Some Don't Know Some Some or 4AD

One of HM's favorite people (a bookseller, no surprise) wrote this week after reading the brief foreword in our latest, Types/Paper/Print. Dear Soul was politely wondering if "some some" - used in the foreword with reference to a quantity of typefaces included in the sampling - was a printer's term he had not previously encountered, or maybe not?

We cannot be responsible for other people's lack of knowledge. Given his own regional locutions, he should have immediately recognized it for being contextually similar to the plural "all you all." The term that appears in the T/P/P foreword is part of a lexicology familiar to printers as far back as Gutenberg, all of them having included some variant of it in something they printed at one time or another. Our correspondent really was a wonderful friend & supporter for the longest time; too bad we'll no longer be at home for his future calls or notes.

More significantly, major gaps in our own knowledge were serendipitously filled this week, and will make valued  contributions to the printing of upcoming books. The English music label 4AD may be the single most important influence on HM, both graphically (at least in terms of providing inspiration) and curatorially - the concept of  wildly diverse output united only by the tastes & interests of the people presenting it. If you liked what you'd heard from the label, you'd probably like whatever else you found from the label. And its in-house design team, 23 Envelope, our eyes to type in design.

The vinyl was purged long ago (good riddance) but over the years, whenever a 4AD CD was found, it was added to the collection. Imagine the happy surprise to find not one but two new (to us) items this week, both of which have proven sublime listening, the glacial wall-of-sound fog that fills a room and lets your mind wander while your body repeats a series of tasks (i.e. prints with a handpress). Swallow was an iffy candidate, as the credits listed singing (not something we generally want to hear), but that singing was built into the musical wall, mortar in the bricks. The Hope Blister was blissfully vocal free, and bonus - it was a new incarnation for Ivo (Mr 4AD) Watts and the team behind This Mortal Coil (iconic, but less frequently heard at HM due to the predominance of vocals in the tracks). Both of the new discs are sonic representations of HM's aspirations, & highly recommended.

Met with Shinsuke Minegishi this week, got into detailed planning for his retrospective book. Prints & engraved blocks all over his apartment floor for a few hours. Ideas bubbling. Publication about a year from now...

Jason Dewinetz over at Greenboathouse Press (see link at right) sent copies of a label he'd recently set and printed, to adorn a box he'd constructed to contain (& hide) a collection of H'ephemera assembled over the past few years. His own unique drop box. The HM pair looks lovely; a bit of grafting & those serifs could be married up in an interesting way...

Without Jason's labels, we'd have no news to report. Still finishing the cases for Types/Paper/Print. About which: the deluxe issue is fully subscribed. Some copies will go to booksellers, so if you had your heart set on one, let us know & we can direct you to someone. Those copies are expected to come out of Claudia's studio mid-May. The current plan is for a binding very similar to Elements in Correlation: quarter leather, leather tips, paste paper over boards (probably different papers for each copy, culled from Claudia's stash of leftovers). 

One point about the deluxe copies that we've repeatedly forgotten to mention: the frontis wood engraving is signed by Shinsuke Minegishi. 

Awesome: The Whys & Hows of HM

The online magazine Vancouver Is Awesome (an aspirational name) recently posted an interview with HM publisher Rollin Milroy. It's a very, very long interview, complete with his trademark run-on sentences. It also gives about as accurate a picture of the studio's Why and How as is ever likely to appear, for which the author, Liisa Hannus, must be thanked. Milroy's usual no-interview policy was waived due to Hannus's genuine enthusiasm for all things print, and the legwork she'd put into research before getting in touch.

“Some people focus on the price of these things and the cost and wonder ‘How can books cost that much?’ Well, if you don’t understand the process, the price makes no sense to you. But if you do understand the process, and therefore are interested in the process, the price makes sense to you. Now, whether you’re prepared to pay that price for that book is totally up to you and your taste, which is the rest of the fun."

With Occupied Over, It's Time to Start Cutting

Copies of Occupied By Colour have been traveling to their new homes over the past couple of weeks. The book is bound in quarter leather, with the head and foot of the boards edged in leather (with leather onlay and gilt tooling). The boards are covered in Claudia's custom paste papers upon which she has hand-tooled a progression of circles.

The cloth box (edged with the same paste paper) contains a crystal prism; a pamphlet briefly recounting the history of hair dye, along with three actual samples (ick); and a vintage dye-test thread card from the Courtauld Co. (early 20th century?).

