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. 

 

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.