Printing Music

Printing for Labour Vertue Glorie is now completed & we’re in the (early) binding stage (vellum spine of Claudia's first dummy for Series 1 and 2 copies above). The printing took a little more than 300 hours, spread over four months. It’s a lot of time standing at the press, rolling out the ink and cranking the bed back & forth. None of that time was spent in silence: there were some podcasts, but most of the time was spent listening to music. Once makeready is done and the ink adjusted for a form, printing is pretty dull: you have to pay attention, but not really do much thinking, so one’s mind tends to wander. One day I found mine playing the Desert Island Discs game: what ten albums would I choose if I were to be marooned on an island with no expectation of rescue?

It’s been my experience that many printers place particular importance on music, and that music often crosses into their projects, whether overtly or tangentially. Both scores and pages are composed, and both grapple with decisions around balance, color, harmony and space. While playing my game, I got to wondering what 10 albums printers I know, or at least whose work I know, would choose. So I invited some of them to play the game, and here present their lists.

The rules were simply ten albums, and album is defined as a single cohesive work. The three discs in Einstein in the Beach would count as one choice, but Sony’s 24-CD collection of Philip Glass would not. (I admit to considering the complete eight-hour recording of Max Richter’s Sleep, but decided it was a stretch; also, I won’t need help nodding off while lost on a desert island.) No explanations or justifications were required.

Readers familiar with this blog will know it does not invite comments, since people have proven they can’t act decently on the Internet. However, if anyone would like to add their own list to this collection, it can be emailed to me (see address lower right) and I will append it (or at least a few interesting ones). Please include your full name, location, and press name/affiliation if any. Don’t bother sending comments or critiques on any of the posted lists, we’re not getting into a debate over choices.

This turned out to be a lot of fun, since several of the lists included choices that were all unknown to me. The game also underscored the wide range of tastes at work, and the place music holds in the lives of the responding printers. (Jason Dewinetz, who prints on a Vandercook, raised a point I had not considered: a mechanized press makes noise, which could impede listening, or at least limit choices. My handpress makes no noise, and I’d go loopy without music while printing.)

Will Rueter (The Aliquando Press)

1. J. Bach - Goldberg Variations. A dead heat among three interpretations: Simone Dinnerstein, Glenn Gould’s 1959 Salzburg recital, and Pieter-Jan Belder’s most recent recording. At the moment, Belder’s harpsichord version wins by a micro-hair.
2. J. Bach - Mass in B minor. My current favourite version is by the Netherlands Bach Society.
3. F. Schubert - String Quintet in C (Emerson Quartet, Rostropovich).
4. M. Haydn - Requiem. Solosits, King’s Consort. An unknown gem.
5. L. Janáček - The Cunning Little Vixen. Vienna Philharmonic, Mackerras. A comic strip about animals made into a profound opera. If there was a CD of Weinberg’s The Passenger, it would have absolute first place.
6. M. Ravel. Anything, but especially Daphnis et Chloe, with choir.
7. C. Monteverdi - Vespers of 1610, with Gardiner. Or any opera. Or madrigal.
8. Leonard Cohen - Probably Ten New Songs
9. D. Shostakovich - My musical hero for so many years. Impossible to choose, but probably Symphony #7 ‘Leningrad’ or any of the quartets.
10. Jacques Loussier - Any record of his riffs on Bach; he’s beyond brilliant.

Crispin & Jan Elsted (Barbarian Press)
Before you put the question, neither of us had really thought very much in any systematic way about what we play when working. The daily programming runs fairly true to a pattern. We often begin the day with an opera, these days tending towards the bel canto (we're particularly fond of Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini) but we're also devoted to Verdi, Puccini, Massenet, and Mozart. Then we'll usually segue into orchestral music, usually late romantic or modernist - let's say from Tchaikovsky through to Shostakovich, Janacek, or Walton. (20th century English music is a shared pleasure, and ballet scores are too.) Towards the end of the day, when energy is flagging more than somewhat, we often switch from classical to jazz (some of which we've mentioned), rock (the Stones, CCR, Beatles), old rock 'n' roll (pre-1960 Elvis, the Everly Bros., or mixes I've put together), or electric blues (Tommy Castro, Muddy Waters, Studebaker John, Junior Wells and the like), just to keep the blood flowing.

