Vintage Papers in the Stacks

Had to kill some time at the University of British Columbia last weekend. Went to the general stacks to peruse the "history of printing" section. In about 10 lateral feet of shelving was a fantastic cross-section of vintage European handmade papers, many used in relatively pedestrian books. For example, the above census of books printed by William Caxton.

A census basically is simply a list of all known copies in collections. The book contains about a dozen facsimile pages from Caxton books, primarily illustrating the different types, but after that it makes for very dull reading. Nonetheless, the publisher deemed it worthy of printing on a lovely laid paper bearing the watermark Chiers. That's the name of a river that passes through Belgium and France, but a lazy Google search turns up no specific references (there were numerous papermills along the river). Pulling out Le Clert's Le Papier is always fun, but shed no light on the question (probably because his book focuses on papermaking in a different part of France).

On another shelf I spotted some lovely deckles poking out from a tattered buckram case binding, inside which was a more engaging book than the Caxton census, printed on an even lovelier paper. H.C. Brooks' 1927 study of books printed by Giovanni Bodoni remains a primary resource on the influential Italian printer, in part because it was produced in a manner appropriate for the topic.

The bulk of the edition was printed on a handmade laid (vergata) sheet, but this copy is one of 50 printed on a opaque wove sheet with a hard, smooth surface (e.g. calendered) and a large gothic watermark (all were partials, along the fore edges). A few copies of this book are listed on Abe, but all seem to be from the main edition.

 
As shown above, the name of the recipient (probably a subscriber) was printed on the limitation page, and it gives this copy an interesting provenance. Winship was a famous American librarian and scholar of printing history. He also was a private pressman who published under the imprint Sign of the George. How his copy of Brooks' Bodoni got to Vancouver is a wonder (or not; bookseller catalogue issued some time after his death in 1952?).

The smooth Fabriano sheet shows off the facsimiles, some of which include intaglio illustrations, beautifully.

There's a brief section on types at the back, plus - for those of you excited by Barbarian Press' current fundraising campaign for their book about Curwen Press borders - a few pages showing samples of borders used by Bodoni. If you've seen the horrible Taschen edition of Bodoni's Manual of Typography, indifferently printed on blinding-white paper & stuffed into a case binding that isn't up to the task, Brooks' book is a balm for your eyes.

Both the Caxton & the Bodoni books are in the most mundane and purely functional case bindings that reflect exactly what these books are: reference materials. At the time they were published, handmade paper was sufficiently available and affordable that using it for a book was not a deluxe affair.

AND ANOTHER THING!
Barbara Hodgson has been invited to give this year's J. Ben Lieberman Lecture for the American Printing History Assoc! She'll be talking about her collaboration with Claudia Cohen for The WunderCabinet. She's an engaging public speaker, and this will be a rare opportunity to gain first-hand insight to their work. Claudia will there but I can't go: have to stay home & work at printing her next book...

Eli Was A Book

 

The term "artist['s] book" has come up several times recently in reference to HM publications. One instance was a course at Smith College in which The WunderCabinet was one of several books examined by students for "how they either align or go against [Janet?] Zweig and [Joanna] Drucker’s criteria" for what constitutes an artist's book. The term could be applied to  any & all of the images shown on this post. How could a phrase that sounds so benign have become be so treacherous?

Let's start by acknowledging that it's always nice to to be included in a discussion like this. Thanks. It might, however, be interesting for the participants to know that neither Barbara nor Claudia would ever call The WunderCabinet - or any of their books - an artist's book. (To begin with, it would have to be an artists' book. This lack of clarity around the apostrophe's place in the term is the first sign that a dark, bottomless pit lies ahead.)

At least one of the Smith essays used the terms livres d'artiste and artist books interchangably (the kid actually wrote "livres d'artiste books"), which Drucker & Zweig probably would be the first to correct. The terms might be analogous, but they're definitely not synonymous. HM would (proudly) admit to some kinship with the French tradition of éditions de luxe in the early part of the last century, if only for attention to production and materials. But never artist books.

A lot of writing has been done about artist books, especially what they are, almost as if they were more thought experiment than actual book. There is an interesting blog by a prof at U Dub (what they call the University of Washington) focusing on applications of digital & social media. This page on a Matisse site has images & info about books created by an artist who had a understanding of & appreciation for the form. And here's an interesting article about the spectrum covered by using the word "artist" as an adjective modifying "book."

In the Smith postings, it was heartening to see several of the students call BS on the whole "what is an artist's book" distraction; here's one and here's another one. Just to put it on the record, HM does not publish artist/artist's/artists' books. We simply publish books. The only adjectives we acknowledge are "good" (aspirationally) and "elusive" (practically). The book is already one of the koolest, endlessly versatile & practical things ever invented. We're happy to do our best to continue the tradition; we don't need to try to make the book something other than it is.

