I can remember my mother creating this ad in 1962 as it was my first introduction to scraperboard (scratchboard) technique and she had everything spread out on the dining room table. The scraperboard consists of a layer of black India ink over a thin layer of white clay on top of a piece of cardboard. The artist creates the white lines by carefully scratching off the black ink with an X-Acto type razor knife to expose the white clay underneath. It’s a delicate operation where it’s best to avoid making any mistakes, although they can be corrected with the judicious application of more black ink. She even let me play a little with some scrap board, very satisfyingly but very tricky to scrap curved lines like the woman’s hair and to make tonal areas like the beach and water in this image, This image also shows remarkable perspective considering the inverted nature of white lines on black background. It also works as night time image.

If you are interested 46 guineas converts to about a thousand pounds in 2023 pound sterling or $1,200 and not something we could afford at the time. The ad ran for several weeks.