Announcing a new publication: Pressed for Time

Pressed for Time is a descriptive bibliography of my work compiled by Nina Schneider to mark my twenty-fifth year of printing. It contains bibliographic descriptions of my published and commissioned books, broadsides, and ephemera; anecdotes about the making of the books; a section of four-color photographs of the books by Annie Schlechter; and essays by Mark Dimunation, Chief of the Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress, and Paul F. Gehl, Custodian of the Wing Foundation on the History of Printing at the Newberry Library. The book is profusely illustrated with original leaves from books; broadsides; type specimens; and marginal illustrations, including original drawings made in pencil, ink, gouache, and candle smoke. The large size of the book (16.5 x 11.5 inches) was determined so that it could accommodate untrimmed leaves from Æthelwold Etc, Specimens of Diverse Characters, and Interstices & Intersections.

Two editions will be published. One hundred copies are printed on Zerkall and French papers, and bound in cloth and patterned-paper with slipcase by Priscilla Spitler. Seventeen copies are printed on two different Twinrocker Handmade Papers, and bound in goatskin and patterned-paper by John DeMerritt. These seventeen are housed in a clamshell box containing a pull out drawer of extra ephemera. Both editions will be published at the end of September, with copies beginning to ship out toward the end of October.

Production is well underway, with Nancy Loeber and I dividing the printing between us. On a normal day, Nancy prints the large text pages while I work on the marginal illustrations. Below are some photos of the production.

Above: The binding dummy of the standard edition, showing the tipped-in bifolium from Interstices & Intersections and CODEX poster, as well as an assortment of sheets in progress.

Below: piles of ephemera for the deluxe edition.

The palette, above, for the ink draw-downs to accompany the description of the Æthelwold Etc color diary, and the process below.

 

To illustrate my book, Incidents, from 1996, each copy has a hand-printed piece of wood furniture pressed onto the paper below a print taken from the form-roller gear of my press.

To illustrate my series of books, Noise, from 1995-96, each copy has a unique print of hand-brayered ink over blind debossed type, outlined in pencil, in the style of Noise 3.