Poltroon Press News 2006

September 27, 2006 We have a few items in a new show at the Book Club of California, called POETS IN FINE PRESSES. It will be up through October: 312 Sutter Street, suite 510, San Francisco. (Best time to go is Monday night open house from 5 to 7 when the bar is open.) I've added a new page for book arts and printing in film, ranging from Fritz Lang to Walt Disney. It's based on the popular holiday lecture I gave at the SF public library a couple of years ago when I showed film clips and talked about the popular conception of books and printing. Send me your additions. It's linked at left. August 21, 2006 I found a photo of me at Dracula's grave and added it to the Dead Poets page. August 9, 2006 Ancient Grease! This summer we have acquired a Stanhope press, the first commercially successful iron hand-press, manufactured in the nineteenth century. It needs a little repair and there's a lot of grease and grime to scrape off before it will be functional again, but needless to say we are thrilled by this acquisition. You can read about our quest to find the machine in the story linked at left. May 7, 2006 PSHAW! (30 Years of Poltroonery) Last year marked our 30th anniversary as a press and we commemorate it with a new book, Pshaw! In some respects it's a "Greatest Hits" anthology as we have recreated some of our favourite items from the press and tipped them in, but in addition there are some new works created just for this book. It contains check-lists of literary broadsides, posters and other ephemeral items we have printed over the last three decades. The book is 44 pages, printed on Hahnemuhle paper: there are three shades of Hahnemuhle used, as well as one sheet of pink Canson mi-teintes -- or "flesh-colour (Caucasian)" as Walter Hamady would style it, and it measures 10 and three quarter inches wide by 15 and a half tall. The type is set in Monotype Bell and printed letterpress. The headings are calligraphed by Frances Butler and have been coloured by pochoir. In addition there are three pages created for the work with pochoir illustration. In all there are 8 pages with pochoir colour. The samples have been recreated by a variety of means: letterpress, inkjet prints, and even Xerox and crayon (for the Acute Actualism poster). There are 28 ephemeral items glued into each copy of the book. There are two essays in the book, one each by Frances Butler and Alastair Johnston. As usual the book took about four times as long to produce as we anticipated. Arnold Martinez bound the 100 copies. They are selling fast. Left: The cover of Pshaw! uses an image I found at the annual fumpon sale at the University Art Museum Berkeley in 1975. People often remark that it looks like a Hokusai work, and it could be, but it is unsigned. We used it for a poetry reading at Cody's poster. The original drawing is in black ink only. Frances made colour separations for the clothing which are printed by letterpress. The green shoes were a linocut I did at the last minute because I couldn't find the zinc for the shoes. Left: The preface is a brief essay by AMJ called "the integument of things cast away" that enumerates some of the types of ephemera we have produced. The illustrations are the two CANINE WINE labels for "Wine for Dogs," 1980. Left: The opening spread of "Literary broadsides" includes a facsimile of a telegram version of Marvell's "To his coy mistress" by Adrian Mitchell that I printed as a Valentine in 1982. The checklist includes notes on 127 literary broadsides from the great (Yuan Mei) to the obscure (You know who you are). Left: Recreations of four Poetcards. "Forgotten" by Bob Grenier [1990], Catullus 46, translated by Peter Whigham [1982], "Psyche" by Tom Raworth [1985] and "The Tongues" by George Oppen [2000]. Left: flyer for the ACUTE ACTUALISM event at Blake Street Hawkeyes, on the death of Darrell Gray. Flyer produced by Xerox with crayon. Photo by Shelly Vogel. Design by AMJ & Jennifer Curtis, 1981. Above: The opening spread of the "Posters" page includes a recreation of one of FCB's Goodstuffs/Badstuffs posters. This one from 1976. Detail of two more of FCB's letterpress & "industrial pochoir" posters Left: A spread, with two more of FCB's vibrant posters Left: cover for a literary magazine; four covers for a bookdealer's catalogues Left: a Bulmer type specimen and a Thomas de Quincey broadside, in Van Dijck Left: A Christmas card for my parents, with a photo by my father of a Nativity scene knitted by my mother(!); on the recto, "Mädchen in Uniform", 1976, a poem by Bernart de Ventadorn with translation by AMJ and illustration by FCB. Left: "Miss Flite's Birds" by Charles Dickens. 28 of our nineteenth-century types printed in split font, with pochoir by FCB, created for this book. Left: Two quotes on books from William Hazlitt, with pochoir illustration by FCB, created for this work.