Jan and I both made lists, and it was interesting for each of us to look at the other's once they were done. Our tastes coincide about 90% of the time. Jan’s choices reflect more of the later afternoon repertoire, which is probably due to her requests for the bouncy stuff dominating the playlists from about 3 p.m. on. The Mozart, Bellini, and Netrebko recital she's chosen are all music we know well, and except for the recits in the Mozart they are all pretty energetic and audible even over a Vandercook, I guess.

As for my final choices, they are largely representative of groups of possibilities. For instance, while Der Rosenkavalier is certainly one of my top ten favourite operas, and I might have chosen another in that slot - Die Walküre, Aïda, or Il barbiere di Siviglia spring to mind -- Rosenkavalier is more complex and would probably have more staying power once it had been plugged into the nearest palm tree on that island of yours. Ask me next year, and the list would probably alter in particulars, but in the main would remain as it is.

Crispin’s list:

1. I. Stravinsky - Firebird and Petroushka (Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Stravinsky con.)
2. W. Walton - Symphony #1 (London Symphony Orchestra, A. Previn con.)
3. P. Tchaikovsky - Symphony #3 (London Symphony Orchestra,  V. Gergiev con.)
4. Shelley Manne & His Men - Live at the Blackhawk
5. Gerry Mulligan - The Concert Jazz Band Complete Recordings
6. M. Weinberg - Symphony #2 & Chamber Symphony #2 (Umeå Symphony Orchestra, T. Svedlund con.) 
7. A. Bruckner - Symphony #4 (Münchner Philharmoniker, S. Celibidache con.)
8. M. Ravel - Daphnis et Chloe (Berlin Philharmonic, P. Boulez con.)
9. L. Janáček - Opera suites incl. The Cunning Little Vixen; From the House of the Dead; The Excursions of Mr Broucek (Prague Symphony Orchestra, J. Bělohlávek con.)
10. R. Strauss - Der Rosenkavalier (Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, G. Solti con.)

Jan’s list:

1. W.A. Mozart - Le Nozze di Figaro (Philharmonia Chorus & Orchestra, C. M. Giulini con.)
2. Gilbert & Sullivan - The Gondoliers (Glyndebourne Festival Chorus & Pro Arte Orchestra, M. Sargent con.)
3. Ella Fitzgerald - The George & Ira Gershwin Songbook
4. Benny Goodman - Carnegie Hall Concert
5. V. Bellini - I Capuleti e i Montecchi (A. Netrebko, E. Garanča, et al., F. Luisi con.)
6. A. Netrebko -  Opera Arias (Vienna Philharmonic, G. Noseda con.)
7. The Rolling Stones - Hot Rocks
8. various - Forrest Gump (film soundtrack) 
9. Paul Simon - The Essential Paul Simon
10. S. Rachmaninov - Dances (Philharmonia, N. Järvi con.)

Sarah Horowitz (Wiesedruck)
I thought I’d have to think about my list, but I didn’t once I looked at what I had. It’s all over the map. I grew up as a teenager with the Beatles, Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Morrison, Hendrix and Janice (yes, in the ‘80s, so I didn’t exactly fit in). Over the last 10 years I have tended towards dark, depressing classical music, but I can’t just listen to that so bits and pieces of all the phases I went through in between have stuck with me - klezmer, latin, old time…

1. W.A. Mozart - Requiem
2. Hilliard Ensemble - Motets of Guillaume de Machaut
3. O. Golijov - Yiddiishbbuk
4. A. Pärt - Tabula Rasa 
5. Portland Cello Project - (anything)
6. Regina Spektor - Regina Spekor and Soviet Kitch
7. Paul Cantelon with Gogol Bordello - Everything is Illuminated (movie soundtrack)
8. Orishas - A Lo Cubano
9. Golden Delicious - Old School
10. Shakira - Laundry Service by Shakira. Because everyone needs to tango a little while printing, especially when it’s been a long day…

Bob McCamant (Sherwin Beach Press & emeritus editor of Parenthesis NA.)

1. Darlingside - Birds Say
2. Tarkan - Dudu
3. fun. - Aim & Ignite
4. Nick Lowe - Labour of Lust 
5. John Grant - Pale Green Ghosts
6. Jane Siberry - Bound by the Beauty
7. Graham Parker - Howling Wind
8. The Beautiful South - Quench
9. L. van Beethoven - Symphony #7 (Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra)
10. G. Handel - Judas Maccabaeus (Philharmonia Baroque)

Jason Dewinetz (Greenboathouse Press)
I rarely listen to music while working; I like quiet, and I also like to hear and feel what the machine is doing: the hiss of the ink, the rumble of the cylinder rolling over type, the click and clank of the casting machine. All of these sounds tell me things about how the work is going, and often I make adjustments (to ink, to the speed of the casting machine, etc.) based on these sounds. That said, occasionally I do put some music on, although I tend to turn it off again after half an hour because it starts to get on my nerves.

