How the summer slides into fall

The tumble toward fall begins! Our fall list is in pretty good shape editorially (other than that the fall catalogue is late, again), and production work on fall books is well underway. The first fall book to take form is St. Andrews Architecture, 1604–1966 by John Leroux and Thaddeus Holownia. The Nature Trust of New Brunswick is hosting a launch for this book in St. Andrews on this coming Saturday morning. Given that the first copies of the book were bound only this morning, it’s going to be a pretty crazy day in here today as we gather, sew, bind and trim enough books for me to drive up to the event tomorrow. Ahh!

There was a nice article about this book in the Telegraph Journal last weekend, which you should be able to fine at this link.



In the mail bag this week were copies of the The Alcuin Society’s catalogue for its 28th annual awards for excellence in Canadian book design, which includes a number of Gaspereau Press productions. I went into Halifax last week for the opening of an exhibition of this year’s winning books at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. I’ll be speaking another opening of the same exhibit at the Acadia Art Gallery in Wolfville on Friday July 23rd at 2:00 p.m.



We’ve had a lot of interesting commercial work moving through the shop too. Of course, there's the usual dog’s breakfast of invitations, programs and flyers, but we’ve also been involved making some interesting books and journals. We did a slim volume by Sackville, NB, poet Michael Thorpe entitled About Thomas Hardy. And a family memoir by Stanley Havill with the delightfully direct title Some Happening of the Havill Family of Nova Scotia. And last week I found myself typesetting a geology paper on an Early Triassic camptonite dyke in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the online journal Atlantic Geology. All of these projects come with their own unique challenges and rewards and they keep me on my toes.



On the letterpress front, I recently designed and hand printed a short catalogue for an exhibition of photographs by Thaddeus Holownia which is presently showing at the Tides Institute in Eastport, Maine. The text is an essay by Paul Griffin. The type was Garamount.



We got involved with one of the other local arts organizations this summer, designing and printing a suite of promotional pieces (posters, cards, etc.) for Two Planks and a Passion Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. The posters and cards were printed offset and included an original scraper board illustration by Wesley Bates. I used a revival of the Fells types to do this fun letterpress broadside, co-writing the copy with the play’s director Ken Schwartz. The next big letterpress project is a 96 page book celebrating the painter Alex Colville’s 90th birthday in August. The editorial and design work is complete, and I’m waiting for paper to arrive so that I can begin printing.



By far the most intensive typesetting job I’ve done in the past few weeks has been the Autumn 2010 issue of the international book arts journal Parenthesis, for which Gaspereau Press is the North American printer of record. Edited by Paul Razzel in Vancouver, the issue hosts a special feature on fine printing and the book arts in the state of California, as well as numerous articles and reviews. This issue is set in Ross Mills’ snazzy new typeface Huronia, accompanied by my own Memorial Hall ornaments. I’ll be printing the jackets on my letterpress later in the month.

Summer is always a busy time for visitors in the printshop. Recent drop-ins have included Jeffrey Macklin from Jackson Creek Press in Peterborough, Ontario, from Jack Illingworth of the Literary Press Group of Canada, illustrator and letterpress printer Basma Kavanagh, just to name a few.



(Oh, yes, and I'm still spending evenings and weekends working away at building a house.)

ANDREW STEEVES ¶ PRINTER & PUBLISHER

Useful Shelves

Whenever we take on a student intern (which is not that often), I always suggest that they read Richard Kennedy’s memoir A Boy at the Hogarth Press (1972). In the memoir, Kennedy recounts, before heading off to intern with Leonard and Virginia Woolf, his uncle’s story about a successful intern in his architectural firm: “[He] never lost a plan, he replenishes stocks of drawing materials, and he put up Useful Shelves.” I have to say that I am yet to have hosted an intern who has erected Useful Shelves, but we have have had a number of exceptional people move through our doors over the years.



