B is for Big Ben

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Downing Street

This series of 26 letterpress prints, a lexicon of London, pairs together letters of the alphabet with many of the capital city’s landmarks. These include its historic locations, contemporary buildings, national monuments and even sports grounds, hotels and eponymous retailers. Composed only of letters and geometric shapes, the set of prints offers a vivid typographical portrait of London. Despite the purely graphic nature of the work, using just image, colour, glyphs and shapes, Kitching is able to convey a palpable sense of the locations he has chosen to illustrate his city. 

In an age of slick, digital printing, Kitching’s adoption of the traditional letterpress method is refreshing. The manual process of applying ink to metal or wood block letters, which are pressed on to thick textured paper, contrasts with contemporary images designed on a computer. Since the late 1980s Kitching has used this method to produce limited edition prints, postage stamps and advertisements such as Poems on the Buses for London Transport.

Alan Kitching was born in Darlington, an area near Newcastle dominated by the railway industry. At 15, encouraged by an art teacher, he discovered his love of printing. From 1955 he was apprenticed to a commercial typesetter in Darlington for six years. In 1963 he worked as a print technician at Watford College of Technology, where he met innovative typographic designers and set up the Type Workshop, teaching experimental techniques. In the early 1970s he started working independently, receiving commissions from museums and publishers. He was a partner of Omnific Design from 1977 to 1988. He produced letterpress designs and taught part-time at the Royal College of Art (RCA), establishing The Typographic Workshop in 1992. Kitching has exhibited his work widely and has held several positions including: Royal Designer for Industry (1994), Honorary Fellow of the RCA and Visiting Professor at the University of Arts London.

Places

Big Ben, United Kingdom and Islands, England, London, Westminster

Subjects

topography, townscape/cityscape, bell tower, clock tower

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), print (as object name), manual relief print, letterpress, cotton paper, Somerset Satin

Artist

Alan Kitching (1940 - )

Title

B is for Big Ben

Portfolio Title

A to Z of London

Edition

Number 2 in an edition of 25

Date

2018

Medium

Letterpress print on paper

Dimensions

height: 28.5 cm; width: 26 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Printer's Proof Ltd, 2019

Provenance

Advanced Graphics London; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 2019

GAC number

18814/2