Art vs Illustration (& etc.)

 

The past month has been so busy I forgot I had a July 1 deadline for this blog. I'm sure what follows will read like something bashed out in a hurry...

Most of the recent activity was related to issuing and shipping Sci-Fi Violence. Thanks to everyone who sent comments and thoughts about the poem and the book; apologies to all who didn’t get a chance to order a copy. For those who responded to reserve a copy of the chapbook reprinting, it’s in the press right this minute, but Briony needs a month or so to finish the frontis. Copies will be ready by the end of the summer.

The next HM publication is in the pre-press stage. The artist has signed on and we’re finalizing things, foremost the paper(s) we’ll use. I won’t share details of the who and what until it’s closer to publication, but I will share that the book feels like a complementary follow-up to Sci-Fi Violence in tone and ambiguity (although it is prose). It’s a story I’ve wanted to print for some years but only last year did the artist whose work suited appear. 

 

Beyond that, I’m hoping to a series of books, each one a collaboration with an artist featuring new, small prints around some theme or topic or their choice. The format is entirely inspired by (copied after) Barry Moser’s Cirsia. Intaglio prints will be featured but it’s not a requirement. There will be no text beyond a title page, a very brief introduction, and colophon. Each print will be presented on a recto. The editions will be small – probably no more than 30 copies – because the artist will be doing all their own printing, and uniformly bound at HM (that is to say, each edition will be uniformly bound, but series will not be uniform in size or binding).

 

 

On that point, a quick aside: I had an interesting conversation with an artist today (not the one who’ll be collaborating on the new book) about how operations like HM approach the incorporation of art (i.e. prints*) to a project. If the word illustration is used in a book’s description, I think it says a lot about how much freedom the artist is given to respond to, or expand on the text. I’ve never seen the point of inviting an artist to contribute, and then telling them what to do. I've also never been interested in publishing books with images that simply & literally illustrate what's happening in the text. There are logistical issues and physical parameters that need to be set down – e.g. page size, the number of prints, how & where they’ll be inserted to the text block   all ideally decided in consultation with the artist. However, in terms of what their contribution – the art – ends up being, the publisher’s role is to pick the artist and then stay out of their way. I didn’t see any of the prints, or even sketches, for Sci-Fi Violence until they all arrived, ready for binding. We discussed how many prints, the paper, and whether the double-page prints should fold out or be presented as two halves, but ultimately these decisions were hers. I can imagine instances when illustration is what the publisher wants, but in that case you don’t need an artist. This is basically the story of Barry Moser’s dis-satisfaction with his experience working with Andrew Hoyem on the Arion Moby-Dick. I’ve always wondered if Hoyem didn’t fully explain to Moser from the start what he wanted (historically accurate technical illustrations), or if Moser didn’t fully hear or believe what Hoyem said. 

* Unless the original image matrix is digital (like Scott’s were for Epilogue), photo-offsets and digitals aren’t prints, they’re reproductions. Combining letterpress with photo-offset reproductions seems contradictory. Unless it’s what the artist wants to do, in which case it might be interesting. But if the artist wants to do it because they don’t know how to make actual prints, it’s just reproductions. 

I’ve also been pulling together items for the promised summer book sale on the HM site. It’s gotten bigger than originally planned, for a few reasons. In addition to a group of books pulled off my own shelves, and a small group of HM titles (last copies mostly), there will be a number of HM titles from the library of long-time HM friend David Clifford, plus an interesting group of Aliquando Press books that fell out of Will Rueter’s move to a new studio. I’ll be sending a notice out to the mail list when the sale pages go live (before the end of July). 

Finally, another conversation I had since the last post, about the phrase handpress, as in printed with a handpress: a handpress is a type of press wherein what’s being printed is inked by hand, rolled under a platen (by hand), and printed (by hand). A press operated by hand is not necessarily a handpress: a Kelsey or Adana tabletop, or even a C&P treadle, is not a handpress (even though the printer is risking their hand every time they feed a sheet into the clamshell). I guess a Vandercook with its inking unit removed (so the type is inked by hand) would be a handpress, but I don’t think may people use Vandercooks that way. When all this started, I was offered a beautiful Korrex Nürnberg Hand press gratis but for reasons that remain vague, I wanted to print on a handpress. So I gave the Korrex away and spent loadsadough to buy my big ugly & beautiful green & yellow O-S. Life could have been so much easier with the Korrex, but probably less fun. Having said that, if anyone’s looking for a big green & yellow press, get in touch... 

