The QB Papers / Sir Quentin Blake
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“The QB Papers were a venture of pure self-indulgence. I had sets of drawings that I wanted to see in print and so I invented the series and paid for its printing; and then I was fortunate that Thames and Hudson took on the distribution. I find that any project of this kind produces a scatter of extra drawings – preliminaries, experiments, alternative versions. – and these are what you see here.”
- Sir Quentin Blake
The idea for The QB Papers came from regular exhibitions at what is now Hastings Contemporary. As Quentin explains, “These exhibitions each have a theme; one, of fantasy headgear, became a book called ‘The World of Hats’. In due course I found myself producing thematic sequences of drawings too fast for them all to be exhibited, and so I decided to have them made into a set of publications, ‘The QB Papers’. The styles, although no doubt still identifiably mine, I have tried to vary.” Most works featured in the series - 18 out of 20 volumes - were drawn in the six months between September 2018 and February 2019, and all of them within the last two years.
The 24cm x 30.5cm books are published in sets of five, the first appearing in August 2019 with five more titles each in November 2019, February 2020 and May 2020. They are on sale via Quentin’s online shop and are also available from the House of Illustration in London and other outlets, distributed by Thames & Hudson. The hand-sewn paperbacks (each title with a different coloured thread on the spine) cost £16.95 each.
The works are available to view on The Coningsby Gallery online shop here:
https://www.coningsbygallery.com/shop/artist/Sir+Quentin+Blake
All works are available to purchase, and the details of each piece are listed in the online shop. Please direct all purchasing and general enquiries to shop@quentinblake.com.