Tim's Book & Miscellaneous Blog

Bibliocadavers and Other Foolishness

2010-06-21T07:08:00.002-04:00

One day several years ago I received a telephone call that completely baffled me. It was someone from Michigan inquiring about sending me their cremains to be mixed with paper pulp and made into a book. I asked them where they had heard about this, and they told me that they had read about it in The Atlantic Monthly. Well, needless to say, I was flabbergasted. Some months earlier I had written a brief humorous essay in the front of one of my bookseller catalogues in which I claimed that I was starting a business called "Bibliocadavers" (you'd think that the name might be a bit of a tip-off that it wasn't serious). I would have people send me their ashes after cremation, and I would mix the ashes with pulp and make paper from it, which could then be printed upon or whatever. It was a joke! I was always making up some outrageous new product that would supposedly make me rich, like the Pope-phylactic (don't ask), or a 1-900 number which people would call to listen to me reading literary classics while I was nude. Crazy stuff. I thought that the Bibliocadavers was one of the crazier ideas - I was wrong. It turns out that a writer researching novel approaches to funerals and memorializing of dead bodies somehow got ahold of my catalogue and reported it in his Atlantic Monthly article as actual fact. From there, it was picked up on by NPR, The New York Times, Harpers, and god knows where else. Unbelievable! Nobody ever contacted me to verify the story. The internet burgeoned with information about it (just Google bibliocadavers sometime and see for yourself), and I got a number of inquiries. It was crazy. I had to patiently explain that the pulp in paper adheres when it dries through ionic bonding, and that since ashes were inert (that is, no free ions), the ashes would not bond with the paper pulp, and you would just end up with a big mess, the ashes sloughing off from the sheets of paper. Lord, lord! But the internet has a life of its own, so people continue to write about it. I can understand amateurs writing about such things without any verification, but when so-called "professional" journalists do so, it's inexplicable. I am reminded of another internet-based flurry regarding me that was quite ridiculous. I had printed, back in the early 1980s, the lyrics of the Emerson, Lake and Palmer song "Karn Evil 9." Actually, I only printed that portion of the lyrics that sort of told a story. As usual, I printed only a very small edition, and I gave all of the copies away, which is what I did in the early days of my private press activities. Well, a copy found its way into the secondary market, where a bookseller listed it for sale on the internet at a ridiculous price - $60 or $75 or some such amount - for this little pamphlet. Soon a string on a discussion group started up that took me to task for profiteering from the pirated item - oh, they slammed me for charging such an amount, failing to recognize that it wasn't me that was selling the darn thing. You'd have thought that I was a common criminal from the postings. It is certainly true that you need to be very cautious about the veracity of what you read on the internet.

A Pointless and Questionable Classification

2009-07-16T07:12:00.001-04:00

Classification of Printers Herewith is a foolish, pointless, and patently invalid attempt to classify printers, an effort fraught with half-truths, misconceptions and biases. That said, here’s what I think. While there are a myriad of motivations for people to take up letterpress printing, private/fine press printing, etc., the motivations tend to group into the following broad classifications. Artistic Types Some people wish to pursue artistic expression, and letterpress printing is a way of doing so. These people are likely to strongly stress images and illustration in their work, and to de-emphasize the content of the text as the focus of their effort. They may make “books” that aren’t books in the conventional sense – objects that look like books, but can’t really be read, or are not primarily being produced for the purpose of being read. Artistic types often use very toothy papers, alternative binding structures, odd page layouts, sculptural techniques, etc. Artistic Types are the most likely to violate Beatrice Warde’s admonition that “printing should be invisible”: for Artistic Types, printing must not only be visible, its visibility should predominate the viewer’s perception. Many people who fall in this category are people with college art degrees, who often dally briefly with letterpress printing and then move on to something else because of the tedium of the medium and the lack of widespread public interest in what they’re doing. On the other hand, it is not at all unusual for Artistic Types to also be Literary Types, in which case their books tend to be more readable. Literary Types Some people wish to use letterpress printing as a mechanism for literary expression. They may be writers themselves, although they usually print the writings of others as well as their own writings. For this type of printer, conveying the text is of prime importance, while the choice of using letterpress as a means of doing so is the result of a recognition that a beautifully designed and printed text is more enjoyable to read than is a poorly designed and printed book. Sometimes the literary motivation is combined with an artistic motivation. When good literary taste combines with artistic talent, the books thereby produced tend to be both intellectually interesting and aesthetically pleasing. A subtype of the Literary Type is the amateur journalist. Amateur journalists wish to express their opinions and to publish their own writings, and to do so, they take up letterpress printing. There are several organizations to which amateur journalists belong and which exchange the productions of the members – these organizations date back to the late 19th century. Typographical niceties are not generally a focus of amateur journalists, although there are exceptions to this rule, as to all rules. Some amateur journalists are among the ten-most-wanted for crimes against typography – tasteless and outlandish use of color and ornament being the most common such felony. An example of a purely Literary Type would be the Daniel Press of the 19th Century. The books are not very interesting typographically, but were primarily produced as a way to convey a particular text. An example of the literary/artistic combination type would be any one of a large number of fine private presses – The Printery, Bird & Bull, Aliquando, Warwick, etc., etc. Mechanic Types Quite a few letterpress printers are primarily interested in the mechanics of printing presses, typecasting, etc. These are the guys (usually guys) who would be out in the garage fixing up a ‘57 Chevy if they hadn’t become interested in printing presses. Text is usually secondary, and artistic expression is often an afterthought with this type (although some Mechanic Types have an artistic flair as well). But Mechanic Types tend to spend a lot more time tinkering than they do producing printed work. When they do actually print something, it is usually on the topic of printing itself. A subset of this type is the “Ye Olde Fashioned Print Shoppe” types. These are the people who are enamored of engaging in an archaic activity – they love to use old 19th Century platen presses (iron hand presses if they can afford them). They wear paper printers’ hats and focus on how they’re doing it “…just like Gutenberg did!” Again, for this type it’s about the equipment and the process, not the product. Busman’s Holiday Types The Busman’s Holiday Type is the person who works in the typographical design and printing industry, and who operates a private press as an outgrowth of their professional work and interest. Sometimes these types do crappy work, while sometimes they do great work – it all depends on the extent to which they combine a literary or artistic bent with their work. People like Henry Morris and Kay Michael Kramer were professionals in the printing world – Kramer a textbook designer, Morris a commercial printer – who established private presses that produce some of the finest work being done out there, combining both artistic and literary interests. Dwight Agner was an interesting type, who started out as a private printer when still a teenager, then moved into commercial book design as a professional career while continuing to operate his private press, the Press of the Nightowl. “Professional” vs. “Amateur” Printers Historically there have always been fine printers who attempted to make a living at it. This includes people who started out as basic commercial printers, but who developed an interest in producing fine work and became known for doing so. The Grabhorns would be a good example of professional commercial printers who became professional fine printers. In today’s world, a number of people of the Artistic/Literary Type have been able to be professional printers – John Randle at the Whittington Press would be an example, as would Carol Blinn at the Warwick press, Andrew Hoyem at the Arion Press, and Gray Zeitz at the Larkspur Press. This often (but not always) means living a very modest lifestyle, because making a living at fine printing is a tough row to hoe. Some of the best known full-time printers weren’t really professionals in the sense that they made their living at printing – they were people who were already wealthy and didn’t need to work, and became full-time printers as an avocation. The Allen Press was a good example of this type. A number of people who study letterpress printing in college go on to establish printshops after graduation that they hope will allow them to make a living at fine printing – few of them are successful at this for very long. Amateur printers abound, most of whom focus primarily on ephemeral printing. Busman’s Holiday type printers may operate their private press as an amateur undertaking, and they are a hybrid of the professional and the amateur. Some amateur printers, who make a living in an entirely unrelated profession, produce books of some substance, but this is a small and dwindling number of practitioners. Emerson Wulling’s Sumac Press was a good example of an amateur printer who produced a large body of significant work. James Lamar Weygand’s Press of the Indiana Kid was another. The writer of this essay has produced a number of books at the Contre Coup Press, although the quality of these productions would be a matter of debate and wouldn’t really bear comparison with the work of Wulling or Weygand. Serious book printers who are true amateurs (ie., not printing full-time as a profession or doing private presswork as a Busman’s Holiday activity) are few and far between today.

Deep Play

2009-05-22T09:36:00.002-04:00

I am just about sold out of "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" by Clifford Geertz. The special copies are sold out, and there are just five copies left of the regular edition available, priced at $195.00 plus $15.00 for shipping. And here's a picture of the grandkids - it has nothing to do with books, but poppy is proud, so what the heck!

Deep Play, by Clifford Geertz - New Contre Coup Press Book

2009-02-22T14:22:00.003-05:00

ANNOUNCEMENT A New Book from the Contre Coup Press Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight By Clifford Geertz With Wood Engravings by Wesley Bates The Contre Coup Press is pleased to announce its new book, Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight by Clifford Geertz. This is the first separate printing of this seminal essay in the field of Cultural Anthropology, an essay that is considered one of the most influential works of scholarship in the last fifty years In 1958, Clifford Geertz and his wife went to study the culture of a small village in Bali. Little did they know that they would become caught up in the fascinating phenomenon of cockfighting. Geertz would go on to write this essay, one of the best examples of his “thick description” approach to exploring cultural issues and behaviors. The essay recounts Geertz’s first experience with the Balinese cockfight, which ended in a mad chase by the police and a narrow escape, an event that opened up the previously unresponsive Balinese people to Geertz’s observations. In the essay, Geertz describes the cockfight itself, but he describes in much greater detail the rituals surrounding betting and the way in which the cockfight is used to reinforce power and status relationships amongst the Balinese people. This book reprints the original essay in its entirety, and also includes a collection of tributes to the author, who died in 2006. The book is 9 inches tall by 6 inches wide with 111 pages. The text was set in the Bembo typeface, and the book was printed on Frankfurt paper using a Vandercook SP20 proof press. The book is illustrated with wood engravings by Wesley Bates, the Canadian wood engraver whose engravings have graced the pages of some of the finest books printed in recent years. He is shown at the peak of his powers in these illustrations, filled with action and detail. There are four full-page illustrations, a magnificent double-page spread of two cocks fighting, a portrait of the author, and four vignettes, all printed directly from the blocks. Each copy of the book is signed by the artist. The book is bound using a special decorated paper designed especially for this book by Carol Blinn, the proprietor of the Warwick Press and a renowned paper decorator. This paper is a variation on a common Balinese textile design. The bindings were designed by Gregor R. Campbell and bound at the Campbell-Logan Bindery in Minneapolis. There are two editions of the book. The regular edition is limited to 24 numbered copies (the colophon states that there were 25, but only 24 copies were completed). It is bound with a cloth spine and Carol Blinn’s decorated paper over boards, and is enclosed in a slipcase. The special edition is limited to 8 roman-numeral numbered copies. The book is bound with Carol Blinn’s decorated paper over boards, with a morocco leather spine. Included with each copy of the special edition is a portfolio of the Wesley Bates wood engravings printed on Johannot paper. Also included with each copy of the special edition is one of the actual wood engraved blocks used in printing the illustrations for the book. The book, portfolio and block are housed in a custom clamshell box. Price for the regular copies is $195.00, plus $15.00 for shipping within the U.S. Price for the special copies is - Now Out of Print. Payment may be made via MasterCard, Visa, checks, money orders or PayPal (PayPal payment address is hawleybk@insightbb.com) Order from: Timothy Hawley Books P.O. Box 5277 Louisville, KY 40255-0277 502-451-3021 hawleybk@insightbb.com

The Bagel - An Early Contre Coup Press Book

2009-01-24T09:00:00.004-05:00

Here's a very early effort, published when I was still using the Cerberus Press imprint. The pamphlet is entitled "A Brief Treatise on the History & Technique of the Bagel", written by Theophile Homard and published in University City, Missouri in 1981. This was the fifth publication of the Press, all of which had been small pamphlets bound in wrappers. This pamphlet is 8 inches tall by 4 inches wide with 8 pages. The book was set in the Kennerley typeface with display in Goudy Handtooled and printed on Basingwerk Parchment paper, sewn into Fabriano Ingres Heavy wrappers. The item was issued in an edition of 35 copies. I was heavily into breadmaking at the time I printed this one, and I had come up with a recipe for whole wheat bagels that was really great - I enjoyed the process of making bagels, boiling them before baking and all. So I thought that it might be fun to print my recipe and directions. And while I was at it, I could write up a little essay on how the bagel was originally developed. Unfortunately, my research didn't really turn up definitive information on the history of the bagel, so I asked the erstwhile Theophile Homard to make up a story of how the bagel was invented, and printed that. I don't know if people reading this little pamphlet actually believed the story, but who cares? I fiddled around with the ornaments that surround the opening title, and ended up turning the ornament on a 45-degree angle and creating a little cartouche. I was still in the process of teaching myself how to operate the press, so the presswork on this one leaves something to be desired.

Genealogy

2008-12-08T18:33:00.004-05:00

N.B. Herewith is a little-known bit of printing history, recently discovered by us amongst some 15th-Century documents from the Court of Lichtenstein when we were doing some genealogical research on a forgotten ancestor. ----- “Oh great King Swopshire, we humbly prostrate ourselves before thee and beg thee to pour thy generous mercy upon our poor inestimable heads. We are unworthy of thy attention, and we pray that thou wilt spare us despite our unforgivable impudence in coming before you in this brazen way. Yet our hearts are heavy. Thou hast cast the poor printer, the decrepit old man Theophilus Hawley, into thy dungeons, where he even today sits amidst his own filth, dressed in rags, unwashed and unkempt, his hope as forlorn as that of a Chicago Cubs fan. And for what? Why dost thou turn thy magnificent hairy back upon this poor wretch, a man whose printing has enlightened both scholars and royalty, entertained the highly-born as well as the peasants, given solace to the heartbroken and inspiration to those who do daily toil in the service of thy great and thunderous desires. Forsooth! It is but a petty complaint that thou dost have against him. He meant no harm. He was but playing the fool, believing that thy famous sense of humor would recognize his jest for what it was, a mere effeminate sneeze in the whirlwind of thy astounding whoosh. Was it his fault that he knoweth not thy sensitivity to comments upon thy wondrous and most admirable derriere? Not that we would ever notice the amazing breadth of thy rump, nor the enormous extent of fine silk cloth necessary to encompass such an astounding expanse of arse, nor the mind-numbing sound emanating from thy nether regions when the capacity of thy bowels becomes o’er-stretched with noxious fumes. ‘Twas but a tiny cartoon that he printed in his little-read publication, not even noticed by most of his readership. Admittedly, he should probably have portrayed thy buttocks in a more modest manner. But naked buttocks are unmistakable, while thy clothed buttocks might have been mistaken for a pair of 500-pound bags of flour or sails on a great ship, billowing in the wind. Notwithstanding the offense that thy majesty has taken, we plead with thee to not have thy royal wolves rip him into bloody chunks, nor to break him on the wheel and drag his squashed corpus through the streets behind thy noble steeds. His printing press has been smashed, and his type tossed into the river – surely that is adequate punishment. Release him, oh great king, and thy subjects will celebrate thy kind and just forbearance. Long live King Swopshire!” ----- History has not recorded the final outcome of this sad event, but we do trace our family line directly to this poor doomed jokester and practitioner of the black art.

No Postings for a While

2008-10-19T07:03:00.002-04:00

I haven't been doing much posting lately. This is mostly due to my work on my next book, which is quite ambitious. Hopefully I will get back to posting soon, as I still have quite a few interesting composing sticks to describe.

My Shop

2008-07-19T13:39:00.011-04:00

I think that the first private press shop that I ever visited was Kay Kramer's in St. Louis. At that time, his shop was in a large room at the rear of the first floor of his home. It was spectacular! His gorgeous large Albion dominated the room, with his Vandercook SP15 nearby and a beautiful little pearl with a wooden base as well. He had his type in beautifully finished cabinets, with the cases all uniform oak-fronted. He had many of his books in the room, with a nice sitting area, beautiful prints and broadsides on the walls - it was to die for.

I later visited with Phil Metzger in his Crabgrass Press shop in a suburb of Kansas City. Again, although it was located in the basement, it was a truly beautiful shop, with (as I recall) a table-top Albion, a platen press of some description, many beautiful books and wall decorations. Phil showed me some truly awe-inspiring bindings that he had commissioned from Fritz Eberhard - incredible leather inlays of illustrations from Fritz Kredel - and I left feeling quite thunderstruck.

When I visited Leonard Bahr's Adagio Press in Detroit, I got a different feel, but I was equally impressed. Leonard's home was quite modest, and his shop was in the smallish basement. But it was so unbelievably meticulous that I just couldn't believe it (anyone who knew Leonard would agree that he was a remarkably meticulous person in everything that he did). Much of Leonard's library (that I purchased after his untimely death) was arrayed along one entire wall of the basement. His large C & P Craftsman press was in a tiny room in the rear of the basement, with a few type cabinets to keep it company. Leonard had a very fine collection of European foundry type, with Palatino being his "house face."

An astonishing place to visit was Carolyn Hammer's Anvil Press in Lexington, Kentucky. She used a tabletop iron handpress (I think that it was a Washington, but it might have been an Albion), and she worked in a small porch-like room at the back of the house. The shop was imbued with the aura of the craftsperson, and was almost like hallowed ground - of course, her home was like a museum, with many original works of art by Victor Hammer hanging on the walls (my wife nearly fainted when we walked into a bedroom and were confronted with Hammer's oil portrait of Thomas Merton - Carolyn casually talked about frequent lunches with Merton, as we sat with our jaws dropping to the floor. The original Merton portrait was actually destroyed in a fire, so this one was a later version).

I mention these various visits (and I have visited other beautiful shops over the years as well, and some not so inspiring) as a way of contrasting them with my own shabby shop, which is pictured above.

I do my composing in the basement, in a crowded room that shares space with pieces of corrugated board that I use in packing book orders, shelves with over 50 cartons of periodicals that I will probably never sell, and miscellaneous junk. One of the pictures shows a few of the blank cases opened to show how I store my collection of composing sticks.

As long as I was taking pictures, I decided to also show a couple of the rooms upstairs where I keep my book inventory. My wife and I actually own a duplex, with two apartments (one up and one down). We basically live in the first floor apartment, and I have filled most of the second floor apartment with books (although Ellen has a meditation room upstairs where she practices and studies Buddhism). My office is also on the second floor.

Fortunately, the basement is almost at ground level, so it stays very dry, and I store much stuff down there - it's a wonderful full basement with high ceilings, so I have lots of room for lots of stuff. I have a framing shop down there where I frame fine prints that I sell at a local antique mall.

Finally, the press is out in the garage, and you can see that it is not a place of beauty. People familiar with Vandercook presses will notice that my press has extensions on the legs that raise the press about 6 or 8 inches higher than most presses sit - I guess that this was an option that the original owner wanted. It does help keep me from having to lean over to operate the press, which is pretty nice, actually. In the wintertime I put the press in mothballs, moving everything from the other side of the garage so that my wife can park her car in there - it's too cold to do any printing during the winter, unfortunately, which is why I hope to one day move to a house with a walk-out basement that I can put the press into. The press weighs about 2,000 pounds, so bringing it into the house and down the stairs to the basement is out of the question. The temperature extremes in the garage mean that I have to keep the rollers in the house, and bring them out to the garage every time I want to do some printing. I also have to schlep the type forms and various other stuff back and forth between the house and the garage (which is probably 40 or so feet behind the house) every time I go to print - it's a pain in the ass, to be blunt about it.

Anyway, that's it. I work in this crummy space, but I still love it! I have CD-players around to listen to music (I have about 4,000 music CDs, which is crazy, but true), and there's nothing quite like putting on some nice music, getting an adult beverage, and distributing type! Heaven!

Schizophrenomania, by Matt Jasper

2008-07-19T13:24:00.006-04:00

Here's one of my favorite Contre Coup Press books. As I've mentioned previously, I think, my main purpose in printing is to make books that people will enjoy reading, and here is a book that I think is a really great read!

