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.
