Product details
• Original Concept: Philippa Wood
• Design & Production: Philippa Wood
• Format: 28pp pamphlet stitched
• Size: 155 x 155 mm
• Publisher: The Caseroom Press
• Publication Date: Autumn 2021
• Price: £20
• Limited edition: 12
• Available from: Philippa Wood
Book Description
During lockdown part of the household routine was to listen to selected guests on the Desert Island Disk archive; the premise of this weekly Radio 4 programme – broadcast since 1942 – is to cast away each guest to a desert island with eight records of their choice, in addition they are given the Complete Works of Shakespeare, the Bible (or equivalent) and can select one other book plus a luxury item to take with them. The luxury must be inanimate and cannot be used to help escape the island.
It is the wide-ranging list of luxury items that informed this limited-edition artists’ book. Using a series of systems, the selected luxuries were firstly categorised and a type hierarchy allocated; in addition the five different presenters of the show over its long history, were each allotted a colour and shape – the diameter of which was determined by the length of time employed on the programme. Type was letterpress printed onto pages from a family bible and coloured shapes overprinted to highlight both category and interviewer. The pages are formed into a 28pp book that identifies male and female selections.