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CURVATURES: or fat women

Allix, Susan Printed on Somerset mould made paper in an edition of 20 (this is number 3), the book measures 20 x 24.5 cm and has 45 pages. Contained in a cloth and paper envelope. Signed by Allix on the colophon. The book is letterpress in two fat face types. The principal typeface is 36pt Braggadocio which was designed in 1930 by W.A.Woolley for the Stephenson Blake type foundry. Some of the letterforms are startling in their weight, brevity, and the use of curve against straight. It is combined with Bodoni Ultra Bold, released in 1928 and designed by Morris Fuller Benton. "This book takes a wry look at seven ladies who are not of the slenderest proportions, accompanied by short quotations by George Eliot, Edith Wharton, and Marilyn Monroe. It also features a moment in the life of Miss Van Eyck where every letter of the alphabet in the typeface celebrated here may be seen. There is little that is straight in the chosen ladies - chosen because drawing a large woman is so much more interesting than drawing a thin one (or indeed, a large man)." - artist statement. The seven prints are made in various ways, which include etching, drypoint, aquatint, chine colle, digital, and lino cut. One title is from a drawing and five pages have collage with the letterpress. Born in England in 1943, Allix studied at the Royal College of Art in the 1960s. She won a Prix de Rome and created her first hand-crafted book in 1973. Her works are held in the collections of The British Library, Yale University, the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the Claremont Colleges, the Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of Alberta, as well as other fine public and private collections. OCLC locates seven copies of this title held in special collections, with none in commerce.
  • $2,500
  • $2,500
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BEAUTY

Of one hundred signed copies, this is number 65. A narrative poem from Fairchild's third collection, The Art of the Lathe (1998). Illustrated with linoleum cuts by Anna Alquitela, letterpress printed and hand-bound with stainless steel "hinges" and aluminum-wrapped covers, housed in a gray cloth clamshell box with a gray paper band. For her fine press edition, The Blackbird Press' Jean Gillingwators said she knew from the initial reading that her book edition would have metal covers, reminiscent of the corrugated-metal buildings that often house machine shops. However, her endeavor became a three-year ordeal when the metal hinges she planned to use were no longer available and had to be handcrafted by herself and her assistant. "The 2,200 parts arrived, drilled and cut perfectly, ready to use. We bought some miniature equipment, and Anna cut all the other tubing and wire into thousands of bitty pieces . Binding Beauty became a thousand-day undertaking, and with each hurdle, I felt a close connection to Fairchild's machine-shop laborers. And the Blackbird Press hinge structures echo the title of the poem - they are beautiful." Fairchild (b.1942) is an award-winning American poet and former college professor. The Art of the Lathe, winner of the 1997 Beatrice Hawley Award, brought Fairchild's work to national prominence, garnering him a large number of awards and fellowships including the William Carlos Williams Award. The book ultimately gave him international prominence, as The Way Weiser Press in England published the U.K. edition of the book. The Los Angeles Times wrote that "The Art of the Lathe by has become a contemporary classic - a passionate example of the plain style, so finely crafted and perfectly pitched . workhorse narratives suffused with tenderness and elegiac music."
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ROADKILLS: A Collection of Prose and Poetry, with Etching and Wood Engravings by Alan James Robinson

This is Suite Number XL of fifty deluxe copies signed by Alan James Robinson, John McPhee, Gillian Conoley, Gary Snyder, Madeline DeFrees, William Stafford, and Richard Eberhart and accompanied by an extra suite of the prints. In the introduction, Robinson explains he originally planned a portfolio without text of some of those animals he had encountered during his many drives to and from college" "Meanwhile, friends began to call my attention to writers who had also been inspired by the casualties of the highways: John McPhee, in Travels in Georgia, and poets Madeline DeFrees, Gillian Connelly, Gary Snyder, William Stafford, and Richard Eberhart. Thus, I began to conceive of Roadkills as a book, with images and text interwoven." Illustrated with 11 wood engravings (10 roadkills and one tire track/broken muffler as colophon) and one etching, the text was printed in red and black by Harold Patrick McGrath at Hampshire Typothetae in Bruce Rogers' Centaur and Frederick Warde's Arrighi which was hand set in 18 point by P. Chase Twichell. The text is printed on Sakomoto and the prints on Cha-u-ke. Bound by Gray Parrot in quarter gray morocco with tire tracks blind tooled across spine and title in blind, matching black chemise with blind tooled tire tracks, all housed in a grey morocco over black cloth clamshell box. The leather spine of the clamshell box is darkened; else near fine. The rare second book of the press; the deluxe edition with its extra suite and the signatures of all the authors has long been out of print.
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CALIFORNIA IN RELIEF: Thirty Wood Engravings by Richard Wagener

This is copy 14 of 300 copies signed by Richard Wagener. Additionally inscribed and dated by Wagener to Gordon Van De Water, past president of the Zamorano Club, once on a prefatory blank leaf and again on the colophon. One of the leading American wood engravers, Richard Wagener has created a visual account of his wanderings throughout California in this lavish new work. In thirty original prints and short prose pieces describing them, he chronicles a journey that begins and ends in Los Angeles with stops in the San Jacinto Mountains, the Antelope Valley, Sonoma County, and the Sierra Nevada. Like John Muir and Gary Snyder, Wagener is a wanderer, explorer and observer of California, creating a poetry of place through both words and images, all born of actual experience. Not since Paul Landacre mastered the aesthetic and technical challenges of wood engraving in the early twentieth-century has any California artist achieved prominence in the medium. Wagener's images of nature - his stately Sierra trees, stark peaks and rocky crags - and his urban architectural monuments - the Pantages Theater and the Griffith Observatory - combine to make this work a deeply personal record of distinctive California locations. Introduction by Victoria Dailey. Prospectus laid in. Quarto. Designed and printed by Peter Rutledge Koch. Original tan paper-covered boards over a dark green cloth spine, with a Wagener engraving on the front and a printed paper spine label. A fine copy in the illustrated glassine wrapper and the publisher's slipcase.
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VAN NUYS BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY 1955-56

Booklet: 48 p. with a two-page map by Howard Saunders. Original paper wrappers, printed in red and blue, and bound with two staples. Founded in 1911, Van Nuys was named for one of its developers, Isaac Newton Van Nuys, a rancher and entrepreneur of Dutch ancestry. It was laid out along with roadways and other towns by the Suburban Homes Company, a syndicate led by Hobart Johnstone Whitley, general manager of the Board of Control, along with Harry Chandler, H.G. Otis, and others. At the same time, Henry E. Huntington extended his Pacific Electric Railway through the Valley, and made Van Nuys the first new stop on the San Fernando Line. In 1915, the town was annexed into the city of Los Angeles following the completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which provided the water required for further growth. Along with city agencies and offices, this directory provides an alphabetical listing of Van Nuys businesses intended to elicit support from the local community. The layout of Van Nuys in this directory is much different from its geography today. In 1991, a 45-block area of Van Nuys was redesignated as a part of Sherman Oaks and in 2009, some former Van Nuys neighborhoods won approval to break off and join the neighboring communities of Lake Balboa, Valley Glen, and Sherman Oaks in an effort to raise their property values, a change some suggested was motivated by racism. Other significant differences are immediately visible on the map. Birmingham Hospital, built at the corner of Vanowen Street and Balboa Boulevard in 1942 to care for troops returning home from overseas service, has been replaced by the public high school of the same name. No holdings were found in OCLC.