Much of this post must sound dogmatic, for which I do and do not apologize. In pursuits like this, one needs clear definitions and opinions. I promise not to miss the October 1 deadline. 

 

Reg Lissel, Papermaker

This month HM is issuing Reg Lissel, Papermaker presenting a variety of his handmade papers, along with brief commentaries by him. The papers used to assemble the 20 sets were purchased when he retired from papermaking in 2013, a somewhat forced retirement sparked by a renoviction from his longtime living space and workshop in Vancouver's Chinatown. I bought most of what he had on hand at the time, a mishmash of different sheets from over the years, and put it all in a box with the vague plan of issuing them as some kind of record of his work. 

 

© Andrea Taylor 2008 

 

The following profile of Reg was originally written for the FPBA’s journal Parenthesis (No. 13, 2007). A slightly revised version was the first chapter of HM’s Elements in Correlation (2009). The sketch of Reg above was a preperatory drawing by Andrea Taylor, for a linocut included with that chapter. The paper for that book was the largest order I’d committed to at the time, and it took Reg about a year to make the hundreds of sheets needed. The sections below in italic are quotes from Reg. The sample booklets shown are from HM’s collection and date from 2000 to around 2010.

 * * *

2007: I FIRST KNEW REG LISSEL as a bookseller, in the early 1990s, a few years before he quit the business. It was his second storefront in downtown Vancouver. His first, in an even dodgier part of town, had been in the same building as Cobblestone Press, the printing shop of the infamous Gerald Giampa. Reg did not quit bookselling to make paper, but he started making paper when he quit bookselling.

When I was starting, there just weren’t that many papermakers around so I was working in my isolated little universe. I built my own moulds and my first beater. There were some initial fumbling attempts, recycling newsprint and stuff. Finally I got a book, The Art of Papermaking by Bernard Toale. It’s got so much great information, all the basic stuff for Western and Japanese papermaking. It let me see other papers and figure out how they were made, and it gave me something to aim for.

 

By 2001 I had printed a few books, even damping the (mouldmade) papers on a couple. Having crossed paths with Reg frequently since his shop closed I knew what he was up to. When I started getting ambitious and wanted to work with handmade sheets, I chased him down.

My first attempt printing text on Reg’s paper was a disaster, all of my own making. Printing on a Washington press, I was using four different batches of cotton paper, none of which damped particularly well (or rather, they damped too well). And so I learned the importance of size, what it does and why it matters. And here is the beauty of HM’s relationship with Reg: I went back and told him what had happened, and he understood immediately what the problem was. He made up a new batch, ratcheting up the internal size. Better, but still a bit too absorbent. He cranked it up again, and by 2003 we had a decent sheet that damped well and consistently.

But the surface was still very rough, fine for books octavo or larger in size, preferably with type no smaller than 14 point. Below that the paper’s texture took on too much prominence. This, Reg explained, was the result of the beater he was using, a contraption of his own fabrication...

Reg couching a stack of paper

I built the tub for that beater out of scraps of wood. I bought a motor from a scrap yard, and some pulleys and pillow bearings and a steel shaft. The roll was built out of wood too, with steel bars set in. I worked with that beater for about eight years. It did the job but it wasn’t heavy and tough enough to really deal with stronger fibers. It could beat cotton, but it took a long time.

 

 

The next breakthrough in what we christened HM Text came with the arrival from northern B.C. of a professional lab beater. It could beat the fibers much more thoroughly, resulting in a smoother sheet. Then, shortly after the first batches from the new beater were turned out, yet another plateau: the most gorgeous, crisp, smooth white sheets imaginable, the result of a tweak to the recipe and a refined drying technique.

The first HM Text paper was just pure cotton with size in it, made with the old beater, & the paper’s a bit soft. The new beater beats the fiber much better, so it makes a crisper, denser paper. The latest batches of HM Text have some titanium oxide, kaolin clay and chalk added to the cotton pulp. It makes the paper more opaque and acts as a filler, so the paper is really smooth. I also added a step to the drying: I cold press and then let the sheets air dry for about two hours – just laid out, maybe two sheets together, turned after an hour. I let it dry in the air a bit but before it starts to shrink, I restack and give it a couple more heavy pressings. I’ve always been cold pressing and then just air drying, without the extra pressings. That extra stage of letting it dry and then pressing makes the sheet even smoother and denser.

