Pool Made with Paper and Blue Ink for Book

A print made for a book

In 1980 Thames & Hudson published Paper Pools, a book by David Hockney edited by Nikos Stangos that gathered the pressed-paper-pulp swimming pool pictures he had made two years earlier. A limited edition of the book came with a small original lithograph: Pool Made with Paper and Blue Ink for Book.

The print shows a close-up of a swimming pool. A diving board, outlined loosely in orange, runs at an angle along the top, with a thin band of green for the lawn. Below it a cross-hatched grid sets out the tiled basin, and wavering blue and dark lines suggest sunlight and moving water. The diving board's shadow bends through the rippling water onto the pool's side and floor, and even the lower edge of the plate undulates with the water.

It was printed in an edition of 1,000 on Arches Cover mould-made paper, with 100 artist's proofs, and published by Tyler Graphics, whose blindstamp is pressed into each sheet. Copies are signed, dated and numbered in pencil. Complete sets also include the book, stamp-numbered to match the print, in its original card slipcase.

Hockney, Ken Tyler and a pool in the woods

Hockney was born on July 9, 1937, in Bradford, England. He moved to Los Angeles in 1964, and the light, the lifestyle and the private backyard pools of Southern California became the subject of some of his most famous paintings, including A Bigger Splash of 1967. For Hockney the pool posed a formal problem: water, he said, can be any color, it moves, and it has no set visual description.

In 1978 he visited the printer Kenneth Tyler at his workshop in New York State, about fifty minutes' drive from Manhattan. By Hockney's own account he went to tell Tyler that he had no intention of making any more prints and was on his way to California to paint. Tyler showed him some paper pulp works by Ellsworth Kelly, Hockney took off his coat to make a few pulp doodles, and after three days he began to see what the medium could do.

The team ate lunch every day beside Tyler's swimming pool, and he swam almost daily. Watery paper pulp, he decided, was a good medium for pictures of water. He worked on the series continuously from August to October 1978, with Tyler, the papermaker Lindsay Green and other assistants, and finished 29 pressed colored-pulp pictures. Hockney died in London on June 11, 2026, at 88.

How the Paper Pools were made

For days Hockney drew and photographed the pool at different times of day and night, often with his model Gregory Evans posing in and around the water. From his drawings, metal moulds were built out of strips of galvanized sheet metal, cut, bent and soldered into compartments.

The moulds were laid over freshly formed wet sheets of paper, and colored pulp was poured into the compartments. Hockney then finished the colors by hand, using spoons, kitchen basters, dog combs, toothbrushes, his fingers, a garden hose and, on occasion, an airbrush. The sheets were pressed in a hydraulic press so that the color became part of the paper itself rather than sitting on its surface.

The Paper Pools were first shown in England in February 1979, when some 20,000 people saw them in London. The book of 1980, and the lithograph made for it, carried that project to a much wider audience.

On the market

Because 1,000 numbered copies were made, the print appears at auction regularly. One market tracker counts 165 auction sales and reports eight in a single recent twelve-month period, with five-year hammer prices running from £22,457 in April 2023 to £65,000 in January 2023.

Copy 41 of 1,000, sold complete with its matching book and slipcase in a London online sale, realized £69,300. Copy 208 sold in the U.S. on June 3, 2026, eight days before Hockney's death, for $61,440 against an estimate of $30,000 to $50,000. Copy 357, framed, sold in a New York online sale that closed on July 16, 2026, for $50,800 on an estimate of $30,000 to $50,000.

A copy numbered 43 of 1,000 was offered at auction with an estimate of £30,000 to £50,000.

How to identify one

A standard copy is signed, dated '80' and numbered out of 1,000 in pencil along the lower edge, and carries the Tyler Graphics blindstamp. One copy also bears the workshop number DH80-460 in pencil on the back.

Catalogs give the publisher's address differently: some say Mount Kisco, New York, and one says Bedford, New York. The sheet measures about 10 1/2 x 9 inches.

One dealer notes that both signed and unsigned examples exist and that the print trades either alone or with the book. Buyers should check which version they are looking at, since the signed, numbered print is the edition described here.

The numbers

Medium

Lithograph in colors on Arches Cover mould-made paper

Dimensions

Sheet 267 x 229 mm (10 1/2 x 9 in)

Edition size

1,000, plus 100 artist's proofs

Catalogue raisonné

Tyler 269; MCA Tokyo 234

Workshop number

DH80-460

Paper Pools series

29 pressed colored-pulp works, made August to October 1978

Timeline

1. Jul 9, 1937

   David Hockney is born in Bradford, England.

2. 1964

   Hockney moves to Los Angeles.

3. 1967

   Hockney paints A Bigger Splash.

4. Aug 1978

   Hockney begins the Paper Pools at Ken Tyler's workshop in New York State, working continuously through October.

5. Feb 1979

   The Paper Pools are shown for the first time in England; some 20,000 people see them in London.

6. 1980

   The book Paper Pools is published; its limited edition comes with Pool Made with Paper and Blue Ink for Book, in an edition of 1,000.

7. Jan 2023

   A copy reaches a hammer price of £65,000, the five-year high reported by one tracker.

8. Jun 3, 2026

   Copy 208 sells at auction in the U.S. for $61,440.

9. Jun 11, 2026

   David Hockney dies in London at 88.

10. Jul 16, 2026

    Copy 357 sells at auction in New York for $50,800.

The world in 1980

• Mar 21, 1980

  President Jimmy Carter announces a U.S. boycott of the Moscow Summer Olympics.

• May 18, 1980

  Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington State, killing 57.

• May 22, 1980

  Pac-Man is released in Japan.

• Jun 1, 1980

  CNN, the first 24-hour news channel, launches.

• Aug 31, 1980

  The Gdańsk Agreement ends the shipyard strike in Poland and opens the way to the Solidarity trade union.

• Sep 22, 1980

  Iraq attacks Iran, starting the Iran-Iraq War.

• Nov 4, 1980

  Ronald Reagan defeats Jimmy Carter for the U.S. presidency.

• Dec 8, 1980

  John Lennon is murdered outside his New York apartment building.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Pool Made with Paper and Blue Ink for Book is number 57 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (78 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Hockney went to Ken Tyler's workshop in 1978 to say he was finished with printmaking. He stayed about three months.
• The Paper Pools were colored with tools including dog combs, toothbrushes, a kitchen baster and a garden hose.
• The pool in the Paper Pools was Ken Tyler's own, where Hockney swam almost daily before lunch.
• A copy sold for $61,440 just eight days before Hockney died in June 2026.
• Besides the 1,000 numbered copies, the edition included 100 artist's proofs.