1. Tintern Abbey, for launch at the Grimsby Wayzgoose later in April
2. Another goth fable, maybe a golem/frankenstein type story similar in format to the Vampire & the Seventh Daughter
3. Collaboration with Holly (a book called “LibrAries”)
4. A type sampler (in booklet form this time)
5. A series of wood engravings
6. A series of linocuts
7. Business cards!
8. A broadside poster
9. Complete a family history design project
10. Maybe a little Shakespeare

Last time, I set the following goals:

1. produce ten books in five years
   I’m not really on schedule for this, since the current book project, Tintern Abbey, was pushed into 2012 by a sudden and welcome flood of work in the studio.
2. step up production value
   What I did produce this year certainly shows more confidence, in keeping with the “get serious!” theme of the next 5 year phase of the press.
3. marketing: on-line presence, adverts, launches, more shows, book sellers
   Some of the ground work on planning and pushing the books paid off, with some books winding up in special collections. We hired a marketing consultant late last year, and I am determined to stop whining and learn to love social media.
4. intensify illustration: my own, but working with other artists as well
   I’ve got some irons in the fire with work from other artists, and my own frontiers have opened up with my first efforts on wood engraving (see previous blogs).
5. form working alliances with writers, illustrators, printers, bookbinders
   I approached a Queen’s University prof to write the intro for Tintern Abbey. He said yes, so that is about to be set in type possibly within days.
6. further my studies in book design and typography.
   That is an on-going project indeed. I did spend some free time trolling through book spreads on line, making some observations but it’s hardly a concentrated study!

What I did do this year was a lot of little things done, including:

1) a new years card – I’m silly late this year, though!
2) Pondered reorganization, and made some minor progress
3) Tintern Abbey book got pushed, although my Wayzgoose anthology contribution made for an early study of the idea
4) Two rare commercial jobs, both invitations
5) Did the usual shows, organized one of them
6) Saw the work produced by Saint Lawrence College students from the printmaking course I taught the previous fall at their year end exhibition (That was a highlight!)
7) Collaborative calendar with the Ottawa Press Gang – (I’m April)
8) Wrote an article for Ornamentvm on the Canadian fine press scene
9) Took professional advise on marketing
10) Produced a broadside type sampler
11) Tried out wood engraving, although rightly that belongs to 2012
12) Spoke to the 2nd year architecture students at Carleton University about book arts
13) Had my first gallery show in Kingston at Studio22

Almost everything mentioned above is covered in some form or another in the previous couple dozen blog entries.

Next I tackled the ruined arch on the right. Initially I intended to just cut masonry blocks, but oh no! had to go for a carved multiple column with a mid break leading into a carved riser, and I experimented with marks that would define these features. This is the finished block:

It looked OK on the block, but would it print? Here is a decent proof, done on the same paper (St. Armand’s Canal paper) that will be used for the Wordsworth book.

Still more work to be done, clearing some of the white areas and lightening up here and there. It ain’t Bewick, but I like it. And I am totally and completely hooked on wood engraving, and gearing up to try out some engrain maple.

Here are a few things I learned, in no particular order:

1. While working on the block, the stress level increased the further I got into it. Wesley Bates once told me that he starts with the toughest parts of the block first, and finishes off with easy areas. Makes sense.
2. Handling the tools is tricky. It takes a while to get in the zone: not holding the graver too high or too low.
3. Sharpening is essential. I’d return to the sharpening stones after about 15 minutes of cutting. And there’s a knack to learn about that too. The angle of sharping has to be pretty much dab on, or the blade and cutting point can be damaged.
4. White marks define dark areas. That’s it. Bend your brain around that and you’ve got it made. Do enough of this kind of work and suddenly your brain will go “Click!” and it all falls into place. I’ve been there. I’ve done a lot of this type of work on lino, but I’ve still got a lot to learn about defining light and dark with engraving tools.
5. “This little cut makes a tree. This little cut makes a stone.” Hard metal tool, hard flat surface, but a master can make it seem as though a semi-substantial ghost is emerging from a design. The whole idea of different marks for soft things as opposed to hard things in the illustration introduces a sea of technique possibilities. Very exciting!
6. As you may have deigned, I am in a little bit of awe of wood engraving. It is a very subtle art. In many respects, I was over-heavy with the graver, doubting that some marks would even show. But even the tiniest prick on the surface shows up in the printing. That is a lot of potential. And I only really used three tools: graver, spitsticker and a small chisel for clear the white areas.

