When the Grolier Club presented an exhibition of the best books created in the twentieth century, Weeds and Wild Flowers was included among the exemplary volumes (Martin Hutner, A Century for the Century, David R. Godine, 2004. Annex A Z1033.F5 H87 2004q).

Armida Maria-Theresa Colt wrote the text, subtitled Some Irreverant Words and George Mackley (1900-1983) created wood engravings, which were printed by William Carter (1912-2001) at Rampant Lions Press in Cambridge, and published by Two-Horse Press in London. A second volume includes a suite of 11 wood engravings without the text, covered with yellow Tatsumaki Japanese handmade paper.

The book joins 40 others printed by the Rampant Lions Press, founded in 1924 by William Carter and continued by his son, Sebastian, until 2008 when the press was closed. The elder Carter described his work as “a matter of seeing the simplest way of doing something, which is usually the best.” (The Guardian, 21 March 2001)

Armida Maria Theresa Colt, Weeds and Wildflowers, Some Irreverent Words, with wood-engravings by George Mackley (London: Two-Horse Press, 1965). Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process

C.K. Williams, Sixty ([Hopewell, New Jersey]: Pied Oxen Printers, 2014). Printed by David Sellers. Copy 4 of 60. Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process

On the afternoon of 9 March 2014, pianist Richard Goode and poet C.K. Williams took the stage of the Richardson Auditorium in Princeton University’s Alexander Hall. The event, billed as “A recital with poetry,” sold out almost immediately and every seat in the auditorium was filled.

Williams, only recently retired from Princeton University, read his poem “Beethoven Invents the Species Again,” which he wrote for the occasion. In addition, he read from his most recent collection of poems All at Once (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2014), including the series that is shown here, first published as Sixty. Goode played ten pieces, including works by Schumann, Mozart, Chopin, Brahms, Bach, Janácek, and Beethoven.

The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired one of the limited-edition, fine-press copies of Williams’ Sixty, with prints by David Sellers. The artwork, letterpress-printed from type-high magnesium photo-engravings, was created by the printer from a detail of an original Edo period Zen Buddhist hanging scroll: a negative mirror image for the title page, the original sumi-e ink design following the title poem, and an overlapping image at the center of the book.

Princeton Magazine published a profile of the Sellers’ press nearby in Hopewell, New Jersey, and you can read the article at:  http://www.princetonmagazine.com/pied-oxen-printers-the-art-of-devotion/

L’art est-il utile? Oui. Pourquoi? Parce qu’il est l’art. -Charles Baudelaire
Is art useful? Yes. Why? Because it is art. -Charles Baudelaire.

Charles S. Ricketts (1866-1931) and Lucien Pissarro (1863-1944), De la typographie et de l’harmonie de la page imprimée: Wiliam Morris et son influence sur les arts et métiers (Paris: Floury; London: Hacon & Ricketts, Ballantyne Press, 1898). Colophon: Ce livre fut commencé par Lucien Pissarro en avril 1897 et achevé au Ballantyne press sous la direction de Charles Ricketts le 2 janvier 1898./ “Il a été tiré de cet ouvrage 256 exemplaires, dont 6 sur parchemin”–P. [1].
Graphic Arts Collection 2014- in process

In 1889, the artisan publishers Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon invited the artist Lucien Pissarro to submit images for their magazine The Dial. Within five years, Lucien and his wife Esther Pissarro established The Eragny Press and began printing books of their own, completing thirty-one titles in all. Princeton University Library only holds around a dozen of their books and surprisingly, not the collaboration between Ricketts and Pissarro De la typographie de l’harmonie de la page imprimée.

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired one of the 216 copies of this important book, bound in the original grey/green boards decorated in floral motif and a printed paper spine label (256 in the book is a misprint). The text pages are beautifully printed in red and black with the Vale type that Pissarro used until 1903.

We are all fortunate that Ricketts’ essay was translated into English by Richard K. Kellenberger in 1953 [http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1345&context=cq]. Of Typography and the Harmony of the Printed Page begins:

“In a renewal of interest in handicrafts, the art of book-making would, at first sight, appear to be the easiest to revitalize. Its limited technique, the placing a black line on white paper, the relationship of this line to the stroke of a pen, adjusted merely to the work of the en- graver (both in printing and in wood-engraving), this does not involve the difficulties which are presented by more complicated or recalcitrant materials – difficulties such as are presented by the technique of weaving brocades or rugs, or of fitting together the pieces of a stained glass window. And yet, throughout the thirty years during which there has been, in handicraft circles in England, an intense preoccupation with the arts, the art of book-making is the last one to come on the scene.”

Founded in 1990, Libros San Cristobal La Antigua is a small hand bindery and press located in the Aldea Santiago Zamora, Sacatepequez, Guatemala in Central America. The directors, Christopher Beisel and Grove Oholendt, are “dedicated to the elaboration and publication of small hand printed and hand bound limited editions on subjects related to Mesoamerica.”