Imagine That! HM Gets Into Cornell

Cornell's Walker Library of Human Imagination has organized an exhibition titled Collecting Imagination, showcasing "imagination as a driving force through history and celebrates the adventure of discovery, learning, and creativity." Included in this diverse and centuries-spanning assemblage is a copy of Barbara Hodgson & Claudia Cohen's The WunderCabinet (HM 2011). Have a poke around in the cases.

Making an Exhibition of Ourselves

Another post from last weekend's Wayzgoose printing fair, this one all about us (mostly). Jim Westergard and his wife flew in from Red Deer to accompany Oddballs' first (& only, at least by us) exhibition in Canada, and it was brilliant to have them on hand. As previously mentioned, we printed up 10 copies of a poster ganging all 40 (plus one) of the oddballs together, which Jim signed and numbered with assistance from the HM devil, before the doors opened. These are 22 x 30 inches (image area is about 12 x 21 inches), giclée printed on 180 g all-rag paper. A few copies of these remain, priced at $60. 

Barbara Hodgson was on hand to discuss The WunderCabinet, a display of which occupied most of HM's second table. As shown above, she didn't get a minute's rest all day, in large part due to an interview with her about the project which aired on CBC Radio's North By Northwest show that morning. As proven in previous years, a mention of the wayzgoose on Sheryl McKay's show assures a significant boost in attendance at the show, and this year was no different: many people came in specifically to see the book and meet Barbara, having heard the interview that morning. A podcast of can be found here.

Jim was diligent about pulling his weight as an exhibitor, but he did manage to make a few circuits of the room over the course of the day. Below he's talking to HM's secret weapon, Reg Lissel, who was demonstrating how to make paste papers. 

Jim brought along a number of the trade books that feature his artwork, and lucky people snapped these up (and got them signed). Jim's off to Toronto in late November for an event organized by Beasts of New York publisher The Porcupine's Quill. It will be an evening's discussion between/among Jim, author Jon Evans, and Toronto printmaker George Walker. 

Do You Have It In a Smaller Size...?

As previously mentioned somewhere in the past on this blog, last summer for fun & laughs we printed a few copies of a complete miniature version of The WunderCabinet. These shrunken heads came in at about 30% the size of the original, which means a page of about 3 x 4 inches, with text in 2-pt type (printed on dampened pieces of Reg Lissel's linen paper deemed too thin for the full-sized book). As is always the case with Barbara and Claudia, this little bit of off-hand hilarity snowballed out of all proportions, with everyone attempting to outdo the others, and has yielded this:

Which is to say, five miniature replicas of the deluxe issue of The WunderCabinet (plus 3 hors de commerce). It's the same full-leather binding with onlays, laid into a box covered in wood veneers, with accompanying oddments and disturbing bits.

These photos are the first completed copy: Claudia's been spending an unprofitably large amount of time with this little distraction, during which she reportedly has overcome much of her strong dislike for small books. Meanwhile, we'll continue pondering how to list this mini-WunderCabinet in the HM bibliography.

Comments from the Peanut Gallery

A report of the All-Day Wonder Cabinet event in New York City, filed by our people on the ground...

The WunderCabinet, represented by Barbara, Claudia and the book itself, made its New York debut on the 16th of April at the All-Day Springtime Wonder Cabinet. This event, curated by author/thinker Lawrence Weschler and presented by the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, was a veritable cabinet of curious scientists, artists, filmmakers and musicians. Highlights included Michael Benson and Carl Schoonover comparing telescopic views of the universe with microscopic views of the brain; "Lurch," Boris Hars-Tschachotin's captivating film set in the Berlin Natural History Museum; and Harvard neuroscientist Margaret Livingstone's assertive yet comprehensible explanation of vision and its quirks.

A copy of The WunderCabinet and all its objects, along with a miniature version and the author's notebook, was on display in the foyer. Barbara had the opportunity to turn the pages from time to time, giving those who hung out in the foyer a chance to see an ever-changing selection of topics. Barbara's talk included slides of the book and Claudia contributed pertinent comments from her sheltered spot in the audience.

Flea marketing the following day resulted in several purchases which may or may not end up in future books. On Monday, Claudia and Barbara visited Victoria Steele, Director of Collections Strategy at the New York Public Library, and were given a terrific tour of the library and saw NYPL's copies of The Temperamental Rose, After Image and The WunderCabinet.

First We Take Manhattan...

Barbara Hodgson & Claudia Cohen have stormed New York City with The WunderCabinet. Yesterday The New Yorker's blog ran a short piece about the book, and Barbara was interviewed by WNYC. We await a debrief on how tomorrow's all-day Wonder Cabinet event goes....

