The Wind in the Willows – onto the next book already!

11 Thursday Oct 2018

Posted by Deep Wood Press in CODEX, Future Projects, James Dissette, Kenneth Grahame, Letterpress, Mad Parrot Press, PR and Media releases, The Wind in the Willows, Vladimir Zimakov

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illustration, James Dissette, Kenneth Grahame, literature, Mad Parrot Press, The Wind in the Willows, Vladimir Zimakov

I spent a couple days before and after Oak Knoll Fest with my partner James Dissette in Mad Parrot Press (formerly Chester River Press) brainstorming our next projects and making plans. I’ll keep you all updated as things move forward with The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame but we have established size, layout and many other aspects of the book.

We settled on typesetting the book in 14pt Centaur and Arrighi – finally a good excuse to use these exquisite typefaces which we have both admired for years but never quite had the right project for. David Carruthers of Papeterie Saint-Armand in Montreal will be making our custom stock and will most likely be making all of my paper for Deep Wood Press from here forward. Vladimir Zimakov is already onboard illustrating with his glorious linocuts and we will have a couple page spreads to show off in February, 2019 during the CODEX show in Berkeley. This will be a big book, a page size of 11.25 x 14″ (28.5 x 35.5cm) is planned and preliminary layout puts the book at around 116 pages not including front or back matter. Edition size will likely be around 60-70 books.

We’re still toying with the idea of having some sort of introduction at the foreword of the book but, really, who needs introduction to such a classic tale? Still, J.K. Rowling, if you’re reading this – we’d love to work with you!

We’ve also decided to move forward with The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster but that book will now come after we complete work on The Wind in the Willows.

I will have my other Kafka project, The Hunter Gracchus, completed for CODEX as well but I will save those details for a future post.

Back to the bindery — I’ve orders to fill!

Preview ~ Franz Kafka, The Hunter Gracchus

04 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by Deep Wood Press in CODEX, Future Projects, Letterpress, The Hunter Gracchus

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Chad Pastotnik, Deep Wood Press, fine press books, Franz Kafka, intaglio prints, literature, The Hunter Gracchus, Weiss type

Here is a small preview of my newest book project that will be available to view at Codex later this week. The latest working prototype for The Hunter Gracchus by Franz Kafka which is a short story I fell in love with decades ago and now, finally, I get to have my way with it.

I’ve already gone over most of the details of having a new English language version made in an earlier post but late last week I received the final working draft from my translator, Jamie Lee Searle. Now I can finally commit to some of the intaglio prints I’ve been working on for the book. Only one of them is ready to show and it is still just a proof but I think I’ve narrowed it down to 4 or 5 others that will be used in the book. They are all mostly moody and tonal created with mezzotint, roulette and stipple with a little bit of burin work. I will be using 14pt Weiss for body type and currently the page size is about 7 ¾ x 9 inches. I’ve been liking the results so far using 175gsm Somerset Book paper for the intaglio printing, the velvet surface and moderate sizing content is wonderful for tonal print work and text is beautiful with the dampened sheet.

All of this is subject to change of course, the margins, and title page particularly, will vary as I experiment some more but here are pictures for proof of concept. The fragility and delicacy of the intaglio prints will definitely make this a short edition of no more than 60 books if I’m lucky.

Fine Bindings for Codex & Events in Seattle

02 Monday Feb 2015

Posted by Deep Wood Press in Book Bindings, CODEX, Future Projects, Heart of Darkness, PR and Media releases, The Intruder, The Mad Angler Poems, The Path

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Books, Chad Pastotnik, Deep Wood Press, Gerard Wozek, John Voelker, Michael Delp, Robert Traver, Sigrid Christiansen, travel

In less than a week I will be in Berkeley California for the Codex International Book Fair & Symposium. Preparations have been going full force here at Deep Wood Press creating new presentation bindings of some of the most recent books and I now have the final draft of my new Kafka translation for The Hunter Gracchus that will preview at the Fair.

A couple of updates from the last post: Exquisite Editions – An International Exhibition of Finely Printed Books now has a web page, so if you happen to be in Dublin, Ireland March 4th – April 18th stop into the National Print Museum for what looks to be a beautiful show of contemporary letterpress book editions.

The lectures and workshop I’m giving for the Seattle Book Arts Guild now has web pages up for the events here. Lectures are Feb. 12th at 7pm at the University of Washington Library, Feb. 13th at Pacific Lutheran University at 4pm and the workshop is Feb 14th & 15th at Pacific Lutheran from 9am-5pm.

With luck I may be able to get one last post up before I leave this week of some pics of the Gracchus prototype but time is running short. I’ll leave you for now with some pictures of some of the presentation bindings I’ll be bringing with me to Codex. Hopefully I will see some of you there!