The book came about because I was visiting in St. Louis one day in 1997, and I was browsing in Streetside Records, a large store on Delmar Blvd. that I had frequented when I lived in St. Louis, only a few blocks away. I was looking at fanzines, and picked one up that had this essay printed in it. The essay really blew me away, so I bought it, and when I got home to Louisville, I contacted the author for permission to reprint it (yes, I know, it's very unlike me to actually ask permission, but I did so in this case). Not only did he give me permission to reprint the essay, but he also sent along some poems that were very relevant, and so I interspersed several of them throughout the book, set in a slightly larger typeface (14 pt., while the text was set in 12 pt.)

The book is 8-1/4 inches tall by 5 inches wide and has 31 pages. I set the text in Cochin and printed the book on Basingwerk Parchment paper (God! I wish they still made this paper - it was one of my favorites!). I used no decoration whatsoever in this book, wanting the words to totally speak for themselves. I printed a total of 16 copies on the Vandercook SP20.

The book was bound, as usual, at the Campbell-Logan Bindery. I asked Carol Blinn to pick out a selection of her paste papers to use for the bindings, and she sent along an interesting variety - the books are bound in several different designs of paste paper; I can't remember how many different ones there were, but perhaps six or eight different designs.

Cefmor British Composing Stick

2008-07-19T13:11:00.006-04:00

Here's another variation of the typical British composing stick. This one is stamped "Cefmor London", so I assume that Cefmor is the manufacturer or distributor. This stick is twelve inches long, and has a depth of only 10 picas - rather shallow. The stick itself is stamped out of sheet metal, and it appears to be nickel-plated, rather than being stainless steel. The knee is very similar to the typical British knee, with the strap encircling the stick. But the clamp is different than the typical stick. This clamp consists of a lever attached to a screw mechanism that is at an angle to the stick, and exerts pressure on the strap when turned, thereby locking the knee in place. One oddity is the end-plate, which is a quarter-circle shaped block that is riveted to the stick - the final photo shows the rivets on the back - I've not seen one quite like this before.

For some reason my pictures are rotated on this post - I don't know why. Sorry.

Ludicrous Book Price Inflation

2008-06-24T21:01:00.003-04:00

I don’t know if any of you have looked up a relatively common book on an internet bookselling site, only to find that the prices of the copies being offered are insanely high. Ever wonder why that happens? Here’s an example of how it works. I’m looking for a copy of Mark Twain’s “Following the Equator” in the Oxford University Press edition published as part of The Oxford Mark Twain in 1996. Volumes from this set typically sell for anywhere from $7.50 to $20.00 per volume, with the average price probably about $15.00. There are several copies of the volume that I am seeking currently being offered on Abebooks.com: the lowest price is $149.00. Now, how can that be? This is not a rare book. How in the world can it be that copies are listed at such inflated prices? Well, here’s how it happens. It starts out with, say, six copies of the book being listed for sale, with the top price being $20.00. Some idiot comes along and lists a copy at $200.00. The six copies listed at $20.00 or less gradually sell – sometimes the purchaser thinks that he is getting a great bargain because someone is offering the book at $200.00 – “Gosh, the book is ‘worth’ $200.00 and I only paid $20.00!” Now, while the cheap copies are slowing selling, other booksellers are acquiring copies of the book. These booksellers – who know nothing about nothing when it comes to pricing books – invariably check the internet to see what other people are asking for the book, since they can’t depend on their own nonexistent knowledge. They see that somebody has it at $200.00, so they don’t want to “give it away” at a price like $20.00, so they list it at $175.00. So now, in addition to the reasonably priced copies, there are two copies listed at outrageous prices. The reasonably priced copies continue to slowly sell, while other booksellers come along and see that two booksellers are now listing the book at a high price, and so they list their copy at a high price as well. Eventually the time comes when the last reasonably priced copy sells, and the only copies left that are being offered for sale are these ridiculously high-priced copies. Nobody ever actually pays these prices, but because these are the only copies currently being offered for sale, the moronic booksellers who base their prices on what others are asking for the book on the internet invariably put a great big price on their copy – “After all, the cheapest copy on the internet is $175.00, so I should be able to sell my copy for $150.00, which is a bargain.” For a $20.00 book!! No copy has sold for more than $25.00 in the history of the world (and likely never will), but the no-nothing booksellers (now mostly amateurs and naïve entrepreneurs who have no background or expertise in the book trade) all act like sheep and list the copies at these stupid prices. This grievous state of affairs is becoming increasingly common. When bookselling sites on the internet first came along, booksellers were very excited, because they figured that they would now have a much greater audience for their books – why, instead of only having customers who were in their home town, they could have customers across the world! What they didn’t realize was that while their presence in the marketplace had expanded throughout cyberspace, the bookselling sites also enabled every other bookseller in the world to compete with them both locally and worldwide. And because it was so cheap (no renting of a shop, no issuing of catalogues, no need to have a significant inventory), every Tom, Dick and Harry was in a position to become an instant bookseller on the internet. The results have been disastrous. Most professional used booksellers – who, honestly, never made a comfortable living from bookselling in the first place, but who usually got by – found that they couldn’t compete, with the internet glutted with outrageously cheap copies of books and outrageously overpriced copies of books. They had more money invested in most of their books than hundreds of these amateur booksellers were asking for their copies of the same books, and they couldn’t hope to sell their copies unless they absorbed a painful loss. Thus, many bookstores rapidly went belly-up, and only the very high-end rare booksellers were able to survive at all, for the most part (since the nincompoops merrily wrecking the used book market didn’t have access to truly rare books and therefore couldn’t compete with the high end booksellers). Further, the influx of amateurs further damaged the used bookselling industry by undermining the confidence that customers have in purchasing books via mail order. Many of these people either don't know how to describe their books - particularly the condition of their books - or don't choose to take the time to type out a description. They also don't waste their time packing the books in such a way as to assure that the books are not damaged in transit. Many customers have been disappointed so many times that they are loathe to purchase books over the internet, which hurts all booksellers. Booksellers thought that the internet was a new golden opportunity – little did they know that the internet was actually going to destroy the industry, a process which is steadily taking place as we speak. The advent of e-books, while not an immediate threat, will ultimately be the final death-knell to used booksellers, and probably to retail booksellers as well. Books used to be one of the few products that supported a secondhand marketplace, and this anachronistic enterprise is now running its course. Those of us who remember what it was like to visit a city like New York or Chicago 30, 40 or 50 years ago and find scores of bookstores and booksellers tempting us with their wares find it sad and disappointing to have lived through the changes that the last decade or two have wrought. Those “good old days” are surely gone forever, and book collecting will certainly never be the same, for good or – as some of us believe – for evil. How’s that for being an old fuddy-duddy?

L.F.B. to P.H.D. re: C. & V. H.

2008-06-18T07:28:00.004-04:00

By 1990, I found myself in the position of having to move, and in possession of a printshop that was so large that I was unable to obtain the space to house it. I had been living in a large house that I had purchased when I moved to Louisville in 1985, and I had quickly amassed a gigantic collection of type, mostly acquired when I purchased the printshop of John Cumming in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. I had sold my Chandler and Price 8 by 10 platen press when I moved from St. Louis, and had purchased a Vandercook Universal I when I got settled in Louisville. I ultimately ended up with around 750 cases of type, most of which I never used, and much of which I would never have used had I kept it. So I concluded that my only option was to sell the shop, which I did.

A few years later, after an abortive attempt at starting printing again with a C & P New Series Pilot that I was never comfortable using, I purchased a Vandercook SP20 from a company in Indiana (thanks to the assistance of Dave Churchman), and got started printing again. The first little project that I carried out was to print this pamphlet.

I had purchased the library of Leonard F. Bahr after his untimely death, and I found amongst his files a carbon copy of a letter that he had written to Paul Hayden Duensing describing a visit that he and his wife, Ann, had made with Victor and Carolyn Hammer in Lexington in 1966. The letter bubbled with enthusiasm, and I thought that it would make for a nice little booklet.

I entitled the pamphet L.F.B. to P.H.D. re: C. & V. H.: Being the Text of a Letter from Leonard F. Bahr to Paul H. Duensing Concerning a Visit with Carolyn and Victor Hammer in 1966.

The book was set in the Cochin typeface (I had purchased some Cochin from Kay Kramer, but only the roman in 12 and 14 point - no italic), and I used Legend for the titling. I printed it on Antique Ingres paper in black, brown and green - don't ask; I just wanted to see what green would look like. The page size was 9-3/4 by 6-1/4 inches, and there were 6 pages. The pamphlet was sewn into wrappers of Fabriano Ingres Heavy paper. I printed a total of 40 copies, completed and issued in 1994, and sold those that I didn't give away for $12.50 - I just noticed that a bookseller has listed a copy on Abebooks.com for $50.00.

It's a very interesting letter. Of course, Victor Hammer was a figure of such incredible talent that he still is held in reverence in Lexington. I was fortunate enough to visit several times with Mrs. Hammer, and found her to be very gracious and generous. My older son, as a high school senior, wrote his senior thesis on Victor Hammer, and we visited with Mrs. Hammer as part of the research for the paper. She showed my son, Jordan, the books that Victor Hammer had printed, as well as paintings and other artwork of Hammer's that adorned her lovely home. As we were about to leave, Mrs. Hammer presented Jordan with a pencil sketch that Hammer had done as a study for one of his paintings, which Jordan still treasures. Many people in Lexington seemed to be in awe of Mrs. Hammer, and tiptoed around her as though she were a hand grenade ready to explode. I never understood this, as I always found her to be as pleasant and approachable as anyone I ever met. I suspect that she did not suffer fools lightly, however, so she may have come across somewhat harshly in some situations.

Wooden Poster Stick

2008-06-17T19:13:00.005-04:00

Here's another real beauty. This is a typical high quality wooden composing stick, often called a "poster stick" because its large size allows for the setting of line lengths adequate for poster-size work. The stick is about 24-3/4 inches long, with a depth of 14 picas. I'm not positive what kind of wood that this stick is made of, but wooden sticks are typically of mahogany or walnut, and I believe that this stick is one of those woods.

The knee is solid brass, without a brace, and the clamp is also brass. There is a brass lining on the end-plate of the stick. This stick was obviously used and treasured, as it has been skillfully repaired in several places. Whoever owned this stick valued it enough to repair it rather than discarding it when it was broken.

There are no markings on the stick. I obtained it from England, so I am presuming that it was probably made there, although it may have been imported originally from America.

How Not to Burn a Book, by Ray Bradbury

2008-05-25T16:36:00.009-04:00

Here's a book that got me into a little bit of hot water.

I was casting about for a text when I ran across this wonderful lecture that Ray Bradbury gave at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1975. The lecture had been printed in Soundings: Collections of the University Library, Vol. 7, No. 1 in September of 1975. I just thought that it was great, so I decided to print a small edition. This was in 2002.

I used some more of that paper that Henry Morris had given me - the offcuts from one of his books - so the book is one of those square things, 7-3/4 by 6-1/4 inches. It runs to 60 pages. Greg Campbell chose the binding material for the book, and as usual did a great job. The book was set by hand in Bembo, and a poem that was included was set in Lutetia. The titles were in Lilith. I printed a total of 27 copies.

Bradbury is such a playful and enthusiastic guy, and I wanted the design to reflect that, which is why I used the Lilith for display. I also used fists (pointing hands) to reflect Bradbury's kind of show-offy manner, his "look at me" approach in the lecture, which is charming and kind of childishly innocent, I think. So the fists point to each of the chapter openings (I broke the lecture up into chapters, which was not how the original was presented), and I moved them here and there, turning them upside down and even going outside the margin on one occasion.

I wanted to print these fists in bright shiny gold, so I got this gold ink. Boy, what a mistake! I learned later that you can't use this stuff on regular paper - it's made for use on coated papers. It also dries at an ungodly quick rate, and repeatedly dried on the press before I could complete a press run of only 27 copies! It was just a nightmare. And instead of being shiny gold (as it would look on a coated paper), it ended up looking like a dull brass color. Not terrible, but not what I had in mind either.

I also committed an error of careless language in the book. I put a little note at the beginning telling where the essay had originally been printed, and I noted therein that Bradbury had slightly edited the text from the spoken lecture. Well, several people were led to believe by this statement that Bradbury had edited the original for my edition of the book, which he most certainly did not (he had edited it for the periodical appearance) - indeed, I didn't even get his permission to reprint the lecture, being the unscrupulous pirate that I am. But I figured that 27 lousy copies couldn't represent much of a copyright infringement, and since I lost money on the deal, as usual (I sold the copies that I didn't give away for $45.00 each), I didn't feel too terribly guilty about it.

But I did feel guilty when I got a telephone call from Bradbury's bibliographer, who was not at all happy that I had printed the book and sold it out immediately. I apologized all over the place, and I told him that while I didn't have any more copies for sale, I would be willing to give one of my personal copies to Bradbury himself if I could get his address, which the bibliographer provided to me. So I sent a copy along to Bradbury, who did not acknowledge its receipt (I hope that he actually got it, but who knows).

Well, the price on the secondary market immediately skyrocketed, and booksellers started listing it at $600, $800 and more, apparently immediately selling their copies. Finally a bookseller in Santa Barbara listed a copy for $1,850.00, but interestingly enough, he listed the book as being signed by Bradbury. So I figure that if Bradbury signed a copy (and he lives in Santa Barbara, so it's a pretty safe bet that he really did sign this copy), then he at least was aware that I had pirated it - perhaps the copy for sale with his signature is the one that I sent to him, who knows?

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with the book, all in all, despite the problem with the gold ink. It is a great read, very entertaining and interesting. And that's my main purpose in printing - to print something that people will like to read, and hopefully in a form that increases their reading enjoyment. The last thing that I want is to make books that people will put on the shelf without reading - that would defeat my purpose altogether.

Cheesy European Composing Stick

2008-05-25T16:25:00.005-04:00

Lest anyone conclude that Americans are the only ones who make cheap, cheesy composing sticks, we offer this bit of evidence to the contrary.

This is a very cheap, primitive stick that bears a superficial resemblance to the typical higher quality European sticks. The knee looks a bit similar, and there appears to be a strap surrounding the knee and the stick to exert pressure with the clamp to tighten the stick. But there the similarities end.

The body of the stick is made of aluminum, and it is 10 inches long. Unless I am mistaken, the knee is also aluminum, as is the end-plate. The end-plate is actually just screwed to the body of the stick, using round-head screws!! I have never seen this method of attaching the end-plate before. Even with the knee removed, this stick won't lie flat because of the protruding screw heads.

The strap that goes around the knee is not a complete strap, but just a bent length of steel, as can be seen in the photograph above. And instead of the screw mechanism that is used on the typical European stick, this one just uses a simple thumbscrew that presses against the knee, using the partial strap to exert pressure.

Junky, junky, junky. I suppose that it would do the job in a pinch, but it doesn't feel right in the hand at all - kind of like a cheap toy instead of a tool. Yuck!

"For My Daddy" by Leon Retharp

2008-04-20T10:12:00.004-04:00

Sometimes you're just fooling around, and you print a little piece of ephemera just to amuse yourself - this is an example.

When my younger son, Noel was about five years old, he abruptly said to his mother one day, "Write this down!" She got out a paper and a pencil, and he said, "This is for my daddy." He then proceeded to dictate the exact words that I printed on this little broadside. It's very funny, very zen, sort of. I think that it was basically an effort to document his accomplishments. If you click on the illustration, you can see a larger format that you should be able to read.

The broadside is 8-1/4 by 5 inches. It was set in Van Dijck and Cochin Open typefaces and printed on Okawara student grade paper. I printed 175 copies, of which 151 were for the Amalgamated Printers Association, to which I belonged at the time.

Leon Retharp is Noel's first and middle names spelled backwards - Noel Prather. Years later, when Noel was working as a musician, he played some instruments on a CD that listed his name as "Brather" - some kind of bastardization of Prather. Go figure.

"Turtle" Composing Stick

2008-04-20T07:41:00.006-04:00

Here is a stick that was purportedly quite popular, although there don't seem to be a lot of survivors. This is the "Turtle", or "Turtle's Standard Job Stick", which you could read in the shield on the illustration above if the picture were clearer. According to Speckter, this stick was manufactured on the East Coast between 1910 and 1930 by one David Turtle, a retired compositor. To better market the stick, Turtle stamped his International Typographical Union card number on the stick, thereby hoping to connect with other union compositors. Also stamped on the bed was an aide to copyfitting - a table showing the number of words to the square inch of various sizes of type. In some versions (including this particular stick) a ruler in inches is stamped on the inside of the rail as an additional aide.

This particular stick is 12-1/2 inches long, with a depth of 12 picas. The rail has a line of round holes punched through it, into which a small round post on the knee fits - the holes are 6 points apart, so the stick can be adjusted to picas and half-picas. The clamp is otherwise virtually identical to the Rouse job stick clamp.

I don't know if the knees tended to be fragile, but this one is unfortunately broken - a tendency to fracture may be why the stick is pretty uncommon, despite having been quite popular. This hypothesis gets further support from the fact that the illustration of the Turtle stick in the Speckter book shows a Turtle stick with a Buckeye knee, which obviously is a mis-match, since the rail is clearly punched with round holes while the Buckeye knee is not fitted with any sort of post to fit into the holes in the rail. Apparently the original knee for Speckter's Turtle wasn't around any more when he took the picture.

Mark Twain's "1601"

2008-03-30T08:21:00.008-04:00

One of the most widely reprinted humorous sketches by Mark Twain is "1601: Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors", written in 1879. This bawdy little piece was written by Samuel L. Clemens for his own amusement and that of a few friends, and its original printing is still a bit of a mystery. In any case, it is very funny, and I believe that every self-respecting private press has a duty to do a printing of it - here is mine, printed in 1996.

It actually all started when I stopped by an art supply store that was going out of business and bought a small number of full sheets of Fabriano Roma paper, a gorgeous handmade paper with a gaudy watermark. I think that I only got about eight sheets - maybe a few more, I don't remember. Since this was obviously only a very small amount of paper, I wanted to print a short text on it, and 1601 immediately came to mind. I figured that I had enough paper to print about eight copies of the book, which is really enough. While I think that all private presses should do a 1601, they don't need to be printing large editions, since there are already so many around. So eight copies was just fine with me.

I ended up printing a book that was 9-3/4 by 6-1/2 inches, with 17 pages. The book was bound by the Campbell-Logan Bindery with a beautiful marbled paper for the sides. Since the book is very humorous and written tongue-in-cheek, I thought that a design that was pretty tongue-in-cheek was called for as well. So I printed the darn thing in as many different typefaces as I could work in. The main text was set in Goudy Thirty, with the little introductory page in ATF Civilite. I used Solemnis, Goudy Text Shaded and Weiss Initials for display - it's a bit of a crazy-looking book.

Now, I had purchased the paper in full sheets, and since I didn't have a paper cutter, I trimmed it with a cheap office paper-cutter, and I suspect that it was the irregularity of the trim that may have caused me a huge problem. I printed the book in several colors, and this included the page numbers in brown. I had printed brackets at the bottom of the page in black, and then started to print the page numbers in the middle of the brackets. To my horror, I spoiled sheet after sheet because I couldn't seem to hit the register correctly, and the page numbers would print right over the brackets, or so far out of center that they looked horrible. I would check and recheck the register with waste sheets, and would hit the spot perfectly - then when I went to print the actual sheet for the book, it would miss. I figured that the problem was how I had trimmed the sheets, but it may have been something else. The result was that I only ended up with four copies that were acceptable, ruining the other four copies. So the book was finally published in a limited edition of just four copies, all press-numbered. Two of the copies I kept for myself, leaving only two copies to sell. So if you are a collector of printings of 1601, then you're really going to have a problem finding this one!

European Style Composing Stick

2008-03-23T11:41:00.005-04:00

Here is a style of stick that is very common in Europe. I believe that these sticks are mostly made in England and Germany. This stick has the titling in English, but it still may have been made in Germany for the British trade. I have been told that the French use a completely different style of stick, but I've never seen a French stick, so I don't know what they're like - I wish that someone out there would sell me one!

Anyway, this stick was made by Cornerstone, one of the major manufacturers of this style of stick. This particular stick is 8-3/4 inches long, and has the typical shallow depth of this style of stick - just eight picas. The body of this particular stick is made of aluminum, while the end-plate and the knee are steel, with a strap on the knee in a yellow-colored metal, possibly brass but probably some other amalgam of metals. The end-plate is riveted to the body.

