THE MERMAID AND MRS HANCOCK - Imogen Hermes Gowar
The first task after reading the manuscript was to collect research on typography, fonts, printed matter, fashion and fabrics. Referencing eighteenth-century lettering helped develop the title and author font. The first sketches by the lettering artist can be seen above as well as the finished title. The way the ‘and’ has been rendered is of particular note.
The objective was always to present a whole design package with this title. The novel was set in Caslon, a popular font in the mid 1700s and the title page was designed to echo the title page of Clarissa. In keeping with the time period the book is set in, an eighteenth-century Harvill Secker logo was created for the cover. The bird was silhouetted from an engraving found in the book Old English Cuts and Illustrations.
Hinting at the narrative, the eighteenth-century pale blue silk shown above is incorporated into the cover design. Anna Maria Garthwaite, a celebrated textile designer of the eighteenth century, designed the silk pattern. Anna lived at the very heart of the silk industry in Spitalfields, where she produced over one thousand patterns for damasks and brocades. The silk is suggestive of waves and was discovered during a research trip to the Eighteenth Century Galleries at the V&A.
Layering two eighteenth-century silks created the background of the cover. The mermaid’s tail was then worked into this repeated pattern. The tail was created from the author’s research on mermaids, collected while she was writing the novel.
The shells reference the fashionable eighteenth-century shell grottoes that feature in the novel. They neatly appear within the text design too.
