Book Art Collective in the News!

Last week, the UANews interviewed me about why book art matters and why our might Collective promotes old printing processes like letterpress. Here is the video the reporter put together from the interview during one of our binding workshops. (Note: ignore the photos of my Talking face. It’s not pretty.)

Happy Birthday, Paul Moxon, Vandercooks, Etc.

This weekend, the Collective had the pleasure of meeting the master of Vandercook letterpress machines, Paul Moxon. Paul was in town for a week or so, offering demonstrations, workshops and a lecture on Vandercooks to the Book Art Collective, our ever-expanding club, as well as members from the community. All of this, it should be noted, was made possible by designer/educator Karen Zimmermann, whose excellent fundraising and organizing made the event possible.

It’s basically understood that Paul knows everything there is to know about Vandercooks, proof presses made by Vandercook & Sons beginning in 1909. In addition to working as a printer and artist, he maintains a website, VandercookPress.info, where anyone can access information about presses.

In the 59 years the company was in business, about 30,000 presses were manufactured; there are currently about 1,500 Vandercooks documented in existence. And what do you know, 23 of them are in Arizona; 4 are kept by the Book Art Collective. Last year was the Vandercook’s 100th birthday and Paul orchestrated a Centenary Print Bundle with lovely prints from shops throughout the country.

The workshop this weekend covered basic operating procedures of the presses and we brought him in not just to teach, but also to fix up our new machines. This summer, the Collective acquired three new presses, one of which seems to have been outside for, well, years.

Paul covered typesetting, adjusting furniture, proofing, measuring, inking and, finally, printing.

Paul was gracious enough to travel here from Alabama on the weekend of his birthday. So happy birthday, Paul! Thanks so much for spending some time with the Book Art Collective. We hope to have you back soon.

A New Semester, a New Space

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been moving into an entirely new and pretty huge space. This space now houses a ton of new equipment, acquired by the excellent Zimmermanns this summer. Now adorning our building: a total of four (!) Vandercooks, one Chandler & Price, two board shears, two guillotines and a TON of new type. More than a ton. Like hundreds of new trays of type. It’s incredible. We’re still arranging things but here it is.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be making some small – or perhaps large – changes to our site, contributors and general face-life things. Stay tuned.

Barb Tetenbaum’s Pressure Printing

This past weekend, we had the lovely pleasure of meeting Barbara Tetenbaum, a letterpress artist, bookmaker, writer and teacher, among other things. She came to lead a Pressure Printing Workshop for our Book Art Collective.

Pressure printing, a term coined by Barb, is an experimental letterpress technique in which a low-relief collage is made with thin objects (string, stickers, lace, thread), arranged into a composition (or not), glued onto a sheet of paper and then placed underneath the paper to be inked. The resulting image is similar to a rubbing, though (in my opinion) much more polished and lovely looking. Barb notes that the final piece is always better than you are, meaning that a simple arrangement can result in a beautifully finished piece.

One of the most exciting learnings from the workshop was our binding technique, a whirlwind binding. The story behind the whirlwind is fascinating. In the early 1900s, caves were “discovered” by a monk in the ancient city of Dunhuang, in the Chinese province of Gansu, which contained thousands of manuscripts of various forms evincing the diversity and breadth of the art of bookmaking. The manuscripts, for which content was the driver of the forms, dated from the 5th to the early 11th century. Holy crap is right.

The binding techniques, with descriptions and instructions, are freely available here.

So. For the workshop, each participant created her own low-relief collage and then printed a small edition on silky kitikata, a handmade Japanese paper. Each person received one of every print, trimmed the pages to book size and bound them into a whirlwind book. The [modified] whirlwind is convenient for this project because each page size is the same, but they are glued such that a sliver of every page is visible, creating a lovely kind of pattern reference when the book is opened.

We’re still finishing up our bindings. Pictures to come. Anyway, the workshop was successful. An excellent combination of getting to know a strong thinker and eloquent speaker in the world of bookmaking, of learning technique and making something pretty. We also had a party with lots of delicious food, which helps too. Workshops are a great way of integrating yourself into your field.

Barb’s beautiful work can be found and purchased at Vamp & Tramp Booksellers. (I highly recommend having at least of her pieces in your collection.)