Whose works have been produced here at DWP

The Wind in the Willows ~ Finished

29 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by Deep Wood Press in Kenneth Grahame, Mad Parrot Press, The Wind in the Willows

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Fine Press, Kenneth Grahame, Letterpress, Peter Hunt, The Wind in the Willows, Vladimir Zimakov

I am very pleased to present the completed standard edition of The Wind in the Willows. It has been a long journey from inception, design, editing all the way through to printing and binding here at Deep Wood Press. I do everything “in house” and transforming the piles of paper, board, leather and cloth into books is always magic for me: True alchemy, turning lead to gold.

In my previous blog entry I was waiting on materials for the cover image hoping to use calf vellum, but in my tests the skin would not cooperate and I was unhappy with the results. I finally decided to acquire a couple natural fair goat skins and dyed them to the shade I wanted, which all took a little extra time but I am finally pleased with the results.

Once again the specifications: 75 standard edition copies of the book are quarter bound, rounded and backed, in a very dark moss green Natural Goat from Siegel Leather with a cinnamon cotton book cloth. The endpapers are a printed pattern on mocha Hahnemühle Bugra with a cloth inner hinge. The title is gilt in foil on the spine in copper and silver and the debossed panel on the front cover features Rat & Mole in a crossed oar emblem foiled in dull copper on grey-dyed goat. The text is set in 14pt Centaur with Arrighi and printed on custom-made, cotton rag paper from Papeterie Saint-Armand developed especially for this book. Interwoven throughout the book are thirteen multi-color and nine 2 color linocut illustrations by Vladimir Zimakov, with an introduction from Peter Hunt. All this in large format folio size; 148 pages, 10.25 x 14″ (26×35.5 cm). $2000.00

There are also 4 copies of the book left in sheets for purchase by other binders. Please inquire.

Initially the book was not specified to include a slipcase but given the number of people desiring such an enclosure (and I don’t blame you) I have materials on hand to produce slipcases to order in full black cloth for an additional $65. Please make a note on your order if you desire this to be added to your final purchase.

To purchase please go to the Mad Parrot website or follow this link.

Email invoices have gone out to our subscribers for their balance due, if you did not receive one please contact James for details via our Mad Parrot Press website.

Once again, the deluxe edition is sold out and no longer available.

Thank you for your patience. I am as excited to get these off to you as you are no doubt to receive them.

Update: James has set up a short video on YouTube with a slideshow of the book. Many more photos to be viewed than are shown here on the blog.

The Wind in the Willows nears completion!

04 Thursday Nov 2021

Posted by Deep Wood Press in Book Bindings, Kenneth Grahame, Letterpress, Mad Parrot Press, The Wind in the Willows, Vladimir Zimakov

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Tags

Bookbinding, Fine Press, Letterpress, The Wind in the Willows

The Wind in the Willows is almost finished and will be shipping in November!

The 75 regular edition copies of the book are quarter bound, rounded and backed, in a very dark green Moroccan goat with a cinnamon cotton book cloth, the endpapers are a printed pattern on mocha Hahnemühle Bugra with a cloth inner hinge. The title is guilt in foil on the spine in copper and silver and a debossed panel on the front cover has Rat & Mole in a crossed oar emblem foiled in copper on dyed grey vellum. The text is set in 14pt Centaur and Arrighi and printed on a custom made cotton rag paper from Papeterie Saint-Armand developed especially for this book. Featuring thirteen multi color and nine 2 color illustrations by Vladimir Zimakov and an introduction from Peter Hunt, large format 10.25 x 14″ (26×35.5 cm)

Copies of the regular edition are still available and are available with a deposit at the

Mad Parrot Website

The pictures below are bench prototypes of the finished binding. The inset illustration on the cover will be done on a grey calf vellum and the patterned end papers will be printed this week. Stay tuned for finished photos coming soon!

The deluxe copies of the book are no longer available. Binding will commence on those copies as soon as the regular edition is complete. Look for pictures here in the future as these individual works of book binding explorations come to be. Inadvertently, one longtime customer was mis-marked as wanting a regular edition, to make everyone happy (I hope) there now will officially be eleven copies made in this way.

