great success. The artist's astonishing images are accompanied by a succinct education in the nature and properties of flowers, and by quotations and explication of lines written by the greatest poet of the English language. Shakespeare used flower imagery in many of his plays, providing dramatic significance as well as aesthetic effect. David Hoeniger cites many of these, including Oberon's vivid ...

    `I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
    Where oxlip and the nodding violet grows,
    Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
    With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.
    There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
    Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight.'

For each quotation, he provides an explanation of the significance or symbolism of the floral image. The beauty of Shakespeare's poetry is complemented by the vivid artistry of the engravings. This co-operative effort of artist and scholar has been most successful in fulfilling Sir Phillip's stated purpose, to teach and to delight.

`Gerard Brender à Brandis is a renowned wood engraver, whose works of densely textured intricacy vibrate across your vision, drawing you into a microscopically magic world.'
    -- Hans Werner, Toronto Star

`This dandy little book is a selection of Shakespeare's flower and plant imagery, accompanied by the Brandis engravings -- which were originally produced from endgrain wooden blocks and hand-printed on an 1882 Albion press for a limited edition of 97 copies in 1997. The text, which presents brief `quotations' from Shakespeare selected and explained both symbolically and botanically by Hoeniger, is not just a vehicle for the artwork but is pleasantly informative. You'll find out, for instance, what Hamlet's Gertrude had in mind when she alluded to the `grosser names' for the roots of the purple orchid: priest's pintle (you got it right the first time), dogstones and goat's cullions (cujones). You don't have to be biased, like me, to see at a glance that A Gathering of Flowers from Shakespeare is a perfect little gem, ideal for lovers of wood engravings, flowers, printmaking or even just Shakespeare.'
    -- Hans Werner, Toronto Star

 



Gerard Brender à Brandis is a member of the Society of Wood Engravers (England). He has produced hundreds of drawings, wood engravings and watercolours of flowering plants, many of which were studied in his own garden. These images have appeared in books, including Wood, Ink and Paper (1980), Portraits of Flowers (1995), and An Artist's Garden (2001), all published by The Porcupine's Quill, as well as in his own handmade editions. These have been included in the collections of the National Library (Ottawa), the New York Public Library, the National Library of New Zealand, and many public and university libraries as well as private collections. His single-leaf engravings are in the National Gallery (Ottawa), the Royal Botanical Gardens (Hamilton), the Missouri Botanic Garden, the Arnold Arboretum and the Hunt Botanical Library. His garden and his studio are located in Stratford, Ontario.

F. David Hoeniger is professor emeritus from Victoria College, University of Toronto, where he taught for many years in the Department of English. He is also a former director of the university's Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. Professor Hoeniger is the author and editor of numerous works on Shakespeare, his work and his times, including Medicine and Shakespeare in the English Renaissance (1992), and Science and the Arts in the Renaissance (edited with John W. Shirley, 1985). His editions of Shakespeare include the Arden Pericles (1963) and King Henry the Eighth in The Pelican Shakespeare (1966). Professor Hoeniger lives in Toronto.
 

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Contents © 2006 The Porcupine's Quill, Inc. - Updated: 19 August 2007 by Tim Inkster
The Porcupine's Quill, 68 Main Street, Erin, Ontario CANADA N0B 1T0
Telephone (519) 833-9158   Fax (519) 833-9845  e-mail pql@sentex.net

The Porcupine's Quill would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council
and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. The financial support
of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP)
is also gratefully acknowledged. Thanks, also, to the Government of Ontario
through the Ontario Media Development Corporation's Ontario Book Publisher's Tax Credit
(OBPTC) programme and the Ontario Book Initiative.

The Porcupine's Quill is remarkable in Canadian publishing in that most of the physical production
of our books is completed in-house at the shop on the Main Street of Erin Village.

We print on a twenty-five inch Heidelberg KORD, typically onto acid-free Zephyr Antique laid.
The sheets are then folded, and sewn into signatures on a 1907 model Smyth National Book Sewing machine.