The Ox Herding Pictures

The Ox Herding Pictures

            Yesterday, I had, briefly, the ownership of a complete set of the Ox Herding Pictures.  It has been thirty years since their release (December, 1983).  Most sets have vanished.  Many sets are incomplete.  Some sets have perished.  This set was probably the last original and complete set to be in my hands in my lifetime.  It was a complete set having the title print, the ten story prints, the title card, the ten poem cards and the ...pre-word processor era... three page photocopy cover text... all within its original folded paper envelope.  I photographed the whole production and here post it as a record of what a, now ‘impossible to find’, first and only issue set should be (have in it).  I am, too, pleased to be able to say that this photographic record does not even slightly convey the rich-to-the-eye and the sensuous-in-the-hand of the prints and the cards ...within the envelope... that is that too.