production started on Jenson's Greek

it's taken months of fluffing around trying to get a real handle on my next book, Jenson's Greek - I intended, to begin with, making a straightforward reproduction of Nicolas Jenson's Last Will & Testament (1480), translated by Pierce Butler & published by the Ludlow Typograph Company, Chicago 1928 - but when I found copies of it freely available online, it seemed that a handprinted reprint was somewhat redundant - in the meantime I had a couple of blocks made, calligrapher Deirdre Hassed had redrawn six of Jenson's letters at a large size and blocks were made of them also, and Bixlers in New York has set the type which I would then put thru the stick and re-space it all - since then it has been a struggle to figure out what to do - now, this aspect has been figured out : three 'poems' have been made by using words & phrases from the Last Will; a number of poems by yrs truly written; a fresh polymer plate of the original printing made by Nick Summers, and I have a book to print. . . here then, is Nicolas Jenson's Greek type as it appeared in his 1471 edition of Noctes Atticae, a commonplace book with commentary written by Aulus Gellius (second century), followed by three of Deirdre's six hand-drawn letters (tho the latter have appeared here last year - 

with Carolee Campbell at CODEX 2013

I'd like to write heaps on what I saw, thought, heard, felt, & otherwise experienced & who I met at CODEX 2013 in Berkeley in February this year - and I will, over time, say a few things about that - but I wanted here to show one photograph kindly taken with printer/book artist Carolee Campbell at her Ninja Press table - her table was one of four tables at the Book Fair which featured fine books of my writings, in her case my poem The Sirens which can be seen a bit at lower left of the picture - 

while I'm at it, there are a few things I learned while at the Symposium & Book Fair, one of the most interesting being this : that, while in Australia letterpress as a primary book-making technology is a minority practice, in the US letterpress is the norm - when keynote speaker Sandro Berra of the Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione put this up on the big screen -        There is No Way to Letterpress

Letterpress is the Way

the whole audience almost cheered in agreement - but what was also brilliantly clear in so many of the tables there was that North American book artists & many Germans also (tho there are no doubt others, I was unable to get around all or even most of the 180 tables at the Fair) are wonderfully adept at adding computer, laser, and digital technologies to their already established repertoire of letterpress technologies in their making of books - 

the Ampersands printed

at last I have printed the Ampersands cut in wood for me by Nick Summers - the design, as I said previously, is Umbra, designed by R H Middleton for Ludlow in 1935 - Nick has called them 'Umbrasands' - I think it suits them very well - 

New Loney book from The Press at Colorado College

Aaron Cohick of The Press at Colorado College has just announced the publication of a book of mine, Orpheus the stutterer - I don't have copies for sale, so buying should be direct from the Colorado press - 

Another note for Alessandro Zanella

by the kindness of an anonymous comment on this site, here is a URL for more information on the late & great printer Alessandro Zanella - the whole site is in Italian, but even so, one can get a good idea of the scope of his printerly life & activity

New wood letters from Nick Summers

here's a nice clutch of ampersands made for me by Nick Summers at Sylvan Type Works in New South Wales - after I re-cover the tympan on the Albion I'll ink them up & print them, and post the result here - the design is Umbra, designed for Ludlow by R H Middleton in 1935 - 

Gill Sans Shadow 338

Electio has just acquired a font of 72pt Gill Sans Shadow 338 from The Printing Museum in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. They can produce a number of types and those interested should contact them for their list. They were kind enough to pull a proof for me and here it is - 

BUT, when the type arrived, it did so in a good, strong, wrap of card with a bit of printing on it which, amazingly, I didn't look at until the next day. It turns out to have been a nice piece of old Linotype packaging, and I confess I'm tempted to rename my press because of it - 

Vale Steve Pratt

looking this morning at Milroy Rollins's blog (Heavenly Monkey) I'm distressed to find that the maker of my Albion press (and one of Milroy's), has died of cancer. Go to Milroy's blog to see more of Steve's history - here's a photo of Steve Pratt and one of his Albions - I have, I have to say, taken this direct from Milroy's blog - 

each of the Pratt-Albions (as they are sometimes called) are dated and numbered - mine is number 11, dated 2001 - and the last information I have about the most recent one is number 18 - tho, if there are any later ones, I'd very much appreciate knowing - what I do know is that a small gathering of Pratt-Albion owners will be at CODEX 2013 in February -
here's mine (even tho I have posted this before - 

Steve Pratt's Albions are reproduced from a small (foolscap folio) Albion made by D & J Grieg, Edinburgh (I think in the 1860s - anyone have better information?) once owned by the late great printer Lewis Allen at his (with his wife Dorothy) Allen Press in California - 
at Allen's death, his printery was gifted to the University of Utah, and somehow a decision was made to strip the little Albion down and make reproductions - for me, owning this press is a special story - in the mid-1970s I discovered Lewis Allen's Printing with the handpress (Van Nostrand Reinhold 1969) and this book became, and was so for many years, my close-read handbook on printing, along with Clifford Burke's Printing poetry -  later, in 1982, in Fine Print Vol VIII, No. 1, Lewis Allen reviewed I book I had printed, of short aphorisms on the creative process plus a number of drawings by designer-bookbinder Edgar Mansfield - Allen was very kind in his review, and I wrote to him saying so and with thanks - after that we had an occasional & sporadic correspondence that I should say did not venture into the craft of the art of printing at any real level - and the last card I had from him arrived just a few months before he died - so, to have a copy of one of his presses (which I ordered just over 20 years after Allen's review) on the other side of the world was and is to me one of the most significant connections I have with the centres of the craft, which are decidedly not in Australia or New Zealand - now, all my printing is done on the Lewis Allen press, and I am thus in daily memory of him and of Steve Pratt - in this sense, every time I touch the press I honour the memories now of both men, and salute the pleasure & information I have gained from their labours - Vale, Steve Pratt - Vale, Lewis Allen -