The graver is indeed a subtle knife!

*

Note: I’ll print a limited edition hopefully in March, when the book is complete, and will offer it for sale at that time.

I’ve been fretting for some months now as to what I would do for the illustrations in Greyweather’s upcoming edition of Tintern Abbey. Illustrations done in the manner of Thomas Bewick would certainly be ideal, but probably well beyond any skill I have developed though working with linoleum cuts. Perhaps something more interpretive, less literal?

Click on the icons to see the remarkable skill of Bewick (from his own hand, or perhaps from his shop of apprentices):

It is really unbelievable what could be cut by hand!

So, it turns out Wordsworth grew up in similar rustic environs to Bewick, and that the poet even praised the engraver in the same book of poems in which Tintern Abbey was published, saying:

Oh now that the genius of Bewick were mine / And the skill which he learn’d on the banks of the Tyne / Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose / For I’d take my last leave both of verse and prose.

What feats would I work with my magical hand! / Book-learning and books should be banish’d the land / And for hunger and thirst and such troublesome calls / Every ale-house should then have a feast on its walls.

I could not agree more. Well, perhaps all that book banishing business I could do without, but the rest…. sure. It did settle the question as to the manner of illustrating the book. After the manner of Thomas Bewick, then.

Easier said than done. Bewick’s work sits comfortably in the public domain, so I briefly considered finding existing period prints and rendering them into magnesium plates…. a few high res scans and voila! But where’s the fun in that? So began my first serious foray at wood engraving.

I have made attempts before, with varying degrees of success. This time I used the gravers on a piece of resingrave , the white surface treated with India ink. I created a rough drawing directly on the block from a variety of sources, including Bewick and 2oth century illustrators such as Buckland-Wright and Canada’s own home grown cutters, like Wesley Bates, Alan Stein and George Walker. Mostly Bewick though, spending a long time studying the way he did his bushes, trees, leaves, shore lines etc.

A cliff on the left, a ruined arch on the right, the bucolic Wye River in the middle.

After the first tentative cuts, I liked where it was going, but I was still making the illustration up on the fly more or less, and as time went on, the white watercolour pencil would wear off, leaving room for even more interpretation.

The broad ferns and foliage originally planned at the bottom morphed into tree roots, but I had already started a work on the bottom of a cliff face.

From stone to wood, then, as the cliff face morphed into a tree. I loved the striking look of the white leaves on the black background, but Bewick never worked like that. He used tone, and a lot of black line work, especially around the top of the drawing.

And as far as I had gotten yesterday:

I had pulled out a copy of Kubla Khan yesterday, and realized this design resembles somewhat the linocut I did for that book, seven years ago now. Weird.

Later this afternoon, a young teacher will come by the studio and take away the last print (in my possession) of Big Big Sea. It has been without doubt one of my best selling prints, much to my astonishment. I based the composition loosely on a photograph I took during a dead calm at Peggy’s Cove in the summer of 1993. My sister Marie and my daughter Meg, probably about 8 years old, stood looking out onto to a sea that seemed to merge with the sky. The photo stood on my desk for years. I liked it for its own merit, seeing the small figures again the enormity of the sea, calm though it might be. It put all my petty problems in perspective.

Time passed, as it does, and by 2008 Meg was a desperate young mother courageously struggling with a near lethal case of depression. Holly and I dealt as best we could pondering the horror of losing our daughter in the face of indifferent health care and fragmented support structures. When I came to plan that year’s series, I pulled the photo off my desk, cut a proportional block of lino and just drew five or six rough lines to mark the rocky shore line and the figures. No tracing paper, no careful details, no precise acetone transfers.

The rocks and the figures were simple lines. But I no longer saw calm in the undulations of the treacherous and tragic waters off of Peggy’s Cove; rather I attacked the block with a variety of cutters, with no real thought to the composition but rather pouring out my own fear and frustration through my hand to the tools to the block. I worked fast on this one. People often ask how long it takes me to do the work, and this one might have consumed half an hour, if that. I proofed the result and was not impressed. Who would buy such a choppy shriek of a print – two figures poised on a fatal abyss? At first, I wasn’t going to edition it all, but fortunately Holly, whose instincts are honed better then mine, convinced me to do so, and I compromised by printing just 35 (normally I do 50 or 100) along with the Artist’s Proof above.