Your Eyes Do Not Deceive

The deluxe copies of The WunderCabinet (numbers 1 - 10) were shipped out from Claudia's studio last week. She and Barbara spent two full days assembling all the bits contained in the box's two levels (the bottom one consisting of two drawers), and writing up a detailed inventory of items for each copy (sewn into a wrap made from Karli Frigge's marbled paper, shown in image at the bottom of this post). Each of the deluxe boxes contains about 40 items. No two collections are the same, but some of the items that might be found include a limpet shell from the Aurora Islands; a cast of a finger of Catherine Vorontsov, Mme la Princess de Dashkov; a porcupine quill; reducing & enlarging lenses; a sea urchin skeleton; polished stone obelisks; ammonite pairs; a parchment armillary sphere; and artifacts and Roman coins from Syria. Each box also contains, in a separate pamphlet, a sunprint and a watercolor painting of a magnolia seed head. Barbara sent these photos of the book and box along.

Claudia had described her plans for the deluxe binding as full leather with a trompe l'oeil pattern, but that could be anything. As one young fan of her work commented upon seeing the deluxe WunderCabinet, just when you think she couldn't possibly outdo herself, she does.

While working on the boxes, the two collaborators also discussed various upcoming projects, the first of which will be the third volume in their color series, tentatively titled A Colourful Calling: The Palette at Work. In a format similar to The Temperamental Rose and After Image, A Colourful Calling will explore how color is used in a variety of occupations, from chemistry to house painting to hairdressing. Illustrating the examples with palettes for interior design, artists’ supplies, textile dyeing, philately and psychology, to name a few, Barbara and Claudia show that work has never been more colourful. We expect to be publishing A Colourful Calling at about this time next year. Meanwhile, for those in the area, don't forget that Barbara will be talking at the upcoming Wonder Cabinet event in New York City on April 16.

One-Day Wonder (Cabinet)

After being shown the New York Public Library's newly arrived copy of The WunderCabinet last month, Lawrence Weschler contacted co-author Barbara Hodgson with an invitation to participate in a one-day symposium celebrating the multi-disciplinary character of the traditional cabinet of curiosities. 

This is the third such symposium organized by Weschler, in his role as director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU. The purpose of the event is to "delve back into the roots of the modern Humanities in the sixteenth century’s Age of Marvels, when the sorts of disciplines that would eventually separate out into distinct Arts and the Sciences, as currently understood, still comingled promiscuously and sometimes well nigh deliriously." Barbara will give an illustrated talk about The WunderCabinet, touching on both its inspirations and details of the project itself. 

More information about this event can be found here. 

Copy Artist

When we finished printing The WunderCabinet last July, we kept a complete copy made up from waste sheets, with the vague intent of sewing them up in some simple case one day, to at least have a bare-bones copy of the book kicking around the studio. Clearing up loose ends before descending into Oddballs, we decided to sew the sheets up, and offered to do the same for Barbara, if she had a waste copy made up from her own rejects among the colored sheets. So she dropped them off last weekend. Even though the sheets were rejects, her copy still looked much more lovely than our plain sheets. So, since it's a waste copy anyway, we decided to do our best at copying in our copy, the pages and parts she'd spent so many months watercoloring. This was no small undertaking for the dedicated monochromaticists at HM. Using what colored pencils were lying around, we got to work. And it became an experience with a book unlike any we've ever had. It's one thing to look at the pages of The WunderCabinet and think, That must have been a lot of work. But it's a much deeper and more sustained experience when one is attempting to copy the original, getting the hues and tones as close as possible. It made us wonder what it would be like to publish a book like The WunderCabinet, and issue it with an uncolored copy, for the readers to fill in. Knowing book collectors, no one would ever actually try it - more's the pity. Shown above and below are a couple of the pages, with Barbara's watercolors on the right, and HM's attempts on the left (the butterflies haven't been tipped on to our page yet).

By the way, institutions that we know of where copies can be seen include The New York Public Library, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and the University of Alberta. In all cases copies are held in special collections, and so appropriate arrangements must be made to see the books. There are, or will soon be more in the United States, and we'll communicate those if/when we hear.

The Cabinet Revealed

Copies of The WunderCabinet were sent out to subscribers last week. All of the 20 regular issue copies have been completed. Claudia is now finishing up the bindings for the 10 deluxe copies. Offered here are some photos Barbara took while various wonders were being assembled and arranged in the regular copies; each is accompanied by a handwritten inventory, detailing the items included.

One of these copies will be on display at next week's Codex book fair in Berkeley, at the table of our friends Vamp & Tramp Booksellers. One of the miniature copies will also be on display. We'll post images of the deluxe copies when we have them.

