The Penrose Annual 1971Author(s): James MoranSource: Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 119, No. 5184 (NOVEMBER 1971), p. 879Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41370945 .

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CORRESPONDENCE

The Penrose Annual 1971 I From James Mor an ̂ 208 Elm Tree Court , Elm Tree Road , London NW8 9JT On reading Seán Jennetťs notes on The Penrose Annual 1971 in the October issue of the Journal [p. 810] I immediately turned to my copy as I had no recollection that it was 'literally' dated 1 79 1. I found that the cover design has quite clearly The Penrose Annual 1971 across the top, and coloured drawings of pieces of type throw- ing their shadows to make, if read downwards, 4 1971'. Because of the coincidence that this year begins and ends with a figure 1, if read upwards, it could be interpreted as 1791. Mr. Jennett, on this occasion, is being perverse.

I was also mildly surprised to see Berthold Wolpe's jacket designs described as 'heavily Germanic'. Looking at the single illustration of a Wölpe jacket I find that it is a piece of exuberant lettering which only by the widest stretch of the imagination could be so described. Like Mr. Jennett I do not care for much of the so-called new lettering, but Penrose Annual , since its inception in 1895, has recorded the graphic fashions of the day, for which art and printing historians are grateful.

The fact is that the book jackets illustrated actually exist; Penrose Annual did not invent them. The same thought must arise in relation to what Mr. Jennett calls 'the saddest thing' about the annual - the survey (for which I was partially responsible). Penrose and its contri- butors are not, as such, responsible for the disputes and difficulties in the printing industry; they are merely recording them. In any case, at

least half the survey deals with new technical developments. Mr. Seán Jennett writes: James Moran presents an engaging picture of a noble knight riding to the rescue of the lady Penrose, with me cast as the wicked baron. It is unnecessary : I have no desire to harm the lady.

As for my perversity, if it is perverse to read the figures 1791 in that order as representing the date 1 79 1 then I am perverse. I would have thought it more perverse to read them back- wards. That they are supposed to be shadows of type I am well aware, as I am also aware that no piece of type ever cast such a shadow. It should be remarked that there was no reason, in this design, why the artist should not have put his figures in the sequence 1971. That he did not was perversity and ingeniousness too ingenious.

There is much that I admire in Berthold Wolpe's work and I have said so more than once ; there are also things that I do not admire and I have said so when I thought it necessary. That some of it is heavy is my opinion and in this context it was relevant to say so.

Of course the jackets with what Mr. Moran terms 'new lettering' actually exist. So do thousands of others that may be worth as much attention as these. Penrose must be subject to criticism in choosing one and not the other.

Finally, I am astonished that Mr. Moran could possibly imagine that I attribute the sad state of the printing industry in 1971 to the influence of Penrose.

NOTES ON BOOKS

Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art Presented to Anthony Blunt on His 6oth Birthday London and New York , Phaidon Press , 1967* £ 4.20 net The papers brought together in this imposing Festschrift were deliberately confined by its editors to the areas of scholarship that have chiefly engaged Sir Anthony Blunt's omnivorous attention : primarily, therefore, it is the supreme authority on Poussin and Philibert de L'Orme and the author of major publications on the Italian drawings of the seventeenth and eight- * The Editor and the author of this review regret the delay in its publication.

eenth centuries in the Royal Collection and on various aspects of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, including the magisterial survey of French art and architecture in the Pelican His- tory , who is here celebrated. Inevitably the volume pays tribute also to Sir Anthony's directorship of the Courtauld Institute (a post that he has now graced for about a quarter of a century) and to all that thereby the disciplines of art history and connoisseurship in this country owe to him - a general indebtedness of which Professor Waterhouse reminds us in his pleas- antly informal and affectionate Preface. Perhaps it will not therefore seem invidious to restrict comment, in the limited space available, to papers contributed by British scholars, many of whom were Sir Anthony Blunt's pupils.

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