Lines, Blocks, Colors

That’s one of the five (i.e. six, with one H.C. copy) boxed copies of Jim Rimmer’s Pie Tree Press. 

 

 

In addition to the book, it includes the 12-page prospectus Jim printed for Leaves from the Pie Tree; a copy of a small broadside, featuring a Robert Kroetch poem, illustrated & printed by Jim (and signed by him and the poet); a complete set of the 13 “unobtainable ornament” cards he issued in 1981 (each set has at least one card in facsimile); and a few pages of Jim’s text from the miniature book Duensing Titling (HM 2003). With that, all of the copies from the edition have been issued and I’m moving on to the next project. 

The first page of the JR book starts with a quote from him about why he found linocuts such a satisfying and expressive medium. It’s taken from an interview he did with Jessica Spring in 2008, available on the Boxcar Press site.

Most of his prints were created from up to seven different blocks, each one printing different elements of the final image in a specific color. I’ve been looking at a number of his prints over the past month, and been fascinated by his composition, his ability to see how the different layers (i.e. colors) will combine, how one color will overlay another in some places to create a third hue.

Whether intentional or a happy accident, this overlapping style meant printing the blocks usually didn’t require terrifically tight registration when printing. Given the number of extra prints he made for his projects (viz. all the ones I found and used for the new book) I think he really enjoyed printing them, and didn’t just stop when he had enough for the edition.  Plus he was always giving things away to the many people who visited his studio. He probably liked having something on hand to give. 

You don’t see a lot of multicolour lino prints in contemporary press, compared to wood engravings. (Nor do you see a lot of multicolour engravings; it’s a lot of fussy work.). Because the material and tools required can be quite simple, I think some people have dismissed lino as too coarse or unrefined for a Fine Press Book. (To be fair, there are a lot of books out there with indifferent or sloppy linocuts.) I don’t know what those people would say to Picasso. When I was working on Oddballs with Jim Westergard, he told me he could achieve the same detail in lino as he could in wood; the tricky part would be how the Lino would hold up when printing. We talked about doing an experiment where he’d engrave the same image on wood and lino, and we’d print them side by side, to see if people could tell which was which. Unfortunately we never got around to it. But here’s an example, by Clifford Cyril Webb, of the detail that can be achieved with lino (sadly he doesn’t seem to have done many prints like this, perhaps too labor intensive):

All that got me thinking, what are the top books with multicolour linocuts I can think of? Here’s my list. It’s completely subjective and doesn’t include any of the many books and artists I don’t even know about. 

First has to be Kuthan’s Menagerie, for obvious corporate reasons. Like Jim, Georges Kuthan seems to have found tremendous expression in the medium. He died in 1966, but I believe Jim knew him at least in passing, and would have seen his linocuts.  

Jim’s Tom Sawyer would be my pick from his bibliography, if only for the 50+ images printed within the text, in addition to the multicolour prints tipped in. 

Lincouts are included in a number of Walter Bachinski’s Shanty Bay books, but perhaps most prominently in their spectacular Circus: The Artist as Saltimbanque. (A saltimbanque is a travelling or street performer; I had to look it up.)

Vance Gerry’s Selected Shore Plants of Southern Califonia (Weather Bird Press, 1992) is worth including in this list. I had a copy, bought in the early years of my education. Copies were around and cheap for years but now it seems to have gotten some recognition. I eventually found the text printing too weak, the face ugly, and the paper too thick. But he was a handpress printer, and the linocuts are lovely. 

Tom Killion’s Fortress Marin seems to be the only book published that features his multicolor linos. I like that he let the images offset to the versos, although I also wonder if this was an unintentional result of lazy printing. I have used this technique when printing wood engravings on thin Japanese paper, to achieve greater opacity (you pull an inked impression without paper in the press, so it prints to the packing; the you pull an inked impression on paper, and the image simultaneously offsets to the very from the packing). I haven’t been able to find the source, but I’m sure I first learned of this in something William Everson wrote. Since Killion was in Everson’s orbit, it’s entirely possible he got the idea the same way. 

Richard Tetrault is a Vancouver artist who has been working with multiblock linocuts for years, but I don’t believe he’s done any books (there are a couple that reproduce his linocuts, but that doesn’t count). 

I’m going to end with a cheat, a book with and about multicolor wood engravings: Whittington Press’s Pastorale (2011), specifically the issue in full vellum. The focus of this book — how the paper used affects the printed image – is a long-standing interest of mine. I’ve lusted for this book for several years, but always end up being put off by what I think is an anemic type (Caslon). John Randle might consider those fighting words. Jim Rimmer would have for certain.

A Visit With Jim Rimmer (Pt. 2)

 

HM’s new book, about Jim Rimmer’s Pie Tree Press & Type Foundry, is out this month. It includes a short essay about Jim’s work by The Aliquando Press’s Will Rueter, followed by a descriptive checklist of the books Jim issued from his press. Each copy also includes an original, initialed color linocut by Jim from one of his books. I had 45 prints, so the edition is just 40 numbered and five hors commerce copies. 

