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.

Help Me Somebody

Before printing of Oddballs could start in earnest, we had to tear the paper down. Which is one reason we kept delaying things; it is such a boring job. We're printing on some of our coveted vintage Guarro mouldmade laid paper (the same stock used for HM=X). Each book requires 14 signatures of two sheets (i.e. eight pages) each; each sheet is almost a half full sheet of the Guarro. Almost but not quite; we need to remove two inches from the width. We used a cutter to halve the sheets (so the heads will be a trimmed edge), leaving the deckle on the bottom and one edge. We didn't like the look or feel of the other fore edge being trimmed, so those have to be torn. We'll print 45 copies to get 35 we like. That means 630 full sheets; once halved, that's 1,260 printing sheets. So that's 1,260 fore edges that need torn. And being a laid paper, we have to ensure we keep track of the rough & smooth sides. You can see why we procrastinated.

The photo above shows the stack to be torn, the offcuts, and the trimmed sheets. The offcuts will be further trimmed - mercifully using the cutter again - to a width of one inch, for use as shims in the binding. Since the engravings are being tipped into the book, the binding - the spine - must account for the additional thickness they add to the text block, and this is done by adding shims to the folds of the signatures. With the trial binding, Natasha Herman has determined that a one-inch strip of Guarro folded twice (to make four thicknesses) inserted between the outer and inner sheet, will be sufficient. (No, we're not printing on this horrible yellow Guarro, but it's the same weight as the white so we used it for the blank dummy.) This is a detail one should always look for when presented with a book that includes tipped-in items.

Progress was somewhat expedited by setting up a jig: a ruler fastened at one end to the cutting mat, and a mark exactly 17 inches to the left. By aligning each sheet to the mark and horizontal, the edge can simply be torn along the ruler's edge. Nonetheless, it is tedious work. So tedious that, after years of rejecting all inquiries along this line, we have begun entertaining the idea of a HM apprentice. This is exactly the kind of work intended for the young & keen. There's even room in the studio for a bedroll.

As the idea took hold, we thought of other tasks suitably interesting and valuable to the studio's ongoing success. Like harvesting the moss from our roof (the apprentice could sell it at the nearby weekend farmers' market). And so, investigations into the feasibility of what we're tentatively calling the Kramerica Memorial Apprenticeship are underway; stay tuned for application details.

Prospective Oddballs

Copies of the prospectus for Jim Westergard's Oddball series have gone out. Jim sent us 27 copies of the Hunter S. Thompson portrait, which is featured as the sample spread in the notice, so 27 copies were printed, sewn into wraps, and numbered. Initial response to Jim's work has been - no surprise - enthusiastic. One correspondent in the U.K., however, thought the content wasn't right for a clientele with a too "Eurocentric" focus. We agree, and this is, of course, why we were attracted to the series in the first place - Jim's ability to inject humor and perversity into a medium that too often takes itself terribly seriously. As Barry Moser says in the introduction:

“Wood engraving is a dark medium...I don’t know how Westergard does it, but he has an uncanny ability to pull humor out of that dastardly valley of shadows. Despite the dark odds against him, he manages, again and again, to wrangle some of the funniest wood engravings I have ever seen.”

While printing of the various oddball biographies is underway, we continue to play with ideas for the title page. Below is a quick digital sketch of an idea we had, incorporating "thumbnails" of all 40 oddballs in the setting, but the size reduction is too great and they'd end up looking like thumbprints. Nonetheless, the concept we still like, and we're talking with Jim about other illustrative options...

How to Stack Books

Maclean's Magazine has published a profile of Vancouver's MacLeod's Books, and owner Don Stewart (the photo above, from the article, is by Brian Howell). MacLeod's is Vancouver's most storied used and antiquarian shop, with a history that now spans five decades. Don is among HM's first generation of patrons, and continues to be a source of inspiration, advice, found-treasure stories, and, of course, books. In fact, one of the cool things about Don is that customers go through an esoteric probationary period - the duration and terms of which are never discussed, but generally have to do with one's level of knowledge, willingness to learn, and commitment to actually buying books. The successful candidates are elevated to a cadre that qualifies them for invitations to purchase certain items that will appeal to their particular interests. These items are never on display (or online), but appear from unknown repositories, often with the story of their provenance. (We know that somewhere he has a copy of our 1998 Griffo book, and a few other very early HM efforts. They will bubble up to the surface one day...) Should you fail to act when the opportunity is presented, you cannot be sure it will recur. Readers whose interest in piqued by the article's mention of a panoramic photograph of Terrace, B.C. please note that this is an error; it's Trail. And for an even better shot of the shop, here's Stan Douglas's famous (& fantastic) photograph, which really needs to be seen in its original 1.75 x 3 meter size for the full effect:

She's Rocio!

The mystery to our new "Iguanas" print is solved, courtesy of one Preston Briggs: the signature was indeed misread, and the artist's first name is RocÌo. (But that C and I really run together like a U....) That makes our artist the Mexican actress and dancer RocÌo Sagaon. Preston kindly sent a link to a 2004 article in the North Texas e-News, which includes the following biographical notes about Rocio and her husband, George Vinaver:

"RocÌo Sagaon, interacting in the circuit of dance and the cultural milieu of Mexico since a young age, expressed her restlessness in all fields of the visual arts, and later together with her husband Georges Vinaver, entered the realm of ceramics. Her pieces invoke the Pre-Columbian and Oriental tradition. Sagaon works on diverse scales, from tiny pieces to large scale....The late George Vinaver deserves posthumous recognition due to his contributions to the relief genre of ceramics. Vinaver, wife Sagaon, and Gustavo Perez are all founders of the El Tomate workshop opened in 1984 on a large piece of land owned by Vinaver and wife. Early pieces produced at El Tomate for part of Seven Worlds [sic]."

We were able to find just one of her etchings online (available from Gilley's Gallery in Baton Rouge), "Tambien ellos Pasan." These images don't do the pieces justice; her color work is fantastic.

Who is Rouó Sagaon?

Found this etching at a flea market last weekend. Edition of 50, titled "Iguanas," image measures approx. 15 x 20 inches, the colors printed from multiple plates. Stunning. In fact, it's so arresting that we asked the price just to see how much the peddler thought it was worth, expecting to hear some ridiculous price that would allow him to retire. But no! It could be had for the few small bills in our pockets! But since getting it home, all attempts to find any information about the artist - or even mention of him/her - have been fruitless.

The print is signed Rouó Sagoan. It doesn't show well below, but we're sure that third letter is a U.

At the lower right corner of the sheet is a blind stamp for the Sagaon-Vinaver Work-Shop:

Google turns up nothing for either the artist or the workshop. The print does not look terribly old - probably less than 20 years. In this day & age, how many people don't show up, at least tangentially, in a Google search? Any information about this artist would be appreciated; our e-mail is down at the bottom right of this page.