Thomas Bewick

On a day of low sun and wild wind I had to go over to Cherryburn in Northumberland, the birthplace and inspiration of the great eighteenth century engraver of the natural world, Thomas Bewick. I went into the room where he was born in August 1753, a tiny room with a stone slabbed floor, a small fireplace and a truckle bed which folded into the wall to save space. In the cold kitchen hens clucked in and out the shadows looking for spiders. It was so modest that you could hardly believe that such a talented, benevolent man could emerge, and indeed escape from, such humble beginnings to become the influential figure he was. On the walls were prints of his original woodcuts, tiny, meticulous and beautiful. In the print room there were all the tools of his trade - boxwood, engraving implements, printing blocks, and presses large and small. The smell was of linseed oil, ink and the tang of soot. I sat for maybe an hour soaking it all in.