Family (aka: Familie Japonaise or Japanese Family)

Stanley William Hayter

This impression of "Familie Japonaise" is one of four color trial proofs, apart from the published edition of 100 printed on Lauriat paper. The image was published by the St. Georges Gallery in London.

Hayter was experimenting with applying ink to the plate using stencils. The printing record for this work reads: "intaglio black, roller red violet through stencil, roller blue through stencil, roller yellow through stencil." It is an early example of the use of soft rollers to lay colors of lower viscosity over colors already applied to the surface of the plate, using stencils to offset the colors.

St. Georges Gallery was a 20th century bookshop founded by Agatha Sadler that specialized in the "most obscure academic tracts or long-out-of-print catalogues raisonnes." Over the years the gallery exhibited many printmakers, including many of those from Atelier 17.

The gallery, which moved around a number of addresses before settling in Duke Street, St James's, in 1964, was more than just a bookshop. Agatha encouraged her clients to use it as a place to meet, chat and exchange news, and so it developed a drawing-room atmosphere. The gallery was sold in 1989.