[Ninja Press] Merwin, W.S., poet; Carolee Campbell, designed, printer, and book artist
Sherman Oaks, CA: Ninja Press, 1995. Number 129 of 160 numbered cpies, with 18 produced hors de commerce. Signed by the poet on the limitation page.
Carolee Campbell's Ninja Press began in 1984. Since that time, she has produced about 30 books of poetry and many broadsides that are renowned for their fine craftsmanship and distinctive artistry. She is recognized as one of the most important of contemporary book artists practicing today. In book artist Russell Maret's magnificent bibliography of the press, Dispatches From the Lizard Brain, he documents the life and work of Carolee Campbell. The foreword and afterword of the bibliography beautifully describe Campbell's ethos as an artist and bookmaker that has informed her work since she began making books in 1984. Russell Maret writes of her: "It takes a special kind of person to know that what one is working on is not ready to be discussed. It takes someone...who unhurriedly allows her books to germinate in her lizard brain until they are ready to be dispatched into the world. With each new book Carolee teaches the rest of us how it should be done - not how to make books like hers , but like her, to make books the way the books want to be made."
Manuel Cordova is perhaps one of the best known productions to be issued by the press. The poem was written by the esteemed American poet W.S. Merwin. From the prospectus: "This special edition [of the book] may be unfolded and read in hand, stanza by stanza, or opened entirely, thus revealing all forty-three, fourteen-line stanzas. Fully extended, the book is fifteen feet long. The five-color image of a river undulates alongside the poem, printed in black, while the [type] setting of the poem itself mirrors the sepentine meanders of the river." A five-color printed river design runs parallel to the text of Merwin's poem, which is printed in black. Campbell wrote in her chapbook, Chasing the Ideal Book:..."this book comes closest to my never-ending chase for The Ideal Book."
Designed, printed, and bound by Carolee Campbell . From the colophon: The type is Samson uncial. Printed on handmade papers of persimmon-washed kakishibu for the text and raw flax paper for the enclosure. The enclosure is fastened with alum-tawed goat skin and bone. The map of the world printed on the liner of the enclosure is from the original, the first to show the world's currents, drawn in 1665 by Athanasius Kircher.The map is hand-tinted in five colors echoing the colors of the river. Housed in a plexiglass slipcase. In fine condition.
The book can be found in many institutional collections including the Getty Center, the New York Public Library, Houghton Library at Harvard University, Yale, University of Illinois, Brown, the British Library, and at Trinity College in Dublin. PRI/071023. Fine. More