18 Folgate Street, Spitalfields

Last month I visited 18 Folgate Street in Spitalfields to make sketches for a project set in 1700s London.

The house is like a cross between a museum and a walk-in storybook, and upon entering the rooms you discover them as though their eighteenth century inhabitants had just left moments earlier.

The place has a real atmosphere and felt like being thrown back in time by 300 years - which was just what I was looking for.

Above: a frock coat and tricorn hat, hung on wall.

Right: house of cards and books

With no electricity in the house, lighting is only by candlelight and by the tiny ammounts of natural light coming in through the narrow windows.

Drawing with such little light and with a white pencil on a black surface can be tricky and you don't really know what you're drawing until you look at it in daylight.

Above left: the smoking room; above right: pin board in the front room

Below left: pen and ink version; below right: Mrs Jervis' drawing room

Below left: sketch from front dining room; below right: the drawing room

Toyobo plate / print

Toyobo plates are developed in water after an image has been exposed on to the plate using a light box, and they can be used for embossment, intaglio or relief printing (the above is intaglio).

Below are a couple of toyobo plates I made. The one on the right went very wrong somewhere - either left in the water too long or not exposed enough on the lightbox...

The Fleet

Two inmates from the Fleet Prison

( This is part of an on-going project which I will be working on more this Spring )

New etched book - The Tempest

Last week I finally finished this project... some photos and scans are below:

Some of the tiny scenes from the book:

Minack III

The plate has been finished! Below are some photos of a dummy version of the book and some details from the print...

New Resurrectionist books

This week, I finally got round to making some digital versions of one of my earlier books (The Resurrectionists) and are going on sale at £5 each.

Email me at Robsonjk@yahoo.co.uk if you’d like to buy one

Minack II

Enter Mariners wet...

Above and below are a little preview of some new work I'm doing for an etched book. Next week aquatints will be made from the plate. And then the bookmaking begins...

A day in the life...

These were inspired by some of the letters of Lord John Hervey. I've put up some of the better panels here:

It's just not cricket

Below are a selection of commissioned illustrations I did for a Cornish family archive.

One of the family ancestors played cricket for England in the mid 1800s. The outfits may look a bit like something from A Clockwork Orange, but cricket players once dressed like this:



Another family ancestor was taken to court by her own son in the late 1700s -

...and another was a successful businessman and merchant in the 1600s. This character has been the most challenging and awkward of all of them to draw.