How we go about producing our books.

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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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.

The Wind in the Willows printing has begun!

26 Friday Feb 2021

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

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Kenneth Grahame, Mad Parrot Press, multi color linoleum cut, The Wind in the Willows

At long last production has begun for our forthcoming edition of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. In mid January all the materials finally arrived and after checking the plate proofs and making the final plan for the process printing began in early February!

After escaping from Manhattan last spring I returned home to the north woods to quarantine and regroup for the coming projects. I had initially hoped to be printing by the middle of last summer with a projected book release for around the holidays. I’m sure it has been an interesting year for all of us during Covid-19 but securing bespoke items to print a very special book proved to be an exercise in patience and perseverance. Fortunately, all good things come to those who wait.

It has taken a full month of printing to complete the twelve 8 x 9½ inch color images that are featured in the book. Vladimir Zimakov created the original images via multi-color linoleum cuts. Each image requires three to six different colors, each is a separate run on the press in tight registration to create the completed image. Since this is the part of the printing where things can go wrong the most this is where we start! In all, some 14 custom colors were mixed and used. There are an additional 9 two color linoleum cuts which will also adorn the book.

At the current rate of printing I hope to be completed by the end of April and then the binding process will commence!

The Wind in the Willows was lovingly set by James Dissette in 14pt Centaur and Arrighi types. It has a page size of 10.5 x 14 inches (26.7 x 35.5cm), 140 pages not including illustrations, front or back matter, printed on a custom made cotton rag paper by Papeterie Saint-Armand. There are 10 sections for the book, each section contains 4 folded folios which is 16 pages. These sections are then sewn together in the final binding to create the book.

Seventy-five copies are available for sale at $2,000, Ten deluxe copies in individual presentation bindings by Chad Pastotnik starting at $2500. Also, five copies in sheets are available for binders at $1500.

There are still some copies available in both editions!

Our special thanks to those who put down their deposit long ago and have been willing to wait it out with us.

We accept checks, direct deposit or Paypal on the madparrotpress.com site. Routing and account information available on request.

Except for deposits, a 6% sales tax will be included upon final payment. Domestic shipping and insurance is $40. Shipping and insurance for international orders will be calculated per country.

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”.