2013 is here, and so are we. . .

usually, when I need photos for this here blog, I ask Miriam if she'd be so kind to take 'em, and I set them up and all sort of thing, but today she looked into the printery and said she'd like to take a picture or two - and here I am, the happy recipient of these to kick off the new year - all to do with the binding of RED SQUARE being ready to enter its last procedure - 

tho it was the ball of cut threads ready for sewing that first caught her eye -

which then led onto this -

with two variants on a more or less single view -

and this - 

progress on The next word

here's one view of the front covers of RED SQUARE - The next word - type is Umbra on a Ruscombe flax handmade paper - next up is sewing (intricate!) the two signatures to the cover - the slipcase making has been interrupted by this weird event they call 'christmas', so the book will be ready post out in the new year - and speaking of the new year, may all of us have a better 2013 than we had a 2012 - I know, every day is a miracle, let's be thankful & a' that - but I wouldn't mind a world in which our murderous interest in each other was not so endlessly & vividly exemplified on a daily basis - still, the turtledoves come to be fed each morning, the flowers keep blooming, the moving world keeps us floating about in its brilliant air, the sun gives warmth & floods my little printery with light from the east - and already I'm dreaming of my next book & the beautiful Greek type of Nicolas Jenson, Venice, 1472 - but here's another view of the covers, all laid out in a row -

CODEX 2013

besides binding right now I am preparing/gathering material for CODEX 2013, coming up in February next year at Berkeley, California - as well as having an Electio Editions table at the Book Fair, I will also be representing Codex Australia, which will be at CODEX for the first time - 

Codex Australia started up in Melbourne, Australia last April, and we now have a healthy and growing list of Sponsors, and the first of its programs are up & running - check out the website to see what's happening -

I am also privileged to be one of the Artist Speakers at the Codex Symposium, along with paper maker Timothy Barrett, and book makers Russell Maret & Veronica Schapers - the Keynote Speakers will be Sandro Berra & Mark Dimunation - 

at the Book Fair, some of the very finest books & book makers in the world will be on show (see the list on the CODEX website) and the Symposium promises to be an intellectual feast as the Book Fair promises to be an aesthetic one - 

fresh news from Ruscombe Paper Mill

above is a fresh notice on the Ruscombe website - the paper being revived is one I have bought for the next Electio book - but the background picture is of printed pages from RED SQUARE : the next word printed partly on Ruscombe's copy of Barcham Green's India Office and partly on a small supply I still had of the original Barcham Green - and about to be issued from Electio - the slipcases are currently being done while the printer morphs into binder over the next couple of weeks

more on Alessandro Zanella

visited Heavenly Monkey's excellent blog, to find notice (his entry on 27.11.12) of an obituary & online exhibition of Alessandro Zanella's work at the University of Utah J Willard Marriott Library - go to HM's blog to click thru to the show. . . 

and it's funny how the familiar can almost slide out of mind or knowledge or memory but, I had to reach recently for Richard-Gabriel Rummonds's Printing on the iron handpress from my bookshelf to be reminded that the photograph on the cover is of, of course, Alessandro Zanella - a fitting, if small, memorial to a great printer

in memoriam Alessandro Zanella, printer

early last July (I cannot find an exact date) Alessandro Zanella, handprinter, of the Edizioni Ampersand, Verona, Italy, died unexpectedly. I can find almost nothing online that registers this event, or honors him, or gives even a short story of his life – and I’m sorry to say I cannot make up that lack here – Alessandro Zanella has been in my mind as a printer for a long time, first as a colleague & fellow printer with Richard-Gabriele Rummonds, and then out on his own as Edizioni Ampersand – in part this attraction was one of those romantic & purely emotional “connections” in that one of New Zealand’s best known literary printers, Denis Glover (1912-1980) of Caxton Press used to write to me as ‘Dear Ampersand Alan’ (I used ampersands in my poetry, something he would never do) – and I once wrote an essay titled & the ampersand, which I printed in 1990 – but I knew he printed on a rare Stanhope iron handpress (the only one I had seen was given the late D F McKenzie and his Wai-te-ata Press at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand by Cambridge University), and I knew that he taught handpress printing, and at one time I seriously considered signing up but the costs were then prohibitive for me – rummaging about online I found a nice tribute of one his teaching classes by Marnie Parsons of Running The Goat – and here you can find a short account of the course and some fine pictures of the students in action, taken by Alessandro himself -

when I found out that he had passed away I contacted Vamp and Tramp Booksellers and I now have one of the most beautiful books in my collection, Persephone by Yannis Ritsos with woodcuts by Joe Tilson – exquisite printing, beautiful design, and a screenprinted paper over boards cover, the text printed in both Greek & English - Vamp and Tramp still have a few copies of a few of Ampersand’s titles –

I think the passing of a handprinter at Zanella’s level deserves some real acknowledgment and I hope to see something soon that keeps the profile & the spirit of the books of Alessandro Zanella alive. . . 

progress on RED SQUARE

the printed sheets for RED SQUARE are piling up - 5 sheets printed, 3 to go - and each sheet has up to 10 printings in up to 7 colors - at the current production rate I hope to have the work done by end of October - here's one sheet photograph'd, others will follow soon -