The Printers’ Blues

 

What follows is a long-winded announcement for a new chapbook from HM, with some additional information on the topic it addresses appended... 

 

The first blue paper copy of a book I saw was not auspicious: it was Black Sparrow Press’ 1973 edition of D. H. Lawrence’s The Escaped Cock. The blue paper looked like cheap copy stock. But it started me wondering about blue paper copies. Why blue?

 

That was about 30 years ago. I didn’t spend all that time pondering blue copies, but the question did recur a few years ago while working on the Griffo project – Aldus was the first publisher to issue a few copies of a new book printed on blue paper – and I did some searching. I thought surely some academic or bibliophile would have researched the whys & hows of blue paper copies, but apparently not, or at least not the answer to my specific question of Why blue? I did find an essay in the 1959 edition of Gutenberg Jahrbuch by Wisso Weiss (a German paper historian & “watermarker” among other vocations), but it didn’t seem to ever have been translated from the original German. So I had our new AI overlords do a quick pass, just to get a sense of the article.

 

It is broader in scope than simply why blue, but a few sections speak to it directly. This month HM issues a chapbook printing English translations of these sections, along with a foreword and postscript that provide some historical context and additional details. 

 

The chapbook is similar in form and style to Francesco Griffo’s Foreword to Petrarch (2021), although sewn in a handmade paper wrap rather than cased in boards. Like that book, it is set in Pablo Impallari’s digital version of Cancelleresca Bastarda. It was printed on my small stash of blue-tinged J Whatman mouldmade paper. Not as blue as Aldus’ blue paper, but blue enough. Given my unreliable printing, I anticipated getting no more than 40 acceptable copies from the paper available, but I actually netted 42. Each copy is sewn in a wrap of Reg Lissel’s handmade rag paper that has been dyed blue. The cover and text pages have been enlivened with calligraphic flourishes taken from J.B. Preusse’s Vollständige Anleitung zum Schreiben für die Land-Schulen (1792) and G. Bickham’s The Universal Penman (1733).

 

The Whatman paper is very thin and therefore somewhat transparent, more than one might ideally want, but it prints beautifully. I’d been hording it for years, and there was just enough for this small project, so I just decided to live with the transparency.  

 

The HM email list was offered pre-publication purchase, with a discount, and those copies have all been shipped. The remaining copies are available priced at US$150 plus shipping. A page with some photos has been added to the HM site. 

 

A FEW INTERESTING BLUE PAPER COPIES

Blue is not the only color to be used for a few special copies: pink, yellow and red are also known, but blue has been the most common colored paper used. While the examples of blue paper copies I’ve seen do have an intriguing appearance, the blue doesn’t seem to make the printing more legible or beautiful in any way. Book collectors being what they are, that intriguing oddness probably is all it took to make the practise a satisfying addition for publishers. I’ve answered my own question.

 

The study of blue paper has become an active field of research over the past few decades, something Weiss anticipated in his article. In recent years there was a large symposium on the topic, coinciding with an exhibition at the Getty. But if the answer to my question lies in the sympoisum papers, I have not found it. One academic, Paolo Sachet, touches on the question in his paper ‘Exploiting Antiquarian Sale Catalogues: A Blueprint for the Study of Sixteenth-Century Books on Blue Paper,’ and provides what probably is the best answer we’ll have (which is included in the new chapbook), barring the discovery of some note from Aldus explaining why he decided to add a few blue sheets to the pile when he was printing Scriptores rei rusticae in 1514 (a plain, boring white paper copy shown below).

 

Printing a few ‘special’ copies on blue paper was clearly inspired by artists who had begun using it for drawings and prints, experimenting with the tonal effects that could be achieved. Using it for type quickly spread from Adlus to other printers in Venice, then across Italy & into France over the next century, and then to other European printing centers through the 19th century. But it seems to have largely died out during the 20th century; I’d have thought the fine press revival of the early 20th century would have been ripe for blue copies, but seems not. The use of special, or at least different, paper for a few copies persisted, but not blue so much. Corvinus Press issued a few copies of Lawrence of Arabia (1936) on blue paper, but also used three other papers for the edition, which makes the blue variant a little less notable.

 

Incline Press printed a small volume on blue paper in 2013, celebrating Boccaccio’s birth, but it seems the entire edition of 250 copies was printed on the same paper, so not just a few special ones.

Tragara Press printed a short essay (Autumn Thoughts) on blue paper in 1975, but again the entire edition of 90 copies, not just a few.  

 

Here are some links to a few interesting blue paper copies...

 

A forged blue copy Aldine! I’d have thought the easiest way to forge a blue copy would be to simply dye the sheets of a regular copy, but apparently this an actual printed forger. Seems a lot of effort. 

 

PrPh Books has issued one catalogue devoted to blue paper copies, and another catalogue with many examples included. Lots of great images. The book above is the first and only edition of the heroic poem that recounts the true events of a duke’s fall from his horse during a tournament, said duke being the author’s patron. Ripe for translation & reprinting. 