The arrival of the beater in 2004, and a visit that same summer from Claire Van Vliet, resulted in another breakthrough sheet, what I call Reg’s vellum paper. It is a sheet that feels and acts like vellum. He can adjust the translucence and tone, from white to dirty old mottled parchment, in the pulp. The stuff is incredibly tough and makes beautiful limp vellum-style bindings.

Claire was inspiring. I really enjoyed the lecture she gave when she was in Vancouver. She was giving a workshop so I stopped by one day, and she was very generous with her time. She showed me the abaca vellum she’d been making and it inspired me. I knew how it was done, so I just had to try it. That was around the same time I got the new beater, so I had the equipment it required to beat the fiber stuff for three hours. It’s the long beating time that results in the paper’s translucence. I just wanted to make it. That’s the real appeal for me, the beauty of the paper. Sometimes it’s an experiment to see what a certain fiber will result in. But mostly going for a certain paper is just to see the beauty of it. I enjoy the process, the movement, the rhythm, the physical work. Making the same sheet consistently.

2026: EPILOGUE

Vancouver’s Chinatown is on the eastern edge of the downtown core, and is one of the oldest in North America. It also abuts the Downtown Eastside, which has the dubious claim to being the most destitute urban neighborhood in Canada. While Chinatown enjoyed a vibrant community and culture for most of the 20th century, by the 1990s it was becoming run-down and somewhat grim. Its proximity to the downtown core, however, makes it appealing to commercial and residential developers, and tension has grown between the established Chinese community, advocates for the Downtown Eastside, and proponents for civic revitalization.

Many of the buildings in Chinatown are owned by non-profit benevolent associations, and for many years Reg lived in one of these. It was pretty run down, but that meant it was affordable. In 2013 he was notified the building would be renovated. While his apartment was being done, he moved to a space on the opposite side of the building. That lasted for about six months. When his place was ready, he couldn’t afford the increased rent. Not only did that mean needing a new home, it meant the likely end to his papermaking adventures.

By that time the physical demands had worn on him, and in some ways he was ready to hang up his moulds. With a few months’ notice, he sold all the paper he’d stockpiled (as much as I could afford to me!), some early pulp paintings, and most of his equipment.

Wood engraving by Shinsuke Minegishi on gampi made by 

Reg Lissel, from Good & Evil in the Garden (HM, 2003)

The next year was not easy for Reg, as he looked for a place to live in one of Canada’s most expensive cities. Papermaking was not on the agenda. During all this HM had moved as well, to Strathcona, a neighborhood just east of Chinatown. It’s one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, and enjoys a more eclectic range of residential architecture and people than is typical for Vancouver. Across the street from our new home is a Ukrainian community hall adjoining a three-storey apartment building for people of a certain age. By luck, chance and the lobbying efforts of friends, Reg got an apartment there, and since 2015 we’ve lived across the street from each other. I often see him walking to or from the community garden, where he has several plots that occupy most of his free time. He’s always liked to cook, and obviously has a fondness for plants, so it comes naturally.

Reg giving a papermaking demo at a community event (2016)

 * * *

Reg Lissel, Papermaker (HM, 2026) is issued in an edition of 20 sets (18 for sale). Each set includes 23 different sample sheets (13 x 18 inches). Most of the sheets are presented as folios (i.e. folded); a few sheets in short supply are presented as single leaves. Reg contributed brief commentaries about the stages of papermaking, from choosing fibers through beating, forming and drying. HM wrote a brief introduction and note about the ongoing collaboration with Reg to perfect a white sheet for printing damp.

The text was set in Optima with Huxley Vertical for display. Most of the sheets where dampened for printing. The colophons were press-numbered and signed by Reg. The sheets are presented loose, in a clamshell box, to allow for each to be held and closely examined. The boxes were made at HM, using four different colors of Japanese cloth, with painted paper for the trays.