1. The Smiths - The Queen is Dead
2. SNFU - And No One Else Wanted to Play
3. Liz Phair - Whip-Smart
4. Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes
5. Tom Waits - Frank’s Wild Years
6. Pixies - Doolittle
7. Skip James - Blues from the Delta
8. Metallica - Master of Puppets
9. The Cramps - Bad Music for Bad People
10. PJ Harvey - Rid of Me

HM’s List
I have found four streaming “radio” stations that have effectively made my own music collection excess to requirement. Like the Elsteds, my listening during a day of printing has an arc, which these four stations neatly span: Ambient Sleeping Pill and/or Drone Zone for the first few hours, while getting a form set up and printing right; Deep Space One mid-day; and Space Station Soma for the final push. But with no Internet on the island, my playlist is comprised of albums that aren’t necessarily favorites, but ones I know would withstand repeated listenings over the years.

1. Kyle Bobby Dunn - Kyle Bobby Dunn & The Infinite Sadness
2. Harold Budd & Brian Eno - The Pearl 
3. Stars of the Lid - The Ballasted Orchestra. Hard to choose one SOTL album, but the song titles alone make this a fun choice…
4. loscil - Plume
5. Bill Laswell & Style Scott - Dub Meltdown
6. Harold Budd & Eraldo Bernocchi - Music for “Fragments from the Inside”
7. Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain
8. The Rolling Stones - Some Girls
9. Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 2. Despite a couple of clunker tracks…
10. Fatboy Slim vs HM - The Mix Tape. This was never released, exists only as a lathe-cut test pressing, and is impossible to find. The only known copy will be with me, thereby assuring people will come looking, rescue me, and I won’t be stuck on an island with just ten albums for eternity.

Next up: news of this fun new, fine-press fixated bibliomystery…

It's Snowing in Vancouver on Christmas

John Henry Nash, What Were You Thinking?

Dipping into the oeuvre of San Francisco printer John Henry Nash this month. I’ve long been a fan of his work, although not necessarily all of his books. This post was sparked by a recent leaf book acquisition, purchased sight unseen, and in some aspects it is less than aspirational.

The book is Nicolas Jenson, Printer of Venice, published in 1926, with a leaf from Jenson’s 1478 edition of Plutarch’s Vitae Parallelae Illustrium Virorum (volume 2). Jenson, Nash, leaf book: these three things combined in one book make it aces for me, but turns out it isn’t one of Nash’s better productions. The first thing I noticed when the book - which is folio sized, to accommodate the Jenson leaf - arrived was the paper. Where many of his books featured European hand- or mouldmade paper, this appears to be a machine-made (it is not mentioned in the colophon, and Nell O’Day’s Catalogue of Books Printed by JHN lists it simply as “Strathmore”).

The Jenson leaf has a little foxing, and Nash’s paper is buff; the Strathmore may have been chosen because its cream hue approximates the Jenson leaf. But in 2017 it simply looks like cheap paper that has aged quickly and badly. Attention to this unlovely paper is heightened by it apparently having been used with the grain going the wrong way: pages buckle along the gutter when turned. The slim volume’s opening isn’t helped by the vellum spine - the thing just doesn’t really want to be opened.

The paper is the primary sticking point. Nash knew paper & most of his books were printed on lovely paper, often a laid Van Gelder mouldmade with his watermark. Why, then, did he choose such a charmless paper for the Jenson project? Let’s inquire by taking a quick tour through some of his work…

Starting with the best example at hand, Cobden-Sanderson and the Doves Press (1929) is another leaf book, one for which the materials and production do justice to the content. The paper for this book is the Van Gelder. The edition is 339 copies, all with an original leaf tipped in on tapes (allowing easy inspection of the verso; the too-common shortcut of gluing a leaf along one edge discourages turning it); 37 of the copies include a vellum leaf, and are bound in full vellum over boards (the rest of the edition in simple limp vellum). A beautiful production.