As with previous volumes in this series, the first eight copies in the edition form a deluxe issue. These copies feature a more elaborate binding, and an original color analysis of a different historical work of art. The color analysis process is based on the work of Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, as found in her idiosyncratic book Color Problems (1901). Shown below is the analysis of Ingres' The Grand Odalisque.

While Claudia is completing the deluxe bindings, Barbara is diving into the writing and planning of their next collaboration (which will not be part of the color series). Cutting Paper, a miscellany of cut-paper art ("scherenschnitt") from Claudia Cohen & Barbara Hodgson, the team behind our ongoing color series and 2011's WunderCabinet. This venerable art form – practised everywhere paper is found – requires no more than scissors and knives and any kind of paper. Each copy of Cutting Paper will include approximately three dozen examples of archival and original cut-paper art. Brief essays will describe the techniques, the variations found around the world, and the history of the art form. There will also be an extensive bibliography. The book will be printed at Heavenly Monkey on a variety of handmade papers, and issued in an edition of 30 copies (including 10 deluxe).

p.s. apologies to all the 99 percenters whose search inquiries lead them to our Occupied posts. An unfortunate, but humorously ironic juxtaposition of meanings.

It's In The Mail

The first batch of Types/Paper/Print were sent out to their future lives today. So were a bunch of the 2012 New Books prospectus. About halfway through casing the regular copies of the book. The photo above shows the three different marbled patterns being used.

But the exciting news is that, within the week, Marsen Jules' label is issuing the long-planned collection of original music inspired by the works of Harold Budd. Very cool. Perfect for quiet moments printing, or reading, books.

New HM Prospectus Full of Lies

A new four-page prospectus for books to be published by HM in 2012 is being mailed out over the next week. Sadly, close reading reveals at least one major untruth: the lead article claims copies of the new Types/Paper/Print specimen book will include "one duplicate leaf printed on handmade paper." The presumption was that there would be sufficient extras from the copies printed on handmade paper (for the 10 deluxe copies of the book, which include the text in full on three different papers: Guarro laid, handmade, and Arches Wove). But there weren't, and so the plan was abandoned. Meanwhile, David Clifford was busy at Black Stone Press printing the prospectus, which was already out of date. C'est la vie. There were some extras, so some copies may sneak out with the extra leaf: the rare "duplicate leaf" variant.

The prospectus also fails to report that the three copies of the HM Drop Box, featured on the last page, are in fact all sold. They were, however, sold to booksellers, so they're not entirely out of play.

A PDF version of the prospectus is available from the home page of the HM site.

Types/Paper/Print: Cased Close

Getting into the thick of sewing copies of Types/Paper/Print and making the cases.

The sections were trimmed to 8 x 12 inches before sewing. The nipping presses become the bottleneck, and the solution is to complete each copy from sewing through casing in, rather than working through each stage of the process for the entire edition. The book is sewn and the spine pasted up; while it sets, the case is made. Then the book gets stuffed in the case, nipped and pressed while the next copy is prepared. After 30 minutes (the time it takes to sew a copy and make the case) between boards in the nipping press, the book is added to a small stack in a second press and left for about 24 hours. Boring, repetitive work. Even worse than printing. But at least something different for a while.

The endpapers are, alas, tipped on, a tactic we have always dismissed as something akin to a clip-on tie. But in this instance, for this book, it made sense, in part because it allowed us to make the slight adjustment in the press for the papers to be used in Claudia's deluxe copies (which most definitely will not be tipped on; hence the need for an increase to the space between what will be the doublure and the fly). For the front of the book we printed 48-pt Perpetua:

For the back, 60-pt De Roos semi-bold:

The cases are being covered in a variety of Payhembury hand-marbled papers. Labels printed in gold are set on to the spine and front board, as shown above.

Getting into the binding of Types/Paper/Print has reminded us of the book that was, if not exactly a model, at least an inspiration. It's a specimen book issued by the Alcuin Press in 1928, beautifully printed in various types on Batchelor's Kelmscott paper.

The book opens with a page set in 72-pt Cloister,

followed by a spread set in 36-pt, and then settles into a variety of faces in book sizes.

The text is an interesting precis of the fine press movement and the history of printing, concluding with a brief summary of the press's abilities in, and philosophy toward binding. In this instance, an elegant quarter-cloth case made with thin board.