The first Italian edition of Euclid’s Elements, printed in Urbino, 1575. 

 

I found a reference stating the 1553 edition of Ludovico Dolce’s translation of Metapmorphosis is the earliest known fully illustrated book printed on blue paper, but I can’t find anything to back that claim up. Either way, lovely book. 

Two Essays on Slavery (Gehenna Press) includes an 8-page section at the end printed on blue paper. The text in this section is set in 8-pt type, which combined with the dark blue paper doesn’t make for easy reading. The book’s title page is dated 1970, but the blue section includes the colophon, which is dated 1975. 

 

Just to tie things off, I wasn’t the only person wondering about blue paper. Thea Burns has just published a much more thorough investigation, Blue Paper: The Overlooked History of a Drawing, Printing & writing Material 1400-1600. Probably a good thing I didn’t know about it until after printing my measly 12 pages. 

 

See you in September, by which time I should have news about another project moving through the press.

HM Enters Early 21st Century

A few housekeeping notes for this post, but first something that might actually be interesting...

March was Women’s History Month. Kelmscott Books has issued three catalogs that mark the event, highlighting work from female artists and printers. For some reason they aren’t listed under Catalogs on the shop’s site, maybe they will be. But the catalog for the New York Book Fair, which is listed on the site, includes some items that reflect the shop’s interest in issues social and political. It’s encouraging to see a business not shying away from these topics.

I wondered if a book that made a big splash when published in 1995 was included in the women’s catalogs: The Ladies Printing Bee. No. Not surprising, it sold out pretty quickly. The edition was just 195 copies, and a chunk of that had to go to the 36 contributing presses from around the world. It was a fantastic collection of work, artistically, technically and intellectually. Published & shepherded by Jules Remedios Faye, I think with some help from her partner at the time, Chris Stern. No copies on Abe, but weirdly there’s one (discounted) on amazon.com.

There were a few collaborative projects like this in the ’80s and ’90s. Aside from some things Codex has done, I don’t know of any more recently (maybe I just don’t get invited, and for good reasons). Printer’s Choice in 1983. Alan James Robinson spearheaded one to celebrate the work of printer Harold McGrath that was very cool. There was one for John DePol, I think organized by Neil Shaver (Yellow Barn Press) that you couldn’t find for love or money for many years, but copies are around now.

Speaking of Neil and John DePol: In the mid-1990s, before the Internet really took off, Portland’s Powell’s Books was a fantastic place to trawl for press books. The poetry section was especially rich (for obvious reasons), but a press book could be found tucked into almost any section. This was before the Internet protected know-nothing book buyers from their ignorance, and books could be found shockingly underpriced. Here’s one of my favorite finds (it was in History-England):

 

 

Interesting two-signature format; maybe the Tovil was in limited supply, which would explain the lack of blanks fore & aft (and the horrible tipped-on endsheets) & ex folius colophon printed on different paper. Very well printed, rectos only. All for $5. A weekend safari to Powell’s every year or so was a lot of fun while it lasted. These days, on the rare occasion I encounter an unrecognized treasure on a shelf, I’m generally inclined not to disturb it.

 

HOUSEKEEPING

 

A new HM web site went up in February. Hopefully more user friendly, definitely better images & fewer typos. 

 

Moving forward, new HM publications will be offered for sale directly from the studio. Distributing books soley through booksellers worked for a long time – it greatly reduced shipping & invoicing work, and the booksellers got the books into collections I never could have reached – but the booksellers have been disappearing and aren’t being replaced by new ones.

 

The tradition of fine press printing I wanted to be part of was already in decline when I started 25 years ago, I just didn’t realize it. I suspect the majority of HM publications will continue to be out of step with what most collectors are interested in today, but my projects have always been simply about entertaining myself; if a handful of others are interested as well, great.

 

The new site’s Upcoming page will be updated with details of what’s in the works. It also has a form for subscribing to emails that will offer pre-publication details and a discounted price. A new project, similar in scope and focus to 2022’s The IdealBook, will be featured in the next blog update (June 1).

 

Finally, should you know someone needing a handpress, the big Ostrander-Seymour Extra-Heavy that most HM books have been printed with will need a new home in the next year or so. (I’ll finally start putting the Albion folio press to regular use.) The colors are horrific but, to the best of my knowledge, original. It could be painted black & shiny, but that seems dishonest. I didn’t want a pretty press, I wanted a good one, and it is. I’ll miss it but not the 2,000 lbs it adds to my life.

 

 

Is it just me or has blogger gotten really awful and impossible to format, i.e. worse than it already was? Like, I'm trying to format this para to align left and it won't. And why do I have to use special characters to insert proper apostrophes? (Which I'm too bored to do at this point.) And why is this para appearing in the editing view as the wrong font, but correct in preview/post view? Unless you're using a phone in which case it is wrong. Because blogger...

It’s a Limited Edition!

The next three months will be spent printing Byzantium’s next book, Textile Designs on Paper: An Archive from Early 19th-Century France. It’s slated for publication in the fall. While I’m doing that, I’ll be working on a few book projects for HM. One is another collaboration with Briony Morrow-Cribbs. I’m going to be updating this blog only every three months, so look for some news April 1 (and we’ll see then if it’s a joke). 