Closing Up The WunderCabinet

We're getting close to The WunderCabinet's release, in just under a month now. Barbara and Claudia will be meeting in a few weeks to assemble all the various bits & pieces that go into each box (and Barbara will write out a detailed inventory of each box, for inclusion). The book will make its debut at the Codex Book Fair in Berkeley. HM has done the previous two fairs but we couldn't spare the time this year, so our friends at Vamp & Tramp Booksellers (who will be exhibiting) have kindly offered to display the book for us. It will be a rare opportunity to see the book in the wild, as the entire edition is subscribed, and our booksellers seem to already have customers lined up for their copies.

In addition to exhibiting one of the "regular" copies (i.e. 1/20), Vamp & Tramp will have on hand one of the miniature versions. Alas, this little copy will not be bound by Claudia but rather by HM. Nonetheless, it should be sufficient for people to flip through and get an idea of what the big book is like. The ten signatures were sewn on two vellum slips, the spine pasted, and then the book was put into a case made from a piece of Reg Lissel's abaca vellum paper (from batch that had been loaded with pigment to dye it black). Barbara is going to create a spine label. The frontis, which is an etching in the real book, is reproduced digitally here, but printed on Reg's paper; everything else in the book is legit (i.e. letterpress and hand embellishments, just like the real thing).

Small, Colorful Wunders

Having perfected and streamlined her technique with the big copies, Barbara Hodgson practically tore through coloring & embellishing the eight miniature copies of The WunderCabinet. (Ten actually, with the two printer's proof copies she kindly undertook as well.) She sent along these photos of completed miniatures, displayed with their full-size progenitors. Still no definitive plan on what to do with them, except that a copy will accompany each of the authors' deluxe boxes, and the publisher's as well. That leaves five in play; watch this blog for details of how and when they will become available.

We asked her for a few comments about the book (in its two forms). She replied with the following:

"Who knows what drove me to tackle the creation of this 33%-of-full-size book, when most of my resources (motor control, eyesight, patience) had already been expended. Ultimately, it must have been the challenge, combined with an enduring fascination for miniscule handmade objects.

"The eight copies took about five days to embellish. The small version is an almost exact replica of the larger one and includes a pressed Dicksonia antarctica fern, a working volvelle and a magic lantern slide of natural history images.

"Claudia Cohen will be joining the madness and binding these copies once she has finished binding the full-size edition."

HM checked in with Claudia this week. The black leather has arrived from Harmatan for the deluxe copies, and the those boxes are well underway. We had expected to be debuting one of the regular (1/20) copies at Codex next February, but now Claudia's thinking that we may have a deluxe one (1/10) ready for display. Either way, the book will be at Vamp & Tramp's table when Codex opens on February 6.

Small Wunders

Printing The WunderCabinet took three months in the HM studio earlier this year; one day last week we printed off eight more complete copies. Chalk and cheese: these latest copies are shrunk down to what felt like 2-pt type, pages small enough we could print two entire signatures (8 up) on one sheet (vs the 2-up folios printed for the edition).

Why? is the obvious question. The answer has faded from recollection, but ties back to Barbara & Claudia's first collaborative book, The Temperamental Rose (2007). For that book, Barbara had made a miniature mock-up as a reference for the printer. When the project was wrapping up and we were collecting all the bits, we asked if HM could keep the little dummy. Surprised by our interest, Barbara instead proposed making three proper miniatures, one each for HM, Claudia and herself. Here's what she came back with:

The book, which measures 2 x 3 inches, is complete in every aspect, right down to the hand coloring, embellishments, pop-ups and even the glass vial of dry pigment. But all that work on pages that were, at the end of the day, just printed digitally. Thus, in the early days of The WunderCabinet, some wise-ass suggested doing this again, but this time with the text printed letterpress. Always being up for a challenge like this, Barbara had polymer plates of each page made, shrunk down to about 30% of the original size. When Reg Lissel completed the paper for the book, we culled some of the 100% linen sheets that were particularly thin. And there it all sat, as HM avoided the issue and did other things. But a promise is a promise, so last week we finally set things up in the press, damped the tissue-thin paper, and got down to the work.

The type on the plates was so small that positioning the eight pages to ensure correct margins & back-up was tedious and strained the eyes. We weren't sure just how the very small pages, with lines that were already very fine in the full-size version, would print; perhaps not at all, or perhaps as a muddy stain.

One of the advantages of printing on dampened paper is that significantly less ink is required to achieve crisp letterforms, and this is especially important when the letters are so small. To our pleasant surprise, the plates printed wonderfully. The biggest challenge was that the paper would begin to dry in the short time between pulling the first impression, re-inking the type, and turning the sheet to back it up, so careful haste was required.

Seven signatures of two sheets each took about eight hours to print off (five sheets printed for each signature). Most of that time was taken up with just getting the pages correctly positioned. Two days later the sheets were dry, pressed, and ready for trimming and collating. Barbara and Claudia have plans to bind up eight copies, the pages hand-colored and enhanced just as they are in the life-sized edition. We hope they do not lose their eyesight on such distractions.