For a variety of reasons, Jim’s books are more widely known of than actually seen. HM’s book was conceived to provide some sense of Jim’s work for people who haven’t had the chance to own one of his books. 

 

Each copy also includes two cards (from a set of 13) he issued in 1981, showing the various “unobtainable ornaments” available from his foundry. Every copy includes Jim’s Apologia (below, left), plus one of the display cards.

Much of the fun in compiling the bibliography was running down variant issues of several books. To augment the new book, here follow images of some of the more unusual items and variations....

The first book issued (but not the first printed...) by Pie Tree was done in an edition of just one copy. Luckily he bound up a second, and it now resides, along with a large archive of Jim’s work, at Simon Fraser University. 

Pie Tree’s second book, Shadow River, has the most convoluted history, spanning three years, two settings, and three issue states (or four, depending how you count). Above is the true first (1996). Jim was teaching typography, printing and illustration at a two-year college program in 1994, and he proposed making the end result a book, produced by the students. Each would create a linocut for a Pauline Johnson poem, and everyone would participate in the setting and printing. The project fell apart, for several reasons, one being that much of the student’s work (including linoblocks) was thrown out during a Christmas break! 

 

Two of the students hadn’t left their blocks at the school, and were able to subsequently print them. Jim went ahead an produced the book himself, cutting blocks for each of the poems, and issued the book in an edition of 40. The last five copies (only) included the print the two students, Monica Serwa and Edward Vandervelden, had completed. Here’s Monica’s...

And here’s Edward’s...

 

If Jim’s intention had been that the two students get one of the copies with their print, it didn’t happen: Edward didn’t even know the book had been completed until I managed to track him down earlier this year.

That’s the title page from second (1997), & most commonly seen version. Notice the woman turned her chair around, and got bigger? It’s colophon hints at some of the turmoil in the book’s production...

Below is what might be a unique copy of the second issue, with a completely different colophon...

Finally, in 1999 Jim completely reset in the book, in Centaur, and printed 15 copies for family & friends... 

... except he later reported only seven were bound up. But at least one copy out there lacks this correction to the colophon. 

His fifth book was Leaves From the Pie Tree, in which he recounted how he was press-ganged into the compositing trade by his grandfather, eventually set out as a freelance graphic artist, and started designing metal and digital types. It’s an entertaining read, enlivened with various linocuts and type samples throughout. The edition was just 40 copies, but actually there were another 10, issued through the digital foundry P22. The idea for it must have come up after he’d finished the book; copies were only available with the purchase of Jim’s digital fonts from the foundry.

Time to start drinking brandy and do battle with this bug (again). I’ll end with different copies of Shadow River; each copy features its own unique printing with cedar fronds. 

 

A Visit With Jim Rimmer (Pt. 1)

 

HM’s checklist of books issued by Jim Rimmer’s Pie Tree Press & Type Foundry will be ready for distribution next month. To coincide with publication  – and augment the checklist – the October post will feature images of his books (& variants). Before all that, this month’s post features links to sources about Jim and his work as a printer and type designer.

 

Many people know of Jim’s books but haven’t actually ever seen one. There are several reasons for this: some editions were small, 50 copies or less. Some editions where never fully issued, his enthusiasm to complete binding waning as sales stalled, which happened because like many private printers, he found self-promotion distasteful. HM’s book was sparked by the acquisition of 45 linocuts from two of his books, and some typographic cards he printed, a year or two after his death in 2010. I had no idea what to do with them, so they sat in a box, but over the years the idea of using his prints as an introduction to his private printing, for the people who’ve never seen the actual books, developed.

 
As an introduction, the HM book includes a four-page profile of Jim written by Will Rueter (the text is adapted from a longer piece published in Devil’s Artisan in 2003), which focuses primarily on his typographic work. The book also includes samples of the types Jim designed and cut in metal, but those are just a slice of his typographic output. A more comprehensive accounting can be seen on Luc Devroye’s site. 

 

Jim lived most of his life in New Westminster, a city jammed up against Vancouver. I first met him in Colophon Books when he was accompanying a younger colleague who was soliciting orders for a book he was publishing (see here for the story about that ill-fated adventure). Anyone getting involved with letterpress in Vancouver in the 1990s would have known Jim’s name, but I had been cautioned away from contacting him for help by someone who said he wasn’t interested in casting type for other people. It was the irascible Washington state printer Chris Stern (Grey Spider Press) who informed me, a few years later, in heated & no uncertain terms, that this was not true, and that I and everyone else in Vancouver did not appreciate the living legend who walked among us. So I called Jim and he said what he probably said to anyone who called asking for help: come on by. 

From about 2002 until his death, I would go out to Jim’s house once or twice a year. In 2003 he gave me a font of his 60-pt Duensing Titling type, and I thought it was the perfect size for a miniature book. He agreed to write a short preface and we published it that same year. He also cast a couple of drawers of Garamont (an odd face) for me that year, which I used for HM’s first book with Barbara Hodgson. Around that time we talked about him designing and cutting a proprietary face for HM, and setting me up with my own casting equipment. I didn’t have a particular sense of what my own type might look like, and I had no desire to play with molten alloys, so neither proposal came to anything. But talking with Jim about those kinds of things was always fun. 