Over the last two dozen years, they have published books on a wide spectrum of topics related to indigenous and ancient arts of Mayan civilization. Most include woodcuts designed and cut by Guillermo Maldonado including their most recent volume Prosa de Antigua (Stories from Antigua), with text by Rafael Vicente Alvarez Polanco.

Prosa de Antigua contains twelve stories by Alvarez Polanco selected by his daughter Ana Victoria Alvarez Najera and printed in Spanish and English by Felipe Bucú Miché at Libros San Cristóbal. Maldonado’s woodcuts were printed by E. Rocael López Santos and hand colored by Grove Oholendt and Carlos Bucú Miché. The volume is leather bound by Sergio Bucú Miché and housed in a slipcase made from Libros San Cristóbal’s own amate bark paper.

Rafael Vicente Alvarez Polanco, Prosa de Antigua, with woodcuts by Guillermo Maldonado ([Guatemala]: Libros San Cristobal, 2013). Copy 17 of 125. Graphic Arts Collection GAX 2014- in process. Special thanks to our friend Alfred Bush who helped transport the volume to Princeton.

Texas-born Kathleen Tankersley Young (1903–1933) published a book of Ten Poems in 1930 and along with Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler, was one of the founding publishers of the literary magazine Blues: a Magazine of New Rhymes (1929-1930). When the magazine closed, she planned a new journal under her own imprint, Modern Editions Press, published by Eric Naul.

The Modern Editions Press published two series of pamphlets in 1932 and 1933. The first series consisted of six pamphlets which included short stories, poems, and a statement. The six contributors were Dudley Fitts, John Kemmerer, Kay Boyle, Kathleen Tankersley Young, Raymond Ellsworth Larsson and Albert Halper; each one illustrated with an original print by a contemporary American artist.

The second and final series of eight pamphlets was published in 1933 and consisted exclusively of work by poets, including Lincoln Kirstein, Horace Gregory, Raymond Ellsworth Larsson, Kathleen Tankersley Young, Paul Bowles, Laurence Vail, Carl Rakosi, and Bob Brown. Each was published in an edition of 100 copies.

Young traveled to Mexico in 1933 where she died unexpectedly and the Modern Press Editions came to an end. The Graphic Arts Collection is fortunate to have acquired the first series of pamphlets, bound together in this colorful unsigned binding.
      

Dudley Fitts (1903-1968), Two Poems  ([New York]: Modern Editions Press, 1932). Frontispiece by Stuart Davis (1892-1964).

John Kemmerer, Two Stories ([New York]: Modern Editions Press, 1932). Frontispiece by Isami Doi (1983-1965).

Kay Boyle (1902-1992), A Statement ([New York]: Modern Editions Press, 1932). Frontispiece by Max Weber (1881-1961).

Kathleen Tankersley Young (1903-1933), The Pepper Trees: a cycle of three stories ([New York]: Modern Editions Press, 1932). Frontispiece by Stefan Hirsch.

Raymond Ellsworth Larsson (1901- ), Wherefore: Peace ([New York]: Modern Editions Press, 1932). Frontispiece by Jane Berlandino.

Albert Halper (1904-1984), Chicago Side-Show ([New York]: Modern Editions Press, 1932). Frontispiece by Louis Lozowick (1892-1973).

The Printers’ International Specimen Exchange (London: Office of the Paper and printing trades journal, 1880-1898). Graphic Arts Collection, vol. 5 (1884), 7 (1886), and 8 (1887).

Thanks to Matthew Young’s recent study, we now know that the Printers’ International Specimen Exchange was founded in 1880, first and foremost as a means to encourage British printers to improve their technical and artistic skills, seen as lagging behind their American and European counterparts. It came to be a far more international  than its originators imagined, encompassing 16 volumes with the work of more than 1,000 printing establishments from 28 different countries.

The Graphic Arts Collection recently acquired three of these rare annuals, published in editions of only a few hundred copies and meant expressly for members of the exchange. The volumes document some of the most elaborate printing from the end of the nineteenth century.

The over-the-top decoration of these printers had both supporters and detractors. The first editor of the exchange, Andrew Tuer (1838-1900) published a letter of support from John Ruskin (1819-1900) in the first volume, “It seems to me…that a lovely field of design is open in the treatment of decorative type…not in the mere big initials in which one cannot find the letters but in the delicate and variably fantastic ornamentation of capitals and filling of blank spaces or musically-divided periods of sentences and breadths of margin.”

Theodore Low DeVinne (1828-1914), on the other hand, spoke sarcastically about these printers, noting, “what advances have we made in rule-twisting! What unknown possibilities in typography have been developed by our new race of compositors! …How it does delight us to employ a typographical gymnast who tortures brass rules and spends hours and days in experiments with borders, fancy job types, tint grounds, and flourishes!” (Historic Printing Types, a Lecture Read before the Grolier Club, Ex 0220.296.2).

Happily, we can now judge for ourselves with the acquisition of these new volumes.

See also, Matthew Young, The Rise and Fall of the Printers’ International Specimen Exchange (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2012). Graphic Arts RCPXG-7033164.