 

What Was, What Is & What Might Be (’25/26)

 

Looking back at ’25, the project with Scott Morgan hadn’t even been conceived at the start of the year. It was fun working with him and I’m better-than-usual pleased with our effort. (Thanx to everyone for not mentioning the typo...) The covers for the book rekindled my interest in airbrushing.* I’d like to do some more intaglio work with his photos, we’ll see. 

* Speaking of airbrushing, Barbara & Claudia will be working on a book about stencils (maybe 2027?), with lots of Barbara’s original designs airbrushed in. Here’s one:

 

The Wisso Weiss pamphlet was fun though I still think the blue text paper was maybe just a little too transparent. 

I don’t buy many books these days – I’m more focused on shedding possessions (anyone interested in a large Ostrander-Seymour handpress, please get in touch...) – but I did get a couple over the year, all of them previously unknown to me. One was an Elston Press collection (1902) of three talks by William Morris on early (gothic) woodcuts and woodcut books. I think the text is much the same as the Kelmscott’s German Woodcuts (1898), but with fewer facsimiles. It’s my first book from Elston, which was hugely influenced by Morris but it seems in good ways – a focus on fundamentals like materials and execution, but not on horrible vines and gothic letters everywhere. 

I could afford this copy because it appears to have been found under a leaky basement sink. The boards (shown above) were ruined and the spine decayed but the textblock was fine. I managed to separate it from the boards and spine – and preserve the original owner's signature and bookplate! – and resew it. I decided to put it in a limp vellum binding rather than attempt a facsimile. This required much less intrusion to the textblock: I simply used wheat paste on the spine and outer edges of the pastedown sheets, so it can all be easily undone one day. 

The most recent acquisition probably will form the basis for a project in 2026. It’s a portfolio issued in Lausanne in 1944 by Jacques Chevalley, launching his new enterprise as a paper dealer. He commissioned a short text from Charles Ramuz, and four large wood engravings by Henry Bischoff. 

 

The edition of 50 copies was issued loose in a portfolio. The text paper is from the Guarro mill, the same mill that produced the paper used for many HM books over the past 15 years. I’d never heard of the thing until I happened across one of the engravings in a catalogue. 

 

It’s not rare, there are a couple of copies out there, but they’re pricey (mine was very much not) and none are in good condition. I’m thinking of printing a translation of the text (which as far as I know has not appeared in English) with facsimiles of the engravings. I want to find out a bit more about Chevalley: it seems his father had been a stationer, but Jacques didn’t stick with it long, as most of his life was spent working as a museum curator. Even in Switzerland, 1944 seems an odd time to be launching a business selling specialty papers. 

Here’s what 2026 is looking like for HM...

The text sheets for Sci-Fi Violence were printed last spring. I hope I remember where I put them. The colophons have been travelling to Vermont and Boston, for the artist and poet to sign. I hope they don’t get lost. Briony’s show last year took more of her time and energy than she’d anticipated, which is why we pushed publication of Sci-Fi back. There’s a lot of printmaking involved: five double-page internal prints (approx 10 x 16 inches) plus one being added to the title page, and the sheets to cover the boards. She’s been at it for some time now, and posted some excellent videos on Instagram detailing aspects of her process. The current schedule is for the prints to land in Vancouver at the beginning of March, and the binding to be completed by May. Even though I haven’t solicited orders yet, I can see demand for the edition of 26 copies will exceed supply.  

While Briony’s finishing the prints, I will be printing sheets for a sampler of Reg Lissel’s handmade papers. When he quit/retired c.2014, I bought most of what he had left, and ended up with a lot of diverse sheets. We have enough to assemble 20 sets (18 for sale), each with about 20 samples. Most will be full 13 x 18 inch sheets folded once (i.e. a folio), a few will be half sheets (i.e. leaves). They’ll be issued unbound, probably in a clamshell box, to allow for close examination. The text includes some technical commentary on materials and methods by Reg, and an introduction & short history of the white printing paper he developed for HM by me. Making the boxes (if they happen) will take ages and not happen until after Sci-Fi Violence is issued, so publication fall of 2026? Then maybe there will be time to print, bind & publish the Moulins à papier translation before the end of the year, we’ll see. 

Thanx to all the old friends still interested in what HM gets up to, & thanx to all the new ones who’ve connected over the past year.

Polymergravure is the word

 

That title will make sense in a few paragraphs...