Jim’s past book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, was a tour de force of one person’s vision directing every aspect of design. He started by cutting in metal a 14-pt type, aptly named Hannibal, to set the text. He then created dozens of linocuts to illustrate the story, printed it all in a robust large quarto format, printed the binding papers with one of the elaborate printer’s ornament designs he was known for, and bound the copies. The only thing he didn’t do was make the paper. Here’s a link to an article from Parenthesis about the project, and here’s one from one of the local newspapers.  

Simon Fraser University’s retired head of special collections, Eric Swanick, has worked on an exhaustive checklist of items printed by Jim (most of his work was for others). It was first published in
Devil’s Artisan #66 (2010), followed by a supplement in #91 (2022). While at SFU he acquired a large archive of material by and about Jim (see here), including work from his early days as a freelance graphic designer (including a ’70s era logo for Heart). Eric’s 2012 discussion about Jim with Nigel Beale can be heard here. 

 

In 2006 Swanick and SFU Library organized a “Rimmerfest” to celebrate Jim and his work. A video of the evening, including the man himself, can be seen here. It captures his gentleness and humor, and the wide range of people he inspired and helped. 

Richard Kegler, founder of the digital foundry P22, made the documentary Making Faces about Jim in 2011. A review of the film can be found here.

 

The Boxcar Press blog posted three articles about/interviews with Jim, which can be found here. 

Jason Dewinetz’s Greenboathouse Press site includes this page about acquiring much of Jim’s casting equipment after his death. Jason has plans for his own Rimmer-related book in the next year or two.

Next month, some details of the HM book and images from the six books published by Pie Tree Press & Type Foundry.

 

 

It’s Canada Day so we’ll keep this short: some photos of the Jim Rimmer book in progress. That’s a sketch of what the binding will look like, quarter black cloth with printed paper over boards, the text set in Jim’s 60-pt Duensing Titling. 

 

Printing will be finished in the next couple of weeks, then binding, so copies out early fall as planned.

The book’s last page:

Next month another guest blog: The Aliquando Press’ Will Rueter. Stay cool.

HM, World Celebrate 500th Anniversary

 

 

Welcome to the quincentenary post from the HM blog. I didn’t realize it was due until I noticed that last month’s guest post from Barbara Hodgson was #499. Her post enjoyed loadsatraffic, so I’ll ask her back when the book’s issued. The guest blogger dodge worked well  – lots of views & no work for me – so I have a few more lined up for later in the year. 

That’s the binding for my copy of the Stockton book above. The spine is a strip of blue vellum that’s been kicking around for years, the paper is a blotter from when I was painting the actual cover sheets & I just liked how it ended up looking, one side with an orange splotch and the other with a blue splotch. 

That’s a tray full of 14-pt Trajanus roman. When the great Will Rueter wound down his studio last year, he very kindly let me take over conservatorship of his entire Trajanus family, sizes 12 to 54, roman & italic. It’s a beautiful face and not often encountered in press books. I have a plan for a get-to-know-you project with it; you never really know a type until you’ve set & printed it.

 

That’s some of the original material that will be included with copies of an upcoming book about Jim Rimmer’s Pie Tree Press & Type Foundry. Each copy will include an original, multi-color  linocut, initialed by Jim, from one of his books, plus a few additional items. That might be the next project in the press, or it could be Barbara H’s marbling book (see last month's post). Either way, both should be issued sometime in the fall. 

Cameron Treleaven, of Calgary’s Aquila Books, has been helping with the Rimmer project, and sent along the above keepsake with a collection of the ornament cards recently. The keepsake was printed by Brian Queen, on paper he made. The particularly interesting aspect of this sample is the laid screen on which the paper was cast was created using 3D printing technology, which allowed Brian to incorporate the watermark. I haven’t seen 3D being used to make screens like this before. Apparently papermaking is Brian’s avocation; I hope to connect with him for a future blog post. 

That’s a bunch of Reg Lissel’s HM Text, all vat-dyed for BH’s Around the World in Colour book. She personally “imported” the pigments from Sennelier, in the 7th arrondissment of Paris. Each jar glass jar weighed almost a kilo, and she bought six and then had to get them home without any colorful disasters in an airport. We’ll be including samples in the book about Reg’s adventures in papermaking, which – after years of attempts – is finally coalescing. I once saw a copy of it in 2024, so maybe it’ll be there when we pass through. 

I had cause to be rooting through my Doves shelf this past week, and rediscovered these two slips of tissue with what looks like a trial setting/proof of Cobden-Sanderson’s Credo. I found them in a bookseller’s ephemera bin, years ago. No idea who was responsible or if the text ever got properly printed. Will R. thought the type looks like Zapf’s Aldus. Could be – the & looks particularly right – but the e leaves me wondering...