Fruit Number 1

Triggered by finding this block (roughly 3cm square) in the archives of a printing business that thrived in Byker, I remembered the coloured tissue paper that fruit used to be wrapped in.

I had also just visited the Matisse paper-cuts exhibition, Drawing with Scissors at Stroud Museum, where I saw the lithographic print of his 1953 Nu aux Oranges.

This gave me the idea to make a letterpress fruit salad, starting with this reference to Jeanette Winterson's 1985 book.

The circle between the type is a digital print on coated archival 300gsm photographic paper which takes up the letterpress ink really well. The intention was that the circle sit centred with the type, but having messed up on the first attempt, I decided to make a print with the circle off-centre. This gave the happy accident of the top of the t just touching the bottom of the fruit & the dot on the i making the stalk mark. More fruit to come...