Small Performances has inspired several artistic responses from stone carving to jewellery, from photography to theatre productions. We never expected our work to be captured in verse. Here’s an ode to the Baskerville punches, written by the poet Kathleen Bell who, following her visit to ‘Capturing Craft’ our exhibition in Birmingham documenting the making of the Baskerville punches, was so stimulated by the project that she penned the following verse.
To Easy Hill
This wealth of Easy Hill
was once
clawed from the earth
heaved out
borne to the smelting where
impurities
were caught out, cast aside
and all the while
master of scripts, japanner, Baskerville
writes out designs
to split thick strokes from thin, to add
careful serifs.
Fonts will be checked and measured. Every comma
must be exact.
The bars that reach the forge will have
corners turned down
be whitened over heat, then hammered,
cooled, turned out
as punches – nearly – and this work is small,
so delicate
made even more precise when graving tools
carve curlicues
give liberty to tiny curves, each slope
set in reverse
for yet more hardening, each punch refined
through purple heat
to blue (there’s an entire spectrum must
be overseen)
before the brushing, smoothing, when
each littlest blotch
is cut away so that the letter stands.
Last there will be
the blackest words on white wove paper, far
too costly for
the forgers, miners, all the workmen who
may be unlettered,
but may have left as witness marks to show
they brought to birth
a luxury of print. Pages declare
again, again
“In the beginning,” sing of arms and men.