Moods And Masks is a collections of 32 unpublished poems written by my late grandfather, Edward Shillito, during his time at Oxford University from 1929-30. As an extremely late Christmas present to the family, I decided to design, print and hand-bind a set of books containing the poems.
He had taken great care to hand-write the poems, so I took design cues from his written typesetting, using the same alignment and ruling throughout. I wanted this book to have a heritage feel to it, so uncoated, textured, off-white stock was selected for the inside pages, with forest-green card stock for the cover. Veronika Burien's 2010 typeface Maiola complemented my Grandad's language use well, and so was used throughout the book.
My Grandad suffered from Alzheimer's in the early years of my life and died before I became old enough to understand, so I never really knew him firsthand. The undertaking of this project had the unintended but welcome therapeutic effect of The process of typing up the poems gave a unique insight into his life as a twenty-something.
Photography by Hannah Warmisham