This style of stick uses a clamping mechanism that is very effective - until it wears out, that is. There is a small lever that is attached to a screw mechanism. The knee is adjusted to the desired line length, and then the lever on the knee is depressed. This lever is attached to a screw. When the lever is depressed and the screw thereby turned, it exerts pressure on the strap, that goes completely around the stick and the knee. There is a section of the knee and strap that is cut in at a 45-degree angle, and so as the knee is pressed against this 45-degree angled section of the strap by the screw, the knee is pressed tightly against both the body of the stick and against the rail by the lever action, thus holding the knee firmly in place. Changing the setting is as simple as lifting the lever, moving the knee, and once again depressing the lever. So this style of stick is very easy to adjust.

Unfortunately, it is my experience that this style of stick also has a tendency to wear out. What happens is that the metal of the strap becomes fatigued and stretches, or the constant sliding of the strap causes it to wear as the inner surface of the strap rubs against the outside of the stick. Thus, the lever no longer exerts enough pressure on the strap to hold the knee tightly in place. I have purchased several sticks in which this has occurred, and the printers have inserted copper or brass thin spaces between the knee and the rail to try to adjust for this problem, but it's not a very good solution. One might think that you could just spin the screw around 360 degrees to tighten it, but the tolerances are so small that this won't work. As the stick wears, the lever must be depressed closer and closer to the body of the stick, finally hitting the stick before the clamp is tight - that's pretty much the end of the usefulness of the stick. The other drawback of this type of stick - a minor drawback, to be sure - is the fact that due to the strap wrapping around the bottom of the stick, this style of stick will not lie flat on the table or bank.

For the Good of the Bleeding Land - A Contre Coup Press Books

2008-03-23T11:20:00.007-04:00

Here's another book that I did in conjunction with The Filson Club Historical Society, which has now changed its name to The Filson Historical Society - I guess it didn't seem "clubby" enough or something.

Anyway, after having printed the Henry Waller journal, noted in a previous posting, I discussed possible other manuscripts with the Curator of Manuscripts, Jim Holmberg. He suggested several, this being one. The manuscript is a well-known letter from James Phelan, a Confederate Senator from Mississippi, to Jefferson Davis, urging Davis to replace General John Bell Hood with General Joseph Johnston as the Commander of the Army of Tennessee, who had earlier replaced him. The letter was written very late in the Civil War - January 21, 1865 - as the Confederacy was near collapse. The letter has been frequently quoted in various historical works on the Civil War, which must surely be the most written-about war of all time.

So I researched the letter and wrote a brief Introduction and an Afterword (that is, Theophile Homard, my close associate, researched and wrote the Introduction and Afterword). I printed the book on more of the Frankfurt paper that Henry Morris had given me (Henry has joked that I'll become known as "the square book printer" because of the odd shape of the offcuts that I used on this and several other books). The book is 7-3/4 by 6-1/4 inches, with 23 pages. The text was set in the Lutetia typeface, and I printed 60 copies. The book was completed and published in 1999, and is out of print.

I wanted something emblemmatic of the Confederacy for the binding, so I went out and bought a magazine that focused on the Civil War and found a representation of the Confederate battle flag. I cut it out and sent it to my binder, Greg Campbell at Campbell-Logan Bindery in Minneapolis, with instructions as to how to arrange the flag on the cover. He then had a commercial printer that he works with create the paper that was used for the binding. My wife was horrified when she saw it, as the Confederate flag has such negative connotations. But I explained that if you're going to do a book about the Confederacy, you're probably going to want to use the symbols of the Confederacy in the book.

One small touch that I attempted with the book didn't work out as planned. I thought that it might be neat to somehow represent the blue and the grey. So I printed rules on the title page in both blue and grey, and then printed the initial for the Introduction in blue and the initial for the opening page of the letter itself in grey. Well, guess what! Grey pretty much looks like black - underinked black, but black nevertheless. So that was a bust.

Fixed-Measure Newspaper Stick with Curled Handle

2008-03-22T06:47:00.003-04:00

Here's a very interesting variation on the common fixed-measure newspaper stick. As is typical, the stick accommodates a 13-pica line-length, and is rather deep - 14 picas. The overall length of the stick is just five inches.But there are two characteristics that differentiate this stick from the more common sticks of this type. First is that the metal at the end of the handle is curled up , with no sharp corners at all. I am guessing that this was so that the stick could be easily slipped into and out of the compositor's pocket without catching on the fabric. It also makes for a very comfortable feel to the stick as you hold it in your hand.

But the other unusual characteristic that may not be so obvious is the fact that the rail does not extend the full length of the stick, which is the case with the vast majority of sticks. Instead, both the end-piece and the cross-piece that serves the same function as the knee in adjustable sticks are riveted to the body, and the rail is only long enough to extend between these two cross-bars.

There are no manufacturer's marks on the stick. I am assuming that this stick dates back well into the 19th Century, as do many fixed-measure newspaper sticks, whose purpose was largely made obsolete when newspapers adopted the use of the Linotype machine - after that time, these sticks would only have been used to set column headlines.

This is a sweet little stick.

