Jolly Little Girls

Originally engraved as linocuts by the Lebanese artist and printmaker Hassan Zahreddine, these joyful images have been beautifully rendered using a vintage Heidelberg letterpress. They were adapted from the illustrations for our book Little Girls Are Wiser Than Men, a poetic fable about conflict and resolution by the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy.

The story revolves around two little girls Malashka and Akulka, who play, frolic, fight… make up, and play again, all in the course of a day. Tolstoy was greatly inspired by the actions of children, and believed that adults could learn much from them.

Read a blog post by V Geetha and Sanjana Vamadevan – Letterpress Prints: The Making of Little Girls Are Wiser Than Men – exploring the possibilities and constraints of the classic letterpress printmaking technique.