Henry Moore's shelter sketches are considered by many to be his finest achievement as a draughtsman. They were made in the tunnels of the London Underground where residents sought shelter from bombing raids during the Battle of Britain. They evince both the characteristic smooth contours of Moore's sculptures and the humaneness he sought to achieve in all of his art. At this time Moore was an Official War Artist, a salaried position awarded to him at the urging of the art critic Kenneth Clark.

The original sketchbook is pen & ink and graphite, with green, red, and blue wax crayon and watercolor. The portfolio offered here reproduces the original sketchbook with eighty color collotypes of Moore's World War II drawings and one original color lithograph on hand made paper signed by Moore once in the stone (in reverse) and once in pencil on the print itself.