Manchester Book by The Sculpts

Manchester was the first great city of the new industrial age, fomenting a dynamic of capitalist technological change which transformed the globe.

Today, this culture of heady optimistic industrial innovation has evolved into something very different, but still intimately related. A post-modern urban culture now radiates across the city, enjoying a creative and innovative way of life within the landscape that it inherited from its industrial ancestors.

From the world’s first timetabled intercity railway linking the city to the sea, to the squelchy sounds of acid house reverberating through The Haçienda, Manchester by The Sculpts is a study in illustration of that change, the process by which Mancunians have constructed this new and alternative way of life.

Each beautifully printed hardback copy looks as comfortable on a coffee table as a shelf, although its best look is when it’s being skimmed through. Each letter that comes to form the city’s beloved name unravels another strand of local history.