Nash employed the vellum over boards, with exposed tapes laced through the joint, on a number of his publications. One on my shelf is the folio-sized doorstop The Life and Personality of Phoebe Apperson Hearst, a hagiography of the mother of William Randall, who footed the bill for the 1,000 copies - all for private distribution - bound in vellum over boards (the binding was done in Germany). Nash was also commissioned to print a companion volume about Hearst’s old man, which is much more scarce than Phoebe’s volume. I found this copy in a second hand store, priced at $100 (which seems to be the going rate online). I cannot imagine how much the binding alone would cost now, assuming you could find someone who knew how to do it, but a lot more than a yard, so I bought the thing. Didn’t even pretend I might read it one day, I just admire the binding, paper and printing every now & then.

Back to paper: my claim that the paper used for the Jenson book is an aberration among Nash’s publications is bolstered by looking at some of his ephemera, all printed on the same beautiful papers he used for books (that’s what offcuts are for). I have two pieces that were printed on handmade H. Pannekoek paper, with a beautiful, big watermark. Apparently Pannekoek disappeared some time in the 19th century, so this must be stock Nash found in a warehouse somewhere. It’s a lovely sheet, a bit soft (possibly unsized).

Nell O’Day’s catalogue was printed by Nash in 1937. It’s not a rare title, but the only copy I’ve ever seen in a shop is the one I bought (it’s in an elegant case of waxed marbled paper over boards, inscribed by Nash and O’Day on the front pastedown). Skimming through it, Pannekoek paper makes its first appearance in 1926, for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. He seems to have had the Le Fortuin sheet (above) and another, “laid finish” sheet.

Pannekoek is used for a few more projects, up to 1928, and then no more - me must have used up his stash. This large pamphlet (The End of a Quest: An Appreciation), issued in 1928, may have been the last of what he had.

The thing that is particularly irksome is that Nash had the Pannekoek paper on hand when he published the Jenson book. It would have been a perfect match, but instead we get the loathsome Strathmore - a sheet with no mention I could find in the Catalogue before or after the Jenson project; that tells you how much Nash liked it Worse yet, he had been using Kelmscott paper for projects immediately before the Jenson! Imagine what might have been.

 

Joseph Fauntleroy’s reminiscence about working with and for Nash (JHN Printer, above) is beautifully produced in the printer’s style, on his watermarked Van Gelder paper, but may be of interest only to hardcore printing nerds. It includes an intriguing mention of Nash’s fondness for bicycle racing during his early apprentice years in Toronto, a fondness that apparently cost him his apprenticeship & sparked the travels that eventually took him to San Francisco. Fauntleroy also mentions several times the care and attention that went into choosing the right paper for specific projects, a point that underscores the uncharacteristic choice for the Jenson book’s.

Having taken that brief tour, perhaps you can understand my puzzlement at, and disappointment with the paper he used in the Jenson book. None of the reference books I have at hand offers any insight to the decision. Regardless, I justified purchasing the book as a raw material for the second edition of the Francesco Griffo “biography” we’ll be printing one day (thought it might be next year, but now looks like 2019 earliest): I’m thinking of including letterpress facsimiles of pages from books mentioned in the biography, including one showing Jenson’s roman, so I need an original leaf to reproduce. Same with that Hypnerotomachia leaf I mentioned last month.

So that’s a lot of moaning about a book I just bought. Even if I’d seen it first, I probably would have bought it anyway, because of Nash and Jenson. At least it sparked me to pull out my Nash ephemera and play with it again. I think I’m going to offer up Mrs Hearst, in her stunning vellum clothing, The End of the Quest (large folio, printed on Le Fortuin), the Aeropagitica quote (single folded sheet, JHN Van Gelder, with unicorn), If It Were Today (folio pamphlet, JHN Van Gelder laid), and Americana Vetustissima (single folded sheet, JHN Van Gelder laid) as a collection, for $250. Send me a note if you want more details & etc.

We have something special for the first post of 2018, with a number of printer friends contributing. Until then, happy happy, merry merry, be well. HM

The End is Near

This month's post is about John Henry Nash, Nicolas Jenson, leaf books, and related matters. It needs a bit more work before posting, and I have to get down to printing that last - and trickiest - sheet for Labour Vertue Glorie: it includes the title and contents pages, two colors on both sides, which means a three-day run (instead of the usual two). I'll get the new post up by the weekend. Meanwhile, go have a look at a short video I made last weekend (instead of working on the Nash post); it was filmed through the studio's east windows. Has nothing to do with printing or books, but I like to think it catches the spirit of HM.

After the title page run, I have just the volvelles to print. Everything remains on schedule for a late winter/early spring publication.

Pictures, Mostly

More pictures, less words this month. Francesca Lohmann's An Alphabetical Accumulation was published in October, copies sent out. See the usual suspects listed at right if interested in acquiring. The edition is 36 copies, but only 30 were for sale.

