“Deliver us from fear and favor; from mean hopes and cheap pleasures. Have mercy on each in his deficiency; let him not be cast down; support the stumbling on the way, and give at last rest to the weary.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
Prayers Written at Vailima
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)
Pacific Palisades, CA: The Melville Press, 1999
PR5488 P75 1999
In 1889, Robert Louis Stevenson moved his family to Vailima in the South Sea island of Samoa. The Scottish novelist and poet was in failing health. His doctors hoped that a change in climate would help. Stevenson believed in the power of prayer and composed many of his own. He held evening prayer services in his home, attended by his family members and his Samoan servants. The Samoans had a strong tradition of closing each day with prayer and hymns.
Stevenson lived for another four years, dying on December 3rd. In 1910, Fanny Stevenson had her husband’s prayers published as an ornate gift book, to which she added her own introduction. There is a morning prayer and two evening prayers, a prayer for time and a prayer for rain, a prayer for separation, a prayer for friends and a prayer for family, a prayer for Sunday, a prayer for self-blame and a prayer for self-forgetfulness, and a prayer for joy.
In this edition, both book and jacket have a delicate, handmade quality that reflects the subject matter of native prayers in a far corner of the world. Designed by Catherine Kanner, with her linoleum cuts used directly to print the many illustrations. The text was composed using handset Bembo types and printed letterpress by Bonnie Thompson Norman of The Windowpane Press. The paper used is natural white Hiromi-Sansui paper in the 24 gsm weight, in French-folded signatures. The binding design is a collaboration between the book’s designer and Allwyn O’Mara, the binder.
Edition of two hundred numbered copies. Rare Books copy is no. 95, signed by the designer.
“I will not try to describe the horrid sight of houses spilled across the streets instead of standing upright, of gunfire and screaming and whistling bombs, while we sit in the basement feeling it must be us next.”
Blitz: Letters from London September and October 1940
Evelyn Lister, Susan Allix
London, 2014
On September 7, 1940 the German Luftwaffe began bombing London and other British cities for over 50 consecutive nights.
From the artist’s statement: “As it will never be possible to have this same experience, designing the book seemed sometimes similar to creating an historical novel. Descriptions, film, artifacts and related reconstructions can help to provide brief windows and snapshots of the time…”
From the colophon: “The letters between Mildred, ‘Billie,’ and Evelyn, “Ana,’ are selected from a small collection that came to light when Billie died. They are accompanied here by later prints and photographs. Of the 5 photographs, 3 were taken in the early 1960s with a ‘box Brownie’ camera. The handwriting is reproduced from the original letters. The aquatints, printed in black and brown with hand colouring, are from drawings made at demolition sites and in the underground. The burning and smoking give different results on each copy. The letterpress is hand set and printed in 18pt. Grotesque 215 with 12pt. Grotesque Italic and 18pt. Granby Light Italic. The paper is Saunders Waterford.”
Bound in black goatskin and light brown textured handmade paper, with morocco, reversed leather, and metallic onlays. Issued in slate gray cloth clamshell slipcase. Edition of fifteen copies. Rare Books copy is no. 14, signed by the artist/bookmaker, Susan Allix.
“Earls Court tube is full of poor folk at night, with rugs and eats spread out on the platform; it’s an awful sight as you know how stuffy and dirty the deep undergrounds are, and all the people bring their little children with them.”
“You’ll have some idea of the state of the collapse and debris when I tell you that there are still 4 bodies that they can’t reach…”
Somewhere in the world, something similar is happening now.
Near his left knee the Pleiads next are roll’d
Like seven pure brilliants set in ring of gold.
Though each one small, their splendour all combine
To form one gem, and gloriously they shine.
Their number seven, though some men fondly say,
And poets feign, that one has pass’d away.
Alcyone — Celoeno — Merope —
Electra — Taygeta — Sterope —
With Maia — honour’d sisterhood — by Jove
To rule the seasons plac’d in heaven above.
Men mark them, rising with the solar ray,
The harbingers of summer’s brighter day —
Men mark them, rising with Sol’s setting light,
Forerunners of the winter’s gloomy night.
