Tag Archives: typography

New Projects from DWP: A Printers Family Tree

30 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by in A Printer's Family Tree, Future Projects, Glenn Wolff, Jerry Dennis, Letterpress, Manhattan Fine Press Book Fair

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

First off, the website has recently been updated and is now fully functional again after over a year in cyber limbo!

I will be in New York in just a week on April 5th to once again be part of the Manhattan Fine Press Fair. Our usual location at The Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, 869 Lexington Avenue. Just across the street the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America is hosting the largest antiquarian book fair in the world at the Park Avenue Armory. Join me and many other private presses, book artists, makers and takers from around the world. And good news, after 11 years the church/school is letting us use the gymnasium which purportedly has windows! Please let me know if you hope to attend, I can add you to my will-call list.

I’m excited to bring along a new project which has been boiling away in the back of my brain for over a decade as I worked on the logistics – A Printers Family Tree – from Gutenberg to Zaph with some paper engineering! Thirty years ago I did all kinds of this sort of thing as individual projects but I’m committed to edition at least 10 of this new piece. I’m still working out paper weights for different pieces but all the elements will be created from intaglio prints – both new mono prints and culling from my vast collection of too many plate proofs and states from my earlier engravings and mezzotints. The names are foil stamped from brass type in this prototype but I will create slugs on my Linotype machine in Garamond for the final impressions. I’ve worked out the binding structure but the boards will remain relatively plain in paper and cloth for flexibility and because they won’t be visible when displayed. The book will be housed in a case as it still won’t sit like a proper book when closed.

The spread that is just penciled in with names will have pop-up elements as well but I’ve left this “editable” as I’m hoping I’ll have plenty of feedback on my choice of whom to include in my list of prominent type designers. Though I have a laser cutter/engraver all these are/will be hand cut to follow the inevitable irregularities the intaglio prints and mono prints have to offer in the trunks and foliage and to allow flexibility foiling the names on each panel with the jig I’ve created for my foil stamping machine.

Looking over exhibitors at our “fine press” book fairs – a majority are now book arts. Two different things in my mind and kind of a dilution of the real work. I do miss the old days of the FPBA before the flailing organization opened up it’s definitions of fine press. If you can’t beat them, join them. What do you think of these evolving definitions?

Other current projects are a new book with essayist/poet Jerry Dennis and our mutual friend and frequent collaborator, Glenn Wolff, is once again illustrating with wood engravings. Jerry, Glenn and I have done multiple projects together over the past couple of decades and it’s always fun to work out a new project – Mornings at Jackpine is a collection of verse and an essay contemplating the turning of seasons in our physical world and the cycle that is our existence. Jerry’s essays, poems, and short fiction have appeared in more than 100 publications, including The New York Times, Smithsonian, Audubon, American Way, Gray’s Sporting Journal, PANK and Michigan Quarterly Review. His books are widely acclaimed, have won numerous awards, and have been translated into Chinese, Japanese, German, Portuguese, Czech, and Korean.

Some of Glenn’s engravings for the project:

Another recent collaboration with Jerry and Glenn is a series of broadsides to benefit Michigan libraries that are facing defunding, book banning or reduced services and hours. The first print is available now via the Peter White Public Library in Marquette, MI. “A Passion for Books” is printed on 300-gram Somerset textured cotton paper, measuring 15 x 11 inches. The text is composed in Garamond and printed letterpress on a Vandercook 219 OS.

We are working with the Library of Michigan and other entities to see how we can bring this and the 3 additional prints we plan to add to the series to more libraries across the state. I’ll happily crank my Vandercook for a day or two to do what I can to support our libraries.

Two editions are available:

·       Special Roman-Numbered Edition: Limited to 20 pieces, hand-colored by Glenn Wolff, and signed by Jerry Dennis, Glenn Wolff, and Chad Pastotnik. Available for tax-deductible contributions of $500 or more.

·       Open Edition: A signed two-color print available for tax-deductible contributions of $100 or more.

Order by clicking the “Donate” button at https://pwpl.info/giving/ and in the payment processing page scroll down to the broadside option of your choice. Payments can be made via debit card, credit card, or PayPal. If you would rather use check or credit card over the phone, contact Heather Steltenphol, Development Director at Peter White Public Library, at 906-226-4305 or via email at heather@pwpl.info.

Another recent philanthropic project is a broadside completed for The CODEX Foundation’s 5th Assembly/Exchange Portfolio – The Art of Translation. Further announcements and details forthcoming from CODEX for this 2025 release but I will share these images of my contribution during production with hopes some of you will be interested in acquiring it with the rest of the portfolio upon its release in a beautiful box along with probably 20-40 of my contemporary peers from around the globe. I was happily paired with David James Duncan to produce his piece “One River” for the first Assembly/Exchange in 2019.

