Contemporary Fine Press and Artists' Books

CHEN, Julie. A GUIDE TO HIGHER LEARNING. Berkeley, California: Flying Fish Press, 2009. Edition of 100. 11.25 x 11.75 x 3.75; cloth covered clam shell box. Letterpress printed from photopolymer plates. Interior lid contain instructions on how to unfold the book. Bottom tray has instructions on how to refold the book. Includes 34 x 34" folded felt cloth for displaying and reading the book. Cloth folds into the center of the structure. Book consists of a central box surrounded by rows of square pages on all four sides. To read the book the whole assembly must be lifted from the tray and placed on the center of the cloth. Each square page is numbered clockwise. The reader thus begins with page 1 on the right and continues around the structure clockwise through page 12. Accompanying the structure is a 3 x 3 book, The Answer Book.; It is laid in the center of the book assemblage. Julie Chen, in The Answer Book: "A Guide to Higher Learning includes many elements that are highly technical in both language and concept which often go far beyond my own level of knowledge. I would like to thank the following people for their contributions to this project. Henri Ducharme and Laura Norin supplied all the mathematical formulas and equations that appear in the book and spent much time and effort trying to explain to me what they mean. The intricate patterns of lines that appear with the equations are origami crease patterns by Robert J. Lang and are used with his kind permission. "The mathematical statements are from the four branches of mathematics: abstract algebra, analysis, geometry, and number theory. The abstract algebra and analysis loops demonstrate the central concept of unity in mathematics. Each of the four equations has a version of '1' as its solution. The geometry loop evokes the surprise of newer geometries incompatible with Euclid's mathematics: once thought to be true absolutely is now true only conditionally. The vastness of mathematics yet unknown is hinted at by the conjectures in the number theory loop. Mathematics have been trying to prove or disprove these conjectures for centuries, but still do not know if either is true. "The origami crease patterns of Robert J. Lang that appear in the four quadrants of the book are shown here in miniature with descriptions and opus numbers of the amazingly detailed forms that can be made, each from a single piece of folded paper, by following the diagrams. "At the center of this book is the beginning of an Ulam spiral, which illustrates the discovery that if the counting numbers are arranged on a spiral grid, the prime numbers - shown as red dots - form surprising and unexpected patterns." $2,175

[signed copy] VAN VELZER, Lawrence. HERAKLES AND THE EURYSTHEUSIAN TWELVE-STEP PROGRAM. Santa Cruz, California: Foolscap Press, 2009. Edition of 110. 6 x 11.25"; 51 pages. Letterpress printed on Curtis Holcomb text and Hahnemühle Bugra. Illustrated by Peggy Gotthold. Clothbound boards with paper title inset on front board. Binding designed to separate the twelve Steps or Labors into single pages that fold out and terminate in an illustrated vase. Enclosed in paper wrapper with leather and cord closure. Author, interview: "Well, what could be a better time to learn something from our past? Half of us are in some kind of twelve-step program and the other half should be. Our economy needs a twelve-step program; ditto the environment, our congress and the policy wonks driving our foreign policy. ... If you read your Greek mythology you’ll find that everything I’ve written about Herakles is true. The twelve-step program I’ve written about is what at the time would have been called a set of Labors. Eurystheus didn’t have a lot of research to fall back on. He had to make it up as he went along. You have to give the man credit." $395

SZIRTES, George. THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS. A poem sequence by George Szirtes based on Elias Canetti's novel 'Auto da Fé'. London: Circle Press, 2008. Edition of 30. illustrated by Ron King. 10.25 x 14"; 15 etchings (13 full page, one double spread, and one quarter page. Text letterpressed printed in Walbaum type from polymer plates. Housed in solander box. Prospectus: "Back in 1971 Ron King at the press in Guildford tried to obtain permission from the publishers to illustrate Elias Canetti's great novel Auto da Fé. Permission was denied to him, as to all others who had requested it, as the author did not wish his work to be illustrated or made into a play or film. In 1981 the novel won Canetti the Nobel prize for literature but still the writer would not release his tight grip on the copyright. Canetti died in 1994 and ten years later King took it on himself to persuade George Szirtes winner of the Eliot prize for poetry 2004, to make a book with him on the theme of Auto da Fé. Within a short time poem after poem of a powerful sequence directly related to or inspired by his re-reading of the book, the poems living as it were, in the crevices of Canetti's text, arrived at the press from Szirtes." George Szirtes, Introduction: "The sequence is titled 'The Burning of the Books' since that is what happens at the end of Auto da Fé. The scholar's library burns in anticipation of the Nazi book-burnings to come. The poems are fuel for King's visual symbiotic-organisms, joining them in a mutual homage-cum-conflagration." $3,150 (Two copies); $3600 (five copies)