Pressmark

The pressmark, at the top of  each website page, was created in 1992 by Chris Broughton. It is also part of the letterhead and thus features on all the New Arcadian Broadsheets since NAB 35.

~ The design visualises the co-participation of artists and writers that is such a characteristic of the New Arcadian Journal.

~ An open copy of the New Arcadian Journal is laid upon a bucolic and convivial bed of vineleaves and grapes (as appropriate to a vignette), and garnished with essential, though some might say anachronistic, ingredients: a tube of paint, a palette, a spool of photographic film, a computer mouse and a floppy disk.

~ The topping of fountain pen, paintbrush, pencil and scraperboard tool forms the compass rose that navigates the creation of texts and imagery from each site walked for successive editions of the New Arcadian Journal.

The initial pressmark derived from a relief of gardening tools on the pedestal of the obelisk at Hall Barn, Buckinghamshire, a landscape garden associated with the Aislabies of Studley Royal.

~ This was first drawn by John Furnival for the exhibition Mr. Aislabie’s Gardens, 1981, and can be seen on the poster-print, preview card and catalogue. It was then drawn by John Tetley for the 1981 Christmas card, and re-used for the first catalogue of publications and also for an exhibition preview card during 1984.

~ Other versions were created by Ian Gardner. They can be seen on Broadsheets 21-34, on the poster-prints of the exhibition series Gardens and Landscapes, 1983-1985, on an associated exhibition preview card, on the ‘Decal’ card and on the cover of the 1991 Catalogue.

~ A second pressmark was designed by Ian Gardner in 1986 as a monogram version of the initials, NAJ. This was used between 1986 – 1991, and is prominent on the covers of NAJs 22 – 28. In 2017, as a tribute to Chris Broughton, Patrick Eyres created illustrated dust jackets for NAJs 23 – 28, which display the third pressmark (1992) 0n the rear cover.

~ The motif initially used on the A4 letterhead paper, and thus on Broadsheets 1-20, was adapted by Ian Gardner from a detail of Nicholas Poussin’s Landscape with St John on Patmos, c.1640. It was originally created for the small book, Eye Spy Trees, 1980.