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Tag Archives: zinc

Book of the Week — On Painting

17 Monday Jul 2017

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aquating, architecture, blind, Brunelleschi, carborundum, copper, copperplate oil, Donatello, drypoint, engineering, etching, Florence, goatskin, inks, intaglio, Italian, Leon Battista Alberti, London, Masaccio, mathematics, mezzoting, Michael R. Thompson Rare Books, painter, Perspex, pigments, poetry, Prose, relief, sand grain, sculpture, Susan Allix, Tuscan, zinc

ND1130-A4813-1999-ColorBlock
“Colour and light have an important relationship in the act of seeing…colours multiply among themselves, but, like the elements, there are only four true colours from which other species of colour are born. There is red, the colour of fire; blue, of air; green, of water; and earth, ashen grey…from these four colours according to the addition of light or dark, black or white, are made innumerable other hues. Therefore the mixing in of white will not change the basic colour, but just make tints;’ and black has a similar power, with its addition making an almost infinite number of colours. You can see colours alter in the shade; when the shade deepens the colours fade, when the light brightens they become brighter and clearer.” — Leon Battista Alberti

ON PAINTING
Leon Battista Alberti (1401-1472) and Susan Allix
London: 1999
ND1130 A4813 1999

Leon Alberti was born in 1401 in Florence. His art was influenced by the work of Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Masaccio. He wrote On Painting in order to “set forth principles to be followed by the painter.” Alberti then turned his attention to architecture, for which he is better remembered today. He wrote De Re Aedificatoria and received several commissions for building projects. He had a deep understanding of the classical past, but an eye for contemporary change. He wrote on sculpture, poetry, prose, mathematics, engineering and other topics. His work was studied by generations of artists.

ND1130-A4813-1999-Power

This translation of On Painting is by Susan Allix, based on the Italian text published in L. B. Alberti, Opere Volgari, Volume Terzo. Allix writes, “This translation…is a painter’s translation and includes those parts that seem to hold, for the present, the most important of Alberti’s ideas…it has been extensively abridged to prevent it from becoming several volumes.”

In a letter to Michael R. Thompson Rare Books, Allix wrote, “One day I started to read Alberti’s book and was astounded at his idea that everything begins with a dot. I spent a long time struggling away with fifteenth century Tuscan (helped with a more modern translation), but present Italian hasn’t altered so much and I did find it readable. I wanted my own translation. Slightly unprofessionally some of this was done in the afternoon quiet of an Italian camping site. One interesting page is where I followed Alberti’s instructions on how to achieve a squared pavement. So complicated, I never believed it would work, but lo and behold the perspective of the squared pavement appeared!”

ND1130-A4813-1999-TheFirst

This edition contains twenty-eight intaglio prints, the result of four years of sketchbook observation and drawing, plate-making and reworking the plates. The prints were made from copper, zinc, and Perspex plates, and contain a wide variety of techniques. There is etching, drypoint, and mezzotint, often in combination, and also open bite, aquatint, sand grain, and carborundum. The plates have been printed black and white and color in intaglio, relief and blind. All the inks are made from pure pigments ground in copperplate oil, so interleaving sheets is necessary to stop the plates from offsetting. As each plate is hand-inked and printed separately, complete uniformity is not possible. Twenty of the prints are in color, seven in black and white, one in blind, and many have extra hand-coloring on the prints or the type. The first ten copies, of which this is number three, have watercolor and pencil paintings on Japanese paper between each of the three of Alberti’s books.

Bound in full cream goatskin, upper cover tinted with a border of darker purple dye, extending to the spine, and an abstract design of other lighter tints and various colored goatskin onlays with textured endpapers.

ND1130-A4813-1999-Cover

Rare Books copy has holographic letter written in ink on both sides of the press’s stationary from Allix to book collector Denis Collins, prospectus, and biographical article about the author, entitled “God is in the datail,” laid in. Signed in ink on the verso of the front flyleaf: “For Denis/with warmest regards/Susan/11 April 2000.” Collins’ stamp on recto of terminal endpaper. One of twenty-two copies, numbered and signed by the artist.

