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ELEMENTS IN CORRELATION
Printing With the Handpress at Heavenly Monkey
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With enough of the details now set, we can announce that our next major project is tentatively titled Printing with the Handpress at Heavenly Monkey. Written by HM publisher Rollin Milroy, he describes it as occupying ground somewhere between a printing manual and a personal manifesto:
"The book will consist of various essays, beginning with a revised version of the article I wrote in 2006 for Parenthesis magazine about HM's ongoing collaborations with papermaker Reg Lissel. The overall theme of the book (the focus of the manifesto) will be the combination of handpress and (dampened) handmade paper; as much as the press, it's the paper that resulted from the collaboration with Reg that enables me to print the most beautiful pages of letterpress type I am capable of.
"I've been mulling why I use a handpress for almost as long as I've owned one, and never with the kind of clear and profound testimonies to honor craftsmanship that others who have written on the topic muster. But with ongoing practise and experience, I began to achieve some clarity of my own, realizing that a large part of the reason had to do with the combination of handpress and (dampened) handmade paper; that as much as the press, it was the relationship with Reg, and the paper that resulted from this relationship, that was allowing me to print the most beautiful pages of letterpress type that I am capable of achieving."
For a new essay titled 'Why I Print How I Print' Milroy began by reviewing his collection of 20th century literature on printing with the handpress - Allen, Pepler, Everson, Gill, Grabhorn et al. While rereading these books, he was looking specifically for discussions about the connection between the handpress (or at least printing) and paper. While all of the authors recognize the importance of paper, Milroy was interested to see how little discussion of how and why there was compared to, for example, type and typography. They all provide details on how to dampen paper, but his interest, and the essay's focus is the Why: the aesthetic result of printing on dampened handmade paper, and how the best tool for achieving this effect is the handpress.
Extracts from approximately a dozen sources consulted in this review of the literature, specific to the relationship between the handpress and (dampened) handmade paper, will be woven through 'Why I Print How I Print.' The essay will have four major parts: "Paper is Fundamental" (taken from a quote from Everson); the technical reasons for printing damp; the aesthetic reasons for printing damp; and to conclude, how & why the handpress and dampened handmade paper combine to form Heavenly Monkey's foundational aesthetic - Milroy's taste - for any book I publish.
The essay will also include technical details of how the printing is done at the studio, as well as sample leaves from at least three books printed between the 16th and 19th centuries, illustrating the qualities of paper, inking, color and impression that combine to form what Milroy considers the ideal letterpress page.
Two shorter essays will include general comments on Milroy's approach to designing and printing pages for the handpress, including combining printing methods (in this case, an etching by Briony Morrow-Cribbs with letterpress); and how to print large areas of black on damp paper, demonstrated with a linocut portrait of Reg commissioned from artist Andrea Taylor for this project. The book will feature several initial letters scribed in each copy, illustrating handmade paper's original use as a medium for calligraphy (hence the heavy sizing which requires damping to soften the paper for printing).
Printing with the Handpress at Heavenly Monkey will be 4to in size, approximately 40 pages, printed in various colors with the handpress on HM Text paper made by Reg specifically for this project. The edition will be 50 copies, with the first ten being signed by the contributors and including additional samples of Reg's paper. These 10 copies will also include a sample Doves Press leaf, as the modern press above all others that serves as an exemplar for printing for Heavenly Monkey. (Not that we presume to be of that caliber, but everyone needs role models.) The book will be published in time for the Codex 2009 exhibition in Berkeley, CA.
HEAVENLY MONKEY |
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