“If” by Rudyard Kipling ~ A new broadside

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by Deep Wood Press in Broadsides, If by Rudyard Kipling, Letterpress, Printing

Tags

arts, Broadside, commissioned work, Letterpress, Rudyard Kipling, Wood Engraving, wood engravings

I recently had a commission to produce this classic for a customer and I’ve always had somewhat of an admiration for that “stiff upper lip” British mentality that this poem so embodies. So I made some extras for me and some for you as well, if you so desire…

The text is set all in 18pt ATF Garamond with the title in Americana. I was hoping to do the text in Baskerville to keep it all UK centric but, alas, when hand setting type one is constrained to the amount of sorts in the case. Even with the Garamond I was short four “o” and had to run the last four lines as a separate pressrun. The paper is Domestic Etch and sheet size is 10 x 16 inches, they are signed and numbered in an edition of 55 copies, printed in 2 colors and are available for $45. It is now on the website here:

http://deepwoodpress.com/books.html

The image is a old wood engraving of mine that first appeared in a small edition (50) of poems by Terry Wooten back in 1997 called Hermaion. With a few more cuts to the block I think it makes an admirable companion to If.

If you’re British or an Anglophile you know all about this poem of course. It’s been voted Britain’s favorite poem uncountable times by various survey entities and carries significant meaning beyond the aforementioned immutable British stereotype. I’ll let you do your own googling for info on Dr Leander Starr Jameson and the Boers War. Kipling wrote this for his own son who died in WWI only a few years after the poem was published in Rewards and Fairies in 1909, a shock Kipling never fully recovered from.

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:

Wood engraving by Chad Pastotnik, detail of Garamond type.

The wood engraving and part of the type set up on the galley.

More about the who and why of this project

13 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by Deep Wood Press in Books, Letterpress, Printing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Books, Fine Press, John Voelker, Letterpress, Linotype, Voelker, Wood Engraving

‎”The Intruder”, from the book Trout Madness by Robert Traver/John Voelker is getting ready to roll off the presses.

What a mouthful eh? What this is in clearer phrasing is: A story about trout fishing on Michigan’s Upper Pennisula’s Escanaba River written by John Voelker (whose pen name was Traver) in 1960. Voelker was a Michigan supreme court justice when he wrote this along with his biggest literary success Anatomy of a Murder which was then turned into an Academy Award winning movie starring Jimmy Stewart.

Still confused? Well how about he’s considered the grandfather of modern fishing writing and I secured one of the finest wood engravers in North America, Jim Westergard, who has lavished his attention on it and provided me with 10 wood engravings to sweeten the whole project.

More details on the webpage and some images will shortly follow here. Book is due out in early May, just in time for something to do in the evening after fishing for trout!

Sheet and type form on the press

“The Intruder” by Robert Traver / John Voelker

13 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by Deep Wood Press in Books, Letterpress

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Books, Fine Press, John Voelker, Letterpress, Wood Engraving

The current project is an exert from John Voelker’s (pen name Robert Traver) Trout Madness, the chapter titled “The Intruder”. The book includes ten wood engravings by Jim Westergard and a foreword by Richard F. Vander Veen.

Printed on dampened Hahnemühle Schiller stock, composed in Linotype Janson 14 pt type with 3 pt leading on a 8×10″ page size in an edition of 150 books.

I’ve been working on this book for close to a year already with the earliest page spreads composed almost 2 years ago. Today we commenced the actual printing of the book. Yesterday it all began with the paper being prepared — cut to size from the parent sheets on the guillotine, counted and then the first folio (160 sheets) dampened and placed in a big plastic bag in anticipation of ink finally going on the press today.

Printing went well with the capable assistance of this years star apprentice, Erin Murray. Sheets are pulled from the damp bag, run through the press and placed back into another bag by Erin. After completion of one side of the sheet the press is set up for the second side printing. This time it comes from the damp bag, run on the press and then placed between blotter paper layers by Erin to ensure even drying.

And so it will go for the next 20 days as we print one folio at a time. No rush for the pursuit of however close we can come to perfection.