R. Dunaway, Books: A Reminiscence

2008-03-07T14:38:00.002-05:00

The popular stereotype has it that book collectors and booksellers are an odd lot. In my own experience, I have found many book collectors and booksellers to be about as ordinary as are any group of people who share a particular interest or fancy. Most people’s interest is just that – an interest - while only a few fanatics carry things a bit further. Take sports fans, for instance. Clapping and cheering during the game and high-fiving after a victory is just a brief interlude in most fans’ otherwise pedestrian life. But there are a few who allow their lives to become engulfed by their love for their team. Bare to the waist in frigid winter weather, their bulbous bellies and bald pates painted in their team’s colors, these fans decorate their homes with team memorabilia and populate their closets with clothing bearing the names and icons of their sporting heroes. Book collectors and booksellers look remarkably normal in comparison with these loonies. But it is true that the ranks of book collectors and booksellers include a healthy complement of unusual and interesting characters. Reginald Patrick “Pat” Dunaway would have deserved membership in this group. I first visited Pat’s small bookstore around 1970, the year that I had moved to St. Louis to pursue graduate studies at Washington University. My lifelong love of the writings of Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) had burgeoned into an obsession, and I had started to build a library of Mark Twain first editions, biographies, critical works, and anything and everything I could find about this great American humorist and curmudgeon. My collecting had led me to ask the Washington University campus bookstore to special order copies of the volumes in The Mark Twain Papers that were being published by the University of California Press, a series that has progressed so slowly that I feel confident that I will not live to see its completion. At that time, the Washington University bookstore was located in the basement of Brookings Hall, the University’s imposing administration building that had originally been built for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. It was most amazingly cramped, with barely room to turn around. Finding an item on a lower shelf required a near-Olympian degree of gymnastic skill. I loved it. As I was checking out one day with a stack of Mark Twain related items, the clerk noticed my interest and asked me if I’d ever visited Dunaway’s bookshop. “He probably would have some things that you’d like,” the clerk opined. “He specializes in literary biography and criticism.” I was living in an apartment just west of the campus, and Dunaway’s shop was a few blocks northeast of campus, so I strolled over to check it out, walking up Skinker Blvd. and turning east on Delmar Blvd. Of course, I walked past the shop without seeing it, and had to backtrack. To my surprise, the address that the campus bookstore clerk had given me had no identifying information on it whatsoever – no signage, the Venetian blinds closed, and the door locked. I was able to peek through the blinds and saw books, so I figured that I was in the right place. Finally I noticed a small business card taped to the inside of the window on the door: “R. Dunaway, Books, ABAA”. I almost turned and went home, figuring that the store was closed, but on a whim I knocked on the door. A minute passed and suddenly someone peered through the blinds at me, scowled, and the door was unlocked and opened just a crack. “Can I help you?” the man asked in a tone of voice that revealed that he was really hoping that he couldn’t help me. I timidly responded, “I’m interested in Mark Twain books. Would you have anything?” “Well, I suppose so, sure,” he said. “Come in.” I walked – rather, squeezed – into the shop. It was a very narrow storefront – maybe fifteen feet wide. There were just three rooms altogether, each small and each jam-packed with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The aisles between the shelves were quite narrow, and maneuvering through them was complicated by the fact that there were numerous waist-high stacks of books on the floor. The front room was about fifteen by fifteen feet, as was the room behind it – the back room was a very small work area where Pat packed orders for mailing. While Pat was polite during this first visit, he was also obviously discomfited by my presence. I was to learn later that his business had been for a number of years almost exclusively mail order, and that he had little or no carriage trade. So unbeknownst to me, I was a bit of an intruder. I don’t remember much about that first visit – I think that I bought a few inexpensive books, but I was rather intimidated by Pat’s manner, so several years passed before I returned. In 1972 I moved for a year to Chicago for my internship at Rush Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Hospital. By this time I had become a bit more knowledgeable and sophisticated about the ways of the small bookseller, and I visited many shops throughout the Chicago area, as well as visiting in the homes of dealers who did not have a shop. By the time I returned to St. Louis in 1973, I felt a lot less intimidated by the eccentricities of booksellers. By coincidence, the tenant who had occupied the apartment in St. Louis that I rented upon my return had left behind a couple of shelves of books, so I called Dunaway to see if he would be willing to purchase them. I remember dropping off several boxes of books, with Pat indicating that he would look them over and give me a price the next day. He was decidedly cooler to me this time, because over the year in Chicago I had grown my hair to pony-tail length and a large Fu Manchu mustache graced my upper lip – he didn’t approve. I returned the next day, expecting to be offered ten or fifteen dollars. Much to my surprise, he offered me much more – I don’t remember the exact amount, but it very much exceeded my expectations. Seeing my surprise, he explained that most of the money he was paying was for a rare Jack London first edition, The Turtles of Tasman. He showed me the book, and I was once again puzzled – there was a date on the title page, but the copyright page listed the copyright as being 1914 by “The Currier Publishing Company”, and the date on the title page was 1916. Pat patiently explained that the earlier copyright date was for a periodical appearance, and pointed out the clues that I should have been able to use to recognize the book as a first edition. Thus began a pattern that persisted for the next ten plus years – me learning and Pat teaching. Reginald Patrick Dunaway was born in a small town in Illinois. He graduated from high school and entered college at the University of Missouri, graduating with a degree in Classical Studies, a course of study that uniquely prepared him for a life of bookselling. He also took some coursework at Washington University – wherein lies a story. Pat was telling me one day about his experience at Washington University during the World War II years, and he described a professor who had really touched in him a responsive chord. This professor, Pat said, was a truly great lecturer, who brought the subject matter alive in a way that no other professor had done. He couldn’t remember the professor’s name, but almost offhandedly mentioned that the professor had brought to class one day a beautiful book that he had written and published in England on medieval paving tiles. “Pat!” I exclaimed, “That was Loyd Haberly!” Pat looked pensive for a moment. “Really, Pat, that had to be Haberly,” I persisted. Loyd Haberly had gone to England in the 1930s to study at Oxford University under a Rhodes scholarship. He became interested in fine printing, and set up his own Seven Acres Press – he later became the controller of the Gregynog Press. During his sojourn in England, he became enamored of the Medieval paving tiles that he saw throughout the country, and wrote the book that Pat had described. When he returned to the U.S.A. he came to St. Louis where he continued to print a few books, although the books he printed in St. Louis were quite undistinguished when compared with those that he had produced in England. “Well, I suppose it was him,” Pat agreed, showing little of the excitement that I felt at the discovery – perhaps he was chagrined that he hadn’t put two and two together to recognize Haberly as this admired professor, since Pat certainly was well aware of who Haberly was and about his St. Louis connections. After college, Pat went to work at the old Neisner’s dime store chain. He was a lifelong bachelor, with no encumbrances, so he was free to go wherever his fortune led. He became a management trainee, and worked as an assistant manager at Neisner’s stores in Washington D.C. and Detroit (I think that he may have also worked in Philadelphia and maybe one or two other cities, but I mostly remember him talking about living in Washington and Detroit). He finally ended up back in St. Louis where he left the Neisner’s chain and went to work in a used bookstore in the old Gaslight Square area in St. Louis in the early 1960s. At some point, around 1965 or so, Pat formed a partnership with an acquaintance (I think someone related through marriage) who could offer a modest amount of financial backing, and began his own book business. It was an apropos time for someone like Pat to be starting a used book business because this was the period of the great university library boom – Sputnik had frightened Americans, who believed that the U.S. was falling behind the Russians. So the colleges and universities across the country ramped up their resources, and this included major additions to library collections. Pat, whose interest was primarily in scholarly books, was perfectly fitted to respond to the need for such books in university libraries, and he issued lengthy catalogues of books that were snapped up by acquisitions librarians across the country. Unfortunately, as with all booms, this one went bust, and the library business dried up. By this time, Pat had bought out his partner and was operating the business as a sole proprietor. He lived within the constraints of unbelievably modest financial requirements. Pat lived with a sister in what had been his parents’ home, just a few blocks away from his shop, so he had few housing expenses. He did not own a car – indeed, he did not have a driver’s license. He spent seven days a week at his shop, working, reading and listening to music, often into the evening. So he was able to survive the downturn in the library business without great difficulty, selling books to readers and collectors, and responding to want ads in AB Bookman’s Weekly. He lived a Spartan life, with his one indulgence being a morning breakfast at the Parkmoor restaurant on Clayton Road and Big Bend Blvd. He was such a regular that he didn’t even have to order – he just walked in and sat down at the counter, and the waitress would automatically bring him his food. I once saw Chuck Berry eating dinner at the Parkmoor – I stood behind him as he was checking out, and I particularly noticed how enormous his hands were. I don’t know what this has to do with Pat Dunaway, but I am always reminded of this chance encounter when I think of the Parkmoor, now sadly defunct. In the mid-1970s my bibliophilia had become somewhat omnivorous – I was always much more a reader than a collector, and I was curious about many things, so I bought books on many different subjects. I was buying first editions of authors that I liked to read – Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Steinbeck, etc. Many of their first editions were quite affordable at that time, so I was able to build a pretty nice collection. I also read widely in history, literature, drama and the arts. My interest in printing and the private press began when Dunaway sold me a copy of Colin Franklin’s book, The Private Presses. And my interest in Mark Twain never waned. Of course, with this broad range of interests, I had frequent need to drop by Pat’s shop and browse. Gradually Pat and I ramped up our conversations, and it became commonplace for us to spend entire visits simply talking about books. Pat had an endless supply of tales to tell about his experiences, his customers, book-buying trips (which he only rarely did by the time I knew him), and wonderful purchases of private libraries. Pat was the kind of person who devoted himself completely to pursuing his intellectual interests. He read about the bookselling trade voraciously, and subscribed to all of the periodicals in the field. He also subscribed to the book auction catalogues from auction houses, maintained a complete run of American Book Prices Current, and had a remarkable collection of bibliographies, mostly focusing on author and subject bibliographies. He also maintained a card catalogue of most of the books that he had ever bought – many, many file drawers of these cards, upon which he recorded the information necessary for listing the books in his catalogues, as well as the names of the purchasers of the books and dates of sale. There were few books of any importance that you could bring into the shop that Pat wouldn’t be able to research using only his own bibliographical resources – his shop was like a bibliographical Google. Having such a wealth of bibliographical resources was a double-edged sword, however. Pat definitely had a touch of the obsessive-compulsive personality about him, and he would sometimes pursue bibliographical information to an almost absurd degree. He might spend an hour researching obscure first edition points or other factors associated with a book that he knew he would be pricing at as little as five or six dollars. But the time that he spent in these activities never factored into his valuation of a book. He was not pursuing the bibliographical details for the purpose of increasing his sale price – he was pursuing these details for his own edification and amusement. It was like solving a puzzle or mystery for him – like a game, almost. He was never happier than when he had ferreted out a detail that most booksellers would have overlooked, or have found unimportant or irrelevant. Pat was also very meticulous about packing books for shipping. He would take an inordinate amount of time to protect books from damage, and virtually never had anyone return a book due to rough handling by the US Post Office or United Parcel Service. He would have been shocked by the careless packing that so many internet booksellers engage in today. When I first knew him, Pat also had an enormous interest in baseball. A friend, who usually helped him make book-buying house-calls, was a guy named Leroy Thompson. Leroy was also obsessive about baseball, in addition to being an expert on firearms and military matters. Pat and Leroy would engage in lengthy trivia contests to see which one could stump the other on a baseball statistic or obscure fact. I remember Pat telling me once that he could name the starting lineup for every team in every World’s Series ever played. I came in the shop one day after having been to one of my younger son’s t-ball games. Laughingly, I told Pat that I had seen a play that I thought he had probably never seen – an unassisted triple play. Pat immediately told me how many times unassisted triple plays had occurred in the major leagues and who had turned them! (For those who want to know, the only players who are in a position to turn an unassisted triple play are the second baseman and the shortstop. There must be runners on first and second base, and the runners must both be running on the pitch. The batter hits a line drive to the second baseman or the shortstop who catches it to make the batter out, the fielder steps on second base making an out on the player running to third, and then the fielder tags the runner running from first. I suppose that a third baseman could do it with runners at second and third as well.) Pat was a living embodiment of the Baseball Encyclopedia. Another interest of Pat’s was opera. He absolutely loved opera, to the extent that he wanted to have a recording of every opera ever recorded. When he reached that goal, he amended the goal – now he wanted every recording of every performance of every opera ever recorded! Needless to say, he had a huge collection of LPs of operas, and had a very nice hi-fi outfit in the shop. When I would drop in on a Sunday, he would often simply be sitting at his astonishingly cluttered desk listening to an opera. Some years later Pat became interested in early recorded music and old records, and he ended up with a gigantic collection of old 78 RPM records dating back to the early 20th century. He bought a special turntable that was specifically designed to play these old records. One treasure trove of old records involved me, and nearly killed several of us. A very large collection of 78 RPM records had been donated to the library at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. Pat was approached about purchasing the collection, and he jumped at the opportunity. The company that I was working for at the time had a truck, so I borrowed the truck one scorchingly hot summer day, and Pat and I and another helper drove over to Edwardsville to pick up the records. Do you know how much thousands of 78 RPM records weigh? A lot. Way too much. We loaded the truck with the records, and started back to St. Louis, but the weight was too much for the truck, and we had to stop several times to let the overheated truck cool down. I don’t know for sure, but I think that the poor truck was never the same after that trip. To make matters worse, Pat was renting space on the second floor above his shop, and all of those boxes of records had to be carried up a long flight of stairs to be stored. I just about had a heat stroke before we were done. Like the truck, I think that I was never the same after that day. An odd paradox about Pat was his mixture of openness to new ideas and his attachment to old times and old ways. He loved the popular music of the early 20th Century, but he detested all contemporary popular music. He loved old movies, but hated most modern films. He was always learning, learning, learning, but his mind was closed to almost all aspects of what might be called “pop culture”. Pat, at a fairly young age, adopted the plaint of the aged: the world’s going to hell in a handbasket. I found it baffling. He had to know full well that the belief that the younger generation was such a lost cause that they would probably bring about the end of civilization as we know it was a conclusion drawn by each succeeding generation. Yet he still felt this way. Perhaps the most baffling belief was his firmly held conviction, expressed to me on many occasions, that the cause of this impending doom was Woody Allen and the Beatles. He despised them with a degree of venom that was downright frightening. He somehow felt that Woody Allen and the Beatles had influenced culture in America to such an extreme and devastating extent that disaster was just around the corner. I was never able to extract a coherent rationale for this belief, but he held it nonetheless. Pat was one of the most well-read people I ever met. He had read much of the classical material that an educated person of previous generations would have been expected to have read: Pliny, Macauley, Gibbon, Aristotle, etc. But he read much more widely than just that. He is the only person that I have ever known who had actually read Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust in its entirety (the book is now often referred to as In Search of Lost Time, or more commonly, simply “Proust”). He read and was familiar with the major works of most of the important 19th Century British authors (Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray, etc.) and many other authors from America and around the world as well. In addition, he would occasionally dip in depth into a minor writer who caught his interest. I remember once in particular that he read through a complete set of the novels of Eden Philpotts, an early 20th Century British author who is largely forgotten today, and was pretty much forgotten back in the early 1980s when Pat read his books. But Pat realized that if an author was very popular during his own time (which Philpotts was), there was probably a good reason for it, and his books were probably worth reading – Bulwer-Lytton and his ilk excepted. He was also not at all averse to reading modern avant garde writers, and had read people like Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Kerouac, and other modern writers. He had read James Joyce, including such very difficult books as Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake, both books that I find unreadable. Not Pat – he read and enjoyed them. I tended to be someone who would read particular authors that I liked in depth, but did not read a wide variety of authors. Pat read both in depth and widely – in depth if he really liked an author or topic, but widely to broaden his perspective. Pat and I also shared an interest in periodical literature, and we read journals and magazines avidly. This included both the periodicals in the bibliophilic arena, as well as literary or popular magazines. I subscribed, for instance, to several boxing magazines (The Ring, Boxing Illustrated), and I would let Pat read them after I was done with them. It might seem odd that a couple of bookworms like us would be interested in boxing, but we were. I was particularly interested in the history of boxing and the early bare-knuckle days. Pat, of course, had read the classic 19th Century books, Boxiana and Fistiana, but I never got an opportunity to do so. Pat subscribed to the Bulletin of the New York Public Library and other library publications. We both got The Private Library, American Book Collector, and others of that sort. Pat was one of those people whose reading is omnivorous and whose knowledge is encyclopedic – he reminds me of Henry Morris, the proprietor of the Bird & Bull Press, whose inexhaustible curiosity has led him also to seek out knowledge and information with a frenzied zeal and unquenchable appetite. An interesting experience was to talk with Pat about something that he did not have a lot of knowledge about – he would become like an information vampire, sucking from you every drop of knowledge that you might have. Henry is the same way – if he wants to learn something from you, you better be ready to give it up, and give it up quick, because Henry will just whale the living bejesus out of you until he gets what he wants to know out of you. It is both exciting and challenging. It’s important to note, though, that Pat’s erudition was not gained for the purpose of intellectual snobbery – another similarity with Henry Morris. He didn’t flaunt his knowledge, or try to one-up people with it. He sought knowledge and read extensively as a response to his own personal desire to know and to experience. If you wanted to have a conversation with him about a topic with which he was familiar, he was happy to do so. If not, well, he was happy to be modest about it and keep it to himself. The only exception to this was in the pronunciation or use of words. If you mis-pronounced a word, he was highly likely to correct you – he was equally likely to praise you if you correctly pronounced a word that was widely mispronounced. I remember particularly once when I used the word “primer”, in the context of talking about a book of basic instructions regarding something, and correctly pronounced it with a short “i” rather than with a long “i”, as the word for the undercoat of paint is pronounced, although spelled the same. Pat immediately noted that I was the first person in a long time that he had heard pronounce the word correctly. Similarly, I remember him looking at me askance when I mispronounced the word ‘halcyon”, a word that I had never heard pronounced and so was ignorant of the correct pronunciation. Those few exceptions aside, Pat was a person who hid his light beneath a bushel, as the biblical saying goes. Never full of himself, Pat would generously share his knowledge when asked, but would not otherwise impose his erudition on others. St. Louis was a pretty good book town in those days, although it had been even better during the 1950s and 1960s. Like many big city department stores, Famous Barr in downtown St. Louis had a rare book department in an earlier day, and was in a position to have a very nice inventory. But even without these places to buy books, there was a nice smattering of shops in St. Louis, small and large. Downtown was A. Amitin, a very large shop on multiple floors run by a true character, Sam Amitin (he used the name “A. Amitin” so that he would be the first bookstore listed in the Yellow Pages). Sam would prowl the shop, constantly giving everyone the hard sell, repeatedly calling out “I’m the source – ask me your questions” – he was much more the salesman than the bookman. I remember him once picking up a copy of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls to show me, and pronouncing it a first edition. I looked at it and informed him that it didn’t have the letter “A” on the copyright page, which was the point that differentiated the first edition from the huge book club edition that had been published of this very popular book. He looked at me shrewdly and said without a pause, “Oh, you mean the real first edition!” Sam always said that the books in his shop were worthless – his salesmanship was the key to his successful business. There was also a nice small shop like Pat’s down on Olive Street just a block from where Lindell Blvd. and Olive merged. The proprietor, an elderly gentleman, lived in a little area in the rear of the shop, separated only by a curtain. Later another shop opened on Delmar Blvd. just a block from Pat’s. The proprietor was a young man who came to a sad demise. He was walking his dog along some railroad tracks, and his dog suddenly dashed in front of an oncoming train. He tried to save the dog, but fell under the train’s wheels himself and was killed – the dog escaped unharmed. There was a small shop in Maplewood, another in Webster Groves, and a few people who operated out of their homes, most notably Anthony Garnett, who had the wherewithal to have a truly spectacular stock. I remember the first time that I visited him, he asked me what I was interested in, and I told him that my main interest at the time was the private press. He said, “Oh, well here’s a copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer in a Roger Powell binding – is that of interest? If not, I also have a Doves Press Bible.” After I peeled myself from off the floor, I let him know that those kinds of books were out of my league. He did have many, many private press books that I could afford, and I bought many books from him over the years. He was British, and did not hold American first editions in high regard, pricing them at amazingly low prices – I got a fine first edition in a dust wrapper of Johnny Got His Gun from him for ten bucks! Sometimes even British books were priced low too, depending on Anthony’s personal judgment of their literary value. He had a set of British first editions of Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, in fine condition with dust wrappers, and like a fool, I didn’t buy them because they seemed too dear at $35.00 per volume. I feel suicidal every time I think about that opportunity missed. Complementing these bookshops were wonderful library collections at Washington University, St. Louis University, the Mercantile Library and the St. Louis Public Library. St. Louis was an embarrassment of bibliophilic riches. Dunaway’s was still the mecca for me, though. It wasn’t long before I was stopping by the shop once or twice a week on my way home from work. After a year or two of this, Pat made me a proposition. He said that he thought that I was knowledgeable enough about what kind of books that he sold that I could become a “book scout” for him. Scouts (in England called “runners”) attend used book sales, yard sales, resale shops etc., buying books that they resell immediately to bookshops. Most scouts are on the prowl for valuable books that they can offer to several different dealers to obtain the highest price. I didn’t have the spirit to go to that much trouble, so I sold all of the books that I picked up on scouting expeditions to Pat. In return, he agreed to try to protect me when I brought him books that were worthless, and I don’t think that it ever occurred that he paid me less for a pile of books than I had paid for them. Not that I didn’t make mistakes on individual books – I did, sometimes embarrassingly stupid mistakes. But the mistake would usually be mixed in with enough books that I made a profit on that things balanced out in my favor. Sometimes I made killings, but mostly I just made a nice modest profit, which I usually used to buy books for my own library. As time went by, Pat’s friend Leroy moved on to other activities, and so I started being Pat’s chauffeur on book-buying visits to libraries and private homes. Our relationship was mutually satisfying and profitable, and thousands of books changed hands between us over the ten or so years that I scouted for him. In the early years of my scouting for Pat, I tended to be very cautious and conservative. This was partly due to my limited knowledge, and partly due to my relative lack of money to risk on purchases that might not have the value that I hoped that they had. I remember a couple of instances in particular in which I agonized over making a purchase. Once, in a bookstore over in Illinois, I saw a book that had been published by The Caxton Club of Chicago early in the 20th century. The book was priced, as I recall, at $45.00 or some such amount, and that was a lot more than I was used to paying – a dollar or two was my typical purchase, and I couldn’t go far wrong at that. After much internal debate, I took the chance and bought the book – fortunately, it turned out to be a book worth a couple of hundred dollars, so it worked out fine. Another time I was prowling around an antique store in St. Louis and discovered a stack of brand new copies of what appeared to be the first edition of Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show. There were nearly thirty copies for sale at $1.00 each. Believe it or not, I was so cautious that I drove to Pat’s store and asked him to return to the antique store with me to examine the books before I bought them to make sure that they were actually first editions. He reluctantly – and grumpily, I might add – did so, confirming that they were indeed first editions, so I went ahead and bought them. Both he and I were pleased with the profitability of that transaction. Pat was notoriously prickly – never with me, but often with people who annoyed him. Many’s the time I stood back and snickered as he was giving a customer the what for. I remember once a customer coming in and asking if the books were in any order. Pat got that look – his eyes narrowed and his lips tightened – and responded, “No, I just throw all the books in a big pile in the middle of the floor!” Another time a customer came in and started asking where certain subjects would be found – history, literary biography, etc. After receiving answers to several of his questions, the customer said, “You know, that’s amazing. I think that you know where every book in this shop is located.” I saw the look coming over Pat’s face that always preceded a sharp-tongued retort. “Well, I do work here full time, you know! This is my full-time job!” Pat snorted, giving the customer a look that would wilt lettuce. He was even worse with people calling on the telephone. I remember being in the shop once when the phone rang, and he answered it. There was a pause as he listened to a question, and then Pat nearly shouted into the receiver, “Rare books? Oh, no! I don’t sell rare books. All I sell is junk!” And with that, he slammed the receiver down in disgust. When a knock came on the door, which was always kept locked, he would stand out of sight and look to see who was knocking. If he didn’t like the looks of the person at the door, he wouldn’t respond, and would just let the potential customer think that he was closed. The door was locked for good reason – during the 1970s, that block of Delmar Blvd. was pretty dicey. His next-door neighbors who ran a dry-cleaning business were an elderly couple, and they were attacked, beaten with sticks and robbed by a group of children as they were closing up one day – the old fellow died as a result. Such occurrences were common in that neighborhood, although now the block has been restored – gentrified, if you will – and no longer involves much risk to pedestrians. In later years, Pat mellowed greatly, and became much more friendly and agreeable. I sometimes missed the opportunity of seeing him put a customer or bookseller in his place, but I know that Pat’s eschewing of this behavior reflected his generally more positive outlook on life. Here's an example: One day I stopped by Dunaway’s shop with my older son, Jordan, in tow. Jordan was very athletic, and had become particularly enamored with the St. Louis Cardinals, an interest that has persisted to this day. Pat was aware of Jordan’s interest. Pat and I were chatting as usual, when Pat suddenly said, “Say Jordan, here’s a book that you might like to see,” and he handed over a volume to Jordan. It was a very tattered copy of J. G. Taylor Spink’s book, Judge Landis and Twenty-Five Years of Baseball, which had been published in 1947. Spink was the Publisher of The Sporting News, which was headquartered in St. Louis. Kennesaw Mountain Landis had been the first Commissioner of Baseball, appointed after the Black Sox scandal in 1919. I looked quizzically at Pat, because I didn’t think that Jordan’s interest would extend into baseball history quite so much. Pat just gave me the old Cheshire Cat smile. Jordan opened the book, and found to his amazement (and mine) that the front end-papers were covered with autographs – and what autographs! Here were the autographs of some of the stars the 1947 St. Louis Cardinals, who had won the World Series in 1946, just prior to publication of the book. Also included were autographs of the announcers, Gabby Street and Harry Carey. Such very prominent autographs as Stan Musial and Enos Slaughter were accompanied by great players not so well remembered like Marty Marion, Terry Moore and the pitching hero of the Series, Harry Brecheen. A few autographs were illegible, or were names that we didn’t recognize. We speculated that the book had probably been passed around at some event that was celebrating the book’s publication – a party or dinner – and the team was present and signed the book as a favor to someone. Jordan slobbered over the book for a while (he had started collecting some autographs of current players, so this was kind of the holy grail for him), and finally handed the book back to Pat. Without hesitation, Pat said, “Oh, you can have it.” I couldn’t believe it. While the boom in sporting collectibles was not what it is today, this was still a very valuable book. I protested (weakly), but Pat was adamant about giving the book to Jordan. This kind of generosity was characteristic of Pat amongst those who were close to him. He was as selfless as the day was long, and if he could do something kind for a friend or family member, he would do so without thought or hesitation. His generosity to me – in terms of discounts on books I was buying from him, payment for books that he was buying from me, and, more importantly, his time, knowledge, expertise and friendship – was of incalculable value. Pat suffered from the problem that most of the used bookshops suffered from: too many books. This always happens very insidiously. The shelves are initially filled with books. The more desirable books sell, leaving gaps in the shelves that are filled with replacements, some desirable, others not. The most desirable of these books sell, leaving more gaps to fill. Eventually, the shelves become filled with books that no one wants to buy. As additional books are purchased, there is no shelf space to display them, so they end up getting put into storage. Without a process for periodically culling out unsaleable books from the shelves and replacing them with books recently purchased, the shelves in the shop become dead stock, and the saleable books remain out of reach. Pat had to rent more and more storage space in which to store new stock that he had purchased, but he had no process for rotating the stock from shelf to storage and storage to shelf. As a result, sales remained very slow, and the storage areas became frighteningly jam-packed with books. This hadn’t been a problem when most of Pat’s sales were from catalogues, because the books didn’t need to be sitting on shelves to sell. But as shop sales became the primary source of income, too much dead stock filling the shelves became a huge problem. I once helped out – and took advantage of the situation – by purchasing Pat’s entire section of Psychology books. I was still in graduate school in Psychology, so I had a ready source of customers for the books. Pat sold me the entire section for a very low price – I think that it may have been as little as $100. I took the books home and dramatically reduced the prices to a dollar or two per volume, set the books up in my dining room, and invited my fellow students to come and buy whatever they wanted. Within a week I had sold several hundred dollars worth. I took the books that were left and sold them to the guy who later was run over by the train, and he paid me a couple of hundred dollars for the remaining volumes. It was a great deal for me, and was actually also a good deal for Pat, because it opened up shelf space that he could fill with fresh inventory. Pat was widely respected for his knowledge and scholarship. He became friends with William Matheson, the Rare Book Librarian at Washington University who later became Rare Book Librarian at the Library of Congress. Booksellers from around the country never missed a visit to his shop when they were in St. Louis, and he was known for his reasonable prices and quality books. If you were knowledgeable and professional, then a visit to Pat’s store was a joy. If you were a poseur, you were likely going to be in trouble – Pat did not suffer fools lightly, and would refuse to offer trade discounts to people who he did not regard as being worthy of them, and would ban some people from his shop altogether if they rubbed him the wrong way once too often. Finally the day arrived that I accepted a job in another city. I told Pat that I would be moving to Louisville. He gave me a long look and said, “So, they’re sending you down to the minor leagues, eh?” While I had been his primary source of transportation, and a good source for new inventory, I was far from being the only person available to fill these needs. Another scout, a real go-getter, had started selling Pat books (but not exclusively – he also sold books to all the other booksellers), and he assumed transportation duties after I left town. Pat had suffered from ulcerative colitis for many years, and several years after I left St. Louis he had such an exacerbation of the condition that he nearly died and had to have his entire colon removed, and an ileostomy installed. I coincidentally was making a visit to St. Louis at the time, so I was able to visit him in the hospital shortly after his surgery. He was in good spirits, and after he recovered he told me that he actually felt better than he had felt in years – despite the hassle of dealing with the ileostomy, he welcomed no longer having chronic indigestion and worrying about developing colon cancer, which occurs commonly with people with ulcerative colitis. Unfortunately, like many members of the petit bourgeoisie, Pat had no health insurance, and spent many years paying off the hospital and doctor bills. A few years after his surgery, I happened to go to a book fair in East Lansing, Michigan, where I ran into a bookseller who was a friend of Pat’s. He told me that he had recently visited Pat in St. Louis, and Pat had suddenly, out of the blue, turned to the bookseller and said, “If you hear somebody fart, it’s not me. I don’t fart any more – I can’t.” That was Pat. A few years later, and quite serendipitously, a long-time customer of Pat’s, Walter H. Morris, expressed an interest in purchasing the business just as Pat was getting to the point that he could no longer take care of all aspects of running a bookstore in the changing environment (the explosion of growth in internet bookselling, for instance). So Pat accepted Morris’s offer, which included having Pat become an employee of the new business. Retaining the name Dunaway Books, the new owner obtained a much larger location on South Grand, just a block or so from Tower Grove Park, in a vibrant business district. By all accounts, the business thrived, and thrives still today. Pat seemed to enjoy his new role as sage. In 2004 Pat died. I didn’t hear about it for several months. He was in his seventies, but I don’t know what his exact age was at the time of his death. Booksellers the likes of Pat operated bookselling businesses all across the country forty or fifty years ago. They were a hardy lot, usually living on a shoe string, and having wide-ranging bibliographical knowledge that is incredibly rare amongst booksellers today, where extensive sources of information are just a few mouse-clicks away. Pat would not be successful in today’s environment, for a number of reasons. First, he was a true book-lover, a bibliophile. He would often comment that the reason that Sam Amitin was so financially successful as a bookseller was that he didn’t care a hoot for books – they were just inventory to him. Pat knew that having a love of books was a sure-fire route to business failure as a bookseller, but there was nothing he could do about it. Secondly, Pat was downright stubborn. He was determined to run his business the way he wanted to run it, and the hell with chasing fashion. He valued books primarily for their content, and would not pursue fad and fashion to make a buck. Booksellers with these characteristics simply can’t survive in today’s market, and we bibliophiles are much the poorer for that fact.

The Canvasser's Tale by Mark Twain

2008-02-17T08:20:00.006-05:00

As I've mentioned in a previous posting, it's often difficult to find a good text to print at the Contre Coup Press, due in part to the fact the the edition size is so small that authors don't want to give me a manuscript with such microscopic exposure. So we have adopted a simple rule of thumb when seeking a text to print: when in doubt, print something by Mark Twain.

I have had a lifelong interest in Mark Twain, having read many of his books when I was still a child. In the early 1970s my interest became almost an obsession, as I read through nearly all of his published works as well as books about him - I probably read around 200 books about the great Mr. Clemens. I collected his first editions and at one time had probably over 20 firsts - during a time of difficulty, I was forced to sell the collection. I still find that Mark Twain's writing always strikes a responsive chord in me, and I laugh out loud at his humor.

So in 2000 I decided to reprint one of his tall tales, this one about collectors. It's entitled The Canvasser's Tale, the title referring to door-to-door salesmen, who were called canvassers during the 19th century. This particular canvasser tells the sad story about his uncle, an avid collector of various odds and ends, who ultimately decides to collect echoes. Yes, that's right - echoes. The story is very funny, to my way of thinking anyway.

My edition is 7-3/4 by 5-1/4 inches, with a lovely binding by the Campbell-Logan Bindery in a cloth spine with marbled paper sides. The book is short - only 15 pages. I set it in the Cochin typeface and printed 20 numbered copies. The paper is Frankfurt - Henry Morris gave me a quantity of offcuts of this paper, and I have printed quite a few books and pamphlets on the paper. Since the story concerns a collector who is intent upon collecting items that are unique, one-of-a-kind objects, I noted in the colophon that the owner of a copy of this book would have just such a unique item, because the book in their hand would be the only one with the particular number of that copy.

I've printed several stories by Mark Twain, and will describe them in future postings.

Grover Stick

2008-02-10T07:44:00.000-05:00

Here's another classic stick, the Grover. Similar in many ways to the Rouse Job Stick, the Grover used a clamp that operated in the same way as the Job Stick. However, the knee did not have teeth fitting into holes in the rail - the clamp simply used friction to hold the knee in place.

This particular version of the Grover was made by the Golding Company in Boston. According to Speckter, the stick was invented by Oliver S. Grover in 1855. The knee has a strap of steel attached to it that wraps around the knee and under the body of the stick. The knee does not have a brace of any kind. This stick is 10 inches long with a depth of 13 picas. The shape of the clamp differs somewhat from the original Grover stick, this one more closely resembling the later Rouse clamp. This stick was originally nickel-plated, although much of the plating has worn off. There is a patent date on the body of the stick - it is very hard to read, but looks like 1888, although one or both of the 8s may be a 6. In any case, the Grover was a very popular style of stick, and was made by a number of different manufacturers. I do have some with the original style of clamp, and I will post a photograph of this clamp in some future posting.

Broughton's Rules: The First Contre Coup Press Publication

2008-02-10T07:15:00.000-05:00

Here is the very first publication that came from the Contre Coup Press - or more correctly, the Cerberus Press. When I first began printing, I called myself the Cerberus Press. However, after a few small publications were completed, I discovered that a Cerberus Head Press already existed, so I changed the name of the imprint to avoid confusion.

