My enthusiasm for the work of Ricketts and Shannon was sparked by Ton Leenhouts, who passed away peacefully last Friday. We met in 1983 at a party at the Phoenix bookbindery in Amsterdam, and Ton soon invited me to catalogue his collection. It was a charming way for him to have me round to his house as often as possible. Although I was a quarter of a century younger, we bonded immediately. What followed was a 43-year love affair.
Ton was head of publicity and press relations at the Danstheater, the modern ballet company in the Netherlands that undertook many international tours. For many years, he not only designed the posters for the performances himself, but also the programme booklets; and as an innovative touch, he came up with the idea of using not stock photographs but photographs taken during the first costume run-through – photographs that were developed overnight and delivered to the printers so that the booklets were ready on the very morning of the first night. A race against the clock that, somehow, always worked out.
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| Ton Leenhouts, Crete, 1971 |
From a young age, he surrounded himself with books and works of art, and when I examined his book collection, I noticed that he collected modern literature in German, French and Dutch, but that, when it came to English literature and art, he had developed a particular fondness for the period 1860–1910. He collected book bindings, gift books and magazines from that era. However, he never confined himself to just one movement or focus. His curiosity constantly led him to explore other areas of interest, such as book illustration, which put him on the trail of The Vale Press. I wrote previously about the formation of that collection in A Modest Collection, a publication of the Private Libraries Association. Huge numbers of antiquarian catalogues arrived weekly at his house in The Hague, and he made frequent buying trips to London.
His collection contained ever-growing rows of books by and about William Blake, D.G. Rossetti, James McNeill Whistler, Lewis Carroll, Lawrence Housman and Charles Ricketts. And although he built bookcase after bookcase himself, there was always room for furniture, prints, paintings and antiques; a pleasant balance prevailed in every room.
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| Ton Leenhouts, 2024 |
The cases were filled with literature, books on art and design, cultural history, photobooks, childen's literature, old tourists guides, publisher's memoirs, World War II, homosexuality, dictionaries. Although he was a slow reader, he easily read four books at a time. He drew connections between all those fields and, in conversation – he was a witty, erudite storyteller who was always on form – he did make use of that knowledge but never flaunted it, for his concern for others was greater than his ego.
Ton designed the layout for about twenty publications, which he had illustrated by artists and printed by commercial or private presses in very small print runs; these were published under the imprint of the Tight End Press or the Canto Pers.
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| Ton Leenhouts at a party, 2013 |
His zest for life was infectious. He was an attractive and enthusiastic entertainer, who loved cooking for groups and always managed to come up with the perfect, unexpected gift for everyone.
Personally, I learnt a great deal from him whether travelling in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, the South of France or Italy, at home together or in the company of friends or collegues; his humour, courtesy, enthusiasm, style and charm were loved by many, and to me he meant everything.
[See also blog 382. The 2018 Alphabet: T (Always)]