They guide the Ploughman to the mellow land —
The Sower casts his seed at their command.
–Aratus (b. ca. 260BC)
The Tower of the Winds
Lawrence G. Van Velzer and Peggy Gotthold
Santa Cruz: Foolscap Press, 2002
N7433.4 V368 T68 2002
Designed and letterpress printed from polymer plates on a Hacker hand press by the authors. The type face is Adobe Herculanum. Papers are Zerkall Book and handmade Egyptian papyrus. One scroll presented in a cylindrical case with
metal clasp. The case was produced from dyed, hand-shaped Arches paper. Edition of 200 copies.
“Its not just this linear experience of open the book and get to the end of the book. Its also a trans-generational experience…you can open a book that was printed in 1780 and somebody sprinkled it with camphor and you can smell the camphor. Its not just the words that relate you to the book. Its the physical action somebody took on that object that is also important.” — Rob Buchert, Tryst Press
Rare Books holds all Tryst Press productions. We chose these three as favorite examples of Tryst Press’s work of the book.
“Their eyes followed us every moment. I do not forget their eyes…”
Interlinear for Cabeza de Vaca
Haniel Long (1888-1956)
Provo, UT: Tryst Press, 1996
E125 N9 L62 1996 oversize
Illustrated by Tal Walton. Printed by Rob and Georgia Buchert on handmade paper from India with Caslon Oldstyle type. Edition of one hundred and fifty copies.
“Behold, for this last time have we nourished my vineyard. And thou beholdest that I have done according to my will and I have preserved the natural fruit, that it is good, even like as it was in the beginning. And blessed art thou, for because that ye have been diligent in laboring with me in my vineyard and have kept my commandments — and it hath brought unto me again the natural fruit, that my vineyard is no more corrupted and the bad is cast away — behold, ye shall have joy with me because of the fruit of my vineyard.”
The Allegory of the Olive Tree
Provo, UT: Tryst Press, 2006
BX8643 O44 A42 2006
Printed letterpress with handset Nicolas Cochin and Garamond types on paper hand made for this edition. Edition of fifty copies. Rare Books copy is no. 6, one of eight bound with olive wood boards.
“Oldest printed view of Jerusalem. Woodcut by the shop of Michael Wolgemut. From Liber cronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle) by Hartmann Schedel, 1493. Printed at Tryst Press as a keepsake for attendees of A. Dean Larsen Book Collecting Conference, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, March 30, 2007.”
Here are some of the pieces chosen by the Rare Books staff for this episode:
ARKA
Timothy C. Ely
Portland, OR: T. Ely, 1995
N7433.4 E35 A7 1995
The book is drawn on BFK gray paper that was brush-sized with gelatin and CMC, then under painted with CMC and acrylic paint. Other materials include ink, Graphite, and watercolor. Each folio is sewn onto four raised cords that, on completion of the sewing, were laced into birch plywood boards. The end bands are silk worked over cores of leather. The spine of the book is goatskin. The board pastedowns are painted paper. The boards have a small amount of gold tooling suggestive of one part of the history and technology of the art of binding. Otherwise the cover boards are painted. The book is contained in a wooden box.
Hunting the Burn
Alicia Bailey
Lake City, CO: Ravenpress, 1998
N7433.4 B22 H86 1998
Two-sided leporello with self in-folded covers and removable spines. One side is Carolyn Hull’s poem “Hunting the Burn,” laserprinted on Basingwerk, overcoated with wax and pigment; the other side is a panoramic painting by Alicia Bailey, digitally reworked and printed with color inkjet on Arches 90 lb. cover and overcoated with wax. Four of the twelve panels have hand-cut rectangular openings with mixed media insertions. Covers are black Canson with hand applied enamel. Title piece is laserfoil on black paper. Spine pieces are black embossed paper laminated to black Canson. The box is paper-mache, gesso and pigmented wax. Box top has metal mesh and hemp-wrapped, wax-covered bullet attached. Inside box are stones and feathers. Edition of twenty copies, signed by Alicia Bailey and Carolyn Hull. Rare Books copy is no. 10.
