The Devil's Artisan

A ROGUES' GALLERY
OF THE CANADIAN BOOK AND PRINTING ARTS

Warren Clements

When I think of Warren Clements, I see The Globe and Mail. Warren spent much of his career there, thirty years, and was responsible for some fascinating aspects of that enterprise. He co-wrote numerous editions of their Style Book and edited The Full Mountie (2003), a collection of readers’ entries to The Globe’s ‘Challenge’ column. Warren’s original comic strip, ‘Nestlings’, ran in The Globe for more than a decade, and his column on language, ‘Word Play’, for sixteen years. His achievements at The Globe were stellar, but I think it was only after he retired that Warren’s creativity and ambition emerged in full. He had always been interested in humour and cartoons, and magazine and book publishing, as far back as 1975 when he edited Gaslight: Canada’s Humour Magazine, or when he compiled Portfoolio 25: The Year’s Best Canadian Editorial Cartoons (2011). In 2012, Warren decided to become an independent book publisher and started the imprint Nestlings Press. A tour of the company’s website (nestlingspress.com) reveals how diligent he has been. In its first ten years Nestlings has published thirty-three books, with more to come. Warren marked the early years of the press in an article for DA 81 (Fall/Winter 2017), ‘The Art of Drawing Laughs: Nestlings Press Turns Five’, charting the origins of Nestlings, its early work, and its ambitions. The Nestlings books often focus on illustration or cartoons, word play, fairy tales, and humour. In my opinion, one of Warren’s greatest achievements has been to help preserve the historical record of illustration, in particular the work of famous, or obscure, or forgotten Canadian illustrators, including Brian Gable, Anthony Jenkins, Robert E. Johnston, Alan King, Jack McLaren, Julian Mulock, Walter Trier, and others.