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.