Wednesday, 17 January, 2018
Today we went to see an exhibition of Alice in Wonderland prints at the Eames Fine Art Gallery on Bermondsey Street. These prints are from the original woodblocks on which Tenniel made his drawings and the Brothers Dalziel, master engravers, engraved. You can read more about this and about John Tenniel at the bottom of this blog post.
We arrived at London Bridge and decided to walk through the newer part of the station entrance, which landed us right at the Shard. It was an incredibly windy day. I could hardly stand against it. Seems the wind was mostly in some corridors since it wasn’t like that everywhere.
I then promptly got lost trying to find the gallery. Going a different way threw me completely off. I’m a terrible map reader!
After one false start, we found Bermondsey Street, and the gallery was pretty close to the corner. The walls were covered in framed prints so we went right in. I absolutely loved looking at them and reading the bits and pieces that were around. At one point the gallery guide came up and talked to me and explained how much detail was in each engraving, and showed me a couple of her favourites. She also suggested I use a magnifying glass to see them properly. I have a lot of trouble focussing with a magnifying glass but what I did manage was quite incredible.
Above is the gallery guide’s favourite. I really like it too. The white marks in the circle at the front of the picture are apparently scratches that appeared mysteriously and no one knows how they got there.
I’ve never looked at those illlustrations so closely, close enough to notice Tenniel’s signature and that of the Dalzeil brothers. Amazing how beloved these pictures are.
