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.
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