In 1979 I decided that I would take the plunge and try printing. I had been collecting private press books for several years, and had done a lot of reading about the private press. In particular, I had been corresponding with Eugene Richardson, proprietor of the Vanishing Press in Gurnee, Illinois. He really encouraged me to give it a try. So I looked in the classified advertisement section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and found a press for sale locally - an 8 by 12 Chandler and Price New Series platen press. I responded to the ad and made the purchase. As I recall, I paid something like $350 for the press, and I paid an extra $100 to have the press moved into my basement. What I didn't realize was that moving the press into my basement was going to involve dismantling and reassembling it, which was quite a job. The seller of the press was an old press mechanic who knew the press like the back of his hand. I mostly stood by and watched as he put the press together in my basement. When I tried to help, I mostly got scolded.

Anyway, I had a copy of Polk that gave me the basic information that I needed to get started. I also made my first trip to Dave Churchman's place to purchase stuff. This was when he had his printing stuff located in his primary business location, before he moved to the Boutique du Junque on Warman Ave. in Indianapolis. I bought just about everything I needed from Dave - empty typecases, furniture, sticks, quoins, etc.

I don't remember how it was that I bought my first type from the Acme Type Foundry in Chicago - I suppose that someone recommended them. I spent a lot of time studying typefaces, and finally decided upon Deepdene as the typeface to begin with. It wasn't a very good choice, as I was later to discover. But I wanted to use a typeface that everyone else wasn't using - I should have realized that there was a reason that people didn't use Deepdene. It was a Goudy face, but had some very unfortunate characteristics. For instance, due to peculiarities in the face, the face had a couple of unusual ligatures - "gg" and "gy", for instance - and when you used these character combinations, they showed up darker than the rest of the text. So the appearance of the page was marred by dark spots scattered around.

So having no idea what I was doing, I proceeded to set up and print the text of Broughton's Rules. I was very interested in the history of boxing at the time. In 1743, John Broughton had drafted a set of rules that were used during the early bare-knuckle boxing period. I wrote a brief introduction and then simply reprinted the rules.

I should probably be too embarrassed to let anyone see this thing. I didn't do any makeready, not yet knowing how to do so. The inking was horrible, as was the overall design of the thing. But at least it was a start. The pamphlet is 7 by 4-1/2 inches with 10 pages. I printed the piece on a nice Curtis paper whose name I don't recollect, with a wrapper of Fabriano Ingres. I printed a total of 60 copies, all of which I gave away - it was several years before I got the courage to actually ask anyone to pay for a book.

Rouse Micrometer Stick

2008-02-03T10:05:00.002-05:00

Yes, I know that I'm probably a total philistine, but somebody really needs to explain to me why you would ever need to make the fine adjustments that this stick is manufactured to allow.

Here we have the Micrometer Stick, manufactured by H.B. Rouse and Co. of Chicago (sorry that the pictures aren't clear). The Micrometer Stick was designed to supercede the Quarter-Point Stick, that was too fragile. The Micrometer Stick uses a body that is identical to that of the standard Rouse Job Stick, with the row of little rectangular holes along the rail into which teeth on the knee engage. The clamp is pretty much the same - the knee is what is different.

The knee, cast from pot-metal and consequently a little brittle, has a similar bar with two teeth that engage with the holes along the rail of the body. If you remember on the Job Stick, when you lift the clamp there is a little lever that, when turned 180 degrees, moves the bar with the teeth 6 points, thereby allowing the measure to be adjusted by agates as well as by full picas. The Job Stick has four teeth, while the Micrometer Stick uses a mechanism that has only two teeth. But instead of the lever as is on the Job Stick, the Micrometer Stick has a...well...a micrometer for adjusting the teeth.

The way it works is, you lift the clamp and then turn the little wheel on the knee which moves the two teeth by half-point intervals. The teeth appear to be able to move a full pica, so there appears to be a total of 24 possible adjustment points. I could be wrong on that, and it may actually allow more intervals than that.

But let me ask all you compositors out there: when is the last time that you needed to adjust the measure on your stick with this level of precision? Really! Is this necessary? It seems to me that this is the kind of technology that appeals to gearheads and equipment geeks, but has little practical value.

Anyway, this stick was apparently pretty popular, and I have several of them. This particular one is a stainless steel stick 9-3/4 inches long and 12 picas deep, with a capacity of 46 picas in line length. The stick is stamped with a number which is supposed to be matched with a number on the knee, but I don't find a number on the knee, so maybe Rouse just routinely stamped these numbers without matching them to a knee.

Postscript Feb. 10: Henry Morris tells me that one of the uses for the Micrometer Stick is when text has been machine set using the Monotype typecasting system, and you want to adjust the setting by hand. He says that the measure is often inexact, so you may have to adjust the measure in the stick by a very small increment to accommodate the line-length of the machine-set type when you begin making adjustments to the text. So that's one rationale for the need for this type of stick.

Millworker, by James Taylor

2008-02-03T08:09:00.001-05:00

I used to print ephemera a lot more than I do now. When the press was inside my home, it was just a lot easier to do little printing projects like small broadsides or folders. But with the press out in my unheated detached garage, it's more laborious to schlep type and stuff back and forth from the basement - where my composing room is located - to the garage. I'm also limited to printing during the warm months.

So anyway, I've always been partial to song lyrics by some of the more significant singer-songwriters, like Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon and James Taylor. I particularly like James Taylor's song Millworker, which he wrote for a Broadway show that closed after a couple of weeks. He recorded it on his album Flag in the late 1970s.

I decided to print the lyrics. Now, lots of people issue Christmas greetings, New Year's greetings, Valentine greetings - I wanted to break the mold a little bit, so I issued my printing of Millworker as a Labor Day greeting. After all, the song is about a woman spending her life working in a mill, so the song seemed appropriate to issue to commemorate Labor Day. If you click on the picture, I think that you will get another web page with an enlarged picture that is large enough to be read.

As usual, I printed it without permission. I printed it on a single sheet of Fabriano Ingres Light 12 by 8 inches, that I folded into fourths to 6 by 4 inches. I set the type in Kennerley, and I printed a total of 60 copies.

One of the things that I wanted to do was to create some symbolic image from typographic ornaments. So I put together a grouping of ornaments for the title page that was supposed to represent a spool of yarn like you would see in a mill where fabric was woven. Apparently it didn't convey what I intended, as a number of people told me what a nice Christmas tree I had made (!). Oh, well.

I issued the piece in St. Louis on Labor Day, 1980. Some years later, after I had moved to Louisville, I had occasion to attend a concert by James Taylor at the Louisville Gardens (what had formerly been called the Louisville Armory, and where I had attended a James Brown concert back in 1966 - but that's another story). My wife had an acquaintance who was friends with one of James Taylor's backup singers, and she agreed to be a go-between to try to get him to autograph a copy of the piece, even though I'd printed it without his permission. So I gave the woman two copies of the piece, one for me and one for Taylor, and she passed it along to the backup singer who successfully obtained James Taylor's autograph on it, as you can see in the picture.

Adana Composing Stick

2008-02-01T14:59:00.000-05:00

Here's the Adana version of the common screw stick. These sticks are very common in England, where they were made by the Adana Company, the primary manufacturer of small presses for hobby printers in England. The stick is a very simple mechanism, with a knee whose only unique feature is that it has the letter "A" incorporated into it, standing for Adana - the end of the stick is curved to conform to the shape of the knee. The clamp extends around the rail and under the bottom of the stick, with a screw of brass.

This particular stick is cast from what I believe is referred to as "pot metal" - I'm not sure if I'm correct on that. But it is very heavy and greyish in color. I have other Adana sticks that are made from steel or aluminum.

The Grand-Kids

2008-02-01T14:46:00.000-05:00

OK, so what kind of a grandfather am I if I don't post a few photos of my grandchildren? Shameful! So here they are - Samantha is the redhead, about 5-1/2 years old. Clara will turn 2 in March. We think they're pretty great - I guess all grandparents think so about their grandchildren. But ours are really special. Honest! Anyone will tell you.

The Coffee Room, by Stanley Elkin

2008-02-01T14:04:00.000-05:00

Here's the other book by Stanley Elkin that I printed. This was, to say the least, much more elaborate - the most elaborate book that I had ever printed up to that time.

After I moved to Louisville, I wrote to Elkin back in St. Louis and asked if he might have another text of some sort that he'd be willing to have me print, with the only payment to him being copies of the book. He responded by saying that the only thing that he could let me have under those terms would be a radio play that he had written several years earlier. The play was written for a series of radio plays on National Public Radio; he was not very happy with the edits that the producers of the NPR broadcast had made, so he specified that I should print his original text, which had been printed in a little magazine, Epoch.

The name of the play was The Coffee Room, and it was set in the faculty lounge of the English Department at Washington University, where Elkin taught. The play was a roman a clef, with the characters being based on actual faculty members of the Department.

I printed 95 copies of the book on Frankfurt Cream paper in a 9 by 6-1/4 inch size. The book, published in 1987, ran to 45 pages. I got Steve Skaggs, a calligrapher here in Louisville, to do the lettering for the title page and the titles for the opening pages of the Introduction and the text of the play itself.

I decided to go whole hog and commission some wood engravings to illustrate the book, so I contacted Michael McCurdy, who did three full-page illustrations and one tailpiece - I show all of them above. Now, I had never printed wood engravings before, so I was probably foolhardy to tackle doing so without any training or instruction. I made numerous mistakes, and it's pretty miraculous that the engravings turned out as well as they did. First off, I bought some ink from the Dan Smith Ink Co. on the west coast that was specifically made for printing wood engravings. I picked what I thought would be the easiest engraving for my first attempt. I had already printed the text pages on the sheet that the engraving would be printed upon. With not too much makeready, I got the engraving to print pretty well. Just one problem: the ink wouldn't dry. I didn't realize that the ink did not have any drier, which I was supposed to have added myself. So I had a hundred or so copies of this illustration that would never dry. I couldn't face re-setting the text for the two pages on the sheet and then printing the engraving a second time. So I went to an art store and bought a couple of cans of artists' spray fixative, which I sprayed over the engravings to basically encapsulate them and keep the ink from rubbing off. Twenty years later, the pictures still look OK, so I guess the fixative was a good solution.

Then I came to the first engraving in the book, the one with the large black door. I was doing makeready by cutting tissue and putting it under the block, rather than in the packing of the press (I printed this book on a Vandercook Universal I, which I owned when I first moved to Louisville). So I started cutting the tissues and pasting them to the key sheet. And I cut, and I cut, and I cut...twenty-six layers of tissue later, I finally got the furschluginer engraving to print right. When I mentioned to McCurdy what a terrible time I'd had getting the block to print, he said, "Oh, yeah, I think that block was low on one side." I'll say.

I asked Carol Blinn to do a paste-paper for the binding - I think that this was the first book of mine that she did binding paper for. She has subsequently done a number of covers for me. I had the book bound at the Campbell-Logan Bindery.

I sent sheets to Elkin to sign, and then sent them to McCurdy to sign, so both signatures are on the colophon page. I press-numbered 20 copies to give to the people contributing to the book - Elkin, McCurdy, Blinn, Greg Campbell, Steve Skaggs, and five copies for myself.

If you look at the picture of the colophon page, you will see a pressmark that I also had Michael McCurdy design for me. It's pretty nice, but I haven't used it in recent years for some reason.

I've been told that I was insane to print the wood engravings on the text paper - that the paper was far too rough and toothy for wood engravings. I should have used a smoother paper. Also, I've been told that I should have put the makeready in the packing rather than putting it under the blocks. I guess it's sort a miracle that the illustrations turned out as well as they did, given my lack of experience and the mistakes that I made.

Another strange thing that I did was to set the character names throughout the text separately from the speeches. This meant that I had to struggle to get the names to align with the text, dealing with differences in squeeze and all. Stupid, I guess. There must have been some reason for me to do it this way - I just don't remember what it was.

I'm just about ready to tackle wood engravings again - hopefully in the book that I will be printing this year; stay tuned.

W. Notting Ltd. British Composing Stick

2008-01-26T11:12:00.000-05:00

Here's another really sweet composing stick. This stick was manufactured by the W. Notting Ltd. company in London - it is stamped "Stephenson Blake Co. Ltd.", so it was obviously sold by Stephenson Blake. This stick is made of fairly thin, but strong, stainless steel. It is 9-1/2 inches long and 12 picas deep, with a capacity of 42 picas in line length.

At first glance, it seems like a common screw stick. But it is not. It is a sophisticated advancement over the common screw stick, although it does include a brass screw that tightens the knee against the rail. However, it has several other features that make it a very high quality, precision tool. First, it should be noted that the rail has a beaded portion at the conjunction of the rail and the body of the stick to increase its strength. The end-plate of the stick is iron which is riveted to the plate. The open edge of the body of the stick, instead of being simply the edge of the metal, actually is made up of a serrated edge which is folded over to the bottom side of the stick. The knee has a spring-loaded L-shaped piece of iron that wraps around the top edge of the stick, and has teeth that engage with the serrated edge of the stick. When adjusted to the desired measure, these teeth hold the knee firmly in place at the top edge of the stick, while the screw holds the knee firmly against the rail.

The addition of a graceful curving brace on the knee makes for a very, very firm locking mechanism to assure an accurate line measure, with clamps on the knee extending around to the bottom of the stick at both the rail and the top edge of the stick. To adjust the measure, you loosen the screw and then press down on the L-shaped piece at the top of the knee, thereby disengaging the teeth from the serrated edge of the stick. When the knee is at the desired measure, you remove the pressure on the L-shaped piece, and the spring presses against the piece, engaging the teeth in the serrated edge and locking the knee in place.

This is one choice stick.

Why I Live Where I Live, by Stanley Elkin

2008-01-26T09:27:00.001-05:00

Here's the first book - or more accurately called, pamphlet - that I printed that started selling for big money. I was flabbergasted when people started asking anywhere from $600 to $800 a copy for this slight piece. Of course, it had nothing to do with me or my press, but the price was based on the author's importance.

This book started out when I saw an essay in Esquire magazine by Stanley Elkin. Elkin was a very highly thought of novelist, short-story writer and essayist who taught at Washington University in St. Louis and lived just right around the corner from my home, which was near the Washington University campus. Since the essay focused on St. Louis, our neighborhood, and people in our community, I thought that it would be an ideal essay to reprint as a little pamphlet from the Contre Coup Press.

I had never met Elkin - indeed, I never did meet him, despite printing this book and another book that he had written. But I knew some people who had been in his classes, and he had quite a reputation - quite a reputation, indeed! One woman who took a class with him told me that he had given the class an assignment, and when they turned them in at the beginning of the next class meeting, Elkin stacked the writings on the desk in front of him, picked up the top item and started reading it silently. After a few moments, he exclaimed, "Oh my God! What a bunch of shit!" He then took the entire stack of papers, lit them on fire with his cigarette lighter and tossed them into the waste paper basket to burn.

Needless to say, I was intimidated at the thought of approaching him. So I decided to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and write him a letter that was filled with chutzpah, thinking that this might appeal to him. Regretably, I didn't keep a copy of the letter, but it was along the lines of how he actually owed it to me to let me print the essay, which was ridiculous, of course, but I hoped that it would appeal to his well-developed sense of the ridiculous. Apparently it worked, because he did grant me permission to reprint it. I had promised him that I had no interest in making money off of his writing, and that I planned on giving away all of the copies, which was entirely true.

So I printed the pamphlet in an edition of 30 copies. I bound 25 of the copies in grey wrappers, and another five copies in brown wrappers, which were the copies that I gave to Elkin. For some reason, the picture here looks very much like one of the brown copies, but it's actually one of the grey copies. The presswork was really so-so on the book. I printed it on my old Chandler and Price 8 by 12 platen press, and I hadn't yet perfected doing make-ready, so the pages are pretty uneven. The pamphlet was 9 by 6 inches, with 8 pages, printed on a German Ingres paper with wrapper of Fabriano Ingres heavy. The text was set in the Van Dijck typeface.

So anyway, I sent off the five copies to Elkin, who seemed pleased with the thing, and gave away a number of the copies that I kept - I think I ended up with about nine or ten copies left over that sat around for awhile. Then one day the telephone rang, and it was Peter Howard, owner of Serendipity Books in Oakland, California. He was on a buying trip, and had stopped in St. Louis to go to some bookstores as well as to visit with Stanley Elkin. He was quickly taken with my little pamphlet, and immediately bought some copies from Elkin. He was calling me because he wanted to buy some more from me.

Well, I told him that I couldn't sell them, because I had promised Elkin that I would not do so. He asked me if I would sell him some copies if he could get Elkin to grant me permission to do so. I said that was fine. The next day he called me, not in a particularly happy mood. He sourly told me that he had gotten Elkin to agree to letting me sell some copies, but Elkin had given permission on the condition that Howard pay me what he had paid Elkin for his copies, which was $100 each. I was floored, of course. So I agreed, and he came and bought six or seven copies, as I recall. He twisted my arm to sign the copies, which I am loathe to do because my handwriting is completely illegible, and I think that my signature on a book is more of a defect than an extra feature. But I did sign them as he requested. He immediately went back to Oakland and started offering them for $600. I found the whole thing pretty amusing. But Howard was smart. He knew that avid author collectors want everything that an author has published, and this little pamphlet was the most limited item in Elkin's canon. I think that he sold them out pretty quickly.

So that little item put me in a bit of a different class in the private press community. Today some of my books sell for pretty stiff prices on the internet - or I should say, people are asking some pretty stiff prices. I don't know if anyone is actually paying those stiff prices or not.

A few years later I asked Elkin if he had something else for me to print, and I ended up doing an edition of his radio play, The Coffee Room. But that's another story, and another post.

Star Composing Stick

2008-01-21T09:24:00.004-05:00

Here's another goodie - the famous "Star" stick. The Star was another variation that was fixated on keeping the knee perfectly parallel to the end-plate of the stick. This ingenious knee used a simple clamping mechanism that tightened the knee against the stick, and also locked teeth into grooves cut along the bottom of the stick, thereby firmly locking the knee not only to the correct measure, but holding it firmly across the entire depth of the knee, keeping it from getting sprung. The teeth were spaced an agate apart (ie., 6 points), so the stick could only be adjusted to full- and half-pica measures.

According to Speckter, one of the problems with this design was that the knees tended to get broken due to compositors tightening them too much. As a result, he says that the company enjoyed a thriving business in selling replacement knees. This particular example is quite a nice one. It is 12-1/4 inches long and 12 picas deep. It retains nearly all of the original chrome, or nickel plating, which was added to better quality sticks before the advent of stainless steel. The patent dates are 1904 and 1905, although the stick was made for quite a number of years. This one is stamped "The Star Tool Mfg. Co.", but I also have examples stamped "Eagle Mfg. Co." - I do not know if this was a different company entirely or simply a successor company to the Star company. Maybe someone out there knows the answer to this, and could email me the information at hawleybk@insightbb.com

Thanks to Paul Young for the pictures of the ATF advertising folder regarding the Star stick.

Joni Mitchell - Between the Forceps and the Stone

2008-01-21T08:49:00.000-05:00

True confessions time: I'm a pirate. The Contre Coup Press never asks permission to print copyrighted materials. I flaunt copyright like most people flaunt the speed limit. I rationalize it by telling myself that 1) the copyright holders would never give me permission, 2) my edition size is so small as to be invisible anyway, and 3) I sell the books for less than my out-of-pocket expenses for paper, type, ink, binding, etc, so I'm obviously not stealing for profit. So I know that's a lame rationalization, but it's the best that this criminal can come up with at the moment.

Here is an example of a book that I printed without obtaining permission. I have loved the music and lyrics of Joni Mitchell since she first came on the scene many years ago. I printed a pamphlet of her song lyrics early on in the history of the Contre Coup Press, but it was one of the most unattractive books I ever did. So I wanted to do a nicer book of Joni Mitchell lyrics.

At the same time, my 17-year old son, Noel, had developed an interest in photography. So I decided that it would be fun to do a book of Mitchell's lyrics, and illustrate them with original photographs by my son. There is a wonderful old cemetery here in Louisville named Cave Hill Cemetery that has a large collection of beautiful monuments and headstones. So Noel and I went around the cemetery and located monuments that we thought would be representative in some way of the lyrics of the songs that I had chosen. Noel took the photographs, developed the film in his darkroom and hand printed ten copies of each photograph, which I tipped into the books.

I entitled the book Between the Forceps and the Stone, which is a line from one of Joni Mitchell's songs that reflects a person's life from birth to death - and, of course, also referenced the "stones" that we had photographed. The book was set in Monotype Cochin that I had purchased from Kay Kramer some years earlier. I printed the book on Nideggen paper, with a trim size of 9-1/4 by 6-1/4 inches, with a total of 50 pages. The book was printed in an edition of only 10 copies, and was bound by the Campbell-Logan Bindery with an interesting decorated paper for the sides. I was fortunate enough to get Jerry Kelly to do the lettering for the title page, which he did in return for credit against purchases from Timothy Hawley Books.

