Yellow Cab Quartet
Yellow Cab
Quartet is a limited edition book work collaboration between Anna Fewster and Olivia Laing. Text
written by Olivia is hand-set in 12pt Baskerville and 48pt Franklin Gothic
Extra Condensed metal type and letterpress printed on Fewster’s Adana
“Eight-Five” press. It is illustrated
with nine images, reproduced from original monoprints by Fewster.
'A
few summers ago, I transported a full fount of 48 point Franklin Gothic back
from New York City in my hand luggage. This heavy sans serif typeface,
suggestive of billboards and newspaper headlines, underpins Yellow Cab
Quartet, a limited edition letterpress printed book produced in
collaboration with Olivia Laing earlier this year. Impressed into the printed
pages of Laing’s ‘four tiny true stories’ about F. Scott Fitzgerald, John
Berryman, Frank O’Hara, and Robert Lowell is a physical trace of New York. Conscious
choices of typeface, space, and underline deliberately attempt to attach Yellow
Cab Quartet to specific cultural bearings. The text is weighted by its
visible appearance. A series of monotype drawings forge associative meaning
across the thread-bound gutter, softly ushering interpretation. Urban
canyons, alcohol-soused taxi journeys, monochrome portraits, the New York
School. On the threshold mediating between text and reader, the paratexts
of Yellow Cab Quartet inscribe contextual significance, reiterating and
amplifying the verbal.' – Anna Fewster
Mora about Anna Fewster
More about Olivia Laing
