Leftovers Again!?

A big part of the planning for This Monkey’s Gone to Heaven was sorting through all the remaining sheets from old projects, seeing what I had in sufficient quantity for an edition of XX copies (TBD in large part by the number of sheets available for any given project – the proof etchings from Iskandariya turned out  to be the limiting factor). When all was done, I still had some sheets from a few projects, and in a few cases more than enough to relegate them to the recycle bin.*

* Unused sheets at HM don’t actually go into recycling. The paper’s too nice. At the very least, printed sheets get used to line binding boards. If the sheet is big enough and not too heavy, it gets painted or somehow decorated, and used to cover boards. I’ve also experimented with dyeing (printed) sheets black, and then printing on them in gold or silver. But the dyeing is messy and a lot of work.

 

Despite the admonition at the start of the bibliography, I’ve had a few inquiries about availability of old books. That gave me the idea to gather some of the remaining sheets to make an "excerpts," shown here. Above is a copy made up from various sheets included in Uncommon Paper, sewn on two long vellum slips, laced into a limp case made from the HM paste paper Claudia Cohen created for the binding of Elements in Correlation. 

Cobden-Sanderson did something like this and called them “retree” copies. That’s not what these are, not least because I’m no Cobden-Sanderson. These are just some random leaves from a project, at best a consecutive portion such as an introduction or chapter. 

 

I made three excerpts from Metal Types and Some Paper. One includes 13 sheets, one 11, and one just nine. All are cased in a sheet of painted HM Text that had been printed on one side (Elements in Correlation, a bad run that had to be redone). Held in the right light, you can see the burnishing of the paper caused by the type on the other side. It’s lovely paper. 

I had a complete set of preliminary sheets from Oddballs – title, Barry Moser’s intro and Jim Westergard’s foreword – plus one of Jim’s engraving and (by chance) its accompanying text sheet. Those all got sewn on vellum and laced into a case of painted handmade paper over very thin board.

Similar situation with Elements – I had a set of everything to the end of the first chapter (which includes Andrea Taylor’s glorious linocut portrain of Reg.) This one’s just a straight limp case, and once again using some of Claudia's paste paper. 

I had three sets of the frontis, title page and introduction (which actually starts on the title page) for Types/Paper/Print. The deluxe copies of that book included the full text repeated on two other papers, to demonstrate how the papers affect the appearance of a type. For the three excerpts, I had a copy of one leaf on all three papers to include.

I’ve put all these up on the &etc. “garage sale” page of the HM site, along with a couple of other HM titles. These are followed by a section of non-HM books I’ve culled from my shelves. I’ve tried to price them below market price; see what you think, if anything interests send me a note, we can talk. 

AND ANOTHER THING!

Maybe you saw one of the review’s of Marius Kociejowski’s new book, A Factotum in the Book Trade. I read the one in the NY Times. The quotes made me laugh – who’s ever heard of a snarky Canadian? And I was intrigued by mention that he has, or did have, a press, but could not find anything he’s associated with printing. But the more I thought about his belittling comments of customers, and everyone, the more I wondered how he was any different from all the Comic Book Guys out there? They are tiresome people.