In the three years since I pulled the edition, Meg’s life has turned around. She still struggles, but like we all do with life’s challenges and opportunities. Depression remains a specter, but one that has receded. As for the print, I still look at it with some emotional ambiguity, but I now acknowledge its beauty and honesty – that latter quality I feel must be key to its success. Several artists have bought this one. When we’re at shows, other exhibitors sometimes come into the booth, appreciating the work generally, but tapping the glass on Big, Big Sea, nodding, as thought to say, “Yes, you nailed it here.”

The very last numbered copy of Big Big Sea is available only from Studio 22 Gallery in Kingston, Ontario.

You may even be able to see red correction marks indicating just some of the many sins contained within. However, it is dramatic, measuring approx. 16 x 22 in. That, for a press that has absolutely no wood type and just marginal amounts of mid-range lead type in large sizes. It works on the premise that many small letters can conspire to make a larger statement. It also seems to embody my own rather scattered focus and schedule.

Now, with Christmas nearly upon us, and feeling an urgent need to produce some kind of seasonal greeting on the press,  so I have to decide: a) dis the type and keep the proof as a plan for a future effort; b) break up the type onto composing trays and reassemble it on the press later; or c) clean up the obvious errors, make some quick fixes and print off 50 or a 100, then get down to Christmas obligations. What to do, what to do….

Hand-tooled leather covered dome-top box, first quarter 19th century, Toronto. (Shown here against a Canon inkjet printer for scale)

One of the many diverse things I do to cobble together a living is to write about the antiques market here in Canada. It is always a bit strange to go to auctions, take photographs and copious notes but walk away with nothing – I simply don’t have the spending power. However, every now and then something comes up that I can’t resist, such as this early 19th century dome-topped document box, which I bid for and won at the sale of Henry and Barbara Dobson’s collection held in Napanee, Ontario on October 22, 2011, held by Tim Potter Auctions. (My article on the auction will appear in the Jan/Feb issue of The Upper Canadian Antiques Showcase, available early in January).

The paper lining inside has been decorated with some kind of faint wash of watercolour through some kind of patterned template or stencil.

Stencil pattern on paper lining.

A closer inspection shows that the paper lining itself are pages of a book, probably printers’ waste since they are full sheets, not folded, cut then collaged in from an existing book. It’s early enough since the ‘s’s are represented by ‘f’s, eg “fally forth for feafhells by the feafhore” etc. Kind of a cool find, and as luck would have it within my financial scope.I read some of the mtter – excruciatingly boring, whatever it is which may explain why it ended up lining a box.

Still, I carried this home with me after the auction and regretted the purchase, thinking that I could have spent the money on a fine press book. This was driven home with particular emphasis while I was at the OCAD Book Arts Fair a week ago! Ah well, when my reserves are back and I do get some more books, I have a classy place to keep them!

The venue is quite striking as well, as I tried to caption in my first experiment with panoramic photographic stitching, early in the show. Crowds filled the hall for most of the day. (Click photos to make them larger).

The Great Hall at OCAD in Toronto, with the Book Fair in full swing.

A less distorted view from our table at the OCAD Book Arts Show

Last week, Holly and I had the opportunity to visit bookbinder Natasha Herman of The Redbone Bindery for a tutorial on edition binding, and not a moment too soon. As I write she’s already in Amsterdam, where she’ll reside for a year of two, so time was of the essence. We met in her tiny, partially dismantled basement studio in the evening after she put her young children to bed for the night. So we brought a hastily gathered offering of pizza and wine and chocolate brownies, and by about 9 pm we all went into the bindery where Natasha stepped us through a two part case in binding with French groove. We took in alot — ways to make the binding straight, clean, tidy with a mind to “mass”production, i.e twenty or twenty-five at a go. It was an enlightening session that didn’t finish until after midnight, and gave me an insight into what Tintern Abbey will look like when it is completed. There’s still some question over the cover paper: I think Holly’s hand-painted papers would look ideal; she thinks papers decorated with my linocuts would be better. Well, we’ll sort something out.

The 2-step case binding, with Holly's painted paper for the cover. The top is half finished, with the inside left unglued for future reference. The two below have endpages but not covers, and show the sewing, the tapes and the structure of the spine.

Bookbinder's tools of the trade