Surplus Value Books: Catalog Number 13
Rick Moody
Santa Monica, CA: Danger! Books, 2002
N7433.4 M644 S6 2002
Deluxe edition presented as a collector’s box, containing two pens, one felt tip marker, one white-out correction pen, one pencil, one wooden nickel, one photograph with loop, seven photographs of “original artwork for placement only,” and other items. Text is composed in the form of galley proofs. Upon removing the galley holding the text, the reader is presented with a removable panel resembling a hospital release checklist. Holes cut into this panel reveal the objects contained below. The collectible objects in the box act as literal illustrations to the story. The narrator of the story is a bookseller, collector, mental patient. The story is told through the description of books for sale in the bookseller’s catalog. Values are assigned to each item in the catalog according to the bookseller’s inherent personal desire for each item. Themes of value, voyeurism, and deceit are presented as a pathology of collecting through the multiple layering of information and the revealing of objects of desire that are contained in the collector’s box. This work was first published in offset. Collector’s box constructed by Daniel Kelm at Wide Awake Garage. Rare Books copy is lettered “H.”
43, According to Robin Price with Annotated…
Robin Price
Middletown, CT: Robin Price, 2007
N7433.4 P753 A15 2007
From the colophon: “Paper maps from locations along the 43rd parallel are bound in an accordion that structurally supports the main text, which is printed on graph paper and also hinged together as an accordion (opening to 20 ft.)…The unusual double-layer accordion, housed in a printed cloth-covered clamshell box, is co-designed and co-produced by Daniel Kelm at Wide Awake Garage…” Edition of eighty-six plus twelve deluxe copies. Rare books copy is no. 23.
The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances
Jen Bervin
New York City: Granary Books, 2008
N7433.4 B47 D47 2008
An altered book is a form of mixed media artwork that takes a book from its original form into a different form, altering its meaning. The artist may take an old or new book and cut, tear, glue, burn, fold, paint, add collage, create pop-ups, rubber-stamp, drill, bolt or be-ribbon the book to create a new work that is the expression of the artist. In this case, it is the text that is altered — by sewing over certain passages and leaving others exposed. The text from which Jen Bervin’s poem emerges is The Desert, written by John Van Dyke (1856-1932), a professor of Art History at Rutgers University. Van Dyke, the author of several books on art theory of the Art-For-Art’s-Sake school, claimed to have spent three years in the American Southwest desert with only his fox terrier for company and a pony for transportation. According to Van Dyke, he carried with him a rifle, a pistol, a hatchet, a shovel, blankets, tin pans and cups, dried food and a gallon of water. His romantic rhapsody of this trip, published in 1901, was a big hit, extremely influential and remains in print. In fact, Van Dyke saw most of the great desert over which he swooned looking out the windows of trains on his way from one first-class hotel to another. The Desert, version 1901, is the fact-faulted, fantastic hoax of a well-bred, well-educated Easterner, in much the same way that Harvard-educated New Englander Owen Wister’s novel The Virginian (1902) is a glorification of an American West culture that didn’t exist. Prose poem adaptation with overlay of zig zag stitches in pale blue thread. Composed and sewn at James Turrell’s Roden Crater on the Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour in October, 2006. Housed in a hinged archival case. Issued in a wrapper of white muslim cloth and white felt stitched together with blue thread.
Justice: What is Justice?
Thomas Ingmire
T. Ingmire, 2009
N7433.4 I48 J87 2008
Handmade paper mounted over board, Chinese Sumi ink, wide-edged pen (Automatic pen), Japanese brush.
The Latest Things in Kites
Christopher Fritton
Ferrum Wheel Press, 2014
PS3606 R58 L37 2014
Artist’s statement: “A chapbook produced for Carrier Pigeon magazine as as tip-in, The Latest Things in Kites borrows language and its title from a chapter in the book, Fun for Boys. The chapbook is a single-sheet, four-page fold-over with rounded corners and a small embroidery thread tail. Handset in 14pt Goudy Bold and 10pt Goudy with antique copper cuts on Mohawk Via vellum. Hand letterpressed.” Edition of 1200 copies.
