Buy Now

Our friends at Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers in Seattle are having a (rare) 30% off sale, starting tomorrow (Tuesday 29 May) and running until June 12. The sale is for items listed on their site only; the code Sale2012 gets you the discount when completing a transaction. For more than two decades this shop has been perhaps the best source for contemporary fine press and artists' books in the Pacific Northwest. Numerous shows featuring different aspects of the book arts have been presented in the shop's charming space as well. Check it out, get to know them.

Exhausten Austen

Jarrett Morrison over at the Bowler Press has launched a campaign to fund his next project, an edition of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice, issued as a three decker (just like the original) and illustrated with his wood engravings. The entire thing will be set by hand, and probably take the rest of his life. (Actually he intends to issue the first volume in 2013, with about a year between each of the next volumes.) He's even posted a well-made pitch film about the project at IndieGoGo (it's like Kickstarter). He needs $20,000 to lay in materials for the entire project, and is offering a variety of incentives for contributors. If an authentic devotion to 19th century aesthetics and literature is your thing, have a look & think about helping Jarrett make it happen. 

Look Up, Way Up...

Twenty-three is the steel letter aniversary. Some cool old letters now adorn the archway leading to HM Central. A foot tall, made of sheet metal, & heavy. Designed to fall on the noggin of anyone outside the clan who comes by without calling ahead.

What news....Oliver Clark, over at Collinge & Clark, recently issued a newsletter featuring some kind words about Types/Paper/Print. He also welcomed the first copy of Jim Westergard's Oddballs to cross the Atlantic (at least, as far as we know). Be interesting to hear what they think of Jim's unique sense of humor over there...

 

Saw the deluxe issue of the catalogue for Charles van Sandwyk's recent exhibition of books held at the University of British Columbia's Rare Books Library. Designed & produced by CVS very much in the style of his own trade publications, it features an original, signed etching sewn in, issued in an edition of 100 copies. These are $300, available from the library or (probably more easily) this shop. There also is a trade edition of the catalogue (different jacket, no etching)...

Third Press is No. 5

While out looking for an anniversary present, & distracted by the sign for a flea market, look what was found poking out from below the table of an absent seller:

Luckily the guy at the next table had a phone number, and a price was quickly agreed upon for this lovely quarto-sized "paper press" (as he called it). And just last week things were backing up in the studio for want of a third press like this. It's important to recognize & acknowledge when good luck comes along. So, that guy hobbling along Terminal Drive, trying not to drop a ton of iron on his toes, was HM, hauling the thing back to the car.

So #5 (as it is apparently named) has been scrubbed clean & will now help case up the last few copies of Types/Paper/Print. Which, by he way, is now out of print (and only one copy that we know of went to a Lovecraft fan!).

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."