Bewick Tales

Book review – Bewick Tales. Journal of Dementia Care 32(6)13.

Stories from the life and work of Thomas Bewick

By Sarah Laurence

Open Ended books is a new imprint of Equal Arts, a leading creative ageing charity supporting older people and those living with dementia in Gateshead, Newcastle and across the UK. The aim of this initiative is  “to create beautiful and life affirming books that stimulate the imagination and help maintain positive relationships between
people living with early to moderate dementia and their family and friends.”

This first publication, Bewick Tales, Stories from the life and work of Thomas Bewick, has been
co-produced by Equal Arts, people living with dementia, Newcastle City Library, the Bewick Society, the National Trust, Sarah Lawrence, the author and Wendy Lewis, book designer. It is such an apt choice of subject as Bewick, a prolific artist, engraver and natural historian was born, lived, worked and died in Northumberland.

This beautifully illustrated book tells the story of how Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) became one of England’s foremost engravers, beginning with his childhood in the countryside where he revelled in the natural world and started drawing what he saw around him. After training in Newcastle he engraved on a variety of materials and objects, produced commercial labels and signs but also published books about nature including his famous History of British Birds.

Most of the images and descriptions of his engravings are reproduced in traditional black and white, but there is astute use of dark cyan (turquoise) and emerald green in the book both as background and text to add interest; pewter grey is used well to frame some illustrations and there are a few full colour images.  The first paragraph on each page summarises the topic in Times Roman (24) font and more detail is added in Arial (14) with good sized spaces between the lines. This helps visual accessibility as a few pages are perhaps too ‘busy’ given the sheer detail of some of the engravings but overall the scale of the images help make them clearer.

Bewick Tales has a landscape format (200mm x 250mm) a manageable size, printed on high quality paper with a hard cover enabling it to be opened and laid flat across a table or knees. This makes it ideal for people living with early to moderate dementia and health and social care staff, family carers and friends to share especially since many images are accompanied by useful questions to prompt discussion. Equally however this book can be enjoyed by many different people who enjoy art, engraving and social history. Bewick Tales is an excellent resource for retirement communities, extra care, care homes and hospitals.

Maria Pasiecznik Parsons,

Creative Dementia Arts Network

Purchase online at:

https://www.equalarts.org.uk/shop/bewick-tales-stories-from-the-life-and-work-of-thomas-bewick