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B. T. Batsford, Published 1985. Hardcover, 168 pp.; 26 cm; First Edition; introduction by Jim Ede; 147 black-and-white photographs and 58 line illustrations; index. Inscribed and signed by David Peace on half-title (recipient's first name, then signature).
In Very Good condition with a Very Good dust jacket. Black cloth with gilt lettering on spine, light bumping and scuffing to edges of covers, mild shelf wear. Binding tight. Previous owner's printed address label on front free endpaper; light scattered foxing to endpapers. Pages clean and unmarked. Pictorial dust jacket (engraved goblets and decanter against red, designed by the author, photograph by John Edward Leigh; the author at his bench on rear panel) with rubbing and light scuffing, a few small nicks and light creasing along edges, rear panel toned. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. The engraver's own account of lettering on glass, from the 722 BC Sargon vessel in the British Museum and the Roman cage-cups through Verzelini, the Dutch calligraphic engravers, and Laurence Whistler, to his own method: paint the glass, set out in pencil, score with a toothpick, cut with a diamond point. Chapters on letter form, the flourish, monograms, in situ engraving of windows and screens, presentation glass and heraldry, engraved church windows (Castle Bromwich, St. Merryn, the Pleiades window), a digression into stone, and the lettering of other engravers. Includes his early debt to Eric Gill and the Golden Cockerel Four Gospels. Peace (1915-2003), a county planning officer by day and MBE for that work, was one of the revivers of diamond-point engraving in Britain in the 1930s, first chairman of the Guild of Glass Engravers in 1975, and later compiler of the descriptive catalogue of Gill's inscriptions; his glass is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Westminster Abbey, and Kettle's Yard. Contents: Introduction by Jim Ede; Acknowledgements; Preface; Themes and Influences; Lettering on Glass; Glass Engraving: Technique and Design; Glass Engraving: Design Principles Evolving; Engraved Windows: Principles and Practice; A Digression into Stone; Lettering by Other Glass Engravers; Epilogue: The Practice of a Craft; Index.