Tag Archives: literature

Mornings at Jack Pine paper cover edition

28 Sunday Jun 2026

Posted by in ATF Little Giant #6, Glenn Wolff, Jerry Dennis, Letterpress, Midwest Author Series, Mornings at Jack Pine, Wood Engraving

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Mornings at Jack Pine first debuted earlier this spring at the Manhattan show and since my return to the frigid north I have been working to get this new version out. I am pleased to present the first book in my Midwest Author Series in a paper cover edition. As promised back in April, the type went back to work on my ATF Little Giant #6 cylinder press to create an extended edition with hopes it will reach a broader audience.

This moving body of work by Jerry Dennis is accompanied by 10 wood engravings by Glenn Wolff. Jerry turns his keen naturalist’s eye inward as well as outward, finding in the landscape of northern Michigan a mirror for grief, love, mortality, and the fierce pleasures of being alive. Graced with Glenn Wolff’s exquisite illustrations, Mornings at Jack Pine is a small book with large ambitions — funny, tender, elegiac, and shot through with the kind of hard-won wonder that only comes from paying close attention to the world for a very long time.

This is, essentially, the same book but re-imposed to be printed in 4 sections instead of 5 to facilitate the sewing of so many books and it is printed on domestic paper stocks. It is printed in 2 colors instead of 3 and I printed the wood engravings from reproductions on photopolymer because the original blocks were very temperamental. Because of difficulties getting the paper in the weight I started with the edition is limited to 125 copies instead of the 250 noted in the colophon.

Composed in Baskerville and Eusebius type it is printed on Mohawk Superfine 70lb text enclosed in French Paper Dur-O-Tone 100lb cover stock printed in black and copper inks. It is a sewn binding glued into the cover wrap.

The deluxe copies are sold out but this version and the lettered copies are available on my newly updated website here for $70.00

More details about the book can be found here on an earlier blog post. The bindery monkeys will be here this week to get as many sewn as possible for the forthcoming release party in Traverse City, Michigan.

Printing the book pages on the Little Giant and a good look at the pressroom here at DWP.

Now this is funny – WordPress is now offering an AI generated video feature which I allowed to try and surmise this post. This is the abomination that it came up with. Trust me, this is inaccurate in every possible way ensuring Luddites like me to continue working without the AI overlords ever threatening to take real work from my hands!

Castles to trout streams ~ further adventures making books

27 Wednesday Mar 2024

Posted by in In the Penal Colony, James Bernard Gross, Letterpress, Louis Jou, Manhattan Fine Press Book Fair, Presentation bindings

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Much has happened in the months since my last post including a trip to the Oxford Fair in December. In a couple weeks I venture forth once again for the 9th Manhattan Fine Press Book Fair and this time I will be bringing along the prototype for the newest book THE LIQUORSTORE pomes by James Bernard Gross as well as a couple presentation bindings to display before they go off to their permanent homes with collectors.

James approached me about his book well over a year ago and details around production finalized before heading to France last September so I could at least start on a couple of the wood engravings while overseas. In December, before and after Oxford, I was busy on my Linotype casting the text for the book. New acquisitions of logotype and diacritic matrices for one of the house typefaces, Garamond, have made typography on the machine equal to hand setting for letter fitment and it is always a joy to print from fresh type. The book will come in just under 100 pages for the 36 poems with an introduction from Toby Olson and will be printed on Hahnemühle Biblio paper in 12pt Garamond, an edition of 50 books in a 6.5 x 10 inch format. I’m still working on those wood engravings (the one shown below is a mere 2.5 x 2.25″) but the plan is for 3 or 4 within the book to illustrate. With luck the book will be in the bindery by June and will be available shortly after. Stay tuned here for more production pictures and details in the months to come.

Another commissioned binding for my edition of Kafka’s In the Penal Colony was recently completed for a collector in Australia. I’ve done five variations on this theme of a rugged leather coast with topographic features blind tooled into the sea for this book and I’m pleased with the way this one has evolved as well. A burgundy Sokoto goat hide for the spine and river grained goat on the boards which is heavily tooled. My usual treatment with thinly pared onlay and inlay work completes the scene. This closes the sale of the edition as well though I might be able to get a book or two from my co-conspirators on the project – Dellas Henke and Breon Mitchell (etchings and translator).

Oxford was a wonderful show and it was a pleasure to see so many of my European printer and binder friends gathered together just before the holiday. It was wonderful to hear so many impressions and stories about encounters with the work of Louis Jou from my European peers and even more encouraging for me to keep up my activities in Les Baux. The true highlight for me was spending time with one of my oldest friends who is currently teaching in Bath. “One cannot make new old friends” as the saying goes…

Finally, stretching back to last October in Les Baux at the Louis Jou Foundation, I taught a typography and linocut workshop for a couple students after the wood engraving class I brought Joanne Price over to teach. With both of them already possessing skills with lino cutting we dove in immediately to 2-color and reduction block work and in the period of 4 days the students came up with some very good broadsides! Working with Jou’s incredible typefaces and using his iron hand presses for production is an experience in itself. I spent a month in Les Baux last fall organizing Jou’s type, the leading and furniture and also breaking down old type forms lying around the studio gathering dust and being destroyed. While we have a supply of his type in book sizes the display type will never be able to be replaced so this was an important personal task for me to undertake. I’m pleased to say that our lovely museum is now a fully functional printing space. If Jou were to rise from the dead and return to his studio he could immediately begin production again.

And to conclude this foray into the world of Deep Wood Press I would like to invite all who can come to the 9th incarnation of the Manhattan Rare Book & Fine Press Fair on April 6th. Our usual location in the basement at The Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, 869 Lexington Avenue just across the street from the ABAA New York Antiquarian Book Fair at the Park Avenue Armory. Join me and 35 other private presses, book artists, makers and takers from around the world as we bare our souls in the city that never sleeps.