Tag Archives: fine press books

I’m back

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Future Projects, Trout

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Well the fishing trip was a great success and by success I mean we were able to live off fish and berries for the last 2 months. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. Actually I had a much more elaborate story made up that entailed finding a USAF food and munitions supply drop to augment our diet of raw fish but that started getting ridiculous as I developed it and finally decided to write a trashy novel replacing Dave with a found feral wolf-girl (for a love interest) out of the idea and release it as an e-book under the pseudonym Burt Grufflty.

The truth is we did catch fish but upon returning home I’d firmly settled into that pattern of waking, coffee, a smoke and then sitting in the kayak all day till I was hungry. Paddle back to camp, eat, have a smoke and go back out and fish till after dark, paddle back, have a snack and then busting out the whiskey – repeat… We didn’t see anyone else for 5 of the days we were out there. I got home and just couldn’t readjust to studio life so I didn’t. Just enjoyed time with the family and tried to get some more trout to fall for my song and dance.

Well, I’m back now. Feet planted firmly in the studio and there’s some wonderful stuff coming up.

  • A new apprentice begins work here shortly, Dani Davis will begin her formal training in the black arts.
  • The Michigan Trout Stamp book is back underway – cleaning up the old images.
  • A lead on an award winning translator of Kafka to give me clear rights to the upcoming “The Hunter Graccchus”.
  • I’ll shortly be acquiring 500 fonts of matrices for the Linotype (this is actually a huge deal)
  • Several commissioned works are in progress for various universities, institutions and private individuals.

So I’ve been busy – just not overly physically productive – but will acknowledge that I spent a fair amount of time enjoying the summer, my family and the river.

This weekend I’m off to the Kerrytown Bookfest in Ann Arbor, MI. I’ll be teaching a intaglio class at the Hollander’s School (still a couple spaces available) and will be hitting several university special collections while I’m in that part of the state visiting and selling some inventory. I’ll be giving a talk on Sunday at noon during Bookfest at Hollander’s about my 20 years of operating Deep Wood Press which is free to the public.

Last week I was in the middle of the state and made visits to special collections at Calvin College, Grand Valley State University, Michigan State University, the Library of Michigan and the State Archives. Great visits, great people and I got to handle some very nice books produced by printers past like Johannes Hamman, Anton Koberger and Nicholas Jenson.

More to come, lots of new things to update you about – but now – BACK TO WORK!

Working on the deluxe edition

22 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Book Bindings, Books, Letterpress, The Intruder

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Had a lovely talk with Jim Westergard this morning. My emails have been bouncing back a lot lately so sometimes you just can’t beat paying prime phone rates to Canada to get things ironed out. Aside from an all around great exchange of information, ideas and enthusiasm we hammered out what the bonuses of the special edition will include. I’ll be printing an additional folio of each of the five big wood engraving in the next couple days and then send them off to Jim along with the 20 already sewn books (but not cased into covers yet) copies designated for the deluxe edition for Jim to sign. I should point out that Jim has his own small edition of the prints from this book available for purchase as well. You can find them here.

Needless to say this will delay availability of these copies by at least a couple weeks. Hopefully they’ll make it through Homeland Security ok. When Jim sent me the engraved blocks (end grain maple) last December it must have looked scary to someone as the box had been slashed open and examined and in the process of doing so cut the surface of one of the blocks. The increased humidity of a Michigan summer and some heavy handed ink application made this cut negligible in the book edition.

My postmaster informed me that they didn’t know if there was any sort of recourse in dealing with packages searched at the border and I (or Jim) didn’t pursue it. Maybe the culprit will just be relegated to that special place in hell where there are no books or art.

So the deluxe edition will contain the five loose prints enclosed in a paper folio along with the book – all of which will be signed by Jim. And this will all be housed in a nice drop spine box covered in a matching cloth to the covers. Below is a picture of one of the first binding prototypes, it has evolved now to a less severe bevel on the cover boards and there will be surface decoration on them beyond what is shown. The vellum spine will be less revealed and different type used for the title but from here you’ll get a general idea of where I’m going with this.

prototype for deluxe edition of "The Intruder"