Urgent 2nd Class: Creating Curious Collage, Dubious Documents, and Other Art from Ephemera

I have admired Bantock's works for many years. I'm yet to figure out if I respect him more as an author or more as an artist. Maybe that's not important. Bantock can create places and imagery that often has me "fact checking" in Wikipedia to figure out what's real and what he's conjured up in his mind.In this book he shares his secrets with the reader. You can use this as a How-to for your own DIY project that will amaze and amuse. Scrapbooking, card making or just plain book creating skills will be enhanced with this top notch entry by the master. I personally created a story for my niece about how her imaginary friend Barry came to Earth from his home planet. Using techniques from Bantock's book I made a story that I can be proud of and goes far beyond any simple text format I would have done without this.

Have been looking for this book and finally found it on Amazon!Vintage items....books, art, antiques, ephemera, etc. have always held my interest andwhen I discovered "Urgent 2nd Class" by Nick Bantock I knew I had a treasure!It's full of the vintage and unusual....items of yesteryear and others that are just strange and weird!He includes....maps, photos, labels, books, stamps, postcards, drawings, collage, games, etc!All of them 'artistically recreated" and given new life with Bantock's creativity! He calls this'making mischief with history by concentrating on the old, tattered, worthless leftovers of bygone eras."From a readers standpoint.....it's a unique and very interesting read!From an artist's standpoint.....it jumpstarts the imagination and inspires creativity!As an artist - It's one of those classic books I will keep forever on my shelf and read often!

I am a huge, long-time fan of Nick Bantock's - I can't swear to it, as all my books are in boxes and storage right now, but I'm pretty sure I have a first edition of "Griffin & Sabine". His art and text has always been evocative and exceedingly different - poetry in pictures and words.Although I enjoyed reading this book, and found it interesting, it is not up to the same standards as his other work. You get the feeling either his publisher said "hey - it's time for another book, what are you going to do?" or he said "gee, I have all this stuff, whatever shall I do with it?"As other reviewers have stated, this is NOT a "how-to" book, and it does not, as is stated on the jacket, "show how to alchemically transform the unexpected into your own idiosyncratic art." If you're looking for step-by-step instructions, this is definitely not the book for you. However, if you are looking for inspiration and ideas, this serves well.The book is broken into 16 chapters and an introduction, and basically touches on the types of art the author creates, such as "Faux Mail", "Dubious Documents" and "Collage", and uses in his work, such as "Stamps", "Postcards" and "Photographs" - with short introductions to each chapter. I wish they had been longer, but then, he talks about much of his techniques and inspiration in his "autobiography" ("The Artful Dodger"), which I highly recommend.

If you are looking for a "how-to" book resulting in cookie-cutter images, then you may want to pass on this one. However; if you are looking for inspiration and the "why" rather than the "how" then this is the book for you.I literally read this book from cover to cover and just like a good novel, found it to be a page-turner. Nick Bantock takes the reader through the various types of ephemera and the reasons he chose the techniques used to produce his thought (and emotion) provoking works. I was absolutely enthralled and found my own muse stimulated to produce works of my own.Granted this book does not give step-by-step directions for creating the effects demonstrated, but isn't that part of the attraction of our chosen medium; the discovery of new techniques and processes that result in the look, feeling, and thoughts we are trying to convey?For true collage and assemblage artists this is an absolute must have. Copy-cats and weekend crafters may wish to pass.

I became interested in collage in the last year or so and seeing Nick Bantock's early books (which had fascinated me, but I never bought any), the Griffin and Sabine series, in a book store recently, I realized that Bantock was way ahead of the current popularity of Art Journals, Illustrated Journals, etc, which incorporate envelopes with secret messages, maps, etc.In the Amazon list of Bantock books, this one on his art form struck me as the most interesting, and indeed it is beautiful, but don't look for any instructions or techniques. You will find lots of inspiration, though.

I love Nick Bantock's work, and I was about to take a workshop in which we would illustrate personal narrative by creating convincing "fake" documents, so I thought this book would be a fountain of inspiration. It was pretty disappointing. It's almost as if the publisher simply rounded up a bunch of Bantock's unpublished work, created categories for chapters and then got a few comments from him. No techniques described, and so little context for the work presented that it felt more like a quick-and-dirty publishing project to trade on Bantock's name.

This is not a new book, but I have only recently discovered it for myself at the local library. After checking it out multiple times, I decided that I needed to make room on my bookshelf for my own copy of this challenge to my own creativity. Neil Bantock is well-known in the Arts/Crafts world, and I have several of his other books already. If you are remotely interested in postal art, or art period, check this one out. I think that you will want to add it to your home library too.

It is a beautiful book with awesome Inspiration. I only wish that there wers some actual projects in a step by step manner. I think it was still worth the price! The photography and examples are fantastic and it was nice to learn about Nick Bantock's methods.

This item was a present for my Wife. She absolutely loved it due to it's great condition.

Love the book and received the order in good time.

It’s okay. That’s the best I can say about Urgent 2nd Class. I knew when I ordered it that it wasn’t going to provide much instruction and I was fine with that. But I thought it was going to be really inspiring and it wasn’t that either. I enjoyed the author’s other books but should have realized that since his art in them is all the same — i.e., vintage and sometimes slightly fantastic — the examples in Urgent 2nd Class would also be of that ilk. Nothing wrong with that and I did enjoy leafing through the book, but paying a lot of money and waiting a long time to get it from the States — nah, I wouldn’t bother again.

very good collage book. very good book for inspiration and tricks to work with ephemeras and strange documents, or postal style collage. very good purchase for that price.

Wer den Autor kennt und seinen Stil mag, erfährt hier mehr zu seiner Arbeit. Ich war hin und weg.