 

The calligraphy on book and box is original, not printed. The book was printed on three different, intermingled papers, the sections then sewn by Claudia Cohen onto a chemise made from old parchment documents. Vellum slips were attached to the chemise, and the sewn block laced into a limp vellum case.

 

The image above shows the "doublures," with the vellum slips laces through the case and the parchment chemise becoming the equivalent of front and rear pastedowns (though no adhesive is used, just the vellum slips).

 

Look close & maybe you'll see the embellishments Francesca added to the printed title page.

 

The first letter. Francesca's calligraphy throughout is in red, the printed facsimiles in black.

 

And a lovely little coda added by her to the last page of each copy...

 

A publisher couldn't ask for two more inspiring and easy collaborators than Francesca & Claudia. Preliminary work on another book with a calligrapher, whose identity will be revealed soon, is underway. Possible publication in late 2018; depends how ambitious he gets with the original calligraphy to be added to each copy. 

AND ANOTHER THING!

HM is all about leaf books these days. Progress is being made with Labour Vertue Glorie. Here's a sheet pulled on Halloween, right off the tympan & added to the stack, interleaved with boards for drying:

A couple of leaf books came my way recently. I'm keeping the acquisitions down by focusing primarily on incunabla, and there probably aren't a dozen leaf books with incunables. And of those, some include the leaf in a pocke, or some similar scheme: if they aren't tipped in - preferably to a tab, to make turning the leaf easy - I'm not interested. Anyway, an early Book Club of California title with a leaf from Aldus' Hypnerotomachia Poliphili came my way!

 

De Vinne's essay was originally published in 1881, and it is one of the first sources that perpetuated the Anthony Panizzi's incorrect assertion that Aldus' types were cut by a goldsmith named Francesco Raibolini. (De Vinne's essay was also published in 1983 by Targ Editions.) The text is set in Poliphilus (natch), and printed (and/or inked) rather heavily on Barcham Green Hammer & Anvil paper. I suspect they didn't dampen the paper, which is a waste, and accounts for the muddy result. (For some good handpress printing, see the Allen Press item mentioned further down this post..)

I justified the purchase as a necessary reference for the expanded second edition of Fragments & Glimpses, which is starting to take form. Here's the leaf:

Vancouver had an antiquarian book fair last month, and it didn't suck! It was a modest affair but included maybe 20 dealers including several from central Canada. For printing nerds, the best stuff was found at Bill Matthews' table. I got a hors commerce Allen Press sheet, printed for a Roxburghers dinner; a copy of the prospectus for volume 2 of the Grabhorn Bibliography, to be tucked into my copy of said volume; and another BCC leaf book, A leaf from the 1583 Rembert Dodoens herbal, printed by Christopher Plantin. Yes, it's outside my preferred timeframe, and its printed on awful, smooth white machine-made paper, but it's Christopher Plantin. And it was cheap.

AND THAT'S NOT ALL!

Finally, remember I mentioned the Florin Press' book of wood engravings by Monica Poole recently, and that there was a deluxe issue with a section about printing the engravings that I wanted to get my hands on? Well, I didn't, but I did get a copy of the text from that section, which is what I'm really interested in anyway. It seems to be some kind of offprint that the printer probably gave away. So, I graingered it right into my copy of the book.

"In Original Binding"

Similar to last month’s post, this one’s about a book, The Allen Press Bibliography (1981). It’s also about a specific copy of that book, one I found in sheets and took the opportunity to grainger. That isn’t a proper verb, but it’ll become clear.

I don’t remember how the Allen Press first became an interest for my collecting pursuits, in the early 1990s. It probably was a result of my education being confined to dealers down the West Coast, especially in California, where Lewis & Dorothy had been at the center of the fine printing clique since the 1950s. I likewise don’t exactly remember why, when I decided to start printing in earnest, it had to be with a handpress, but the Allens’ books certainly must have influenced that prejudice.

In the early aughts, while my collecting muscles were still in regular use, I set my sights on what I considered to be, for me, three foundational contemporary handpress books (i.e. books displaying the excellence that can be achieved only with a handpress, hand inking and dampened paper): Everson’s Psalter, Baskin’s Jewish Artists, and Allen’s Printing with the Handpress. A facsimile of that last book was published shortly after the Allen’s original, but a book about printing on the handpress really needs to be printed on a handpress. I eventually (actually, pretty quickly) got copies of all three, and found myself looking around and wondering, what now?

