Writer William Hogan and photographer David Titlow are the authors of our new book about British Citizens Band Radio Culture of the 1980s, and more specifically the Eyeball Cards – the business cards of ‘breakers’ exchanged when meeting up in person after chatting on the airwaves. We asked them about their own experience of the wonderful world of CB radio and Eyeball Cards.
We’re proud to introduce our newest project, one that we’ve been beavering away at for over a year now: Four Corners Irregulars, a series of books presenting a new look at the history of modern British visual culture.
We have chosen a wide range of different subjects, ranging from politics to hobbies, and stretching from 1945 to the present day. All are linked by the remarkable visual creativity that has happened in Britain outside of art galleries and museums. Some of the artworks we will feature were made by people who wouldn’t have considered themselves artists, many more were, but who nevertheless chose to make their work seen outside of a traditional gallery context.
Each book will provide an overview of its subject, and together the books will add up to a portrait of our own histories – at times passionate, at others frivolous, but more complex and multifarious than the myths we sometimes tell ourselves about being British.
The first volume is by William Hogan and David Titlow, about Eyeball Cards, the mysterious business cards created by CB radio enthusiasts in the late 1970s and early 1980s. CB radio ‘breakers’ would chat over the airwaves at a time when the technology was yet to be legalised and, taking a lead from US CB culture, would create handles for themselves to help keep their identity a secret. It’s these invented identities that the Eyeball Cards immortalise, calling cards for ‘Lollipop’, ‘Rubber Duck’, and ’Blue Eyes’. These are amusing, occasionally mundane, dark or bawdy, but always personal creations — flotsam from a more innocent analogue world. The result is a window into an outpouring of creativity that prefigures online identities — social media handles before there was even an internet.
The book presents hundreds of the funniest, strangest and most intriguing Eyeball cards from across the UK. In addition, photographer David Titlow has taken portraits of some of the breakers who owned the cards, and writer William Hogan has written a lively history of how and why these cards came to exist.
Eyeball Cards will be published on 12 September, priced £14. It’s a hardback, with 192 pages. It’s Four Corners Irregular #1, and we’ll be announcing details of further books in the series over the coming weeks.
The Overcoat is one of two books by Nikolai Gogol in our Familiars series. (The other is The Nose, with art by Rick Buckley.) We asked The Overcoat's artist, Sarah Dobai, about her edition of the Gogol story.
This weekend (12 & 13 August, 2017) we will be at the Kiosk Independent Publishers Fair in Pekcham, London. Come and say hello.
Featured at the fair are the following outlets and publishers:
Actual Source
Adolfo
Arcades Magazine
Bronze Age
Clandestine Books
Colophon Foundry
Cygnnet
Ditto
Four Corners Books
Fruitlands Zine
Hato Press
Heresy
Hexus Press
Hi Bye Studio
Hotel
Kiosk
Migrant Journal
Note Well Press
Palm Studios
People of Print
The Photocopy club
The Plantation Journal
Roys Room
Sabat Magazine
Shelf Heroes
Snöar Press
Splash & Grab
Studio Operative
Varv Varv
Whatever Press
Yasseen Faik For Iraq and Syria, a collaborative poster exhibition curated by designer, Yasseen Faik (which launched at KK Outlet in June) will be hung in the space for the duration of the fair. The fair will span across two days, open 12–8pm on Saturday August 12th and 12–6pm on Sunday 13th. Admission is free of charge. Kiosk IPF 2017 is proudly supported by Arts Council England.
Copeland Park & Bussey Building, 133 Copeland Road, SE15 3SN
The cover of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, features tattoos by Liam Sparkes. We wanted to create a cover in keeping with the 19th century nautical theme of the book, and tattoos seemed the most natural way to do it. We were especially impressed with the tattoos of Liam Sparkes, who works out of Old Habits Tattoo on Kingsland Road. He created fresh artwork for us, inspired by themes and moments in the book, including the "N" Nautilus symbol, an underwater grave, a diving helmet, and a giant squid.
At Four Corners Books we seek to bring art history to life. Our aim is to explore unfamiliar corners of visual history, share the stories we find, and publish them as well as we can.
Run by Richard Embray and Elinor Jansz, we’ve been making books since 2003. Our aim is to create a space to reflect on artists and creative outputs from our recent past that have often been overlooked. It’s our mission to champion this creativity, in an accessible way.
We’re interested in those hidden pockets of art that can spark a bit of joy. Books that can amuse or educate, challenge or intrigue, delight or provoke. They are more than books about art. They are a way to experience it.
Publishing enquiries
Our main focus is art historical, with a particular interest in British art and design from c. 1945 to c. 2000; art or design that appeared outside of the art world, or work that wasn’t made for a gallery context; ephemera, protest, overlooked work, or collections that give an insight into social history.
Our books are primarily visual, although alongside that, we love to commission historians and art historians with new and interesting stories to tell.
For the most part we do not publish art theory or artists’ books. However we also occasionally commission artists to produce new illustrations for classic novels in our Familiars series. We are only able to commission titles in that series sporadically as these books are often slow to make.
Please contact us by email in the first instance. If you are a retailer wishing to make a trade order, please refer to our distributors listed below.
Four Corners Books, registered charity 1125471. Registered company 6591195. Company limited by guarantee, registered in England.
Trade enquiries / distribution:
Design by John Morgan studio
Programming by Benedict de Silva
Pictures by Four Corners Books