Whitman Crosshatch
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
East Hampton, NY: 2015
PS3222 A7 2015
“A harsh algorithmic line levels its gaze, makes one blunt admission after another while the time in which the statement is made expands and contracts with efficient respiration, an echo following itself across all the bitmapped spaces of the mind.”
Prove Before Laying
Johanna Drucker (b. 1952)
New Haven: Druckwerk, 1997
N7433.4 D76 P76 1997
Letterpress printed by the author on a Vandercook using photopolymer plates. Hand bound by the author. Edition of forty copies, signed. Rare Books copy is no. 22.
TRAVELERS ~~~~~~~~~~
IN CELEBRATION OF PETER AND DONNA THOMAS ~~~~~~~~~~
FORTY YEARS OF BOOKS TO GO
Peter and Donna Thomas are book artists from Santa Cruz, CA. They work collaboratively and individually letterpress printing, hand-lettering and illustrating texts, making paper, and hand binding both fine press and artists’ books. Inspired by a quest for beauty and perfection, and by the potential of word, image, shape and texture to create an illuminating experience, their initial aim was to create limited edition fine press books made of the finest materials and produced to the highest standards of quality, in both full size and miniature format. This aesthetic continues to guide them as they work in new formats made possible by personal computer technology, exploring non-traditional book structures and shaped book objects as both limited editions and one-of-a-kind books. They travel the USA as the “Wandering Book Artists” giving talks, workshops and demonstrations to both academic and community-based audiences. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
— Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From the Rare Books Department
May 24 through September 1, 2018
Level 1 lobby, J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah
Gallery talk
Thursday, June 21, 5:30pm
Level 1
Cosponsored by the Book Arts Program
A Casual Commentary: front seat, u.s.a.
Marnie Powers-Torrey
Salt Lake City: UT: M. Powers-Torrey, 1999
N7433.4 P69 C37 1999
Typeface is Twentieth Century Medium Italic. Handset and printed on an Asbern letterpress. Photographs are gum bichromate prints, photolithographs, and intaglio prints from photopolymer plates. Edition of 15 copies, signed and numbered. University of Utah copy is no. 4.
God Created the Sea and Painted it Blue So We’d…
Michelle Ray
Tallahassee, FL: The Small Craft Advisory Press, Florida State University, 2013
N7433.4 R395 G63 2013
Title is derived from a quote by Bernard Moitessier, a French yachtsman. Eleven unpaged booklets issued in a basswood box attached to linen hardcover with embossed title and printed endsheet. Inside the box are two compartments. One contains a tunnel of cut-out illustrations. The second compartment holds a cardboard box with title printed above tab enclosure and which contains the booklets. Images and text created with photopolymer plates, using Trajan and Optima typefaces on handmade cotton/abaca, French Construction, and Neenah Environment papers.
From the publisher’s website: [Mrs. Delany] is an “imagined collaboration between Mrs. Mary Delany (1700-1788), an English widow, woman of accomplishment, and creator of imaginative botanical ‘paper mosaics’ and Herr Ernst Haeckel (1852-1911), a distinguished and controversial German biologist and artist who devoted much of his time to the study and rendering of single-celled creatures.”
Cut paper image of a microscopic organism affixed to frontispiece with another cut-paper image affixed to the recto of the same sheet; eleven cut-paper interpretations of microscopic organisms tipped on to captioned plates; tipped-in cut-paper initials, numerous smaller cut-paper decorations. The paper cuttings are adapted from Ernst Haeckel’s Die Radiolarien (1862) and Kunstformen der Natur (1899-1904). They are cut from a variety of papers, including Yatsuo, Kozuke, mulberry, Gifu, Kitikata, and Kiraku kozo from Japan; Ingres and unidentified wove from Europe; and Reg Lissel handmade papers from Canada. Some were cut from papers previously marbled in the Turkish or Suminigashi styles. Some were dyed by the papermaker; some were dyed or otherwise hand-colored for this book. The cuttings are mounted on one of Arches text wove (white), Arches MBM Ingres (black) or Hahnemuhle Ingres (black).
