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HM = X
Checklist Number Three: The First Decade
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It was around this time exactly ten years ago that the first book bearing the Heavenly Monkey imprint was issued. Since then HM and HM Editions have issued a total of 32 titles, all of which have been detailed, with brief commentaries, in our newly published Checklist Number Three. It is by far the most elaborate of our checklists to date, and the first to actually be printed at the studio. The Heavenly Monkey and HM Editions publications are listed in separate sections. For the sake of completeness, a third section details the three books issued under HM's predecessor imprint, A Lone Press (1998-99).
"About the samples included at the back: yes, most of them are wretched in one way or another. That's why they weren't issued in the editions. I offer them here as much for their faults, and as a history told on different papers of my ongoing efforts to learn how to print, as for any praiseworthy qualities they might have.
"One of the first hard lessons I learned, after the completion of the Griffo book, was to always have another project ready to print. Otherwise, you face a great blankness, wondering what to do next. Ten years on, I have the choice of more projects than I could ever complete, and I must decide which ones will occupy my second decade. They will be fewer in number, and more substantial in format. I also see them as perhaps forming the second half of a whole, and bringing HM to a logical end. These kinds of endeavors are best ended when one is at the top of their game, and as much as I have learned in the past decade, I have at least that much again to learn during the next." From the introduction to HM = X The text has been set in Dante and Dante Titling, on printed in two colors on dampened Guarro laid paper. The checklist itself runs to 20 pages, followed by a section in which actual leaves form six of our books are mounted (i.e. hinged) on successive rectos, above the book's printed title. The samples are taken from Francesco Griffo da Bologna (1999); The "Innsmouth Look" (2003); The Garden of Good & Evil (2004); A Letter from T.E. Lawrence (2005); The Girl with the Mask of a Crow (2005); and Iskandariya (2007). The checklist's format is commensurate with Elements in Correlation, to which this checklist can be considered a companion volume, in that the sample leaves are offered primarily as an admittedly dismal history in (on) paper of HM's attempts over the decade to learn how to properly dampen and print on different papers (primarily hand made). The edition, which was fully subscribed upon publication, consists of 26 copies (4to, 40 pp with samples), each one press-lettered (A - Z) with Jim Rimmer's 36-pt Duensing type. The books were sewn at HM, and uniformly cased in black Japanese cloth, with printed labels on the front board and spine. HEAVENLY MONKEY |
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