One of the truly aggravating mistakes that I made in this book was mis-spelling a word in one of the lyrics. My favorite of all of Joni Mitchell's songs is Shades of Scarlett Conquering. This song is about a woman who is likened to Scarlett O'Hara from Gone With the Wind. But for some inexplicable reason, I spelled her name "Scarlet" throughout the lyric, as well as in the title! Yikes! And not only that, I had also mis-spelled the name in the pamphlet that I had printed years before! Double yikes!!

I press-numbered four copies of the book - two for myself, one for my son Noel, the photographer, and one for Joni Mitchell, that being No. 1. However, I found myself in a quandary about how to actually get the copy of the book to her. I couldn't trust just sending it to her record company, because I was afraid that someone would just swipe it. I've been stumped, and the book still sits here waiting for me to find a reliable way to get it to her. Anybody out there know Joni Mitchell well enough to tell her that I have a book that I want to give to her?

Bacher Aluminum Composing Stick

2008-01-19T07:21:00.000-05:00

In contrast to the cheap aluminum stick described yesterday, here is a very nice, well-made stick that also has an aluminum body - but there the comparison ends. This stick was manufactured by the Bacher company, which I believe is a German company. The stick is 10-1/4 inches long and 12 picas deep. It opens to a line measure of 48 picas, which is stamped into the stick. The end-plate of the stick is steel, and is riveted to the stick body. The aluminum body is much thicker and stronger than the body of the cheap stick in yesterday's post.

The knee bears some resemblance to the Buckeye knee, with a clamp that screws against the knee with a lever. However, unlike the Buckeye, the clamp goes around the rail and under the body of the stick.

This stick has a really nice feel to it. This particular one has some ownership markings on the bottom of the body: "G DUNN JT/IT". I assume that G Dunn is the name of the compositor, and JT/IT may be the name of the company where he worked - that's all speculation, of course.

Cheesy Aluminum Composing Stick

2008-01-17T18:28:00.000-05:00

Here is possibly the cheapest, cheesiest stick that is in my collection. This thing is an abject piece of crap! Awful! It's made out of thin aluminum, with the end-piece riveted to the body. The knee is a simple bent piece of aluminum, with a clamp that is just a bent piece of steel with a thumbscrew. There is no identification of manufacturer, as if anyone would admit to it. It's nine inches long and ten picas deep. It opens to about 38 picas.

Cheap and poorly made as it is, it probably does the job OK. But I sure wouldn't want to set up a form that has to be put into a large chase and fit nicely, because I would be afraid that the squeeze exerted when I justified the lines of type would bend the damn stick and make the measure irregular. I'd want to be very careful to not justify the lines too tightly.

Anybody who knows who is responsible for this disgraceful piece of junk can email me at hawleybk@insightbb.com

Picture

2008-01-17T18:26:00.000-05:00

Countless thousands of rabid fans of Timothy Hawley Books and the Contre Coup Press have requested a picture of the proprietor. So herewith is a picture of me. The picture is a few years old, and I'm somewhat better looking now.

Henry Waller Travel Journal - A Contre Coup Book

2008-01-15T14:41:00.001-05:00

Here's a book that I feel pretty good about, despite its flaws in terms of presswork. One of the challenges facing a printer who prints teensy-weensy little editions like I do is finding quality manuscripts to print. Most authors aren't too keen on seeing all their hard work result in a book that only 20 or so people will ever be able to read. So one solution to that little problem is to print something written by someone who's dead!

The Filson Historical Society here in Louisville, formerly known as The Filson Club, has an amazing manuscript collection. Some years ago I introduced myself to the curator of Manuscripts, Jim Holmberg, and asked him if I could search around for a manuscript that was previously unpublished that I could print. He agreed, and I started looking. With amazing luck, I stumbled upon a travel journal that none of the library staff was even familiar with. It had been written by a young man named Henry Waller, who was a West Point graduate, an attorney, and would soon become a prominent citizen of first Maysville, Kentucky and then Chicago, Illinois.

The journal in question was written during a trip that he took from Frankfort, Kentucky in 1835 down through south-central Kentucky, into Tennessee, and on down the Natchez Trace through Mississippi - unfortunately, the journal broke off while the travellers were still in Tennessee. What was remarkable was the quality of writing in the journal. Most similar manuscripts are quite uninteresting. Waller described the people and places in a very colorful style, and the journal is very enjoyable reading. I did a great deal of research on Waller, his family, and the people he met along the way, the places he visited, etc. This included a visit to the still young and active Shaker Colony at Pleasant Hill, a tour of Mammoth Cave before it became a commercial concern, a visit to the Tennessee state legislature while it was in session, and stops at many famous and less-than-famous inns and taverns. I wrote an introduction, and also included at the end a tally of the expenses that had been written in the same volume with the journal.

The book itself is 10-1/2 by 6-1/2 inches with 48 pages, printed on Mohawk Superfine paper. The book was bound by my usual binder, the Campbell-Logan Bindery in Minneapolis in a very nice period-style marbled-paper with a cloth spine. I set the type in Lutetia type that I purchased from Harold Berliner. Therein lies a story. The type was cast from European matrices, but on American Monotype machines. For reasons known only to him, Berliner cast the 14 point Didot size type on a 14 point American body. Of course, Didot is larger than American, so the result was that all of the descenders kerned off the bottom edge of the body of the type. Well, I've had problems with kerns breaking off when I used too much impression, so I decided to use a light impression to avoid this problem. But in so doing, I ended up over-inking to compensate for the light impression. This was particularly problemmatic for the 10 point size that I used for footnotes and shoulder notes - the counters on the 10 point type were very, very shallow, and they tended to fill up with ink and make a big blotch on the page. I was pretty unhappy, particularly because it probably would have been safe to use a heavier impression, but I was too timid.

Anyway, I printed 100 copies during 1997, which of course is a very large edition for me. Consequently I had copies of this around for a long time, and I ended up giving quite a few of them away just to get rid of them. I do have to say that I think that this is a pretty good book in terms of content, even if the presswork was a disappointment.

P.S. I've been contacted about purchasing copies of this book. Unfortunately, I have no more copies for sale. However, copies can be obtained in the second-hand market through Abebooks.com and I would encourage people to go to that website if they want a copy.

If you want additional information, I can be reached at hawleybk@insightbb.com

Brass Composing Stick

2008-01-15T05:11:00.000-05:00

This is the only brass composing stick in my collection. The body of the stick is brass, the knee is brass - the screw clamping the knee is steel, although the nut is brass. The stick is 11-3/4 inches long and 10 picas deep. There is no identifying information on the stick as to manufacturer. It is a very basic Common Screw Stick in design, with holes spaced along the rail and a knee with a slot that allows fine adjustments. It is interesting to note that the knee on this stick is not braced with any sort of cross-bar to prevent the knee from becoming sprung, and as a result, this knee is slightly sprung - that is, the face of the knee is not perfectly parallel to the head of the stick. This usually results from years of tight spacing of lines that gradually bends the knee slightly out of parallel. The Albion stick was the first to have a brace to prevent this from happening- I will show an Albion stick in a future post.

Remember that you can click on the picture to get a larger image. Also please remember that I am eager to get additional information on any of the sticks that I describe. You can leave a comment here on the blog or email me at hawleybk@insightbb.com

Thank you.

Hoe Yankee Stick

2008-01-12T06:45:00.001-05:00

Here is a real classic stick from the 19th Century - the Yankee stick, manufactured by the R. Hoe & Co. of New York City. This stick was the originator of the type of stick that would lie flat on a table because the clamp on the knee did not extend below the bottom surface of the bed of the stick body.

This particular stick is large, being sixteen inches in length and having a depth of 14 picas. The stick can accomodate a line measure of 82 picas or so.

As you can see, the rail is fluted, so that a corresponding slot on the clamp holds the knee firmly in place without the clamp needing to wrap around the bottom of the rail. According to Speckter, this stick was introduced about 1870 - this particular stick has a patent date of February 8, 1878 stamped on it.

This stick is beautifully manufactured, with a brass clamp and thumbscrew, and a knee with an indentation cast into it where the screw fits. It has a great feel in the hand.

Ellen

2008-01-12T06:29:00.001-05:00

Long-time recipients of Timothy Hawley Books catalogues are familiar with hearing about Ellen. Here's a picture of the great, glorious and long-suffering Ellen, for those who might be curious.

Also a picture of our dog, Lucy.

Sibs: A Contre Coup Press Book

2008-01-06T12:17:00.001-05:00

Here's the second-smallest edition printed to date by the Contre Coup Press (the smallest edition was a book produced in an edition of zero copies! That is, it was produced in an edition of ten copies, all copies being bound and then destroyed as an exercise in non-attachment.).

This book is entitled Sibs. It was printed in 1994 in an edition of just one copy. The book is 10 by 7 inches, with 28 pages. It was printed on Basingwerk Parchment paper, another wonderful paper that is no longer being made - Basingwerk was a beautiful, very smooth paper made from esparto grass, and I printed a couple of books on it. Amazingly enough, I had this single copy of the book bound by Fritz Eberhard, the renowned bookbinder, calligrapher and book artist. Actually, I had several books that I had him bind for re-sale, and so I tossed this one in just for fun. It is bound in silk sloth with leather labels on the spine and the front cover.

The book came about when someone (I don't remember who) took a roll of photographs of my two sons horsing around in our back yard. When I got the pictures developed, it struck me that I could arrange the pictures to tell a little story of sorts - so I did so, and wrote a humorous narrative to accompany the photographs, tipping the original photographs into the book.

By the way, although it doesn't say so anywhere on this site, if you place the cursor over any of the photographs and left click the mouse, you will get a much larger version of the photograph. So if you'd like to get a closer look at anything, just click on it.

It's funny to look at these pictures. My older son, Jordan, was about 15 years old, and my younger son, Noel, was 12. Jordan is now in his early thirties, and runs the comedy club in Lexington, Kentucky, Comedy Off Broadway. He has two daughters, Samantha and Clara. Noel works in a residential program for people with intellectual and other developmental disabilities. He also is a musician, having toured the U.S., Europe and Japan with a singer/songwriter named Tara Jane O'Neill. He is also working on a baccalaureate degree in nursing. Kids do grow up, don't they.

The Buckeye

2008-01-06T06:40:00.000-05:00

Here's a stick that people really like - the Buckeye. The Buckeye, so-named because it was first introduced by the Chandler and Price Company in Cleveland in the good old Buckeye state - Ohio - is a very simple but elegant stick. This particular stick is a fairly large one, being 11-3/4 inches long with a depth of 15 picas. Buckeyes were made in many sizes, including very small ones with a very shallow depth of as little as six picas. While a number of other companies made the Buckeye, this one is an "authentic" Buckeye from the Chandler and Price Company.

The mechanism of the Buckeye is very simple, but effective. The knee slides freely, and has a removable clamp that is tightened with a simple lever that turns a screw, the end of which presses against the knee and holds it tight against the U-shaped part of the clamp that extends across and around the top side of the rail.

The manufacturers were aware that there was one potential flaw in this design. What if, for reasons of wear or metal fatigue or even variation in manufacture, the screw did not fully tighten before the lever hit the bed of the stick and could not be turned further? To ameliorate this problem, a tapped hole was drilled in the knee where the screw would press, and a set-screw was inserted so that an adjustment could be made to assure that the clamp could be tightened.

According to Speckter, the Buckeye was developed to compete with the stick manufactured by the Hoe company that used a fluted rail so that the clamp on the knee did not have to extend around the rail and below the bottom of the stick (I will show one of these sticks in a future posting). This meant that the stick could lay flat on a galley or on the bank, or could even be put directly into a press and a proof pulled without dumping the type from the stick (although this is a practice rightly frowned upon). The Buckeye also could lay flat because the clamp did not extend below the bottom of the rail.

Rouse Quarter Point Stick

2008-01-01T12:08:00.000-05:00

Here is a stick that has always been a puzzle to me. It's the Rouse Quarter Point Stick. The body of the Quarter Point Stick is identical to that of the Rouse Job Stick, with the same row of small rectangular holes along the rail. Some of the Quarter Point Sticks have the name "Quarter-Point Stick" stamped on the body - this particular stick is marked identically to the Job Sticks, but the number stamped on the body is identical to the number stamped on the knee, so I am assuming that Rouse used the bodies somewhat interchangeably.

The puzzle is this: why would anyone need to adjust the line length by a quarter of a point??? It's hard to understand how anyone could even perceive the difference of a quarter point, or a full point, for that matter. There is always a market for things like super-performing hi-fidelity equipment for the music connoisseur, or the souped-up engine for car-daddies - but adjusting a line length by one-quarter of a point? Come on!

Anyway, this particular stick is 10-3/4 inches long, with a depth of 12 picas.

The way the adjustment on the knee works is pretty straightforward. The clamp is lifted to allow the adjustment mechanism to work freely. Then the little hand on the protractor is moved to the quarter-point setting along the curved gauge, which is numbered from one to twelve - the measure can therefore be adjusted by quarter-points for a total distance of twelve points. As the lever is moved, it moves the piece of metal with the rectangular posts on the bottom of the knee which engage with the holes along the rail on the body of the stick.

This model of stick was superceded by the Micrometer stick, which I will describe in a future post. Few of these sticks have survived, possibly because few were sold in the first place, and also because the mechanism was fragile and many were broken. Speckter says that these sticks were popular "because of the convenience they afforded in the setting of runarounds, variable book headings, odd point initials, box heads for columnar matter and other uses requiring bastard measures." But if one is looking for an infinite amount of fine adjustment capability, a Basic Screw Stick would seem to fit the bill admirably. Well, as I say, I'm puzzled. But perhaps the professional compositor of bygone days found a use for such fine adjustments.

Common Screw Stick

2007-12-31T15:01:00.001-05:00

Here's another very common model of stick from the 19th Century, although these sticks have many minor variations. This is called a Common Screw Stick, and consists of a body with several holes evenly spaced along the rail, a simple knee, and a screw and nut that attach the knee to the stick.

This particular stick was made by the Chandler and Price Company of Cleveland. It is 6 inches long, with a depth of 13 picas. It has one of the common variations - the part of the knee that runs parallel to the rail has a long slot rather than a series of holes. The brass nut into which the screw fits is machined to allow a portion of the nut to fit down into the slot, which allows the screw to be tightened very securely. The knee can slide the length of the stick to adjust to any chosen line measure. The screw can either be tightened with a screwdriver, or it can be turned by hand by grasping the fluted surface of the screw with the thumb and forefinger and turning.

Although very simple, this model of stick is quite practical and versatile. It can open to about 24 picas in length, yet is small enough to fit into the compositor's pocket. This is the kind of stick that many "tramp printers" would have owned and carried with them on their travels.

The First Contre Coup Press Hardbound Book - 1984

2007-12-31T09:36:00.000-05:00

I thought that I'd do some postings showing the work of the Contre Coup Press from its beginning, at least as far as the hardbound books are concerned. So here's the first hardbound book produced at the Contre Coup Press. It is entitled Mrs. Ira Gale Tompkins' Journal and Record of Events Dec., 1874 - April, 1877. The book was printed when I lived in the section of St. Louis called University City - my house was just about two blocks outside the St. Louis city limit, and was near Washington University where I had attended graduate school.

I debated the title of the book. It was my great-grandmother's journal, and her name was Demaris Ide Tompkins. It seemed as though I should have used her name instead of calling it "Mrs. Tompkins'" journal. However, the actual journal had a hand-lettered title page that she had created, so I decided that it would be most faithful to the original to use the title that she had chosen, even though it wasn't politically correct. C'est la vie.

The book was printed using my first press, a Chandler and Price 8 by 12 platen press. I had removed the motor and belt and had obtained a treadle. I didn't get the treadle because I wanted to be more authentic or anything; I got the treadle because I didn't like racing with the motor. I could kick the treadle at a very slow speed, which is what I wanted to do because I liked going slow and also because I usually interleaved the printed sheets, having suffered some unfortunate offsetting problems previously.

I set the text in the Van Dijck typeface, which is still one of my very favorites. I think that I obtained the type from Harold Berliner, although it's possible that I got it from MacKenzie and Harris - I really don't remember.

The book is 7 inches tall by 5 inches wide, and has 56 pages. Included is a brief notation by my grandmother, and an afterword by my mother, describing a little bit about the lives of the people mentioned in the journal.

The original of the journal had quite a few photographs pasted into it. My great-grandfather, Ira Gale Tompkins, was a photographer in the 1860s and 1870s, so many of the photographs were taken by him. He was never able to make a go of photography, having been minimally successful with a studio in Grand Rapids, Michigan before moving to western Wisconsin. He had hoped that he would be able to market photographs of local sites and homes with little competition from other photographers, but the pioneers were too focused on putting food on the table to be spending money on photographs, so he had to try to make a living as a farmer, a profession for which he was ill suited. He finally gave up and moved to Chicago, where he lived the rest of his life.

My friend, Kay Michael Kramer, proprietor of The Printery, suggested that I have some of the photographs reproduced by the Hope Press in St. Louis, and they did a very nice job, using an ink that gave the photographs a sepia-tone look. The pictures that I've shown here are of Ira Gale Tompkins, Demaris Ide Tompkins, and Mabel (Birdy) Tompkins, my grandmother. Demaris Tompkins started the journal for the benefit of my grandmother, because she wanted to pass along a record of her childhood and some family history. My grandmother, in turn, did a great amount of journaling herself, filling at least three large volumes with as-yet unpublished writings.

I had the marbled paper for the binding made by Jim Reed, another St. Louisan who was heavily involved in marbling. A young man in St. Louis who was interested in bookbinding bound the book, but regrettably I can't remember his name. He wanted to make the binding have a period look, so he waxed and polished the marbled paper.

I printed the book in an edition of 100 copies, using Ragston paper, which was a really nice letterpress paper that is no longer being made. At the time, I didn't have any extra money to put into the production of a book, so I asked members of my family to front me $100 each in return for five copies each of the finished book. My brothers and parents kindly did so, which allowed me to complete the book.

My great-grandmother was a good writer, and the journal is very well-written, particularly in comparison with the typical journals and diaries of the time. Often they were little more than a recitation of the weather and the activities of the day. Ira Gale Tompkins also did some journaling, but his journal is quite uninteresting. Demaris Tompkins poured her heart out in her journal, and it is a wonderful view into the life of the time.

However, while she was a good writer, she was not a particularly good speller. So just for fun, I printed up a little sheet that I called "Non-Errata", being a take-off on errata sheets that printers sometimes add to point out typographical errors in a book. My Non-Errata sheet pointed out mis-spellings that were not typographical errors, but were mis-spellings in the original.

This book was actually reviewed (positively) in Fine Print and The Devil's Artisan.

Golding Adjustable News Stick

2007-12-30T04:15:00.000-05:00

Here is one of my very favorite sticks in my collection. This is a Golding and Company adjustable Newspaper Stick. The stick is similar to regular fixed measure News Sticks - it is five inches long and is quite deep, 15 picas. However, the stick is adjustable from a 12-pica to a 15-pica measure, so a compositor could take this stick to various newspaper shops and be able to adjust the measure to whatever column-width the newspaper used. The adjustments are accomplished by loosening a screw that is in a slot on the rail and another in a slot on the body. The screw on the body is necessary because the knee does not have the long brace that most knees have that are parallel to the rail and keep the knee rigid and the measure equal along the entire depth of the stick. The second screw on the body holds the knee in place.

This type of knee, with the adjustments requiring the use of a screwdriver to loosen and tighten the screws, is the most basic form of an adjustable stick - in this case, the screw fits directly into the knee, rather than fitting into a nut of some sort that is separate from the knee itself.

This stick has a wonderful feel to it - it's a joy just holding this one in your hand, being relatively hefty for its size and with a beautiful balance. It likely dates to the mid- to late-19th Century.

Fixed Measure Newspaper Stick

2007-12-29T08:36:00.000-05:00

Here's the most basic stick - the fixed measure newspaper composing stick. These sticks were extremely common before the invention of the Linotype machine, and were used in newspaper offices across the U.S. to set type in the standard column-width of thirteen or fourteen picas.