Bound in full polished morocco, ruled and stamped decoratively in red and gilt with a gilt-lettered spine by Claudia Cohen. Marbled endpapers. Issued in orange clamshell case with a gilt-lettered spine label.
Edition of twenty-five copies plus six hors de commerce, each signed by the author, printer, and binder. Rare Books copy is XXII.
Jabberwocky
Barry McCallion
East Hampton, NY: 2015
PR4611 J32 2015 oversize
India ink washes, various collage and drawing elements incorporating metallic gold paper and aluminum foil with text from newspaper type, copied on various papers, each letter cut out and collaged in a myriad of shapes and sized as well as colors. Richard de Bas cream wove paper. Bound by Joelle Webber: hand-sewn yellow colored silk over boards with title on front panel, a reduced reproduction of the title-page. Blue and silver endpapers by St. Armand, terracotta colored guards. Housed in tan linen over boards, clamshell box, title in red reproduced from the title-page with yellow and red reproduction of first page inset on front panel. Signed and dated by the artist.
The Arctic Plants of New York City
James Walsh (b. 1961)
New York City: Granary Books, 2015
N7433.4 W355 A73 2016
From the publisher’s website: “The Arctic Plants of New York City combines personal letters, poetry, prose essays, scholarly research, botanical exploration and artistic investigation, and ranges from the Doctrine of Signatures to the sleep of plants, and from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Muir on mental travel to Giacomo Leopardi and Charles Baudelaire on the necessity of illusion for art and life. Interspersed throughout the book are a number of two-page spreads that focus on a single plant, such as Common Mugwort, with a mounted botanical specimen of that plant surrounded by texts drawn from earlier writers on botany and set in verse, creating a field of word-objects interacting with plant-objects. The letters that open the book lead into a prose essay that touches on the souls of plants, their use in medicine and as spurs to mental travel, their transience, their migrations, their meaning. A bibliography lists the most essential works from the author’s research and the book concludes with a reproduction of the index from Nicholas Polunin’s Circumpolar Arctic Flora (1959), in which the author has marked in red pen the eighty-eight Arctic plants that occur in New York City. Written, designed, and printed letterpress by James Walsh, with eighteen botanical specimens pressed and mounted by the author. Bound by Daniel Kelm at Wide Awake Garage.” From the colophon: “All the plants were gathered in Brooklyn.” Printed by the author using two Vandercook proof presses at the Center for the Book Arts. Text paper is Somerset Book White, endsheets are Hahnemuhle Ingres Blue Green. Cloth bound in Dover Oxford Black. Edition of forty copies, 34 of which are for sale.
Take heed of loving mee,
At least remember I forbade it thee;
Not that I shall repaire my unthrifty wast
Of Breath and Blood, upon thy sighes and teares,
By being to thee then what to me thou wast;
But so, great Joy, our life at once outweares;
Then, lest thy love, by my death, frustrate bee,
If thou love mee, take heed of loving mee.
The Prohibition
John Donne (1572-1631)
Longmont, CO: PS Press, 2001
PR2247 P76 2001
English poet John Donne wrote often about love. This admonishment to a lover at the end of a liaison expresses the ambivalence of both loving and hating the once beloved. Donne’s twists and turns of thought, his admiration of paradox, are symbolized in the magic-wallet structure of this book. The book opens in a single spread with one stanza each on verso and recto. To finish reading the poem, the book must be closed and then opened again from the back cover where the fore edge reveals, as a hidden resolution, the third stanza.
Illustrated with anatomical drawings of the human heart and arteries, the production uses handset type, letterpress and monoprint, paper over board, bound with Daniel Kelm’s wire-edge binding. Edition of fifteen copies.
Take heed of hating mee,
Or too much triumph in the victorie;
Not that I shall be mine owne officer,
And hate with hate againe retaliate;
But thou wilt lose the stile of conquerour,
If I, thy conquest, perish by thy hate.
Then, lest my being nothing lessen thee,
If thou hate mee, take heed of hating mee.
Yet love and hate mee too;
So these extreames shall neithers office doe;
Love mee, that I may die the gentler way;
Hate mee, because thy love’s too great for mee;
Or let these two, themselves, not mee, decay;
So shall I live thy stage, not triumph bee.
