Cooking the Books: Ron King and Circle Press 15 JUNE — 8 SEPTEMBER, 2002 Ron King and his Circle Press have been making beautiful and creatively significant books for the past thirty-five years. Since 1967, when he formed the Press to "draw together a circle of like-minded people" to make books, King has collaborated with over one hundred artists, writers, and poets, including John Christie, Ian Tyson, Julia Farrer, Birgit Skild, Roy Fisher, Kenneth White, and John Berger. The resulting works are made from an extraordinary range of materials--paper, wood, metal, stone, glass, and wax--that stretch the concept and definition of the book to its limits. This retrospective exhibition, selected from the Center's collections by Elisabeth Fairman, Curator of Rare Books and Archives, traced the history of the Press from its beginnings. It also celebrated a wonderful gift. In a remarkable generous gesture, Ron King and his wife (the sculptor Willow Legge) donated archival material that relate to the projects published, printed, or created by or for the Press. The extraordinary collection included drawings, plans, experiments, prototypes, texts, correspondence, posters, write-ups and criticisms, blocks, plates, cutting and creasing forms and some wood and metal tape. The archive offered an opportunity to catch a glimpse of the creative process. It was possible to trace King's idea for a production from his first doodle in a spiral-bound notebook, through its various permutations, to its eventual emergence as a work of art. We saw how he "cooks the books," carefully working out the details of every publication before production begins. As King said, "My mind is like a cauldron. There's a great stew of things going round and round. In the end I serve up a dish." The books and archives together made the Center's holdings the most comprehensive collection of Circle Press in the world. King said that "our most ardent support has always come from the U.S., without which we never would have been able to survive as an independent self-supporting 'workshop'.... all this, as it were, under a British roof in a very fine building on American soil, couldn't be more appropriate or gratifying." A fully illustrated catalogue, with pop-ups and other special features designed by Ron King will be available in the Museum Shop, along with Circle Press publications. For more information on Ron King and Circle Press, visit www.circlepress.com. The exhibition itself was made possible with assistance from the British Council.