The printing has been completed and bindery work has been moving along full steam. The printing was all done on my Vandercook 219 OS proof press – nearly 800 runs on the press all hand fed and cranked with over 40 custom ink colors made. But recently it has been a great pleasure having past apprentices and students join in on the arduous process of bindery work. Daniel Schneider (Industrial Rust Press) and Tonya Baumhardt (Snow Fairy Cottage) have been especially instrumental with their more than capable skills and we’ve managed to have some good fun along the way as well. I began the printing of this book in late February of this year with snow drifting outside and today was the first snowstorm of the new winter coming on. Cycles of seasons and books continue here at Deep Wood Press.

This series of photos shows a loose progression from printing to collating, punching sections for sewing holes, cutting and paring the goat skin, foil stamping the title, sewing, rounding and backing and casing in the book blocks.

Manhattan Fine Press Book Fair and other news.

26 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by Deep Wood Press in Breon Mitchell - Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony, Letterpress, Manhattan Fine Press Book Fair, Presentation bindings, The Hunter Gracchus, The Wind in the Willows, Vladimir Zimakov

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Next week I will make my way to Manhattan for the 6th annual Fine Press Book Fair. Though I have gone back and participated in the show two or three other years I have very fond memories of the first fair and the great fun for those of us that journeyed there for it. A highlight being a lovely gathering of fellow printers at Jean Shiff’s home organized by Chris Adamson of the Books and Vines blog. So come join me and 40 other presses from around the world and descend into the ugly basement of the school of St. Vincent Ferrer at 869 Lexington Ave at 66th St on March 7th from 10am to 5pm.

For this years show I will have some lovely presentation bindings for my newly translated edition of Kafka’s In the Penal Colony, other books from my catalog and some progress to show for the forthcoming Wind in the Willows being done with my partner James Dissette and our Mad Parrot Press imprint. Vladimir Zimakov is still working away at the illustrations we’ve commissioned for the book. Otherwise the text layout is complete and edited, just waiting to plug in the images where appropriate. It should be forthcoming this summer for all of you who keep asking! I’m also making progress on my other new translation of Kafka’s The Hunter Gracchus but progress once again is being held up by my intaglio prints that will illustrate. They are mostly complete but my big intaglio press is in “Studio B” with the Linotype machine which is kept just above freezing in the winter months and I just can’t justify heating three buildings at the moment when the average temperature here is 25° Fahrenheit.

*Some of the linocuts forthcoming from Vladimir*

I’ve come to enjoy binding books again! Everything is done “in house” here at DWP from composition of the type via Linotype or handset, illustrations, printing to binding. In recent years I had totally burned out on edition binding even with the help of apprentices and the occasional student. Now my editions have become smaller and while I still do some edition binding a growing percentage of the books are becoming “one off” presentation bindings. Making books is rife with repetition with literally dozens of steps along the way to a finished product. Enjoying any part of the process is important to keep it seeming less like work! My apologies in advance to all the librarians and archivists as I keep lousy track of these things.

I see that it’s been roughly a year since my last post about my work, welcome to 2020! I wish that I had more news for you but 2019 was sort of a null year and the old adage of “no news is good news” unfortunately falls short in this case. Some routine medical procedures with complications started out the summer and upon full recovery from that I was shortly after diagnosed with Lyme Disease! The good news is that it was caught early and I’ve made pretty much a full recovery but lost months of studio work time as a result. Regardless, I’m one of the lucky ones. I have friends and family who weren’t diagnosed in time or misdiagnosed with this terrible disease and now suffer the full effects of it. A mere couple years ago this wouldn’t have even registered with doctors in Northern Michigan as a possibility but, unfortunately, the infected tick population has made its way here and now diligence must be made with the animals and, even more importantly, the kids looking for ticks and scanning for telltale bites with rings. My heart goes out to those of you in the Northeast and other parts of the country where this has become the new “normal”.