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This is the most lavish and ambitious publication The
Holloway Press has yet attempted. It consists of 22
wood-engravings by Leo Bensemann (1912-1986), a New
Zealand artist whose importance is becoming ever more
widely recognised. The artist’s original blocks have
been kindly loaned to the Holloway Press by the
Bensemann family, and the engravings printed directly
from them, a method of printing wood-engravings
pioneered in New Zealand in the 1940s by The Caxton
Press in the 1940s, the firm in which Bensemann was a
partner and printer. A Book of Wood Engravings by E. Mervyn Taylor (1946) and
Engravings on Wood by Rona Dyer
(1948) were both produced in this fashion.
 Leo Bensemann was active as a wood-engraver from about
1940 to the early 1950s (though one engraving dates from
1975). It was the only print-medium he practised with
any regularity. Some of his woodblocks were printed in
Caxton Press publications, such as the periodical Book
(1941-46) and their distinctive Specimen Books of
Printing Types (1940, 1956). Others were shown at annual
Group Show exhibitions, and six were included in A
Second Book of Leo Bensemann’s Work (Caxton Press,
1952)—his ‘first’ book was Fantastica: thirteen drawings
(1937), of which The Holloway Press produced a second
edition in 1997 (now out of print). Of the 22 engravings
included 11 have been previously published or exhibited;
the others are published here for the first time (though
some exist in the form of prints held in family
collections). Bensemann’s wood-engravings—like much
of his work in other graphic media, especially his
drawings in pen and ink—are unique because of both their
subject matter and style. In this period Bensemann
largely avoided overt reference to his immediate
physical environment (despite this being the high water
mark of regional realism in New Zealand art), preferring
to draw his subjects from literature, legend, folk
stories, or his own idiosyncratic imagination, as for
example in Strange Outlandish Fowl, Ophelia,
Merman,
Dancing Dwarf, and the several Dragons. Stylistically, Bensemann drew widely from European and Oriental art,
Dürer, Beardsley and Hokusai being particular
favourites. Little is known about the immediate
influences on Bensemann’s engraving technique, though
Eric Gill, the English engraver, and English-born
Francis Shurrock, who taught in Christchurch, were
probable models, while Olivia Spencer Bower gave him his
first imported boxwood blocks to work on.
Accompanying the engravings are an extensive
introduction and detailed notes on the prints by Peter
Simpson who has been studying Leo Bensemann’s work for
25 years and is writing a book about the artist. The
introduction discusses Bensemann’s wood-engravings in
relation to his other artistic activities, especially
painting, drawing and book illustration, while the notes
give details of previous exhibition and publication,
identify sources of the images, and discuss other
relevant information. Tara McLeod, the designer and
printer of the book, provides a note that clarifies the
distinction between wood-engravings (in which the end
grain of hard wood is used) and wood-cuts (which utilise
the side-grain).
Engravings on Wood is letterpress printed by Tara McLeod
on an Asbern cylinder press at The Holloway Press,
University of Auckland. The text is 12 point Jansen, set
in linotype by Gordon W. Smith at Longley Printing
Company, Auckland. Types on the hand-set title page are
Perpetua Roman, an Eric Gill designed typeface. The
binding, with silver blocking, is by Bound to Last,
Auckland. The paper is 290gsm Tiepolo, a cotton paper
made in Italy. Size: 290 x 385mm
The edition is 100 numbered copies at $NZ500 each.
Bensemann Portfolio
In addition to the book, Engravings on Wood, The
Holloway Press— in a unique development for the
Press—will publish an edition of ten of the engravings,
individually numbered, in unbound format suitable for
framing, printed on 250gsm Lana Royal, a cotton paper
made in France. The size of the paper is 285 x
380mm.There will be 30 only of these sets contained in a
portfolio (black with silver blocking) especially
designed and made for The Holloway Press by Bound to
Last. The engravings included are: Strange Outlandish
Fowl, Ophelia, Boy, Maori, Merman,
Dancing Dwarf, Ball
Dance, Mary Bensemann, Death and the Woodcutter, and
Night. The cost of the portfolios is $NZ1200 each
Publication date is 15 August 2004.
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