In 1967 John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote a song titled “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” for the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The inspiration, and many of the lyrics, came from a letterpress-printed Pablo Fanque circus poster from 1843 that Lennon had bought in an antiques shop.

This song, and the poster that inspired it, fascinated British designer and artist Peter Dean.  In 2012, Mr. Dean lovingly recreated that poster. Letterpress-printed like the original, it uses antique wooden and metal type and features two specially-commissioned wood engravings by notable British artist Andy English. Every print is hand-inked and hand-pulled on a Victorian ‘Albion’ press. It is a limited edition of 1,967 copies, a number that commemorates the release date of Sgt. Pepper.

ARC is happy to announce that we have recently acquired one of these lovely posters from Mr. Dean in London. You can see short film http://vimeo.com/50892862 showing the impeccable care in creating this print, and we hope YOU will consider adding one to you own collection.  You can learn more and contact Mr. Dean at kiteprint.com

It joins our other woodblock music poster, from Mais Um Discos, part of the materials gathered when we created Brazilian Music Day – part of this massive collection of two!