Lecons de Livre pour Calyban or Prosper's Parisian Printing Parade. Bon mots, bagatelles, & tableaux de l'imprimerie. Also a sometime type specimen & leaf book. As Told to an American. Pochoir by Jef Aerosol.
Caliban Press. McMurray, Mark.
St-Zotique, Quebec [Canton, NY: Cat's Head Press [Caliban Press], 2008. Copy in unique binding by Donald Glaister, the book is one of 114 copies, all on various papers including Rives and Arches, vintage Barcham Green handmade, St-Armand handmade from Montreal, Quebec, Kochi from Japan and handmade lokta from Nepal, each signed by the author / printer, Mark McMurray who has invented a fictitious press and location for this irreverent look at Paris and Paris printing history, with a dark back story of immigrant life. Page size: 8-1/4 x 12 inches; 48pp. Bound by Donald Glaister: grey morocco spine and edges with title in gold gilt on smooth spine, hand-made pastepapers by Suzanne Moore with gold gilt letters and lines tooled in random scatterings, always following the circular or orbital grid of the pastepapers, dark grey, green, going to raspberry and orchid blue and back to green are the front colors, grey going to green and electric blue and teal are the back panel colors, gold gilt "vectors" interspersed with the random letters, guards of darker (again with circular or orbital patterns), grey headbands, top edge graphite, signed on lower rear turn-in in blind, "DG" with signature gold dot; housed in custom-made black cloth over boards clamshell box with grey paper label printed in black, with title and false press as on titlepage (Cat's Head Press) and date. Issued with a separate sheet of "Lecons Notes" which explain some of the images and text that is laid into the back of the box along with the announcement of the book from Caliban Press. From Melissa Schulenberg's portrait of Nancy Cunard (original relief print) to figures from the 1493 "Liber chronicarum" to woodcuts to found images, this tour of Paris delights. The text consists of fourteen lessons in English and French concerning the Arts of the Book and sundry other old and new topics. Collected from found and fabricated texts by the two main semi-fictional characters, Cal & Prosper, who are visiting Paris to learn the art of printing. This, then, is also a type specimen and a leaf book. It recalls printers past and present who have produced books in Paris. It is printed in several colors on cylinder and hand presses from foundry, monotype, photopolymer & wood types set by hand, machine composition, and computer. The primary face is Garamond. Additional faces include Fournier, Caslon, Nicholas Cochin and others. Monotype composition by Michael Bixler; photopolymer plates by Boxcar Press. The original signed pochoir by Jef Aerosol of Samuel Beckett is a stunner. The small "gold" man (cut-out paper doll) in the Treizieme Lecon "Who's that?" is collaged on a page of Arab text opposite a map of the Quartier Latin with text in French and English guessing at his identity - or commenting on it. "Ubu reincarne?" (Item ID: 10350)
$2,500.00
