The Country Life
by Kathleen Lindsley

In 1996, the Fleece Press was planning a series of miniature books documenting Kathleen Lindsley’s designs for pub signs for the Samuel Webster brewery. There were over 200 engravings that were turned into signs in the 1980s, on a variety of themes, and all are cleverly composed and sensitively engraved. For some reason, the series fell by the wayside, and only The Country Life was ever published. We recently rediscovered a single proof of the second book in the series locked away and forgotten in a drawer at the Press, but that is as far as things went.

The Country Life brings together Lindsley’s engravings from pubs across West Yorkshire whose signs reference the natural world. It is a short tour of rural life, from beekeeping to hunting and with plenty of livestock inbetween.

It’s a lovely, idyllic book, where the engravings are allowed to speak, moo, baa, cluck, buzz, or neigh, for themselves.

This miniature was published in 1997. There were 300 standard copies, priced at £34 each.