Catalogue: Worktown: The Drawings of Falcon Hildred

Falcon Hildred is a highly accomplished artist who has dedicated his working life to recording the buildings and landscapes of 19th- and 20th-century industry, producing works of high aesthetic, historic and social value.

He has recorded in detail technological and engineering change and a rapidly disappearing way of life in Britain.

His drawings record such industrial towns such as Coventry, Newcastle, Newport and Blaenau Ffestiniog in Gwynedd (his home since 1969).

In 2011, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, working in partnership with the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust and with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, acquired the unique collection of over 600 of his original drawings of industrial buildings and landscapes.

Life and philosophy

The acquisition of the collection preserves an invaluable resource for future generations and will encourage access to Falcon’s work through a coordinated programme of digitisation, exhibition and education across England and Wales.

The first exhibition of these iconic images opened at the Museum of Iron, Shropshire, in October 2012 and Worktown: The Drawings of Falcon Hildred was launched at the opening.

We wanted Worktown to be more than an exhibition catalogue. We wanted it to explore the artist’s life and philosophies, provide a representative sample of his work, and act as a window to the entire Falcon Hildred Collection.

It was also important for us to highlight that the stunning images on display were acquired as part of an archive, and that they exist as archive items first, and exhibition objects second.

Worktown is a comprehensive book that provides information about individual exhibition images, while placing them in the broader context of the collection as a whole, and giving a deeper commentary on the key themes of the collection.

As an art book, the quality of image reproduction was a central concern. All of Falcon’s original drawings were scanned to archival standard when they were acquired, allowing us to reproduce works with accuracy.

We also made a decision to use a five-colour printing process that increased production costs, but gave us a more truthful colour reproduction. We showed some images on a larger scale than their originals to allow the incredible skill and detail of the artist’s work to shine through.

Rachael Barnwell is the Falcon Hildred project officer at the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales