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To the World's End
Collected Poems 1940 - 1980

Item date(s): Bound 1975

William Redgrave


Pages: 42pp, 31pp. 2 vols
Size: 286mm
Collation: 2 volumes
Edition: #3/20


Publisher: The artist

Additional notes:
This copy has 42 pages (numbered in pencil) and additional poems on the left-hand pages which appear to be hand-written in ink with corrections in pencil. This appears to be a mock-up for the other (published) edition from which only certain pages were selected.

A second volume bound in the same manner by the same binder, with only 31 pages, titled:

Tread and Rise - Tread and Fall. Poems selected from the "Book of Life" by William Redgrave.

Note in Ms. inscribed on inner front cover of book: This copy number 3 of an issue of only 20 copies.

Drawings scripts and illustrated title page turned into line blocks and printed at the Royal College of Art and then Redgrave (sculptor) covered every single sheet with watercolour and washes.

The whole bound in half Morocco by Pasotti of the Victoria and Albert Museum - 1975.

David Lay: United Kingdom Auction Date: 2002:

WILLIAM REDGRAVE "Tread and Rise - Tread and Fall, Poems selected from the Book of Life." by William Redgrave, 31 numbered coloured plates and coloured title, signed `First Edition 9/20 W.A. Redgrave - Boots, I have written in six more from the `collected poems for you with my love Willy.' six hand written poems, on the reverse of the numbered plates, well bound 1/2 green morocco, folio, 1975 fine copy, includes inserted ALS and photograph.

William Redgrave (1903–86) was a British sculptor. His major work The Event was mostly destroyed in the 2004 Momart warehouse fire.

William Redgrave was born in Little Ilford, Essex. He worked for the BBC for a time. In World War II he was an air raid warden. With Peter Lanyon he then ran an art school in St Ives; Francis Bacon rented a studio from them and, in 1957, encouraged Redgrave to take up sculpture.[1]

His girlfriend in the 1960s was Jenny Pearson, who was a feature writer for The Times at one stage in her life.[2] In Chelsea she saw him create his major work. This was The Event, a bronze triptych, measuring 56 x 124" overall, weighing a tonne and consisting of 228 figures arranged in 49 different scenes each with a theme, such as flirtation or gang murder. It took the artist three years to make. When it was finished, he said, ""Some great outside thing is happening to these people—something we all fear might be going to happen." The Scottish poet Alan Bold wrote a poem about the work and said the figures were "forced/To face the judgment of a world they represent." The Event was first shown at the Royal Academy in 1966. The Daily Telegraph reviewed it as:

" the most successful piece of sculpture seen at the Academy for many years "

Giacomo Manzù's bronze doors for St Peter's, Rome were cited as a comparison. Sir John Rothenstein, Director of the Tate Gallery also expressed admiration. It was scheduled for installation in the new Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall, but this plan was cancelled because of financial restraints.[1]

In the 1970s, Redgrave did portrait heads of a number of noted people, including Henry Cooper, Diana Rigg and Laurence Olivier. The bust of Olivier is now in the Olivier Theatre Foyer, Royal National Theatre in the South Bank complex.

In 1998 The Event was part of a retrospective at the Roy Miles Gallery in west London. Redgrave's family then put the work into storage with Momart, and were working on plans for a permanent display of it. In 2004 it was in the east London Momart warehouse destroyed by fire, along with works by Tracey Emin, Jake and Dinos Chapman, and Damien Hirst, amongst others. Critic Bevis Hillier called it "by far the greatest loss" of the fire, but it was initially not mentioned in news reports, until publicised by the campaigning art group the Stuckists on their web site (billed as a "world exclusive").[1] Five days before the fire, the family had paid £5,508 in back fees.[2]

Remarkably, although the left hand side of the triptych was completely destroyed, the sculptor's son, Christopher Redgrave, was able to personally retrieve, in two trips, at least 30 of the 228 figures in good shape[3] -- about a third of the central panel, as well as other fragments, though cutting his hands badly on broken glass in the process. He described the experience:

There was a smell of rotting food, rotting chips, rotting meat from one of the units Momart shared the building with ... There were bits of glass hanging from the roof. I had to climb over steel girders. It looked like a twisted rollercoaster that had crashed.

As far as is known he is the only person out of the artists or artists' relatives to have been to the site; he said, "this building was inappropriate for what they are doing. There's no way around that."[2]

Notes and references

1. a b c 2004 ""By far the Greatest Loss" of the 'Saatchi' Fire" stuckism.com June 1, 2004. Accessed 15 April 2006

2. a b c Meek, James 2004 "Art into Ashes" The Guardian, 23 September 2004. Accessed April 15, 2006

3. 2004 "The Art that Survived the Momart 'Saatchi' Fire" stuckism.com June 11, 2004. Accessed 15 April 2006.

Details from the copy in the Getty Library:

Title: Tread and rise, tread and fall : poems selected from the "Book of life" / by William Redgrave.

Author: Redgrave, William, 1903-1986.

Date: 1975

Description: [2], 32 leaves: coll. ill. (lithographs); 29 cm.

Publication [England?: s.n., 1975?]

References: Cannon-Brookes, P. William Redgrave, 1903-1986, p. 36

Notes: Date of publication from Cannon-Brookes

Comprises an illustrated title page, a contents leaf, 32 photo-lithographed plates and a loosely inserted unnumbered leaf titled "To the world's end". Each plate features a poem and a drawing. The title page and the 32 plates are hand colored by the author.

Limited edition of 20 copies signed by William Redgrave on the title page

Signed "1st ed 17/20" in the upper left hand corner of the contents leaf

Form Genre:

Livres de peintres--England--20th century.

Photolithographs--England--20th century.

Hand coloring--England--20th century.

Poems--England--20th century.

Ref: GB/16680







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