 

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The phrase “limited edition” gets thrown around very freely, from sneakers to drink coasters to rugs. I can’t get into the question of why stating that an object is one of only xxx copies available makes it more interesting or desirable to some people, but it does. Often the actual limitation isn’t even stated, which generally means it’s a big number, and possibly one determined entirely by sale, like any other product.

 

Just about any physical book (or car, or shoe, or...) is limited in quantity because at some point the production line gets turned off. The only exception with books I can think of is POD. If you’re going to make the limitation part of the book’s promotion – only 5,000 copies produced! – it really should be stated somewhere in the book itself. Some people sneeringly label this “manufactured rarity,” and in may cases rightly so: the limitation is governed entirely by how many copies the publisher thinks will sell. There is nothing about the production process that imposes a limit. 

 

I’m interested in the history of books that explicitly state how many copies were printed. The earliest statement I’ve found is from the 18th century, and the limitation was determined by the number of subscribers, so not a production constraint. Some types of intaglio plates begin to deteriorate after some number of impressions have been pulled, and these prints are the true first examples of a production limitation in publishing/printing I know of. This is why for some kinds of intaglio prints, collectors prefer low numbers, based on the assumption that the edition number corresponds with that copy’s place in the printing sequence. 

 

At HM, editions have always been limited by the number of impressions I can pull in a day (and the subset of that number that aren’t flawed in some way). I could print more if I used a press that did the inking and printing for me, but I don’t want to be that kind of printer. Because I print damp, a sheet needs to be worked off over a maximum of three days; that’s how long it retains a reasonably consistent level of dampness. (Redamping is not recommended, as there can be registration issues. Plus it’s just a lot more work.) So I have one day to complete each side, and a third for any extra runs (i.e. color). The actual materials I’m printing with – the type and paper – could produce hundreds more copies; the limitation is how much work I can accomplish in a day. 

 

For the recent Dunwich project, the limitation was based on this production limit, and also by the intaglio prints included. While the plates were steel faced to reduce wear from each impression, deterioriation/degradation of the image still becomes an issue after a certain point. So there were practical/physical limitations to how many copies could have been in the edition. If I was a better or faster printer (the two do not really cohabit well) the edition could have been 10 or maybe even 20 more, but not double. And I’m not a better or faster printer, so 50 (+ 6 h.c.) was the limit. 

 

 

All of which is to say, I wonder at people who tout something as being a “limited edition” but then don’t bother to state what the edition is, or do so in some completely ephemeral way. I purchased David Lynch’s Crazy Clown Time when it came out. Stuck to the shrink wrap was a small sticker stating this was copy 0273 of 2,000, the number having been printed with some kind of auto-mechanism. There was no mention of the limitation inside the case or (separate) book. Why bother? (FYI I bought it because I’d enjoyed Lynch’s other albums, especially Big Dream, but Crazy Clown was something else and I sold it, with the sticker preserved in a glassine envelope...)

 

This expanded version of Eno & Lanois’ Appolo album does a little better, with copies number auto-printed on the back. But there’s still the question of whether an “edition” of 12,000 is worthy of numbering, or even stating. 

 

Here’s a more recent example: Cursed is a collection of Charlie Engman’s AI-generated images. Interesting and provocative work, very cool. A signed edition is available from the publisher, for a paltry £5 premium. But his signature is on a little slip of paper tucked into the back of the book! Practically like an erratum! At the very least put it at the front, and if you aren’t going to spring for an entire leaf, at least maybe mount the signed plate on the title page? At least they didn’t call it a limited edition.

 

The size of an edition matters. There is no denying that a smaller edition run appeals to many collectors. That’s a strategic business decision, not a production constraint. What’s the upper limit for calling something a limited edition before it becomes meaningless? I don’t know. Five thousand copies of a book signed by Bob Dylan probably is legitimate (too bad he didn’t actually sign them); 5,000 copies of your self-published first novel would be questionable (even if not labelled a limited edition).

 

Whatever the reasons a publisher claims for publishing a book as a “limited edition,”, there is an iterative calculation of capital costs, time (labor), anticipated interest (market), and what the book’s combined elements objectively could demand in the current market. Everyone does the math differently, and I suspect the only common element is that people who are actual private printers (vs enterprises issuing “fine press” books produced under contract by others) end up earning a paltry hourly wage.

 

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I wrote most of this post before xmess. On December 27 The NY Times published this article about trade publishers discovering the marketing appeal of “deluxe limited editions.” These boutique lines from major commercial publishers, and a number of smaller imprints that have emerged over the past decade or two, have simply found profitable ways to superficially adopt the mantle of fine press printing without getting their hands inky. It’s no different than all the commercial Kelmscott-knock-off limited editions that proliferated in American and English publishing a century ago. No one confused them for the things they were aping.

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The text of colophons is a related topic that also interests me. The next post might be about colophons.