Oswell Blakeston and Max Chapman.
How to Make Your Own Confetti.
Trigram Press, 1965.
Hardcover.
48 pages.
Numbered edition of 750, the first 150 are hardbound and jacketed and the remainder are bound in softcover. Numbers 1-50 have been signed by the author and artist.
This is number 31 and is signed by Oswell Blakeston and Max Chapman.
Poetry by Oswell Blakeston,
Illustrations (“Illusions”) by Max Chapman.
Oswell Blakeston (poet, experimental filmmaker, painter, mystery novelist, cookbook & travel author) was the pseudonym of Henry Joseph Hasslacher (1907-1985). A key yet now largely neglected early English Modernist, from the 1920s until his death in 1985, he was vigorously active across several generations of avant-garde art scenes. Intimate friend of Bryher, H.D., Kenneth Macpherson, and Dylan Thomas among many other notable figures. Editor and contributor to the famed modernist film magazine of the 1920s & 30s, Close-Up, a writer of unusual and oblique mystery novels, Blakeston also crafted exquisite poetic miniatures that landed in many of the finest small mags of the day. Author of dozens of books, over the years his champions included Stefan & Franciszka Themerson’s Gaberbocchus Press, Asa & Pip Benveniste’s Trigram Press, and Dennis Cooper’s Little Caesar Press. In the late 1930s he met the painter Max Chapman —the two would remain life partners until Blakeston’s death in 1985.