Since January, Gaspereau’s been hosting Laura MacDonald, an intern who studied book publishing at Humber College in Toronto. It seems Gaspereau Press came up in one of her classes, and she was hooked. Technically speaking, her internship ended months ago, but she’s been hanging around the printshop, finishing up her letterpress project and picking up some paid work in the bindery (as well as playing crib with Gary at lunch break). Interns be warned: a job in literary publishing ruins you for normal work.



Laura’s letterpress project is a chapbook of poetry which she designed and hand set in 18 point Bembo. It was printed on a Vandercook proof press.



She’s also been learning how to make paper by hand. These sheets will be used for the cover of her book jacket.



Not to give you the wrong impression, I should add that most of Laura’s time here has involved running paper cutters, folders, binders and other production equipment, helping us to produce our trade books. But we also made sure that she’s had some time to muck about and learn some of the rudiments of the traditional book arts, at least the little we know about them here.

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Speaking of people moving through our doors, Emily Leeson is leaving the press at the end of June in order to pursue other interests. Emily started with the press in the fall of 2008 and her energy and enthusiasm have been a great asset in the promotion of the press’s authors and their books. We are presently considering our options with regards to this vacancy, and may in fact take this opportunity to reconfigure the position altogether. In the meantime, all promotional queries may be directed to Gary Dunfield or myself.

ANDREW STEEVES ¶ PRINTER & PUBLISHER

Blogslacker

The Gaspereau Press blog has been silent as of late thanks in part to the untimely death of my camera, but also due to my partial distraction. In short, my wife and I sold our house and moved our family into a tent for the summer while we build an off-the-grid house in the woods. Our perpetual shorthandedness at the press doesn’t really allow for a summer-long disappearance on my part to build said house, so I’ve been essentially burning the candle on both ends. Blogging seems to have been a casualty of this, but I’ll see what I can do to reinstate the Gaspereau Press blog as a part of my week. Much is, after all, afoot!



Even on the construction site, I see grids and letters.

Speaking of grids, letters, and buildings, I’ve been madly working away designing a book by architect John Leroux and photographer Thaddeus Holownia on the architecture of St. Andrews, New Brunswick. Combining text and images in a way that looks seemless is always a tricky thing, but rewarding when it falls into place. John and I have also been collaborating on maps which help the reader should they wish to use the publication like a guidebook. As well as being a Gaspereau Press publication, the book is a fundraiser for the Nature Trust of New Brunswick. There will be a launch in St. Andrews on July 17, so, umm, I better quit this and get back to work.



Also on my desk at the moment is the next North American issue of the fine press journal, Parenthesis, published by the Fine Press Book Association. I’m typesetting it in a pre-release version of Vancouver-based Tiro Typeworks’ new pan-American type, Huronia, designed by W. Ross Mills. I’m liking Huronia very much. Ross, Like Rod McDonald, knows how to design a type that stands up to a range of applications. It’s got, well, tensile strength and character. You can see samples and read more about Huronia at the Tiro Typeworks web page. This is the third issue of Parenthesis to be produced at Gaspereau Press. (Every alternate issue is produced in the UK.) Magazines are a whole different kettle of fish than books, and I always look forward to doing this project for that reason. For one thing, it's chop full of wonderful colour images.


Dump it in, sort it out. How will all this fit on a spread!?

Novels by Norman Ravvin and Bruce Johnson are simmering away in the editing process and soon to be typeset, as is an astonishing book by Tim Bowling about book collecting and mid-life. We’re also up to our necks in setting and proofing a new edition of Jan Zwicky’s epic Lyric Philosophy, and designing missing anglo-saxon glyphs to set a bilingual edition of Old English poems translated by Christopher Patton. Did I mention that we’re also releasing a Gaspereau edition of George Elliott Clarke’s classic Whylah Falls?

Soooo ... it’s busy. Especially if you’re also trying to wrap your head around the 2010 changes to the building code.

ANDREW STEEVES ¶ PRINTER & PUBLISHER

Review: The Annotated Bee and Me

Tim Bowling's new collection of poetry, The Annotated Bee and Me, was recently reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press.



Reviewer Jennifer Still called the book, "a quirky, shimmering, stingingly sharp work of lyric wonder." Click here to read the full review.