Spring 2023 – France, NYC & more presentation bindings

22 Wednesday Mar 2023

Posted by Deep Wood Press in France, Future Projects, Letterpress, Louis Jou, Manhattan Fine Press Book Fair, The Wind in the Willows, Workshop

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Foundation Louis Jou, Les Baux, Presentation bindings, wood engraving workshops

France:

The past year has been a full one. A vast amount of my time has been spent working on presentation bindings, a few of which as yet still backlogged on my bench. In addition, I spent a month in the fall in France where I made a connection with the Foundation Louis Jou in Les Baux de Provence. That connection led to an invitation to join the Foundation board and I am honored and pleased that I was elected by fellow members this spring to help guide the organization forward.

Louis Jou (1881-1968) was a prolific fine book printer, wood engraver, type designer and book binder. He was born in Catalonia but moved to Paris in 1906, attracted by the growing artistic scene and by 1921 he was designing his own proprietary typeface, having it cast in Spain and releasing his first imprint – Machiavelli’s The Prince. In 1939 with most of his staff leaving to join the war, Jou moved his studio to Les Baux where he began the restoration of the Hotel de Brion, though he could not move the presses to the location until after the war. Of the 167 books he created, 95 were printed on his iron hand presses. In 2017 the Foundation was created and work began to restore the workshop, museum and make Jou’s work more accessible to the public. I immediately felt a kindred relationship with Jou as I too do every step of the book creation process “in house” and am drawn to the classical ideal of a fine press book.

The studio is well equipped with three Stanhope iron hand presses, a wood framed intaglio press, book presses, Jou’s gravers and other tools. The composing room doubles as a workshop space and the walls are lined with type cabinets full of Jou’s proprietary types. Upstairs is an apartment for workshop students and staff with a small kitchen, dining space and 3 bedrooms. Across the street is Atelier du Livre where François and his daughter Marie Vinourd, book and paper conservators, ply their trade. As you can imagine, I immediately felt right at home despite the frequent language barrier.

My partner, Madeleine Vedel, lived in this region of France for 20 years before we met in Northern Michigan. She and her former husband had a noted cooking school and B&B in Arles and after their separation the opportunity to establish a goat farm creamery and make cheese brought her back across the ocean with her sons. Her goat adventure behind her, she has recently created a small but thriving chocolate business. Madeleine concurrently taps her connections with artisans and locations in France to offer specialized tours (often centered around food and wine) through her Cuisine Provencale. All this back story is a lead-up to the individual who in fact made the connection for me with the Foundation: Madeleine’s friend and goat mentor Claudine, now retired from cheese making, is a docent at the Jou Foundation and encouraged us to visit. Not expecting much from this visit I was blown away by the legacy of Jou and the possibilities the space had to offer. I immediately made contact with the Foundation offering to make some needed repairs which turned into a brilliant working holiday where I became good friends with another board member and was introduced to many other printmakers, bookbinders and printers during my stay.

From my position on the board I am tasked with developing international programming for a workshop series, helping restore the equipment and composing room and to be “ambassador for the book.” Other goals include creating a book with some of Jou’s unpublished wood engravings (in his type) and bringing graduate level book arts students to Les Baux for extended workshops and internships. More information to come on these latter goals in future blog posts.

I am pleased that for this inaugural year I have lined up two instructors so far. Richard Wagener (Mixolydian Editions) will be teaching wood engraving in September and Joanne Price (Starpointe Studio) will also teach a wood engraving class in October. I will teach a type composition class in October as well. When the schedule is set I will offer more information here but if you are interested in any of these workshops and want to travel to an amazing location this fall in the South of France mark your calendar now!

Book binding:

Before and following the release of my last project, The Wind in the Willows, I have been inundated with the creation of presentation bindings for that book as well as a back log of special bindings, slip cases and solander boxes for some of my earlier editions. I will confess, I’ve never had a best seller before where special bindings were sold out in advance, these usually trickle in at a manageable pace. This is solitary work, each binding is a work of art in itself and – they take time. I’m not complaining, I’m thrilled that my bindery work has achieved such recognition and desire but I am ready to get back on the press again and create new books! Below you can see some of the bindings I have completed in the recent months.

Forthcoming:

Work on The Machine Stops and my Mad Parrot imprint with James Dissette is progressing slowly and I have another commission for a book of poetry, The Liquor Store Pomes (not a typo) by James Bernard Gross who had an earlier book (Fingerings for Words: selected poems) produced by Chester Creek Press in 2016. Along with a couple other small projects that need to get on the press it will be another busy year in leather and ink.

I (and Madeleine too!) will be at the eighth annual Manhattan Fine Press Book Fair next month on Saturday, April 29th from 10 AM to 5 PM. Our event is at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, 869 Lexington Ave at 66th Street across the street from the NY Antiquarian Book Fair at the Park Avenue Armory.