The stick pictured here is a typical 13-pica stick, with an overall length of 5 inches and a depth of 14 picas, which allowed the compositor to set more lines of type before dumping the stick - typical sticks of today have a depth of twelve picas. There is no manufacturer identification stamped on the stick, which is also typical - these sticks were made by many companies, and pretty indistinguishable from each other. This type of stick was used extensively during the 19th Century, but phased out fairly quickly when newspapers started using linecasting machines in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. A few sticks may have been used for setting of headlines, but most were probably scrapped. I have several like this one, and also a wonderful adjustable newspaper stick that I will show in a future posting.

As usual, if you can provide additional information on this model of stick, please email the information to hawleybk@insightbb.com

Improved Standard Job Stick

2007-12-28T14:43:00.000-05:00

As mentioned in a previous posting, here is a description of the so-called "Improved" Standard Job Stick. This model was made primarily by the H.B. Rouse Company of Chicago, but was also made by Golding and Company of Boston. They are sometimes stamped with the manufacturer's name, but are sometimes not stamped. I will note the way to tell them apart later. This particular stick is a Rouse stick, 7-3/4 inches long. I have no information as to when this type of stick was introduced. If anyone has additional historical information, I'd be happy to hear it at hawleybk@insightbb.com

Anyway, the Improved Standard Job Stick is very similar to the Standard Job Stick, with one major difference. Instead of having a row of tiny rectangular holes along the rail into which pegs in the knee fit, the Improved Stick has a row of small round holes along the rail. The clamp, which is not attached to the knee but is a separate piece, has a small round pin that fits through the hole in the rail and then into one of several holes in the knee - the clamp is then closed to hold the knee firmly in place. The knee has several holes into which the pin can be placed. Depending on which hole is used, the measure can be set to a full picas, half-picas, or smaller increments - apparently two additional increments are possible.

While the adjustment system works well and adjustments can be made fairly easily, the flaw in the system is that the pin on the clamp tends to be quite fragile, and the pins become loose or even detached - one of my Improved sticks has been welded, apparently due to the pin having broken loose from the clamp, thus requiring a repair.

Now, as to discriminating between the Rouse and Golding sticks, if you look at the last photograph, you will see the clamp from a Rouse stick on the left and the clamp from a Golding stick on the right. The bottom edge of the clamp on the Rouse stick is straight, while the bottom edge of the clamp on the Golding stick has a curved section.

One would be hard-pressed to explain how this stick is an "improvement" over the Standard Job Stick. The only advantage that I see to this stick is that there are a couple of additional fine adjustments that can be made to the line length, and perhaps it is easier to make line-length adjustments by taking off the clamp and placing the pin in a different hole in the knee than it is to turn that tiny lever on the knee of the Standard Job Stick (which is often pretty difficult, as the levers tend to get frozen). But I confess that I always set my line length to a full pica measure, so it doesn't do me any good to have the ability to make the finer adjustments.

Speckter notes that the Improved stick is commonly used on the West Coast of America, while the Standard Job Stick is used more commonly elsewhere in the U.S. He speculates that this is purely because the Improved stick had some wider acceptance on the West Coast, and since printers are notoriously resistant to change, people have continued to use them. It's much like computer software, I think. You learn how to use a particular word processing software, or spreadsheet software, and you then insist that it is the best, because you don't want to have to learn a different software. I still use the option in Microsoft Excel, for instance, that allows you to use the keystroke commands from Lotus 1-2-3, which I learned about thirty years ago. Let's face it - humans fear change! Don't make me learn something new when what I've been doing so far works just fine!

Update: Steve Saxe kindly sent me updated information regarding this stick. In fact, the Rouse Improved Standard Job Stick was copied from the Golding Standard Job Stick, which was designed by Henry L. Bullen in 1886. Steve sent along a scan of the Jan. 1886 issue of "Bulletin of Novelties", a trade publication of the Golding Co., and I am adding the scan to this post. Note that the original Golding stick had a knee that was not braced. All of my Rouse Improved sticks have braced knees, while the two Goldings that I own have knees that are not braced.

An Older Contre Coup Press Book Still Available

2007-12-27T18:08:00.001-05:00

I turned up a few copies of a book that I did several years ago. The book is entitled My Watch, and is an amusing little story written by Mark Twain, printed at the Contre Coup Press in 1999. The pamphlet is 6-1/2 by 5-1/4 inches and has 7 pages. It is bound in wrappers, and was printed in an edition of 50 copies (actually, I didn't bind that many - probably more like 40). Anyway, here are a few pictures of the book, which is available for $20.00 postpaid from Timothy Hawley Books, P.O. Box 5277, Louisville, KY 40255-0277.

Rouse Standard Job Stick

2007-12-27T16:11:00.001-05:00

Some of you probably know that I have a keen interest in letterpress composing sticks. I'm going to post information on some of the sticks in my collection, giving the information that I have on the stick and hoping that anyone who has additional information will email me with it at hawleybk@insightbb.com There is very little information in the literature about the history of composing sticks and the companies that manufactured them. Probably the best book is Disquisition on the Composing Stick, by Martin K. Speckter, published by the Typophiles of New York in 1971 as their Chap Book No. 49. It gives a good broad overview of the history of composing sticks, but was not intended to present a lot of detailed information, much of which may be lost to history at this point. I have over 120 sticks, although many of these are simply different lengths of the same model - I have upwards of 60 different models and designs by various manufacturers.

So anyway, I'll start with the good old Rouse Standard Job Stick. The stick pictured is the one that I generally use when I'm setting type. This happens to be a twelve-inch stick (actually 11-3/4 inches in total length). It has gradations along the top edge of the bed to 58 picas, but in a pinch, you can actually set it to several more. This particular stick is made of stainless steel, but this model also comes in regular steel. You probably can't see it in the pictures, but there is a number stamped on the knee, under the clamp, and also a number stamped on the bed at the far end near the rail. It is very important that these numbers match. When fabricating these sticks, the little posts in the knee that fit into the rectangular holes along the rail are on a separate piece of metal, and are adjusted carefully so that when clamped the measure is set in exact picas. Different knees will have these posts in a slightly different position, so the measure will not be exact if a knee from one stick is used on a different body.

The picture of the knee shows the small lever under the clamp that can be rotated 180 degrees - this moves the piece of metal holding the tiny rectangular posts exactly one-half pica distance along the rail, which allows the stick to be set to half-picas instead of full picas. The H.B. Rouse Company of Chicago also made sticks that had finer adjustments, and I will show some of these sticks in another posting.

This model of stick is the most popular stick ever made in America (at least, the most popular of the modern era), and is the stick most commonly used by letterpress printers today. The so-called "Improved" stick is frequently used by printers on the U.S.A West Coast, however (I will show one of these sticks in a future posting as well). I do not know when the H.B. Rouse Company began manufacturing these sticks, and perhaps someone out there can give me a date.

New Book by Robert Schumann

2007-12-15T06:21:00.000-05:00

Here is the latest from the Contre Coup Press. The book is entitled Musical Rules At Home and In Life. It was written by Robert Schumann to accompany his collection of short piano compositions entitled Album for the Young. The book is 12-1/2 inches tall by 7-3/4 inches wide and consists of fourteen leaves printed on rectos only. The book is beautifully bound in cloth-covered boards in a Japanese-style binding, the binding being carried out by the Campbell-Logan Bindery. A total of 32 copies were printed, and as of the present time, there are still a few copies available for $40.00 plus $5.00 for shipping.

Our previous book, Eleven Voices, is now out-of-print.

New Contre Coup Press Book - Eleven Voices

2007-10-03T08:16:00.002-04:00

We've just finished up the latest book from the Contre Coup Press. It's entitled Eleven Voices, by the author Theophile Homard. The book is a collection of poems with dark, disturbing content. The book is 12-1/2 inches tall by 6-3/4 inches wide and has 21 pages. The book is bound in wrappers in a Japanese-style binding. A total of 18 copies were printed, all numbered and initialled by the author. The book sells for $20 per copy, plus shipping. Here are a few photos of the book (unfortunately not very good, as we aren't very adept at photographing books, and the tight binding makes this one particularly difficult to photograph.

P.S. This book is now out of print.