Lest thou thy love and hate, and mee undo, O let mee live, yet love and hate mee too.
“These showings of Intertype “Fotosetter” Garamond mark an important event in the history of Intertype Corporation. All of the composition was produced on an Intertype Fotosetter photographic line-composing machine. The original film positives were used to make deep-etch lithographic plates, from which this booklet was printed. Quite appropriately for such an occasion Garamond, considered among leading typographers to be one of the most successful type faces ever introduced, was selected for these introductory specimens of Fotosetter technique.”
Any one of a certain age living in Utah knows who Don Gale is. Three times a day, in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, KSL aired Don’s short, stern, fair editorials. Don was the Vice President for Public Affairs and Editorial Director at KSL.
Over the years, Don has donated personal papers, videos of his editorials and other material to Special Collections. In 2006, Rare Books was the happy recipient of a collection of books and printed ephemera concerning twentieth century commercial printing technologies, including manuals and type specimen books.
Don’s dad was a printer.
In late November we received an email from Henning Impgaard Madsen in Denmark, who had discovered through the internet that we had “some information about the first Fotosetter in the world.” The Royal Danish Library did not have “any information.” Mr. Madsen said that he was helping a museum get an Intertype Fotosetter working but that he needed “some details about the electrical parts and how to work it.”
Thanks to Don’s donation, we were able to provide Mr. Madsen with all the details he needed.
Like Mr. Gale, Mr. Madsen is “retired,” although neither one of them is spending much time retiring. He studied electronics in school. Among other things, he worked with Fotosetters, “mainly Compugraphic from US.”
After he retired, Mr. Madsen and his wife visited museums featuring typesetting, but never ran across a Fotosetter. Then, in a museum in Viborg, the Vingaards Officinet, he found an Intertype Fotosetter. “I had no idea that the first Fotosetter looked like this.
“I talked to the people at the museum and asked why they did not have a Compugraphic, the one I knew from the 1970[s]. They answered, ‘If you can find one we would very much like to have one.’ Mr. Madsen thought to himself, no problem, easy job. “I started to call around, but all the machines or my old customers [had] disappeared. [Someone] gave me the idea” to contact, GRAKOM, the Danish Association for Communication, Design & Media. That contact led to an article about Mr. Mardsen in UDKOM (Outcome), an industry magazine covering issues and news for companies straddling design, media production, communication and marketing.
The article eventually led to a phone call from a man who had a Compugraphic Universal V. It wasn’t working, but Mr. Mardsen found some parts, did what he could and donated it to Vingaards Officinet.
The museum staff then asked Mr. Madsen to get their Intertype Fotosetter running.
And that is how Don Gale’s donation made a difference in Denmark. We supplied Mr. Madsen scans of a manual for operating the first Intertype Fotosetter, from Mr. Gale’s collection. And Mr. Madsen got the mid-century Fotosetter running. A generation made to last.
Thank you, Don Gale and good work, Mr. Madsen!
###
“The Fotosetter is an automatic, photographic line composing machine. It produces justified composition in galley form directly on film or photographic paper in one operation. This composition can be reproduced on offset-lithographic, gravure and letterpress plates, using standard platemaking methods in each case.”
Introducing the Fotosetter: the photographic line composing machine
Brooklyn, NY: Intertype Corp., 1950
TR1010 I58 1950
“The greater party of this manual is devoted to suppplying the Fotosetter operator with the information which he must have to set up, operate, and maintain his machine, and to understand the principles of its operation.”
Operators manual for the Intertype Fotosetter photographic typesetting machine
Brooklyn, NY: Intertype Corporation, 1955
Z249 O643 1955
Rare Books copy is a gift from Don Gale.
“Following a three year period of field testing in the U. S. Government Printing Office in Washington the first commercial installation was made in 1949. Since then Fotosetter photographic line composing machines have been installed and proven highly successful in all types of printing and composition plants throughout the United States and the world.”
Fotosetter type faces
Brooklyn: Intertype Corporation, ca. 1950
Z250 I58 F6
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