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.