Center for Book Arts, New York

Blake's Songs
By William Blake
New York: Center for Book Arts, 2007. Edition of 39.

6.5 x 10"; 9 folios. Letterpress printed. Hand-colored. Collated in a St. Armand wrapper. Printed by Letterpress II students at the Center for Book Arts in New York City. Each folio signed by the printer.

An eclectic mix of typography and illustration. Each printer/student printed and often illustrated a selection or selections from Blake’s Songs of Innocence on one side of a 13” x 10” sheet. That sheet was then folded into a small folio.

Who would have ever thought Batman might be saying "And I saw it was filled with Graves, / and tomb-stones where flowers should be..."?
$100

The Book
By Albert Goldbarth
New York: Center for Book Arts, 2006. Edition of 100.

6.5 x 9.5"; 12 leafs. Frontispiece illustration folds out. Designed, printed, and illustrated by Amber McMillan. Text in Centaur digital type. Letterpress printed from polymer plates on Zerkall Book paper. Cover illustration printed from polymer plates on Rives BFK paper. Interior illustration relief printed from woodblock and polymer plates on Zerkall Book paper. Housed in a St. Armand Canal Denim slipcase with letterpress printed title. Signed by the poet.

Albert Goldbarth, a judge for The Center for Book Arts 2006 Poetry Chapbook Competition, has twice received the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. These four poems were each published previously elsewhere.
$25

Film History as Train Wreck
By Jesse Lee Kercheval
New York: Center for Book Arts, 2006. Edition of 100.

6.5 x 10"; 30 pages.Text in Chelteham Old Style. Printed on a Vandercook SP-20. Designed and printed by Barbara Henry.

Four poems by Kercheval, all previously published elsewhere. The manuscript for this book won the 2006 Poetry Chapbook Competition at The Center for Book Arts in New York City.

Film is an egg. It is the egg.
Wide or narrow, it is a ribbon
of pastry, of moonlight, of butter.
Film is the light
gliding over our eyelids,
sneaking in even when we try
not to see.
     ~ lines from "Film As An Elongation of Photography"

$35

Bird in the Head
By Ailish Hopper
2005. Edition of 100.

6.25 x 10.5" Designed and letterpress printed by Barbara Henry. Goudy's Deepdene was cast in monotype composition by Ed Rayher at Swamp Press. Printed on a Vandercook Sp-20 at the Center for Book Arts.

The manuscript for this book won the 2005 Chapbook Competition at the Center for Book Arts.

Interior with Birds

Taped to the wall
are nine pictures

of birds, cut out
of an Audubon Guide.

And so he builds
his roost
from these found things...

$35

strange lights
By Jean Valentine
2005. Edition of 100.

4 x 6" Text set in Garamond and title in Garamont by Swamp Press. Letterpress printed on Arturo Magnani paper with Hautaura Lokta and Thai Mulberry covers.

"Strange Lights" was printed on the occasion of the 2005 Center for Book Arts Chapbook competition, for which Jean Valentine was a judge. Book designed and printed by Roni Gross with drawings by Peter Schell. "Strange Lights" was previously printed in American Poetry Review.
$35

Interrogation II: [Four interrogators: a victim, bound and hooded; red walls, a ladderlike device with chain; a chair]
By C. K. Williams
2004. Edition of 150.

6.5 x 9.5" Letterpress printed and hand bound by Roni Gross. An interesting page structure, overlapping three pages onto a single leaf.

Since its inception in 1974, The Center for Book Arts has supported the production of beautiful presentations of the printed word. One of the venues is an annual poetry chapbook competition. Each year as part of the event the Center publishes a chapbook by one of the Competition's judges. C. K. Williams was a judge in the 2004 competition.

C. K. Williams is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Repair (1999), winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, and Flesh and Blood (1987), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.
$50

Salt Mother, Animal Dad
By Jeffrey Skinner
2004. Edition of 100.

9 x 7" 22 pages. Letterpress printed and hand bound by Nancy Loeber. Set in Joanna designed by Eric Gill. The paper is Magnani Velata and is bound in Canford covers.

Since its inception in 1974, The Center for Book Arts has supported the production of beautiful presentations of the printed word. One venue for this is an annual poetry competition. The winning manuscript is awarded with the publication of a beautifully designed, letterpress-printed, limited edition chapbook printed and bound by artists at the Center for Book Arts. Jeffrey Skinner was the 2004 winner. "Salt Mother, Animal Dad" is a compilation of twenty-two of his poems.

Jeffrey Skinner was a winner in the National Poetry Series, the 1997 Frost House Poet-in Residence, in 1998 served as the American writer-in-residence at the annual Arts Festival in Country Kildare, Ireland, and in 2002 served as the James Merrill House Poet-in-Residence. Of his poetry Skinner says: "We all want to know why the universe is the way it is and not otherwise. Or why it is at all. Poetry is my way of putting on such questions and going outside for a walk. It’s good for all kinds of weather, for the country as well as the city. When I’m inside poetry I seem compelled to enter the ocean, or an idea, or a city I once knew, or my own cruelty, or whatever–without lying. Poetry seems to have something to do with attention; and with love, if one can say such a thing without getting all wet. But what that something is, I don’t know." (From interview on PoetryNet)
$35

Street Life in London Redeemed
Designed by Andrew Atkinson
2003. Edition of 100.

5 x 8.25" with 24 pages. Three black and white photographs tipped in. Bound in black cloth with gray ornamental image on front board. Short letterpress "academic" introduction. Uses Woodburytype, an archival photography intaglio process from the 19th century.

This book was the result of the proposal by Andrew Atkinson, 2003 Sally R. Bishop Resident at The Center for the Books, New York City. Atkinson's concept was to merge the ideas of two different books to for a new presentation of social commentary. Atkinson used these two books as a basis to introduce a book which claims to be part of the Nag Hammadi library with the contents an adapted version of the Street Life in London.

"Street Life in London" was originally published in England in 1878 with social documentary photographs by John Thomason. The photographic reproductions were counter pointed by text which espoused sentiment for the poor and those lost to society whilst retaining an undertone of moral superiority and the wisdom of the objective stance. At the time of the original publication it was well received and was even instrumental in educating the wealthy to the degree that action was taken to build walls along the river Thames to protect against flooding.

The Nag Hammadi Library was found in jars, in 1945. Some "books" were burned, some lost, but finally some of the codices were collected and translated into English. It is considered the greatest resource ever found on the subject of Gnostic thought.
$150