This is a very special picture book not least for the crazy title! It is the first time the story - first published in a Polish newspaper in 1940 and recreated in this exquisite collaged version in 1963 - has been made available to an English-speaking audience. Franciszka and Stefan Themerson were Polish avant-garde artists and filmmakers who arrived as refugees in London, she in 1940, he in 1942, and who continued to work on a huge range of creative projects in England. With her unique illustrations, and his deceptively simple, humorous stories, they created many successful children's books together. Lovingly republished, this will be an opportunity for a new audience to escape into a book, which, as Wadely says in his introductory note, 'has all the innocence of a child's song, as the table dances back to nature, and the liberated typography floats across the page'.
The Table that Ran Away to the Woods tells the tale of a writing desk that one day 'grabbed two pairs of shoes/ran downstairs, and took flight', escaping into the countryside with its owners in barefoot pursuit.
This is the first English translation of classic modernist children’s book which will appeal to fans of classic children’s literature as well as those of avant-garde typography and design.
Stefan and Franciszka Themerson were leading Polish avant-garde artists and film-makers in the 1930s. They left Warsaw for Paris in 1937, and in 1940 Franciszka fled to London, where her husband later joined her in 1942. In 1948 they founded the influential Gaberbocchus Press, publishers of Kurt Schwitters, Jankel Adler and Alfred Jarry, among others.
