Lambretta: An eBay Buyer’s Guide Spring 2019

In the early 1980s, Scott King fell in love with the gleaming hordes of Lambrettas that would pass through his hometown of Goole, East Yorkshire en-route to scooter rallies in Skegness and Scarborough.

King bought his first Lambretta aged fourteen and has been passionate about them ever since. Having not owned a scooter for almost ten years, King now spends many hours poring over eBay UK assessing the merits of Lambrettas that he will never buy.

King’s latest book is a genuine – if highly subjective and non-professional – buyer’s guide that wryly illustrates some of the nuances and eccentricities at the heart of Lambretta ownership. King describes this book as “the reciprocal for a lifetime’s accumulation of useless knowledge… expressed in a quasi-impenetrable language”.

The book could also be read, not only as an indulgence of King’s nerdish love of Lambrettas, but as a unique take on the inherently self-indulgent nature of the ‘artist’s book’ as a form.

Scott King has produced several books including: Anxiety & Depression (2009), Art Works (2010), Anish and Antony Take Afghanistan (2014) – all published with JRP-Editions; as well as, Public Art (2016) and, Britlins (2017), both published with Slimvolume.

King’s work has been exhibited internationally in both commercial galleries and institutions; his most recent work, 77 Barton Street – a full-scale wax rubbing of the facade of former Joy Division singer Ian Curtis’ home in Macclesfield, England – is currently on display as part of, Hyper! A Journey in Art and Music at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg.