Michael Charlton Exhibition

Avid followers of this blog (yes, both of you) will remember the tribute I wrote for Michael Charlton, who died last year; this week his his son William has contacted me to let me know about a retrospective exhibition of Mike's work to be held at Salisbury Art Centre from Feb 25th to march 14th. I urge anyone who can make it to get over to Salisbury and see Mike's illustrations. I realise that for some people this is impossible so here are a couple more examples so you can see what you're missing.

The Christmas box

The Xmas box is a real favourite of mine. Mike often saved his most adventurous experiments for his own projects and his annual project was to create an original approach to the christmas card. This is a 1950s experiment where instead of a card Mike produced a box with himself, his first wife Irene and children, Nick, Ruth, William and Cathy given a side each. I believe it's print from a lino cut. The mind boggles at the amount of work that must have gone into making these. And yet he's ended up with something that has a bold design alongside Mike's lightness of touch and the warmth of his humour. Great isn't it.

Here are some more:

The Toff-o-lux chewer

The man himself with trademark pipe and pencil

This is typical of his later work for Bodley Head and Hodder and Stoughton

and this is just fab!