Another project in its infancy is large in scope but has begun to form up is my series of Midwest author books which Mornings at Jackpine will kick off. In addition to the fine editions I produce, a second state will be offered on Mohawk paper and a simple binding structure which I will print on my Little Giant press allowing me production speed unheard of with my hand cranked cylinder proof press and I’ll pass the time and cost savings along to those of you who love the books but can’t justify the expense (I get it, I really do.) I’ve worked out everything but the marketing but that’s never stopped me before! I’ve also created a new partnership to edit this series of books but this will all be gone into in depth in a future blog post. This is another aspect of Deep Wood Press I’ve been wanting to explore more and have given a lot of thought to in the past decade. I will continue to issue fine editions of great books from the past that have touched and inspired me but my heart is in new writings, upcoming authors and translations and that’s the direction I see things moving forward with the greatest energy.

Ok, that’s a lot for one blog post. I’ll let it digest and get back to you in the next 6 months.

One last note. The stupid AI on WordPress tells me my words and sentences are too complex for most readers and that some of the words I use don’t even exist. If you’ve made it this far – welcome to the minority!

A Broadside for Terrance Hayes ~ process

01 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by in Broadsides, Education, Letterpress, Printing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

I’ve admired the poetry of Terrance Hayes since a friend recommended him a couple of years ago so when I got word he was coming to my part of the world I took note, and made a few inquiries. I had done a broadside for Robert Hass when he came to Interlochen Center for the Arts in 2006 so had already set a precedence for the project to happen and they were very receptive. Then the game of working with an author and their publisher on a short schedule for selection and proper clearance began!

I was sent the piece Bower which is excerpted from the poem Arbor for Butch in the book Lighthead. I was familiar with the poem as a whole and struggled with what sort of art or ornamentation this fragment of a poem should/could have accompany it. In the end I decided to let these four lines of text stand on their own and this was probably influenced by the fact that I had a linocut I’d done but hadn’t used for anything “bookish” yet which fit well with the poem especially after hacking a bit off the top of the block. Also, time was short, I had to work with materials and paper I had on hand, no time to order anything in.

finsigned2

So here it is as it turned out. Three colors on mould-made German Zerkall Frankfurt cream paper, 15 x 8.5 inches, hand set in Garamond in 24 and 72pt type and printed on my Vandercook 219OS with an additional bit of text on the back commemorating the evening and credits. The paper was not ideal, it is a beautiful sheet but the pronounced laid lines from the mould made printing the solids on the linoleum block quite difficult solved by being diligent with ink, a soft packing and running the sheet through the press twice. The Frankfurt paper was the only nice stock I had in enough quantity to do 100 broadsides so the dimensions of the broadside were more or less dictated by how the sheets could be divided and since it had such a lovely deckle edge from the mould, 100 is a small enough quantity to tear down by hand.

From the beginning I planned on the text running into the linocut so had made paper cut outs of the proofed text and moved it around with prints pulled from the linocut to plan my composition. I printed the lino first but now, to my eye, I feel the text crowds the image and would have benefitted from being moved a bit further away but stubbornly decided to keep my left margin equal − these are the hazards of only having a couple of days to devote to something. I prefer to have various proofs just hanging around the studio for a few days or a few weeks to look at. It’s fast enough to put some ink on the slab bust out a brayer and tweak the print or play with word spacing in the type, add leading, move elements around and “play”.

 

My approach on book and typographic composition comes from my fine art background first where typically a painting or print evolves over a period of time. Blocks of text are tones of color or shades of grey, how they work with whatever other non-typographic elements might be present and the space of the page spread and the overall book design. My early books were far more “experimental” with type I think but not always in a good way, so much forever to learn. I have an advantage, I think, in my book production because I do every part of the process here – I envision the whole of the book from the beginning from material selection to what the cover will look like. Knowledge of paper and bookbinding informs much information on creating the page layout and selection of stock for accompanying art, doing the artwork for the project gives me flexibility in design, and there is no reason why anything can’t change as the project progresses.

this is analog design.   this is letterpress.

 

For those who don’t know, (taken from Wikipedia) Terrance Hayes first book of poetry, Muscular Music (1999), won both the Whiting Writers Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His second collection, Hip Logic (2002), won the National Poetry Series, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and runner-up for the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. He won the National Book Award for Lighthead.

Hayes poems have appeared in literary journals and magazines including The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Fence, The Kenyon Review, Jubilat Harvard Review, West Branch, and Poetry.

In September 2014, he was honored as one of the twenty-one  2014 fellows of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation – one of the most prestigious prizes that is awarded for artists, scholars and professionals.