 

An update from the studio: publication of Josh Bell’s poem Sci-Fi Violence has been pushed back to early 2026, to give Briony Morrow-Cribbs more time to work on the aquatints. I’ll include a progress update in the December post.

 

This opened a window to complete another project that was waiting in the wings: the epilogue to H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, with two intaglio prints by Scott Morgan. I have been interested in printing extracts from longer works, fragments I think stand on their own from a narrative perspective, or maybe are simply engagingly ambiguous when removed from their original context.

 

Scott is primarily known as the recording artist loscil, and has released more than two dozen albums over the past 25 years (depending how you count LPs, EPs, digital only & etc.), all of which have received heavy rotation at HM. His live shows are accompanied by his original videos, many incorporating photographs or videos he’s shot (see here). The first ones I saw were from his 2014 Sea Island tour. There have been some recurring images and elements in his videos, particularly the inclusion of geometric negative spaces in the screen’s center. Wells’ epilogue ruminates on how terrible events inflicted on earth and humanity might affect the decisions we make for our future; I thought it somewhat apropos. I asked Scott if he might want to contribute one or more original images, and luckily he shared my enthusiasm for the text.

His first question was what? and his second was how? The first was easily answered. For the second I took him to meet Peter Braune at New Leaf Editions. The two images Scott settled on started as (film) photos, which he then digitized and adapted using the same software he uses for his videos. So basically we had two monochrome images with tremendous tonal detail. Rather than using the traditional copper plates, Peter recommended printing from intaglio polymer plates, also known as polymergravures. These are essentially the same as a metal plate, the main difference being in how the tonal effect is achieved. Rather than paraphrasing others, I’ll quote from Keith Taylor’s 2020 blog post on the topic:

“[Polymergravure] involves printing the image directly on a plate using the front manual feed of the [inkjet] printer. The microscopic dots from the printer’s stochastic pattern acting like, and replacing the need for, an aquatint screen.”

 

A polymergravure plate for one of Scott’s images is shown at the top of this post. In edition to Taylor’s post, an excellent illustrated article describing the process can be found here. 

 

Once the plates were made we assembled at New Leaf to pull some proofs and consider ink variations. Both the text and etchings are printed on Barcham Green’s Royal Watercolour Society handmade paper, the text on a NOT (i.e. slightly rough) sheet, the prints on a hot pressed sheet. Neither is pure white. Some of the proofs were pulled on sheets closer to pure white, and the difference slight variations in a paper’s hue had on the result was significant. This isn’t news but we briefly discussed pulling a few sets of proofs on five or six different white sheets, simply to illustrate how the paper affects the printed image. Sort of like PSNABW but for intaglio.

The two prints book-end the text, one a frontis, the other facing the last page of text. The text was set by hand in 18-pt Perpetua and printed with a second color on the title page epilogue opening. The edition (7.5 x 11 inches, 8 leaves) of 30 numbered copies (+ six hors commerce), all signed by Scott, will be uniformly cased in boards, but some of those details are still being hammered out. I’m not sharing images of the prints here, but I’ll add an image or two to this post when a dummy is completed.

 

If interested in receiving a notice when the edition is offered for purchase (some time in October), send HM an email with War of the Worlds, or loscil, in the subject line.

 

For anyone in Europe reading this, Scott will be on a short tour over the next few weeks. His shows are always engaging, contemplative and sonically immersive events, highly recommended.

 

AND ANOTHER THING!

Barbara Hodgson’s Byzantium imprint will be launching a new web site this fall, to coincide with publication of its latest book, Textile Designs on Paper: An Archive from Early 19th-Century France. I’ll add a link when it’s up and running.

 

Briony Morrow-Cribbs currently has a show of new works at Next Stage Arts, in Putney VT, for the next two months. Some of the new works have been added to her site’s home page.

I’ve always felt slightly baffled by being human—as if this form came too soon, and I should’ve had at least one more round as a gopher, a wren, or maybe a fox. By making work based on animal forms, I’ve found a way to try on their shapes, slip into their skin, follow their instincts, and experience the world through their eyes. These animal-based images let me explore alternate incarnations—and facets of myself otherwise eclipsed by the human experience. In creating these creatures—sometimes real, sometimes imagined—I find a place to remember what it feels like to move through the world with certainty and grit. – Briony Morrow-Cribbs

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.