![]() ![]() The Parrys do not believe this is a necessarily a negative thing, though. Such automatic perfection is not the Parrys' way: One critic, Roderick Cave, has faulted their earlier books for ``roughness'' and for being too ``hand crafted.'' Many private presses settle for a formula, for a type face or a paper they can master and then use over and over again. But Nicholas also maintains he would ``like to think people buy our books for the risk.'' Risk is finally what he feels differentiates between craft and art. People buy their books, the Parrys reckon, because they find them ``friendly'' - or so some have said. The Parrys combine extreme seriousness and ambition in their books with a love and enjoyment that, at best, communicates itself with fresh directness. Their house goes back 300 years at least, is decorated (not without significance) with Morris-design wallpapers and, in the kitchen, curtains and a tablecloth in an oddly familiar ``English Bird fabric ca. Visiting and talking with the Parrys in their home-cum-workplace here, one is soon aware that what this unpretentious but determined couple is managing to pull off is something much more than a ``cottage industry.'' Art, he feels, has to do with a more finely tuned balance of eye, soul, nature, and hands than ``craft,'' which usually emphasizes ``materials and techniques.'' The Parrys aim to ``bring the book up to the realm of art, I suppose,'' says Nicholas. They feel that this, above all, is what makes their efforts different from the 200-odd other private presses in Britain. ``Art'' is what the Parrys and their two-person press are all about. She looked at ``Birds Nesting'' and said: ``Oh, it's all right - it's art, it isn't birds!'' It was the woman in charge of the antiquarian books department of the London shop who managed to save the day. Heller can be critical of some Tern Press books, he calls this one ``a watershed,'' a ``coming of age'' as the 50th title produced by the Parrys' press since its founding in 1973. With justice the prints have been described by Joshua Heller, who deals in rare books (including the Parrys') in Washington, D.C., as ``hauntingly beautiful.'' Although Mr. Nor is Nicholas Parry in his many colored prints of etched, cut, and engraved linoleum in ``Birds Nesting'': He is clearly after the feel - more than strict observation - of the birds he has suggested in the subtle variations of silver-greens, misty grays, tree-branch browns, downy yellows, and sudden flashes of red or orange in his cuts. That French 20th-century artist was not at all concerned with ornithology. But, says Nicholas, ``my favorite bird artist is Braque!'' ![]() But when he looked through it, Nicholas says, ``his jaw dropped.'' Mary offers that he was probably expecting zoologically accurate depictions of birds. ![]() Before he saw ``Birds Nesting'' he was confident he could sell the entire edition - some 84 copies. But this dealer also happened to be an expert on birds and books about birds. The London dealer in question knew and liked the Tern Press's highly individual kind of books. Its text is a previously lost poem by 19th-century Northamptonshire poet John Clare, edited by Clare scholar Eric Robinson of Boston, Mass. ``Birds Nesting'' is a large-format, slim volume bound (by Mary Parry) in a decorative ``English Bird fabric ca. ENGLISH artist Nicholas Parry tells a revealing story about a London book dealer's reaction to a book he and his wife Mary made in 1987. ![]()
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