Foolscap Press ~ California
(Peggy Gotthold and Lawrence Van Velzer)

Despatches
By Michael Katakis
Santa Cruz, California: Foolscap Press, 2008. Edition of 185.

4.5 x 8"; 3 books, 24 pages each. Printed letterpress on Magnani Vergata paper. Each book wrapped in Camel Hahnemühle Ingres paper covers. In the center of each book is a map of that country. Each set of three books
contains ten photographs taken by the author and reproduced by Deborah Mills Thackrey of Willow Glen Productions. The photographs are archival pigment prints, using Epson Ultrachrome inks on 100% cotton, acid free, Velvet Fine Art paper. Housed in a ‘dispatch case,’ made of O’Malley Crackle handmade paper from Cave Paper. Signed by the author.

Foolscap Press: "Originally written as journal entries, Despatches is a selection from many years’ travels and remembering from Michael Katakis. These writings bring the immediacy of an eyewitness report even as they convey a perceptive reflection of his own past. The deliberate spelling of Despatches pays homage to T. E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell and Mungo Park, who, says Michael, 'Helped a solitary little boy dream of deserts and faraway places.'

"These are not travel guides but are more personal, as if we were reading letters from the most desirable sort of friend. The friend who, though far away, carries you with him as he meanders through the medina in Fez, or strides along in the tall elephant grass of Sierra Leone. His voice is such that you can almost smell the herbs and dusty soil in Crete as you read."

The journal entries Foolscap Press has chosen for publication are from Sierra Leone, Morocco, and Greece. They appear in three separate books, each with a map of the country at its center. The three books slip into a ‘dispatch case,’ which can be carried to an exotic location or placed within arm’s reach of the would-be traveler’s armchair in the library.

Michael Palin, actor, travel writer, author, film documentarian and recipient of letters from Michael Katakis writes of his friend: “In both his letters and in his journal, Michael has an infectious ability to sense the essence of place and transmit it to the reader. Michael has two other vital qualities for a good traveler. Curiosity and a conscience."

Mr. Katakis is the author of The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Excavating Voices: Listening to Photographs of Native Americans. He is the editor of Sacred Trusts: Essays on Stewardship and Responsibility. His photographs appear in The Aesthetics of Action and in 75 Years of Leica Photography.
$264

Direction of the Road
By Ursula LeGuin
2007. Edition of 120.

Printed letterpress on white linen paper made by Le Papeterie Saint-Armand paper mill in Montreal, Canada. The book is sewn into Saint-Armand’s Green Umbrella cover paper. The book, the anamorphic woodcut, and the reflective polymer cylinder are housed in a portfolio box covered in green Japanese cloth. Woodcut by Aaron Johnson. With a short new introduction by Le Guin – and signed by her.

This ecological fable from 1974 is perhaps more relevant today. Simply stated: what we do affects everything—the planet is a web of relatedness.

The narrator, one lone oak, recounts an increasing state of extremis as the human population grows and life speeds up. You see, while a lone walker thinks that mere perspective causes the tree to change sizes as she approaches, the tree actually—physically—grows, taller, taller, until it looms, then quickly shrinks as the walker passes. Easy enough, perhaps, when the walkers were few. But then more walkers. Then riders on horses (adjusting to the trot is doable, the canter less so, the gallop is a killer). Then, of course, automobiles.

Anamorphic art (devised, at least in the West, by Da Vinci) demonstrates the fable’s conceit; crinkly paper echoes riffling leaves: this integration of structure, text, and image add an aesthetic shiver to Le Guin’s work –powerful enough on its own – but in this instance demonstration that even great fables can be affected by the things around it, and sometimes the affect can be a gain.

Beautifully conceived, beautifully rendered.
$395 (Less than 20 copies remaining)

Other Worlds: Journey to the Moon
By Cyrano de Bergerac
2005. Edition of 120.

9 x 11.25" bound in quarter goat skin leather and housed in a custom made box. Printed letterpress on Hahnemühle Bugra. The direct-gravure etchings are printed on 300 gram Pescia. In this unusual binding "half pages" are opened revealing an etching in nearly every section of the book. The edition is limited to 120 numbered copies plus eight printer's proofs numbered i-viii. Signed in the colophon by both the translator and artist.

Written by the poet, Cyrano who was, indeed, a brave soldier. He was wounded in battle twice, and was an excellent swordsman. But, most important, he left behind a work that influenced many writers who followed. Cyrano was an satirist, a man ahead of his time who dared to challenge the orthodoxies of both contemporary astronomy and the Church.