I hope to see you there!

Before I left for Europe I had a visit from Dave Seat who helped me replace all the heaters on my Linotype machine with modern solid state controllers. A little more work and the machine will once again be producing beautiful type for future books.

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!

Looking forward towards 2018

09 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by Deep Wood Press in Authors and Translators, Books, Breon Mitchell - Franz Kafka, Education, Future Projects, In the Penal Colony, Judith Minty, Letterpress, Mad Parrot Press, The Hunter Gracchus, Workshop

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Books, Breon Mitchell, Dellas Henke, Fine Press, Franz Kafka, future projects, literature

Here we are, a new year. I’ve been remiss updating this blog but I’ve not been fully idle in my absence so allow me to update you to some of the exciting projects underway here at Deep Wood.

Franz Kafka — In the Penal Colony

I will not attempt to summarize In the Penal Colony, it’s a brilliant and important part of Kafka’s canon. But if you are curious here’s a wikipedia link.

I am pleased to present this new previously unpublished translation by the acclaimed Breon Mitchell which will be lavishly illustrated with six etchings by Dellas Henke. This very limited edition is set at 30 copies divided between Dellas, Breon and myself and will be sold in sheets primarily. I will bind my third of the edition and also produce some presentation bindings.

Dellas has been working on editioning the intaglio prints and is closing in on his end of the project while the rest of the paper lies here at the press waiting as I fuss with last minute layout adjustments.

The book is large a format 10×13 inch (25×33 cm) page size with the text being composed in Janson and printed on Somerset Book White, 175gsm. The intaglio illustrations are “bled print” to the edges. 40 pages. $1000.00 unbound. Advanced inquiries and sales may be made.

Here are some of the image proofs from Dellas, 10×13″ sheets. It should be noted that these are proofs – works in progress – and also were not printed on Somerset stock.

Breon Mitchell has translated major works by Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll, Siegfried Lenz and other leading German authors. His retranslation of Kafka’s Trial received a special commendation from the American Translators Association. His other awards include the ATA’s Ungar Prize , the ALTA Translation Prize, the Kurt and Helen Wolff Prize, the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize, and the British Society of Authors’ Schlegel-Tieck Prize. He is Director Emeritus of the Lilly Library and Professor Emeritus of Germanic Studies and Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Dellas Henke learned printmaking a S.U.N.Y. Brockport from Robert Marx. It was there that he saw his first artist’s books- collaborations Marx had made with the activist priests the Barrigan brothers. Henke continued his education at the University of Iowa where he worked with printmakers Mauricio Lasansky and Keith Achepohl and had the remarkable opportunity to learn about letterpress printing from KK Merker and Kay Amert. It was in Iowa that Henke first illustrated with etchings Samuel Beckett’s, “Waiting for Godot” – an edition sanctioned and signed by Beckett. Over the next few years there were further collaborations with Merker and the Iowa Center for the Book where Henke illustrated Beckett’s “Company” and H.D.’s “ Within the Walls and eventually making an illustrated edition of Beckett’s, “Ill Seen Ill Said”. In the intervening years Henke has been the coordinator for the printmaking department at Grand Valley State University where he continues to make prints, paint, and draw. Henke has been involved in more than 200 exhibitions and has been collected by dozens of public institutions.

I would also be remiss mentioning that Dellas was my professor for printmaking in college long ago. Great to be working with him again and his visits north have been a lot of fun fishing, hiking around with his dog Lazlo and telling stories.

Further, it is a thrill to be working with Breon on this project and a fortunate stroke of serendipity with my own project though rather mind bending to be working on two Kafka manuscripts at a time.

Dellas, working on print arrangement for the book.

Additionally

My own Kafka project The Hunter Gracchus is also coming along but has been completely redesigned to a larger format. More to come soon with that progress.
I sadly note the passing of Judith Minty in November. Judith and I produced her short Killing the Bear in 2011 with wood engravings by Glenn Wolff. In her 84 years I hope I amused her for at least one of them….

Opening spread, Killing the Bear by Judith Minty

James Dissette and I have continued planning our new projects for our Mad Parrot Press (formerly Chester River Press) and plan to bring you E.M. Forster’s strange and prescient science fiction story, The Machine Stops. We are also in the planning stages for the iconic childhood rhapsody, Wind in the Willows which will be illustrated by the brilliant linoleum cuts of Vladimir Zimakov. Here’s a taste of his concept art for Badger:

Residency and Instruction

One of my distractions lately from making books has been finishing the guest house above “studio B” which is now listed on AirBnB. The space will be used to host collaborators, limited artist residencies and, of course, some additional income…

Use of the studio spaces and instruction can also be negotiated with a stay. Fully (and nicely) appointed letterpress and intaglio print spaces as well as a complete bindery. Visit my main website for much more information about the facilities here.