ND1130-A4813-1999-Reclining
ND1130-A4813-1999-WomanSea

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Book of the week — Night feet on earth

05 Tuesday Jul 2016

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Bayeaux Tapestry, comets, conjunctions, firmament, grid, Halley's Comet, handcut zinc blocks, hooves, horse, Ken Campbell, letterpress, linguist, Oxford, pagan, poem, poetry, stars, woodletter, zinc, zinc plate

N7433.4-C36-N44-1987-titleN7433.4-C36-N44-1987-spread2

“Where the hooves touch the ground.”

NIGHT FEET ON EARTH
Ken Campbell
London, England: Ken Campbell, 1986
N7433.4 C36 N44 1987

Artist’s statement: “The recent visitation by Halley’s Comet, and its image upon the Bayeux Tapestry, brought forth a poem about comets and a divine child descending:; a rather pagan Christmas Carol. The poem is set in airily spaced woodletter capitals, and is alternately revealed either in white space or on a dark, starry backdrop. A comet appears. Its form is gained from the back leg and tail of a dark horse that moves about the printed firmament. The horse is sometimes dismembered, and sometimes whole. At a Christmas dinner in Oxford I found a party cracker on the table and opened it and found, along with the necessarily silly paper hat, a little plastic thing like an articulated hat rack. It was a horse that you could open and shut. I asked a lady to my right what it was that she did. After no little thought she replied, ‘My husband is a linguist.’ I thought, ‘I’m going to do a book about these bizarre conjunctions.’ Halley’s Comet, the horse, and this poem in my mind: that is the poem of the book. I cut out a zinc horse in its different attitudes, opened and shut, and moved it around a firmament of stars. The stars were holes drilled at regular grid intervals in a solid zinc plate that was to supply the blue black night sky. The text is given in very few words for each page. At the end of many pages I show the first word of the next page at the foot of the text to give rhythm and to echo the tradition of cueing the eye for what is to come overleaf. Set in capitals about an inch high, the poetry runs from one left had page to the following left hand page. On the right hand side is a big blue firmament of graded colour with yellow printed underneath to give a little light to the dark horizon. Sometimes the stars are white and sometimes yellow, to give a very mechanical but velvety rendition of the sky in regularly spaced stars. Over this disports a horse in black a metaphor for the comet; a metaphor for the divine child descending. In the first half of the book the first half of the poem is shown on the white, left hand page while the second half of poem is pursued in the dark right. After a central spread where the parts of the horse are wildly rodeo-ed around the firmament, the process is reversed and the first half of the poem is pursued in the dark, left hand page, while the second half of the poem is revealed in the now white, right hand pages. On the slipcase and the closing page the horse’s tail has been distorted to give a fiery tail of a comet. This book is where the hooves touch the ground.”

Letterpress printed in four colors from woodletter and handcut zinc blocks. Issued in slipcase. Edition of fifty copies.

N7433.4-C36-N44-1987-spread

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Book of the Week – Inversnaid

20 Monday Apr 2015

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A T F Garamond, Arches Cover, Betsey Biggs, Brian Molanphy, Colorado Springs, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Inversnaid, James Schuster, James Trissel, Kelly Cress, Leigh Fletcher, linoleum, lithograph, Oxford University Press, relief print, The Press at Colorado College, Tully Bragg, zinc


Inversnaid
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Colorado Springs, The Press at Colorado College, 1988
PR4083 H44 I58 1988

Colophon
“This book is frankly experimental in character. It is the product of a one-month Topics course taught at The Press at Colorado College by James Trissel. Six students were involved in the planning and printing of the poem in this manner which turned out to be more ala prima and less seriatum than one normally expects in book printing. The students are Betsey Biggs, Tully Bragg, Kelly Cress, Leigh Fletcher, Brian Molanphy, and James Schuster.

The paper is Arches Cover and the type, A T F Garamond. The inks for color-printing are generally lithographic inks printed relief from zinc and linoleum.

Although the poem, “Inversnaid,” is in the public domain, Oxford University Press gave us its blessings. There are fifty numbered copies; and this is 12.”

alluNeedSingleLine

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