When I first visited Janet Stone during 1991 to talk about making a book on Reynolds' wood-engraved lettering, I knew very little about her, and certainly had no idea that she was a brilliant photographer. Her record of the social and artistic circle within which she and Reynolds moved, based largely on their Dorset house at Litton Cheney, is now well known through two published books. Janet photographed her visitors in natural light and using a Rolleiflex camera (through which the photographer looks downwards and not at the subject directly), but less well known are her powerful images of Reynolds cutting letters in stone, as well as finished inscriptions before they were moved to their final location. Her ghostly, silent studies of Reynolds' cherished collection of Albion and Columbian handpresses in the outbuildings are also included here.

Janet and Reynolds' son-in-law Ian Archie Beck has written a lovely introduction about meeting the family in early 1977, and describes the unassuming outbuildings where the stone was cut and the presses were kept. The selection of about 40 photos is my own, and the text is set in Janet (a Stone design).

120 pages, 275 copies quarter-bound in Compton marbled paper, available now. Price £174, postage free within the UK.

To order this book, please email me at simon@fleecepress.com (the button below can be used if you have email set up on your device’s Mail app) or call me on 01226 792200.