This beautifully designed and printed book exploring England’s belfries through the lens of photographer Christopher Dalton was one of our favourite projects in 2019.

Richard Jones, who wrote the accompanying essays, first came to Holywell Press in spring 2019 with a proposal for a project to showcase Christopher Dalton’s stunning photography of English belfries and their bells.

Richard sought advice on how to present Dalton’s images, so our designer suggested an earlier book he had worked on for The Bardwell Press with photographs by the acclaimed photographer James Ravilious: Down the Deep Lanes. This was exactly the quality of book that Richard wanted to achieve. What’s more he got into contact with Bardwell Press, who undertook to publish the book.

In order to best capture the quality of the original photographs the images are printed as duotones, using Black and Pantone Cool Gray 11 as a second colour. This method adds richness to the images and enables us to achieve deeper blacks in the shadows while adding depth to the mid-tones.

To add even more impact to the images, a spot gloss machine varnish was also used to lift the pictures off the page. Many of the images were rescanned at Holywell in order to improve them and considerable work was done to proof (two sets of scatter wet proofs) and improve the duotone images until Richard and Bardwell Press were happy with what we would achieve.

The final books were printed on a heavy (170gsm) gloss art paper to further lift the images. They are case bound (hardback) and covered in a dark green real cloth (Wicotex Brillianta) with gold foiling to the spine, and dark green head and tailbands and a gloss laminated jacket with generous flaps.

Richard, Susan Dalton (Christopher Dalton’s widow) and The Bardwell Press were delighted with the finished books. They have also proved popular and the book is now completely sold out.

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Banner image by Christopher Dalton