Trench (bold, italic)
Henningham Family Press
2011
Edition 75
screenprint
184 x 262 mm
£138 (£228 framed)
In our An Unknown Soldier project we are writing as people who have felt the legacy of the First World War, primarily through family stories, but not first-hand. We wanted to depict the impression it had made upon us rather than the memory. So we chose not to depict it figuratively and, instead, to make interruptions in our text itself. One of the ways we did this was to make three bespoke Trench fonts. Zig-zagging wedge shapes intersect a white slab, redolent of a limestone headstone. Trench (regular) is a plan view of the same block letters found in this print, as if seen on a map, but here they are seen from a perspective nearer the ground. Fire-steps serve as punctuation marks.
For Trench (bold, italic) we used an old ‘comic’ paper size, and a special polythene pocket to hint at call-up posters, papers, and martial instruction manuals. The block letters are specially created for screenprinting, with a white undercoat on cool blue paper with yellow overprints.