Press bibliographies are a particular interest to me, especially if they include sample leaves of the books listed. It’s like having a mini-exhibition of the press’s work in your hands. (This is why I still have not acquired a copy of Neil Shaver's Yellow Barn Press bibliography, despite my regard for his work - no sample leaves!!) The model for most press bibliographies has been that of the Ashendene Press (below), although the samples in that book are facsimiles (resettings) of pages, not actual leaves from the original printing. It contains brief comments from Hornby about each title, along with the bibliographic specifics. The Allen’s bibliography received much praise when it was published, enough that the Book Club of California produced a facsimile (which also had sample leaves!) worthy of the original, in execution and materials, just four years later, in a much larger edition (750 copies; see last image below) than was usual for that group.

Binding was the role of Dorothy in the Allen partnership, and she was competent at making flat-spined case bindings. The material or paper used to cover the boards seems to have been the source of greatest interest; the cases are perfectly fine but not quite on par with the printing. Nonetheless, the bindings became part of the Allens’ overall aesthetic, and their books often are immediately identifiable among a row of spines on a shelf. Which makes the matter of my copy of the bibliography, found in sheets, tricky.

The sheets came with 6 original leaves - I think that’s how many each copy contained (more on that in a minute). One of the sheets in my copy was a Picasso lithograph from Goll’s Four Poems of the Occult (1962, shown at top of this page), which is pretty kool. To these I added six more samples, all prospectuses. The technical term for this is “to grainger,” - adding additional (related) content to a book. Originally this generally implied additional copies of prints in the book, e.g. state proofs or colored copies. But it has since been applied more widely, to any additional content that makes a copy unique. 

And I’d lined up a binder worthy of the book: Hélène Francoeur, of Quebec. She and I had both attended the first week-long printing course offered at Barbarian Press (1996?), and she did (does) beautiful work. My budget stretched to a full-goat binding, but with minimal tooling & certainly no inlays etc. I came up with the stylized AP to be debossed in the boards. Dealing with all the salted-in samples was a bit of a challenge, especially the folded prospectuses which added that much more bulk to an opening. And I wanted everything sewn in (i.e. tipped to hinges), at the appropriate place, by the book’s listing, not stuffed in a pouch at the back. She got it all done, lots of shims & guards, and a few months later a beautiful, sober, solid volume arrived.

I can’t remember if it was before or after, but I also got a copy of the BCC facsimile edition. It was never a rare book, given its large edition. I probably thought it would be useful to have a reference copy, to save my graingered copy the wear & tear. A few years ago the price on these facsimiles bottomed out and copies seemed to be everywhere; I see several copies listed online today under $100, which makes them a steal: the book is beautifully produced, and an engaging read for anyone interested in printing & fine-press publishing.

Sometime later, and again I don’t remember when or why, I encountered a bound copy of the original edition, and bought it. It must have been priced cheaply, or come from someone who had an outstanding invoice. It is bound in quarter-cloth, with block-stamped cloth over boards. Dorothy liked block-stamped fabrics. It’s quite plain next to the copy bound by Hélène, but it also is more obviously & genuinely an Allen Press book.

(Taking photos for this post, I discovered this funkiness in Dorothy's sewing of the first signature - what's going on here?! It looks like she was using doubled thread - which I've never encountered - and one has broken but the other is still intact. I dunno.)

Over the past few years I’ve been shedding as much stuff as possible, trying to pare down to just what’s regularly useful or necessary, as opposed to nice to have around. I’ve long had a general rule for non-reference books: if they haven’t been taken off the shelf in over a year, then maybe they can move on to a new home. (And if a book isn’t going to a be useful reference in one way or another, it doesn’t even get into the house now.) All of which brought my attention to the three copies of The Allen Press Bibliography taking up shelf space.

Culling the facsimile would be the easiest decision, but with cheap copies abundant, no one needs mine. Which of the two originals to let go? The one to which I added all the extra samples and had bound in full goat would seem the likely candidate to keep, but there’s something about a press book in the publisher’s original binding. I pretty quickly decided that was the copy to keep. If you disagree with this line of thinking, and are interested in a unique copy of The Allen Press Bibliography, with an original Picasso litho & six extra sample sheets added, in an austere bespoke binding by one of the best binders working in Canada today, it’s yours for US$1000. Lemme know. You didn’t realize this was one long advertisement, did you. The book has moved along to a new home.

AND ANOTHER THING!

Come back next week, I'll have a cool type thing to share...