Stanley Donwood opens a shop selling his Radiohead screenprints

Stanley Donwood, who has made Radiohead's artwork since The Bends, reopens his website today as the Slowly Downward Manufactory, with a shop that sells his pictures as screenprints for the first time. Two of them are covers of OK Computer singles he made with Thom Yorke, who signs his artwork Dr. Tchock. Happy Family, from “Karma Police”, shows a father leading his family into a home-made fallout shelter of doors, pillows and cushions, as UK government guidance advised. Such a Pretty House is the cover of “No Surprises”; Donwood's note on it says the house is pretty and the car is nice, but he doesn't think anyone is home.

Every print is a limited edition that Donwood printed by hand, signed and numbered. Two new ones, Escape and Alarm, are built from pieces of the OK Computer artwork, and of Escape he writes that things are still NOT OK. Operation Phantom Fury, named after the US codename for the assault on Falluja last November, is still being printed and due by mid-May. The shop also sells his books; one, Catacombs of Terror!, is a pulp thriller he wrote in a month for a bet.

W.A.S.T.E., the band's mail-order and fan club, sent the news out with two flyers signed “Stanley Donwood, Proprietor”. More is promised: more prints, a spoken-word CD, probably more books and, one day, something extremely weird that he is keeping secret, though he wants to hear guesses.

Donwood wrote in to say an email would follow once it all worked. helo i went and redid my site without making sure everything worked ho hum⁶

He is also giving away a new story, My Giro, in eight chapters, one a week from today, each a typeset PDF to print on any paper. The cover comes in the last week, so the pages can be sewn or stapled into a book, or folded into paper aeroplanes. It's a free book, if you discount the cost of the paper, the ink, the printer, the computer, the internet connection and whatever medication you're on²

Prints in the Manufactory, May 2005