In 2013, the poet Susan Howe came down to Princeton University to perform W O O D S L I P P E R C O U N T E R C L AT T E R , a collaborative performance with the composer David Grubbs. http://www.nassauweekly.com/susan-howe-in-middle-air/.  Some of the poems heard at that event are now included in a new volume entitled, Tom Tit Tot, for which Howe collaborated with her daughter, R. H. Quaytman.

Published by the Library Council of The Museum of Modern Art, the limited edition book brings together sixty-seven poems by Howe created with “slivers of typeset text extracted from her readings in American, British, and Irish folklore, poetry, philosophy, art criticism, and history. Beginning with copies of the source material, and including excerpts from the texts themselves and from surrounding footnotes, tables of contents, and marginalia, Howe cut out words and sentence fragments, then spliced and taped them together while retaining their typefaces, spacing, and rhythms. These re-collected images, formed into arrangements shaped both by control and by chance, were then transferred into letterpress prints.” (prospectus)

Quaytman’s design for the book is inspired partly by the geographical atlases and histories of Emma Hart Willard (1787–1870), an American author, educator, and civil and women’s rights activist. For the frontispiece Quaytman created an artwork based on two of Willard’s visualizations of geography and history, Picture of Nations and Temple of Time. Quaytman’s frontispiece, also titled Temple of Time, was printed as a six-color silkscreen at Axelle Editions, Brooklyn; digitally at the Lower East Side Printshop, New York; and by letterpress at The Grenfell Press.

Three more of Quaytman’s images, printed by letterpress at The Grenfell Press, are bound into the volume. One shows an unraveled knitted baby’s sock, and derives from a photoengraving in Thérèse de Dillmont’s Encyclopedia of Needlework, first published in 1886; the second shows a thumbprint on black paper; and the third is an abstract image taken from the artist’s frontispiece.

Susan Howe and R. H. Quaytman, Tom Tit Tot (New York: Library Council of The Museum of Modern Art, 2014). Copy 10 of 95. Graphic Arts Collection.

For more on Willard, see Steve Ferguson’s post https://blogs.princeton.edu/rarebooks/2008/12/standing_within_the_temple_of.html.  Emma Willard (1787-1870), Willard’s Map of Time: a Companion to the Historic Guide (New-York: A.S. Barnes & Co., [1846]). Rare Books (Ex) Oversize Item 5146637q

Inger Lawrance, Kevin Crossley-Holland, and Nicolas McDowall, The Seafarer (Llandogo, Monmouthshire: Old Stile Press, 1988). Binding by Habib Dingle. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

This modern translation of The Seafarer was created and published in an edition of 240 copies. Inger Lawrance cut all 43 images on wood; Kevin Crossley-Holland prepared the text from the Anglo-Saxon; and Nicolas McDowall hand-set the Albertus types, completing the printing of the book in June 1988 at the Old Stile Press.

“Ever since the tenth century, versions of The Seafarer have been committed to books, though it was no doubt part of the tradition of poems recited aloud and learned by heart. Here, Kevin Crossley-Holland has written the poem in modern English verse which retains all the Anglo-Saxon poet’s passionate love for the sea while recognising its hardships and dangers.

Inger Lawrance is Danish but now lives near the stormy Northumberland coast, so the sea features prominently in much of her painting and printmaking. Her woodcutting technique was learned partly in Japan and her imagery is very spare, almost calligraphic. The book itself is somewhat delicately bound in the Japanese style but is enclosed, almost wrapped, in a portfolio of rough linen and blue buckram – as though it had survived a turbulent time at sea and is now rescued especially for the reader.”—prospectus

From the limited edition, ten copies were reserved for the special binding by Habib Dingle, one of which is now in the Graphic Arts Collection at the Princeton University Library. Dingle wrote in the prospectus:

“After necessary consideration of the structure and function, the design was allowed, or took, full rein to express itself in organic form…. Although the sea and seafaring are the more obvious subjects, my own reading of the poem gave me a greater sense of the mystic – to this end the circular motif, mandala like, is focal to the design – it consists of burnished and distressed gold laid on gesso raised so as to give the impression of an Anglo-Saxon emblem in the centre of the image of the sun.”

The Cedar of Lebanon boards were initially roughed out with a radial saw followed by an overhead router and finally a spoke- shave. The boards were then fired using a blow-lamp and the charred wood worked out with wire-wool, before waxing. It has retained its distinctive cedar smell.