FAC-adjacent: Peter Hook Owned One of My Prints

"What a band. I loved these 'Family Tree' things."

That's Peter Hook, writing about a Joy Division print I made mapping the band's discography.

A few years ago, while I was living in Manchester, I sent a copy of the print to Peter Hook through his management. I didn't think much would come of it beyond a nice gesture, a small thank you to someone whose bass playing had shaped a huge amount of what I care about in music. I didn't hear back, and I moved on.

Then, in 2021, Peter Hook put a large part of his personal collection up for an Omega Auctions sale.

"The Signature Collection"

Hook had already done this once before, in March 2019, when Omega Auctions sold off close to 300 lots from his Joy Division and Factory Records years: his first bass, bought after the Sex Pistols played the Lesser Free Trade Hall, the guitar used on Closer, even the old Factory Records boardroom table, famously broken by Happy Mondays. That sale raised money for the Epilepsy Society, The Christie, and CALM.

In October 2021, he did it again, this time with the New Order side of his career, and still things from Joy Division. Over 400 lots: guitars, awards, stage gear, rare vinyl, personal memorabilia going back four decades. Omega Auctions put together a full catalogue for the sale, complete with Hook's own handwritten-style comments on individual pieces, the kind of small personal notes that make an auction catalogue actually worth reading.

Lot 160 was mine.

What the catalogue says

The listing reads: "Joy Division Songwriting History Poster 1977-1980. Frame measures 85 x 60cm." Underneath it, in Hook's own words: "What a band. I loved these 'Family Tree' things."

That phrase isn't a throwaway one. "Family Trees" is a direct nod to Pete Frame, the music journalist who spent decades hand-drawing intricate band genealogy charts for Sounds, NME, Melody Maker, and Rolling Stone, tracing lineups and offshoots the way a genealogist traces a bloodline. Frame's Rock Family Trees ran in the British music press for years and got its own BBC series. Hook, who came up reading exactly those magazines, wasn't just being polite. He was placing my print inside a tradition he'd clearly loved for most of his life, at least that is what I want to believe.

It sold for £320 for charity, well above its £50 starting price. I found the listing itself still live on Omega's site, lot 160, right there among the rest of Hooky's history: the quote, the price, the date, all in one place.

I also own a copy of the catalogue itself, bought afterward through Omega or through Hook's own site, I honestly don't remember which anymore. There's no story behind how I got it. What matters is that it's signed by Hook on the cover, and Lot 160 is right there on the page, in print, not just on a website that could change one day.

It sat in the catalogue between a framed collection of New Order photographs from a Paris festival and a Salford gig poster, in a book that also contained his stage-played basses and Grammy certificates. Somewhere along the way, a print I made at a desk, working through dates and label catalogue numbers, ended up on a wall in the home of one of the band's own members, tracked well enough that he still had something to say about it when it came time to let it go, and valuable enough to someone else that it sold for more than six times its opening price.

Why it matters to me

I make these prints because I care about getting the history right: the dates, the labels, the small connections between records that most people never think to map out. Most of that work happens quietly, at a desk, with no idea whether it ever reaches the people it's actually about.

Lot 160 is the one time I found out. Not a review, not a testimonial I went looking for, just a member of the band writing a line in his own auction catalogue, because he actually liked the thing.

I made that print as a fan, unprompted, before it would have occurred to me to ask if he wanted one. I still make prints that way sometimes, just because I want one for my own studio or living room, with no plan for it to go anywhere else.

If you're reading this and you've bought one of my prints, thank you, and I hope it's a reminder of what you're passionate about.