The book continues to make progress, albeit a little slower than I’d hoped, but the end is in sight with only seven weeks before we begin installing the show.

After the first critique session my project kind of spun around 180°, so I lost some time and now I’m trying to catch up. All this means that for the best part of the summer I’ve been at the studio until really late every night editing, outputting digital negatives, making plates and printing the edition, but as Richard Wentworth, our landlord in London used to say, “crisis produces results”. Although I’d really like to think it hasn’t come to that yet.

Each book in the edition of 10 will consist of an unbound suite of twenty sequenced hand-pulled photogravures, with letterpress text pages, all presented in a single-tray case. The images are 7″ x 7″ on 14″ x 15.5″ Rives BFK paper.

I’m having the letterpress polymer plates made by Boxcar Press so next week I’ll be using one of the Vandercook presses at MCBA printing the title page, colophon, a preface to the project and a small quote to run some tests I have in mind. All change again…

I’d originally thought of using a clamshell design for the case, but Regula Russelle, my fantastic mentor for this project, rightly felt that a single-tray case would be much more elegant. I’ve made a few test cases now, but I have several ideas still, one of which involves locally hand-made Cave paper. Also, local type designer Mark Simonson has a typeface that I think I might like to use, but more on that later…