Contre Coup Press Bibliography

2007-09-17T19:23:00.004-04:00

Here's a bibliography of the Contre Coup Press, for those who might be interested. A Bibliography of The Contre Coup Press The Contre Coup Press was founded in 1980 by Timothy Hawley in St. Louis, Missouri. The press was originally named The Cerberus Press, an imprint that was used for the first few items printed. However, when the proprietor discovered that a Cerberus Head Press already existed, the name was changed to Contre Coup. Height precedes width in descriptions of the dimensions of the printed pages in the following descriptions. Reference to “PPB” refers to the listing of the item in the Private Libraries Association’s annual bibliography, Private Press Books. ----- The first items were printed using a Chandler and Price 8 by 12 New Series platen press. ----- 1) Anonymous (Theophile Homard), Broughton’s Rules, Being the Text of 1743 with an Introduction, St. Louis, The Cerberus Press, 1980. 7 by 4-1/2 inches, 12 pp. Set in Deepdene and printed in black and red on Warren’s Olde Style Wove paper with wrapper of Fabriano Ingres Heavy. 58 copies. PPB85-6.66. ----- 2) Curry, Tim, I Do The Rock, St. Louis, The Cerberus Press, 1980. 3-1/2 by 3-1/2 inches, 15 pp. Set in Kennerley and printed in black and red on Warren’s Olde Style Wove paper with wrapper of Fabriano Ingres Heavy. The lyrics to a song. 43 copies. PPB85-6.65. ----- 3) Anonymous (Theophile Homard), Pardon Me, Roy, and Other Amazing Puns, St. Louis, The Cerberus Press, 1980. 6 by 6-1/4 inches, 29 pp. Set in Deepdene with display in Engravers Shaded and printed in black and red on Warren’s Olde Style Wove paper, sewn into Fabriano Ingres Heavy and enclosed in a wrapper of Canson Mi Tientes paper. 83 copies. PPB80.51. ----- 4) Taylor, James, Millworker, St. Louis, The Cerberus Press, 1980. Single sheet of Dresden Ingres folded into fourths to 6 by 4 inches. Set in Kennerley and printed in black and red. The lyrics to a song, printed as a Labor Day greeting card. 59 copies. ----- 5) Anonymous (Theophile Homard), A Brief Treatise on the History and Technique of the Bagel, St. Louis, The Cerberus Press, 1981. 8 by 4 inches, 9 pp. Set in Kennerley with display in Goudy Handtooled and printed in black and brown on Basingwerk Parchment paper sewn into cover of Fabriano Pompeii and with a wrapper of Fabriano Ingres Heavy. Title label printed on Nideggen. 35 copies. PPB81-4.186. PPB81-4.208. ----- 6) Keepsake for Jordan’s Class, St. Louis, The Cerberus Press, 1981. Single sheet 9-1/2 by 6 inches. Set in Deepdene and printed in black and brown on Warren’s Olde Style Wove paper. 20 copies. ----- 7) Lake, Greg, Karn Evil 9, St. Louis, The Contre Coup Press, 1981. 5 by 8 inches, 12 pp. Set in Kennerley and printed in black and blue on Arches Text Wove with wrapper of Fabriano Ingres Heavy. Partial lyrics from a song. 25 copies. PPB81-4.207. ----- 8) Mitchell, Joni, Scarlet, Old Furry and the Dry Cleaner, St. Louis, The Contre Coup Press, 1981. 10 by 7 inches, 11 pp. Set in Kennerley with display in Forum and printed in black and blue on Warren’s Olde Style Wove and sewn into a cover of Fabriano Pompeii and with a wrapper of Fabriano Ingres Heavy. Title label printed on Nideggen paper. 50 copies. PPB81-4.205. ----- 9) Homard, Theophile, Bruce Rogers’ “Favorite Thirty”, St. Louis, The Contre Coup Press, 1981. 8-1/2 by 5-3/4 inches, 12 pp. Set in Deepdene with Forum initials and printed in black and red on Dresden Ingres and sewn into cover of Fabriano Rosaspina and with a wrapper of Fabriano Ingres Heavy. Title label printed on Curtis Tweedweave paper. 60 copies. PPB81-4.206. ----- 10) Prop. Card, St. Louis, The Contre Coup press, 1981. Single sheet 3 by 5 inches. Set in Kennerley and printed in black and red on damped Fabriano Ingres Heavy. 160 copies for the Amalgamated Printers Association. ----- 11) Letter to Twinrocker, St. Louis, The Contre Coup Press, 1981. Single sheet 11-1/2 by 7-1/2 inches. Set in Deepdene with display in Goudy Handtooled and printed in black and brown on damped Iyo Glazed paper. 5 copies. ----- 12) Homard, Theophile, An Introduction to Contre Coup, St. Louis, The Contre Coup Press, 1981. Single sheet folded once to 4-1/2 by 6 inches. Set in Kennerley and printed in black and brown on Curtis Tweedweave paper. 160 copies for the Amalgamated Printers Association. ----- 13) Goudy, F.W., On the Profession of Type Designing, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press, 1981. Single sheet folded into fourths to 2 by 3 inches. Set in Caslon and Van Dijck and printed in black and red on Ragston paper. 175 copies for the Amalgamated Printers Association. ----- 14) Lines Writ in St. Louis upon the Occasion of a Friend Passing His Prime: November 10, 1981, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press (1981). 6 by 4-1/2 inches, 4 leaves printed on rectos only. Set in Kennerley and printed in black and red on Antique Parchment and sewn into cover of Fabriano Pompeii. 25 copies. ----- 15) Ireland, William Henry, William Shakespeare’s Profession of Faith, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press, Christmas, 1981. Single sheet 5-1/2 by 4-1/2 inches. Set in Van Dijck with Forum initial and printed in black and red on damped J. Barcham Green Hayle handmade paper. Tipped into cover of Fabriano Ingres Heavy. 45 copies issued as a Holiday greeting. ----- 16) Rowland, Beryl, Goats and Monkeys: A Guide to Beastly Invective, St. Louis, The Contre Coup Press, 1982. 8-1/2 by 5-1/2 inches, 16 pp. Set in Van Dijck and Caslon and printed in black and blue on Ragston paper with wrapper of Fabriano Ingres Heavy. Reprinted from Maledicta, The Journal of Verbal Aggression. 140 copies. PPB85-6.87. ----- 17) True Narrative of the Early Life and Cruel Abduction of M. Jean-Nepomucene-August Pichauld, Comte de Fortsas, with an Expose of the Supposed Fortsas Hoax, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press (1982). Printed in English and French, with translation by Veronique Vuilly. 6-1/4 by 3-7/8 inches, 24 pp. Set in Van Dijck with Caslon and Cochin Open display. Printed in black on Arches Text Laid paper, sewn without wrapper. 150 copies, of which 125 copies were for the Fifth Exchange of the Society of Private Printers. ----- 18) Homard, Theophile, The Haunted Platen Press, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press (1982). Single sheet 7 by 5 inches. Set in Kennerley and printed in black and brown on Ragston paper. 250 copies printed for inclusion in the 1982 edition of It’s a Small World, Press of the Haywoods. ----- 19) Mann, Barry, Who Put the Bomp?, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press (1982). Single sheet folded into fourths to 4-1/2 by 7 inches. Set in Deepdene and Goudy Handtooled and printed in black on Warren’s Olde Style Wove. 151 copies printed for the Amalgamated Printers Association. ----- 20) Simon, Paul, Punky’s Dilemma, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press, 1982. Single sheet 7 by 3-1/4 inches. Set in Kennerley and printed in black and brown on damped Iyo Glazed handmade paper. 175 copies, of which 151 were for the Amalgamated Printers Association. ----- 21) Anonymous, Printing Periodicals, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press (1982). Single sheet folded once to 8 by 5 inches. Set in Kennerley and printed in black and blue on Ragston paper. 100 copies printed (but not distributed) as a keepsake for the annual Wayzgoose of the Amalgamated Printers Association, Gurnee, Illinois, August 14, 1982. ----- 22) Elkin, Stanley, Why I Live Where I Live, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press, 1983. 9 by 6 inches, 14 pp. Set in Van Dijck and Janson and printed in black, brown and blue on German Ingres paper with wrapper of Fabriano Ingres. Reprinted from Esquire magazine. 30 copies; 25 copies bound in dark grey wrappers and 5 copies bound in brown wrappers and reserved for the author. PPB81-4.209. ----- 23) Anonymous, Accusatio/Apologia, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press (1983). Single sheet 7 by 5 inches. set in Van Dijck with display in Cochin Open and Kennerley and printed in black, red and blue on Ragston paper. 250 copies for the 1983 edition of It’s a Small World, Press of the Haywoods. ----- 24) Retharp, Leon (pseudonym for Noel Hawley, age 5), For My Daddy, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press (1983). Single sheet 8-1/4 by 5 inches. Set in Van Dijck with display in Cochin Open and printed in black and brown on Okawara Student Grade paper. 175 copies, of which 151 were for the Amalgamated Printers Association. ----- 25) Invitation to the Dedication of the Richard l. Admussen Memorial Lounge, St. Louis, Washington University Department of Romance Languages, April 29, 1983. Single sheet folded horizontally to 4-1/8 by 5-1/2 inches. Set in Van Dijck and printed in black and brown on Ragston paper. 60 copies. ----- 26) In Honor of the marriage of Merrie Virginia Wood and Kay Michael Kramer…, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press (1983). Single sheet 7-1/2 by 9-3/4 inches. Set in Kennerley and printed in black, red and blue on Arches paper. 3 copies. ----- 27) Tompkins, Demaris Ide, Mrs. Ira Gale Tompkins’ Journal and Record of Events, Dec., 1874 – April, 1877, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press, 1984. 7 by 5 inches, v, 48 pp. Set in Van Dijck and Cochin Open and printed in black, brown and blue on Ragston paper. With 7 reproductions of photographs printed at the Hope Press tipped in. Bound by Bradley Gale in cloth-backed marbled paper-covered boards; paper marbled by James R. Reed. The first hard-bound book of the press. 100 copies issued at $25.00. PPB81-4.210. ----- 28) Prospectus for Mrs. Ira Gale Tompkins’ Journal…, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press, 1984. Single sheet folded once to 7 by 5 inches. Set in Van Dijck with an initial in Cochin Open and printed in black and brown on Ragston paper. Includes a specimen illustration tipped in. 100 copies. ----- 29) Anonymous, More Periodicals, Being a Brief Compendium of Current Periodicals Related to Printing and the Book Arts, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press, 1984. Single sheet folded once to 9 by 6 inches. Set in Van Dijck and printed in black, brown and blue on Nideggen paper. 70 copies for distribution at the Annual Meeting of the Typocrafters, Washington, D.C., October 12, 1984. ----- 30) Hieb, Andy and Jordan Hawley, People, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press, 1985. Single sheet 7 by 4-1/2 inches. Set in Kennerley with display in Cloister Black and printed in red and black on Hahnemuhle Ingres paper. 36 copies. ----- 31) Greetings from Contre Coup Press…Apropos of Nothing, St. Louis, Contre Coup Press, April, 1985. Single sheet folded once to 8 by 4 inches. Set in Cloister Text and Kennerley and printed in black, red and green on damped Charles I handmade paper. 25 copies. ----- 32) Invitation to a reception for Herve DuFresne, Washington University Department of Romance Languages, May, 1985. Single sheet 4-1/2 by 6 inches. Set in Van Dijck and printed in black and blue on Fabriano Ingres Heavy paper. 80 copies. ----- In August, 1985, the Contre Coup Press moved to Louisville, Kentucky. The Chandler and Price platen press was sold, and a Vandercook Universal I Reproduction Proof Press was acquired, which was used to print the following items. ----- 33) A Brief (and Very Private) Letter from the Proprietor of the Contre Coup Press to the Proprietors of the Twinrocker Paper Mill, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, January 28, 1986. Single sheet folded into fourths to 9-1/2 by 6 inches. Set in Kennerley and Cloister Black and printed in black, red and blue on damped Fabriano Roma paper. 4 copies. ----- 34) Little Known Facts About Printing, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1986. Single sheet 11-1/2 by 7 inches. Set in Perpetua and Van Dijck with display in Fry’s Ornamented and printed in black and brown on Nideggen, Frankfurt Cream and Arches Text papers. 100 copies printed for distribution at the Annual Meeting of the Typocrafters in Atlanta, Georgia, October 11, 1986. ----- 35) Fern Creek High School Class of ’66 Recognition Certificate, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1986. Single sheet 10-1/2 by 8 inches. Set in various display typefaces and printed on Frankfurt Cream paper. 10 copies. ----- 36) Elkin, Stanley, The Coffee Room, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1987. 9 by 6-1/2 inches, 51 pp. Set in Van Dijck and printed in black, brown and blue on Frankfurt Cream paper. With title calligraphy by Steven Skaggs. Four wood engravings by Michael McCurdy, printed directly from the blocks. Paste-paper for the binding made by Carol Blinn. Sewn by hand onto tapes by the printer and bound by the Campbell-Logan Bindery in cloth-backed paste-paper covered boards. All copies signed by Stanley Elkin and Michael McCurdy. 95 copies, of which 20 copies were press-numbered for those contributing to the book (Elkin, McCurdy, Scaggs, Blinn, Campbell and the printer). Issued at $85.00. PPB87.48. ----- 37) Prospectus for The Coffee Room, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1987. Single sheet folded once to 9 by 6-1/2 inches. Set in Van Dijck with calligraphy by Steven Skaggs and printed in black and brown on Frankfurt Cream paper. With a wood engraving by Michael McCurdy printed directly from the block. 100 copies. ----- 38) Periodically…, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1987. Single sheet 7 by 5 inches. Set in Van Dijck with display in Kennerley and Chisel and printed in black and brown on Warren’s Olde Style paper. 250 copies for inclusion in the 1987 edition of It’s a Small World, Press of the Haywoods. ----- 39) Invitation to Living Supports Second Anniversary Celebration, October 11, 1987. Single sheet folded into fourths to 5-1/2 by 4-1/4 inches. Set in Kennerley and Goudy Handtooled and printed in black, brown and blue on Warren’s Olde Style paper. 100 copies. ----- 40) Homard, Theophile, Thomas Halsey, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1988. 7 by 4-1/2 inches, 17 pp. Set in Kennerley and various display typefaces and printed in black, red, green, blue and brown on Warren’s Olde Style paper. Printed for distribution to the Typocrafters at their meeting in Toronto, October 7-9, 1988. 75 copies. PPB88.34. ----- 41) Letter to Twinrocker, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, June 26, 1988. Single sheet 19-1/4 by 6-1/2 inches. Set in Goudy Thirty and printed in black and red on Warren’s Antique No. 66 paper. 9 copies. ----- 42) Letter to Carol Blinn, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, December 30, 1988. Single sheet 12 by 6-1/2 inches. Set in Goudy Thirty and printed in black and red on Warren’s Antique No. 66 paper. 9 copies. ----- 43) Typocrafters 1989, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1989. Single sheet 11 by 8-1/2 inches. Set in Perpetua with display in Craw Modern and printed in black on Warren’s Antique No. 66 paper. Issued as an invitation to potential new members of The Typocrafters. 150 copies. ----- 44) Mark Your Calendar, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1989. Single sheet folded once to 3-1/2 by 6-1/4 inches. Set in Bembo and Caslon Old Face with display in Chisel and printed in black and blue on Warren’s Antique No. 66 paper. Issued as a notice for the Typocrafters 1989 meeting. 250 copies. ----- The Contre Coup Press was suspended and all equipment was sold circa 1990. The press was revived in 1994. The following items were printed on a Vandercook SP20 Proof Press. ----- 45) L.F.B. to P.H.D. re: C. & V. H., Being the Text of a Letter from Leonard F. Bahr to Paul H. Duensing Concerning a Visit with Carolyn and Victor Hammer in 1966, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1994. 10 by 6-1/2 inches, 6 pp. Set in Cochin with display in Legend and Goudy Text and printed in black, brown and green on Antique Ingres paper, with wrapper of Fabriano Ingres Heavy. 40 copies issued at $12.50. PPB94-8.146. ----- 46) Channing, William Ellery, God Be Thanked for Books, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, N.D. Single sheet 5 by 8 inches. Set in Post Medieval and printed in black and brown on Fabriano paper. 40 copies. ----- 47) To Ellen on Our First Valentine’s Day as Wife and Husband, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, February 14, 1994. Single sheet folded into fourths to 6-1/4 by 4-3/4 inches. Set in Legend and Post Bold and printed on a commercial laid paper. 4 copies. ----- 48) Sibs, Louisville, Contre Coup Press (1994). 10 by 7 inches, (28) pp. Set in Cochin and printed on Basingwerk Heavy in black and brown. Illustrated with 14 original color photographs tipped in. Bound by Fritz Eberhard in silk-covered boards with gilt-stamped leather labels on the spine and front cover. One copy. ----- 49) Invitation to a Holiday Gathering for the Center for Rehabilitation and Recovery and the Jean Marlatt Center for Supported Living, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1994. Single sheet folded into fourths to 8-1/2 by 5-1/2 inches. Set in various display typefaces and printed on commercial machine made paper. 100 copies. ----- 50) Green, Ecton, You Got To Have A Milkshake, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1994. Single sheet 8-1/2 by 10 inches. Set in Liberty, Civilite and Fournier and printed in black and brown on Basingwerk Parchment paper. About 4 copies. ----- 51) Two?, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1995. Single sheet folded into fourths to 6-1/4 by 4-3/4 inches. Set in various display typefaces and printed in black on commercial laid paper. 4 copies. ----- 52) But What of the Centaur Press?, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1995. Single sheet folded once to 11 by 8-1/2 inches. Set in Cochin and printed in black and brown on Basingwerk Parchment paper. Printed for inclusion in the Dwight Agner tribute portfolio. 40 copies. ----- 53) Mark Twain, 1601: Conversation as it was by the Social Fireside in the Time of the Tudors, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1996. 9-3/4 by 6-1/2 inches, 17 pp. Set in Goudy Thirty, Civilite, Solemnis, Goudy Text Shaded and Weiss Initials and printed in black, brown and blue on Fabriano Roma handmade paper. Bound at the Campbell-Logan Bindery in marbled paper-covered boards, cloth spine, paper spine label. 4 copies. PPB 94-8.147. ----- 54) Mitchell, Joni, Between the Forceps and the Stone: Selected Lyrics from Twenty-Five Years, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1996. 9-1/2 by 6-1/2 inches, (50) pp. Set in Cochin and Perpetua and printed on Nideggen paper in black, brown and blue. Illustrated with original photographs by Noel Hawley. Title page lettering by Jerry Kelly. Bound by the Campbell-Logan Bindery in decorated paper-covered boards with cloth spine and paper spine label. 10 copies. PPB94-8.148. ----- 55) Typographs, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1998. Single sheet 10 by 8 inches. Set in Lutetia and printed in black and blue on Basingwerk Parchment paper. Printed as a brief introduction to the Typographs printed by Leonard Bahr, and distributed to the Typocrafters at their annual meeting in 1998. ----- 56) Phelan, James, “For the Good of the Bleeding Land”, Being the Text of a Letter from James Phelan to Confederate President Jefferson Davis Dated January 21, 1865, in the Collection of The Filson Club Historical Society, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1999. 7-3/4 by 6-1/4 inches, 23 pp. Set in Lutetia and printed in black, blue and grey on Frankfurt paper. Bound by the Campbell-Logan Bindery in cloth-backed decorated paper-covered boards. 60 copies. PPB99.50. ----- 57) Jasper, Matt, Schizophrenomania, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1997. 8-1/4 by 5 inches, (31) pp. Set in Cochin and Post Medieval and printed on Basingwerk Parchment paper. Bound by the Campbell-Logan Bindery in cloth-backed paste-paper covered boards. The paste paper was made by Carol Blinn. 16 copies. PPB94-8.150. ----- 58) Waller, Henry, Narrative of a Journey Through Kentucky and Tennessee in 1835, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1997. 10-1/2 by 6-1/2 inches, (vii), 38, (iii) pp. Set in Lutetia and printed in black and red on Mohawk Letterpress paper. Bound at the Campbell-Logan Bindery in cloth-backed marbled paper-covered boards. 100 copies. PPB94-8.149. ----- 59) Prospectus for Narrative of a Journey Through Kentucky and Tennessee in 1835, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1997. Single sheet folded once to 10-1/2 by 6-1/2 inches. Set in Cochin and Post Medieval and printed in black on Mohawk Letterpress paper. 100 copies. ----- 60) Mark Twain, My Watch, An Instructive Little Tale, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 1999. 6-1/2 by 5-1/4 inches, 7 pp. Set in Cochin and printed in black and purple on Mohawk Superfine paper. Bound in decorated paper wrappers. 50 copies. PPB99.49. ----- 61) Be My Valentine, a Limerick Valentine, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, February 14, 1999. 6 by 4-1/2 inches, (2) pp. Set in Lutetia and printed in black on Frankfurt paper. Bound in decorated paper wrapper. 4 copies. ----- 62) Mark Twain, The Canvasser’s Tale, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2000. 7-3/4 by 5-1/4 inches, 15 pp. Set in Cochin and printed in black and blue on Frankfurt paper. Bound by the Campbell-Logan Bindery in cloth-backed marbled paper-covered boards. 20 press-numbered copies. PPB2000.36. ----- 63) Newman, Randy, Shame, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2000. 7-3/4 by 6-1/4 inches, (9) leaves printed on rectos only. Set in Bembo with display in Huxley Vertical and printed in black and brown on Frankfurt paper. Bound in decorated paper wrapper. The lyrics of a song. 15 copies. PPB2000.37. ----- 64) Invitation to a Christmas celebration, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2000. Single sheet 4-1/4 by 5-1/2 inches. Set in Bembo Italic and printed in black and green on Frankfurt paper. 50 copies. ----- 65) The Dalai Lama, A Prayer, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2000. Single sheet 10 by 8 inches. Set in Perpetua and printed in black on a laid paper. Set by hand and printed by Ellen Garrison (Green). 20 copies. ----- 66) Invitation to a Christmas Celebration, Louisville, Contre Coup Press (2001). Single sheet 5 by 6-1/2 inches. Set in Goudy Thirty and printed in black and red on commercial machine-made paper. 50 copies. ----- 67) Invitation to a bridal shower for Erin Wiese, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, March 4, 2001. Single sheet 4-1/2 by 6-1/4 inches. Set in Post Medieval and printed in black and blue on a commercial machine-made paper. 50 copies. ----- 68) Invitation to a wedding and reception for Erin Wiese and Jordan Hawley, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, March 24, 2001. Single sheet folded once to 4-1/2 by 6-1/4 inches. Set in Post Medieval and printed in black and blue on commercial machine made paper. Included is a 4-1/4 by 6 inch insert set in Caslon Open and printed in black on Frankfurt paper. 100 copies. ----- 69) Leonard F. Bahr Salutes Paul H. Duensing’s Four Ideals, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2001. Single sheet folded once to 12-1/2 by 9-1/2 inches. Set in Post Medieval and printed in black and brown on Arches Text Wove paper. Enclosed in the folder is an original broadside printed by Leonard F. Bahr. Printed for inclusion in the Duensing tribute portfolio. 75 copies. ----- 70) Bradbury, Ray, How Not to Burn a Book, or, 1984 Will Not Arrive, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2002. 7-3/4 by 6-1/4 inches, 60 pp. Set in Bembo, Lilith and Lutetia and printed in black, red and gold on Frankfurt paper. Bound by the Campbell-Logan Bindery in cloth-backed decorated paper-covered boards. 27 copies. Published at $45.00. ----- 71) Saint Theresa of Avila, There are more tears shed…, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, July, 2002. Single sheet 12 by 9-1/2 inches. Set in American Text and printed in red and black on Iyo Glazed paper. 20 copies. ----- 72) Whitman, Walt, And this is what you shall do…, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2002. Single sheet 19-1/2 by 12-3/4 inches. Set in Lutetia and printed in black, red and brown on Canson Mi Tientes paper. 40 copies. ----- 73) Attachment, A Printer’s Sand Mandala: Teachings of the Buddha Regarding Attachment, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2004. 12-1/2m by 7-3/4 inches. 18 leaves printed on rectos only. Set in Lutetia and Post Medieval and printed in black and brown on Frankfurt paper. Japanese style binding in wrapper of Canson Mi Tientes paper. 10 copies printed, all copies of which were destroyed by the printer as an exercise in avoiding attachment. ----- 74) A Wonderful Announcement, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2004. Single sheet folded once to 5-1/4 by 7-1/4 inches. Set in Post Medieval and printed in black and red on commercial announcement paper. Announcing the adoption of Samantha Wiese Hawley. 100 copies. ----- 75) Letter to David Godine, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2004. Single sheet 23-3/4 by 12 inches. Set in Perpetua and printed in black and brown on Canson Mi Tientes paper. 3 copies. ----- 76) Types of the Contre Coup Press, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, various dates. Single sheets of various sizes and printed on various papers (mostly Basingwerk Parchment). Various limitations, but many 3 or 4 copies. Each sheet shows the complete character set of a typeface in a particular size, including: ----- a) Lutetia, 10 point Didot on 11 point American body ----- b) Lutetia Italic, 10 point Didot on 11 point American body ----- c) Lutetia Small Caps, 10 point Didot on 11 point American body ----- d) Solemnis, 10 point ----- e) Cochin, 12 point ----- f) Crayonette, 12 point ----- g) Perpetua, 12 point ----- h) Satanick, 12 point ----- i) Van Dijck, 13 point on 14 point body ----- j) Bembo, 14 point ----- k) Bembo Italic, 14 point ----- l) Bembo Small Caps, 14 point ----- m) Cochin, 14 point ----- n) Lutetia, 14 point Didot on 14 point American body ----- o) Lutetia Italic, 14 point Didot on 14 point American body ----- p) Lutetia Small Caps, 14 point Didot on 14 point American body ----- q) Caslon Open, 18 point ----- r) Civilite, 18 point ----- s) Cochin Open, 18 point ----- t) Fournier, 18 point ----- u) Gallia, 18 point ----- v) Goudy Thirty, 18 point ----- w) Homewood, 18 point ----- x) Perpetua, 18 point ----- y) Post Medieval Light, 18 point ----- z) Post Medieval Light Italic, 18 point ----- aa) Prisma, 18 point ----- bb) Solemnis, 18 point ----- cc) Bembo, 24 point ----- dd) Bulmer, 24 point ----- ee) Bulmer Italic, 24 point ----- ff) Caslon Old Face, 24 Point ----- gg) Civilite, 24 point ----- hh) Cochin Open, 24 point ----- ii) Comstock, 24 point ----- jj) Delphian, 24 point ----- kk) Gallia, 24 point ----- ll) Gold Rush, 24 point ----- mm) Jim Crow, 24 point ----- nn) Legend, 24 point ----- oo) Perpetua, 24 point ----- pp) Post Bold Titling, 24 point ----- qq) Post Medieval Light, 24 point ----- rr) Post Medieval Light Italic, 24 point ----- ss) Post Medieval Medium, 24 point ----- tt) Post Roman Bold, 24 point ----- uu) Romantique, 24 point ----- vv) Showboat, 24 point ----- ww) Solemnis, 24 point ----- xx) Weiss Initials, 24 point on 30 point body ----- yy) Fournier, 30 point ----- zz) Goudy Cursive, 30 point ----- aaa) Garamond Open, 30 point ----- bbb) Homewood, 30 point ----- ccc) Legend, 30 point ----- ddd) Lilith, 30 point ----- eee) Perpetua, 30 point ----- fff) Post Bold Titling, 30 point ----- ggg) Post Medieval Light, 30 point ----- hhh) Post Roman Bold, 30 point ----- iii) Weiss Initials I, 30 point ----- jjj) Weiss Initials II, 30 point ----- kkk) Caslon Openface, 36 point ----- lll) Chisel, 36 point ----- mmm) Civilite, 36 point ----- nnn) Cloister Text, 36 point ----- ooo) Cochin Open, 36 point ----- ppp) Delphian, 36 point ----- qqq) Egmont Initials, 36 point ----- rrr) Garamond Open, 36 point ----- sss) Goudy Text Shaded, 36 point ----- ttt) Hidalgo, 36 point ----- uuu) Homewood, 36 point ----- vvv) Lombardic Caps, 36 point ----- www) Nova Augustea, 36 point ----- xxx) Perpetua, 36 point ----- yyy) Prisma, 36 point ----- zzz) Scotch (Inland Type Foundry), 36 point ----- aaaa) Solemnis, 36 point ----- bbbb) Nova Augustea, 38 point (perhaps this is 36 Didot?) ----- cccc) Open Shadow, 42 pint ----- dddd) Post Medieval Light, 42 point ----- eeee) Post Medieval Medium, 42 point ----- ffff) Post Roman Bold, 42 point ----- gggg) American Text, 48 point ----- hhhh) Chisel, 38 point ----- iiii) Goudy Text 48 point ----- jjjj) Homewood, 48 point ----- kkkk) Lydian Italic, 48 point ----- llll) Onyx, 48 point ----- mmmm) P.T. Barnum, 48 point ----- nnnn) Post Bold, 48 point ----- oooo) Post Medieval Light, 48 point ----- pppp) Repro Script, 48 point ----- qqqq) Lombardic Caps, 72 point ----- rrrr) Weiss Initials, 66 point (60 point Didot?) ----- ssss) Castellar, 72 point ----- tttt) Huxley Vertical, 84 point ----- uuuu) Huxley Vertical, 120 point ----- vvvv) Various ornaments and borders ----- 77) Homard, Theophile, Grand Collaboration: The Production of John James Audubon’s The Birds of America and The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2005. 13 by 10 inches, 29 pp. Cloth-backed paste-paper covered boards. One of 27 numbered copies. Initialled by the author. Each copy includes one original hand-colored lithograph from the octavo edition of The Birds of America and one original hand-colored lithograph from the octavo edition of The Quadrupeds of North America. The paste-paper for the binding was decorated by hand especially for this edition by Carol Blinn at the Warwick Press, and the binding was completed at the Campbell-Logan Bindery. Published at $185.00. Out of print. ----- 78) Mark Twain, The Invalid’s Story, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2006. 10 by 6-1/2 inches, 19 pp. Cloth-backed marbled paper-covered boards. Set in Bembo type and printed in black, brown and blue on Arches Text Laid paper. Limited to 18 copies. Bound at the Campbell-Logan Bindery. Includes an Afterword by Theophile Homard. ----- 79) Walker, Frank X, The River Speaks, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2006. Broadside 27 by 15 inches. Set in Bulmer and printed in black and brown on Johannot heavyweight paper. Limited to 100 numbered copies. Signed by the author. Printed for the Filson Historical Society. ----- 80) Walker, Frank X, Irreconcilable Differences, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2006. Broadside 20 by 7-1/2 inches. Set in Perpetua and printed in black and red on Johannot heavyweight paper. Limited to 100 numbered copies. Signed by the author. Printed for the Falls of the Ohio Lewis and Clark Bicentennaial Committee. ----- 81) Tompkins, Hawley T., Church Man, Louisville, Contre Coup Press, 2007. 7-3/4 by 6-1/4 inches. 39 pages. Set in Bembo and printed in black and brown on Frankfurt paper. With original photographs by Noel Hawley tipped in. Bound by the Campbell-Logan Bindery in cloth-backed decorated paper-covered boards, with the paper decorated specially for this book by Carol Blinn. Signed by David C. Churchman and Charlene Churchman. Limited to 23 copies. -----

First Posting

2007-09-17T19:11:00.000-04:00

Well, here's my first posting - my official entry into blogdom. I will be periodically posting information about the activities of Timothy Hawley Books, the Contre Coup Press, and who knows what else. I've been issuing catalogues of books for sale since 1984, and have been operating my private press since 1979. I've been selling books on the internet at various websites for a good long time, with my books currently being listed only on Abebooks.com. I've been selling stuff - mostly type specimens and related materials - on Ebay for a year or so. My Contre Coup Press books typically sell out immediately, which sounds like quite an accomplishment until you realize that I usually print 30 or fewer copies, and give quite a few of those away, so it only takes a few purchasers to drive the books out of print pretty quickly. A number of out-of-print Contre Coup Press books are being offered by various booksellers at Abebooks.com and other bookselling sites. We are awaiting receipt of the latest book from our bookbinder, and will note its availability here as soon as it arrives. I guess that's all for now.