London Centre for Book Arts – London Centre for Book Arts

Based in what was once the heart of London's print industry, the London Centre for Book Arts (LCBA) is an artist-run, open-access studio offering education programmes for the community and affordable access to resources for artists and designers.

London Centre for Book Arts

Based in what was once the heart of east London's print industry, the London Centre for Book Arts is an artist-run, open-access studio offering education programmes for the community and affordable access to resources for artists and designers.

[UPCOMING EXHIBITION]
THEMERSON & THEMERSON
Gaberbocchus Press 1948–1979
18 September – 22 November 2025
Private view: Thursday 18 September, 6:30–9pm

London Centre for Book Arts is delighted to present an exhibition dedicated to Gaberbocchus Press, the avant-garde publishing house founded and run collaboratively by Franciszka and Stefan Themerson in London, 1948. Together they published and illustrated more than sixty titles over thirty one years, introducing seminal experimental European writers to a British audience.

A guiding principle of the press was to publish “best-lookers rather than best-sellers” resulting in striking, unconventional designs and a quietly radical commitment to publish books not for profit, but to create a platform for art and literature that was deemed unpublishable by the mainstream. Playful, anarchic and enduringly independent in all their activities, the Themersons and Gaberbocchus Press resisted categories and conventions and when asked about the strengths and weaknesses of the press, gave the same answer to both questions: “refusal to conform”.

LCBA thanks the people who made this exhibition possible; Daniel Haynes, Catherine Moore, Harriet Neville, and Joe Hales. With special thanks to Jasia Reichardt and Robert Devčić for their generosity and support.

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