Christian Waller - The Great Breath, a book of seven design

The Great Breath, a book of seven designs by Christian Waller. The Golden Arrow Press - Melbourne - 1932.
Le tirage prévu était de 150 exemplaires, mais à peine une trentaine auraient été mis en circulation.

In 1929 the Wallers made a trip to Europe. Shortly after their return to Melbourne in 1930, they befriended Tatlock Miller, who owned a bookshop in Geelong; in the next few years he assisted with the production of a number of Christian Waller's books and prints; she contributed to the initial editions of his literary and artistic magazine Manuscripts (published from November 1931). Miller established the Golden Arrow Press, the first release of which was The great breath, published in April 1932, priced at £3.3.0 each.

The production of 'The great breath' was entirely undertaken by Waller; all aspects from the cutting and printing of the linoblocks to the manufacture of the distinctive gold-painted emerald green cover was done by hand. She printed the blocks on her 1849 hand-press in her studio at Ivanhoe, each book taking about four days to make, hand-bound with green cord. Although it was intended to produce an edition of 150, it seems only about 30 were made, with some unbound impressions extant, usually untrimmed. Each consisted of a title page, colophon, contents page and seven linocut designs. The images were printed in solid black on white translucent tracing paper, trimmed and tipped onto the cream pages. The books were not numbered sequentially, but rather in relation to the numerology of the buyer - the Gallery's copy was a gift of Klytie Pate, Waller's niece.

Christian Waller was a Theosophist, beliefs which inform 'The great breath'; in particular the Golden Dawn Movement. The central theme of the book is the evolution of the human race, based on the writings of Madame Blavatsky, the founder of the Theosophist movement, in particular her book 'The secret doctrine' (1888-97); the introduction stated 'A book of seven designs, each design a symbolic rendering of the impulse behind an individual Root Race of the present world cycle'. The designs draw upon ancient Egyptian and Greek imagery, and symbolism from a number of sources including the Zodiac, as well as art deco and modernist design. 'The lords of the flame' is the third image in the book; 'The lords of the flame made man a living soul in the Lemurian third race'.

Hendrik Kolenberg and Anne Ryan, 'Australian prints in the Gallery's collection', AGNSW, 1998
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