This work is translated by Geoffrey Strachan who won the Scott Moncrieff Prize for his translation of Makine's Le Testament Français. In his informative introduction of Journey to the Moon he speaks of "pataphysics," a term used by Alfred Jarry meaning the science of imaginary solutions. Mr. Strachan states, "If ever there was a classic example of pataphysics in action it is surely Cyrano's decision to resolve his contemporaries' disputes about the nature of the moon by penning an imaginary flight there—in order, as it were, to see for himself: a perfect marriage between empirical method and poetic imagination."
$2,300

Desert Dreams
By Lawrence G. Van Velzer and Peggy Gotthold
1997. Edition of 185.

8 x 9 "; 144 pages. Type and multicolored illustrations printed letterpress on Legion Letterpress paper. Bound in Japanese cloth over boards. Illustrations by Peggy Gotthold.

A tale by Lawrence G. Van Velzer taken from the heart of the Great Middle Desert where three of its rather unusual denizens inhabit an arid and enchanting land. Tommy is a young tumbleweed with a longing to travel to the distant horizon and learn about the mountains that so intrigue him; Dusty is a dust devil whose array of hats are fashioned from fine sand and who considers herself the desert's foremost detective; and, finally there is Crawfoot, a crow caught between his desire to remain within his familiar surroundings and the unexpected opportunity to add to his formidable collection of shiny things. Fate has thrown the three together and theirs is the story of life, of companionship, of exploration, of travel and discovery. One could say it is a book for youth for it is a story filled with a youthful sense of adventure. One must also say it is for those with a youthful spirit that sometimes reappears after a sobering brush with adult life.
$130

Phisicke Against Fortune: Forty-six Dialogues
By Francesco Petrarca
1993. Edition of 175.

12 x 9" Designed, handset and hand-sewn by Peggy Gotthold and Lawrence G. Van Velzer. Translated by Thomas Twyne. Illustrated by Hans Weiditz (from the German edition of 1532).

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374) inspired the Renaissance in Italy. He set patterns and standards for the revival of learning and, at the same time, was a powerful advocate for the preservation of valuable manuscript material. His original manuscript, "De remediis utriusque forunae," is a work of prose consisting of two hundred and fifty three dialogues that he completed near the end of his life. It represents a distillation of his moral philosophy arranged as a treatise that shows how our ideas and actions help us create either true happiness or sorrow and disillusionment. Foolscap selected forty-six of these dialogues for this edition.

One of the books in the New York Public Library's exhibition "Ninety From The Nineties" in the Illustration section: "For this 1993 edition of Petrarch's dialogues, Lawrence Van Velzer and Peggy Gotthold made photo engravings from the 16th-century woodcuts by the "Master of Petrarch."
$285

Tower of the Winds
Written, designed and printed by Lawrence G. Van Velzer and Peggy Gotthold
2002. Edition of 200.

A cylindrical case, yellow-dyed to the appearance and feel of an unusual bark, and lined with a map of Ancient Athens, comes into the hands like an artifact out of time. Tucked tightly inside is a papyrus-wrapped scroll. The text follows the written history and compiled science of an intriguing building, the so-named Tower of the Winds, that was constructed both as a monument and in order to house the most advanced scientific instruments of the day. The octagonal tower was built by one Andronikos of Kyrrhos to reckon the eight winds. On each side of the marble tower, he wrought a relief figure to represent the wind which blew upon that face. Atop the structure he placed a weathervane figure of Triton which turns with the winds and stops, pointing his wand at the figure below, when he directly faces one of the eight directions. Although its mechanical and spiritual functions have been explained by scholars since antiquity, the Tower remains mysterious and enchanting.

The pre-codex form of the book allows the reader to scroll through history, viewing the subject along a twenty-five foot panorama. The captivating history of this strange and fascinating monument is told in the voices of early Romans, a seventeenth-century Turkish traveler, and modern scientists. Illustrations of the tower are from the pens of eighteenth-century British architects James Stuart and Nicolas Revett, whose written descriptions and drawings inspired a new architecture in England with reverberations in America.

Letterpress printed from polymer plates on a Hacker handpress in Adobe Herculanum on Zerkall Book paper with handmade Egyptian papyrus. Scroll cases, hand-shaped from dyed Arches paper, are formed into a rigid cylinder hinged with cloth. Bound at Foolscap. Includes footnotes and bibliography. Edition of 200. Scroll box is 11 inches long by 2.5 inches in diameter and comes with instructions for handling and re-rolling the scroll.
$325