Tuesday, 2:26pm
7 April 2009

Curwen on the Stone(s)

the picture department
Graphic design
Posters
Visual culture

Pasche’s rock’n’roll posters get the fine printing treatment

Designer John Pasche writes to tell us that his celebrated Rolling Stones posters (see Two degrees of (colour) separation, Eye Blog, September 2008) are available from his new website, rollingstonesposters.co.uk.

They’re lithographic prints in eleven or twelve colours, printed from the original artwork by Curwen Studio, founded in 1958 by the sons of Oliver Simon and Herbert Simon of the Curwen Press, which was featured in ‘Quiet spirit of joy’, the Archive article by Alan Powers in Eye no. 70 vol. 18).

stones 1972 tour poster

Curwen-Spirit-of-Joy

Above: ‘Get the Spirit of Joy’ (1920). Claud Lovat Fraser’s chapbook revival style captured the essence of the Curwen Press. Courtesy of Tate Gallery Archives. The unicorn device (below) was commissioned for the press from Eric Gill.

CURWEN_Unicorn

You can see more of John Pasche’s Stones artwork, including this tasteful Magritte pastiche (below), on his website johnpasche.com.

Rolling Stones 1973

Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published quarterly for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions and single issues.