Berkeley, CA: never mind the press, 2019. Hardcover. Number 12 of 18 copies signed and numbered by the book artist. From the website of Alisa Golden's never mind press: "As a writer, printmaker, and letterpress printer, I work with words and images on paper and cloth. The bridge between writing and art has taken the form of books and prints since 1983, and expanded into felt and art quilts since the early 2000s. Additionally, I founded, edit and publish the art and literary magazine, Star 82 Review. For many years teaching was also a main part my life; workshops for all ages and semester-long courses as an adjunct professor around the San Francisco Bay Area. My work explores interaction and change, primarily the intersection between urban environments and natural settings, conversations and conflicts." She also wrote: "Book art can be made of many materials and take many forms: an interactive, touchable object that opens; a merging of words and images and structure; it can also be sculptural work that references reading or printing or the characteristics of a book. I'm interested in how each part adds to a whole tactile and sensory experience."

This handsome and intriguing work from Golden is one of a series of three books inspired by birds. She describes this book on her website: "Bearded Vultures are interesting Old World birds. We don't have them in North America. The last nesting pair in Israel/Palestine was seen in 1982. In the wild, Bearded Vultures preen with iron-rich soil, giving them a rusty color, but in captivity, their body feathers remain white. I hand colored the reduction cuts with 'red earth' acrylic ink. The front has a cutout for a letterpress printed, wood type V. It is bound in Japanese book cloth in a shimmery copper/navy blue. Another V shape appears as doubled covers: outer and inner, like wings unfolding. The front cover has a recess with a Bearded Vulture linocut in black. The wings unfold and spread to reveal two accordions, each with handset type letterpress printed in white on Stonehenge black paper that meet in the center, where two Bearded Vultures live. The endpapers are paste paper frottage from cutouts of feather shapes. Reduction linoleum prints of bones and fragments, the primary food of Bearded Vultures, are the first and last images. Yes, they eat bones! I printed white on white on white and loved the effect of the black paper showing through. Printed from handset Caslon and Baruch Schocken on Stonehenge paper." In fine condition. Measures 6 x 7.5 inches closed; 12 x 7.5 inches open. Unpaginated. ARTB/011525. Fine. More

Berkeley: never mind the press, 2019. Hardcover. Number 6 of 18 copies signed and numbered by the book artist. From the website of Alisa Golden's never mind press: "As a writer, printmaker, and letterpress printer, I work with words and images on paper and cloth. The bridge between writing and art has taken the form of books and prints since 1983, and expanded into felt and art quilts since the early 2000s. Additionally, I founded, edit and publish the art and literary magazine, Star 82 Review. For many years teaching was also a main part my life; workshops for all ages and semester-long courses as an adjunct professor around the San Francisco Bay Area. My work explores interaction and change, primarily the intersection between urban environments and natural settings, conversations and conflicts." She also wrote: "Book art can be made of many materials and take many forms: an interactive, touchable object that opens; a merging of words and images and structure; it can also be sculptural work that references reading or printing or the characteristics of a book. I'm interested in how each part adds to a whole tactile and sensory experience."

She writes of the making of this striking book: "After learning that the raven was the first bird Noah sent out of the ark, preceding the dove, I had questions. If ravens mate for life, what happened to the mate? What did the raven do besides return and fly 'to and fro?' Raven was the bird I knew I would explore when I turned in my proposal to create book art around 'Birds in the Bible' for the Anolic Family Award. Quail was the first book of three that I completed. I began with the Japanese marbling technique, suminagashi, done in blue on the background mulberry paper. There's a raven nest camera mounted outside a store in Iceland that I was alerted to by one of my fellow Osprey nest camera watchers, so I studied the ravens in motion and close up, when possible. At first I wanted to print the babies when they were young because their red mouths are such a good contrast against the black, but the book didn't want that. So I did a reduction print from a screenshot of the juveniles, a few days before they fledged and disappeared from view for good, which was the beginning of June. I carved other linoleum blocks and printed the ravens in dark blue-black and overprinted in black with some black pigmented mica powder for a subtle sheen. I set the biblical verse in Hebrew and English. Machine-sewed with variegated rainbow thread and a leaf pattern to attach the mulberry paper to the front and back title pages. The book is covered with black book cloth and has recesses like windowpanes that show the raven outside. Or inside, depending how you like to look at it. I chose walnut Paperwood endpapers to represent the ark, and printed a few elements in brown. The center mountain fold is letterpress printed in both English and Hebrew in rainbow colors with part of the Jewish prayer said upon seeing a rainbow." Bound in black cloth covers with an accordion structure. Printed with Baruch-Schocken Hebrew type, linocuts and ancient Caslon 471 type. Housed in a black cloth covered slipcase with a brown cloth spine. In fine condition. Measures 5.5 x 7.5 inches. Unpaginated. ARTB/011625. Fine. More

Simi Valley, CA: Pie in the Sky Press, 2022. Hardcover. Number 8 of 30 copies, signed and numbered by the book artist. Rebecca Chamlee is a book artist, printer, writer, and bookbinder who has published innovatively designed, letterpress printed, limited-edition fine press, and artist’s books under the imprint of Pie In The Sky Press since 1986. Her work is in prominent special and private collections throughout the U.S. and has been exhibited widely. As a self-taught naturalist and citizen scientist, Rebecca’s artist’s books examine the intersection of her artistic and scientific interests by collecting and cataloging the natural world. Rebecca retired in 2023 as an associate professor at Otis College of Art and Design where she taught bookbinding, letterpress printing, and artist’s book classes and headed the Book Arts minor program for over 20 years [from the artist's website].

Chamlee writes about her book: "During the long months of isolation in 2020 and 2021, I began documenting the many birds that came to my backyard feeders and noted their unique behaviors. With a telephoto lens, I was able to record detailed and intimate images of my avian visitors. As often happens, the passion I felt for the birds grew into the idea for an artist’s book. Dreams of Flight, the nesting season is an interconnected story of three different species of birds that nested in my suburban yard during the spring nesting seasons of 2020–21. The book was created entirely at home. Printed in the colors of the birds on the Vandercook Universal III power press in the living room studio using Deepdene and 20th Century type with assorted wood type from the Pie in the Sky Press collection. The original images were captured through the window over the press with a Nikkor 200-500mm f5.6 lens mounted on a Nikon D850 camera and printed with photo polymer plates made by Boxcar Press." The blue binding with an abstract gilt image of a bird's wing is a flutter book structure, a type of accordion where the fore-edges of the pages are pasted together but the spine is not. A tan cloth magnetic spine supports the backbone of the book and can be removed for reading and display. Printed on cotton cloud paper that was handmade to order by Tom Balbo. The endsheets are Hahnemuhle Bugra. The text paper is Wa-Mix Kozo and Clairefontaine Simili Japon with sewn-in wings of cloud paper and colored Bugra to match the birds. The book is housed in a blue bookcloth-covered clamshell box and includes a suite of three prints printed in four colors on 320gsm Izumi paper, enclosed in handmade St. Armand Papeterie blue paper folder. The box is housed in a protective blue stiff paper clamshell box with a slightly smudged title label on the cover. In fine condition. Measures 6 x 10 x .75 inches. Box measures 8.75 x 10.75 x 1.5 inches. Unpaginated [24 pages]. ARTB/030424. Fine. More