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Tag Archives: spring

An Impression of Spring

20 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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Bertram Rota, British, cardboard, commercial, gesso, Gogmagog Press, Hosho, Japanese, landscape, leaves, London, Morris Cox, panorama, plywood, poetry, printer, private press, Prose, seasons, seeds, spring, twigs, varnish


“Now sprigs are pricked by bursting buds,
and threading the trees the wind’s weft
skittles, drops and spurts again,
rubbing along the ground to tease old leafings
of skittering litter, scratching swirl…

Between bettling sky and buxom earth —
a mazed and frilling lightning flash!
The eye bleaches and goes black.
A far-off tracking thunder rolls
and tight, hard raindrops teem and patter,
hiss an sheen in rimplin rods…
till overhead the ragging cloud thins off
in clean-washed grin, and sun-bowl tips
over the giggling earth its molten gold.”

An Impression of Spring: A Landscape Panorama
Morris Cox (1903-1998)
London: Gogmagog Press: Dist. by Bertram Rota, 1966
ND497 C748 A43 1966

Gogmagog Press was a one man operation: for more than forty years Morris Cox — artist, writer, and printer — worked alone, using simple tools and creating one of the most important of British post-war private presses. Cox experimented with various aspects of his craft,  always paying meticulous attention to detail.

Morris Cox’s poetry and prose rarely found commercial publication. For this reason, in middle-age, Cox began Gogmagog Press, in order to distribute his work. It was only then that his poetry began to be championed, for the poetry was as good as the press production. Word and image are so intertwined that one divorced from the other leaves only half an experience.

The texture of the prints derives from the unusual printing blocks used to create them. Cox mounted sheets of cardboard onto plywood and layered them with gesso, next adding materials from nature like seeds, leaves, and twigs. These elements were varnished to strengthen them.

Impressions is one of four works on the seasons, all considered to be the peak of Cox’s achievement as a printer. Printed on Japanese ‘Hosho’ paper. Edition of one hundred numbered and signed copies. Rare Books copy is no. 23.

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Book of the Week — The Farmer’s Diary, or, Beers’ Ontario Almanack, for the Year of our Lord 1824

20 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Albany, almanacs, American, Andrew Beers, attorney, Beers' Ontario Almanack, Canandaigua, diary, editor, farmers, James D. Bemis, Joseph Smith, New York, New York City, nineteenth century, Ontario County, Ontario Repository and Genesee Advertiser, polymath, spring, weather

AY256-N5-F26-1824-Title

“This month is generally ushered in with boisterous wind and nipping frosts. The hapless mariner beholds his vessel wrecked upon the very rocks which bind his much-loved home. Vegetation perishes through severe and untimely ires!; and deluging rains, descending with impetuous force crush the springing blade, and despoil the beauty of the gay parterre. Even thus do the rude passions of man’s soul break forth with resistless force at this unsettled period of existence, wrecking the fragile bark of youth. The tide of dissipation sweeps away the principles of virtue, which have not had time to take root, and every noble energy is blighted by the influence of bad example.”

Happy Spring!

The Farmer’s Diary, or, Beers’ Ontario Almanack, for the Year of our Lord 1824
Canandaigua, NY: Printed and sold, wholesale and retail, by J. D. Bemis, 1824
AY256 N5 F26

For all their necessity, American almanacs in the early nineteenth century assumed that most farmers understood, without printed confirmation, events such as the beginning of spring. Nonetheless, warnings such as the one above about the ravages of early spring weather, not to mention the unsettling effect it has on the “fragile bark of youth,” pervaded these sage documents. As evidenced here, spring fever was alive and well in 1824.

Attorney Andrew Beers acted as chief polymath for several almanacs in New York City before he moved to Albany in 1797. He began working with printers in western New York towns wanting to issue almanacs particular to their areas. Newspaperman and publisher James D. Bemis of Canandaigua, nine miles from the home of Joseph Smith, turned to Beers for help with astronomical, monetary and other calculations invaluable to local farmers and businessmen. Bemus was the editor of the Ontario Repository and Genesee Advertiser. Ontario County, New York was home to Joseph Smith and his family between 1816 and 1830.

AY256-N5-F26-1824-Signs

AY256-N5-F26-1824-backcover

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