Bob Haberfield: The Man And His Art
A two-volume tribute to the artist, showcasing his astonishing range and talent. Now available from Jayde Design
Bob Haberfield is best known to science fiction and fantasy fans as the artist responsible for his stunning covers for the Mayflower editions of Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion novels. In 2021 Bob passed away, and in June of that year his son Ben contacted me through my blog to ask my advice on what to do with the original artwork. After a few discussions, Michael Moorcock suggested that we get in touch with John Davey of Jayde Design about the possibility of a book dedicated to Bob’s work. The publisher had recently released a monograph of the work of Jim Cawthorn, another illustrator closely linked to Moorcock and the magazine New Worlds.
What we didn’t fully grasp at the time was the sheer size of Bob’s legacy. The science fiction and fantasy covers represented a tiny subset of a body of work that encompassed a huge range of styles, subjects and media. In the end we catalogued over 3,500 works of art, and then whittled the list down to a core set of pieces that we felt best represented the breadth of Bob’s output over half a century.
The result is Bob Haberfield: The Man And His Art, a two-volume set showcasing paintings, drawings, commercial and fine art. In the preface, John Davey writes:
There were few endeavours -- as readers will discover in these volumes -- to which Bob Haberfield could not turn his creative hand.
An extremely accomplished musician and singer, he rejected the lure of a career on stage in favour of more solitary pursuits as an artist. He went on to make a reasonable living in that field, and remains best known for his often astonishing book-cover artworks, particularly those painted for titles by fantasy and science fiction author Michael Moorcock.
In time, however, he would struggle to reconcile his limitless artistic ambitions with the constraints of work-for-hire, no matter how extraordinary and wide-ranging the results.
Other demons, too, would affect both his output and his relationship to it, added to which his strongly held Buddhist beliefs felt at odds with a monetary wealth that he neither sought nor wanted.
So there are two discrete elements to Bob Haberfield: the man, and his art. Even that separation is by no means clear-cut, but it does allow for a logical distinction between these two complementary volumes.
To quote Ben Haberfield, Bob’s son, Volume I: The Man focuses almost exclusively on “a catalogue of his drawings and paintings ... These images are an expression of who he truly was. This is his legacy. The catalogue he made is his own selection of those images and this book is that selection”.
Volume II: His Art features painstakingly curated -- deemed the best -- examples of Bob Haberfield’s many book & magazine covers and record sleeves, as well as other artworks created across a staggering range of subjects and media.
Each volume also includes a number of essays by family, friends, peers and admirers of Bob Haberfield… both the man and his art.
These contributors include John Guy Collick, John Davey, Ben Haberfield, Garry Kinnane, Rodney Matthews, Peter Meerman and Michael Moorcock.
The final two volume tribute is a really lovely set of books, and I’m very proud to have had the opportunity to help bring this to life, and to preserve the legacy of such an iconic arrtist. Bob Haberfield: The Man and His Art costs £52, with postage and packing included for the UK. For international shipping rates please check the site.
You can order the book directly from Jayde Design by clicking on this link.