Well, our website has been relaunched after a long and minorly painful process (mostly, mind you, due to chaos around my state of being). It looks better and, more importantly, functions better. This blog is better integrated and now the onus is on me to start posting regularly again. Hope springs eternal. Many balls in the air with new collections in the pipeline, a major bit of growth, fundamental ’process changes’ (this last focused on trying to get me to behave in a predictable, rational fashion). I will try to keep you amused by documenting my descent into madness…

We had the extraordinary good fortune to be able to offer 20 pre-publication Special Editions of the portfolio of Occupy poster art. I’ve included a handful of images of some of the posters to be included. This edition includes 35 pieces (the regular edition will have 30) and includes thirty 12” x 18” hand silk-screened artists’ prints on French paper in an archival silk-screened presentation box. The collection has been curated by Occuprint organizer, Jesse Goldstein, BOOKLYN’s Marshall Weber, and various Occuprint editorial committee members including Molly Fair, Josh MacPhee, and John Boy.

Our special edition (Occupy the ABAA) pre-publication set is limited to an edition of 20 and contains , in addition to the above:

• an original first edition of the Occupy Wall Street Journal’s Occuprint issue.
• 1 copy of the Alexandra Clotfelter’s iconic “The Beginning is Near” roped bull   image, offset printed on French paper from a limited edition of 160 on French paper
• 2 Occuprint “General Strike” offset posters
• 1 Occuprint “General Strike Newspaper”.

While we placed most of the edition, I have a few sets left and, as this project is a fundraiser for Occupy, I’d like to see the entire run placed. Please contact me if you’d to have a set when they are printed (in the next month or so).

“Occuprint emerged when The Occupied Wall Street Journal asked us to guest curate an issue dedicated to the poster art of the global Occupy movement. The Occuprint website is meant to connect people with this work, and provide a base of support for print-related media within the #Occupy movement. occuprint.org/

Occuprint showcases posters from the worldwide Occupy movement, all of which are part of the creative commons, and available to be downloaded for noncommercial use, though we ask that artists be given attribution for their work. Our Print Lab is collaboration with the Occupy Wall Street Screen Printing Guild. The OWS Screen Printing Guild is an official working group within the OWS General Assembly. It is an open working group that regularly incorporates new members into its process and can be contacted at owsscreenguild(at)gmail(dot)com.

We look forward to creating and distributing more printed matter by supporting the development of screen-printing labs at other locations worldwide, and by printing more of the wonderful posters that we are receiving.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                     —Occuprint

The dust is finally settling and I thought I best get some images and links posted about the ever-fabulous NYC ABAA Book Fair. It was, in brief, a wonderful fair and a great weekend (and then some). Melissa Sanders (of Ken Sander’s Rare Books fame) flew out early and both helped me prep for the fair and attended a great outing of the Ticknor Society with me. She also corrected errors in my database as she helped pack, for which I’ll apparently be repaying her on a per-error basis for years (overall, a win for me).

The fair was good fun, in that slightly over-intense and somewhat masochistic way. We sold well (and most of the things I really wanted to sell) and bought even better. The shadow show had some great things and was well worth the trip (though I wish some coordination could be such that one could do both the shadow fair *and* attend the ABAA annual meeting…). The best wrapup of the fair and it’s importance was done by Lorne Bair and can be found here (highly recommend the read).

The ABAA blog has a nice post on celebrity spotting at the fair. I was especially pleased to have Steve Martin actually stop by the booth and look about…and more so that he then posted about his visit as *his post* radically increased the fair’s twitter profile

A video of the booth can be found here (a bit too much background noise, but gives you a good overview:

Images are captioned and covers before and throughout…

Originally published by order of Napoleon Bonaparte and printed between 1809-1828, the original Description of Egypt is one of the masterworks of the printed book. The twenty volumes (10 of plates, 1 atlas, 9 text) were printed by the atelier Rémond, founded in Paris in 1793…the successor in intrest to this historic press is the atelier Didier Mutel, aptly named as it is home to master printer and engraver, Didier Mutel. Approximately 200 years later, Didier is breathing life into a reinterpretation of this historic and remarkable work.

The original was a benchmark in printing of the day, emblematic and historically and technically remarkable. Didier’s intent with this new project is both a homage and an extension…the bite of acid upon copper expanding to envelop digital contextualization. Where the original explored architecture on the grand scale, the new begins with an exploration of faces on the micro scale. For each of the 28 plates associated with the first volume (Blindness), Didier created a unique face…and then engraved 16 iterations of each plate. Though each engraving stands alone, their evolution(s) in series quite literally transforms them [seriously, don't miss this wonderful bit of etched animation].

Didier’s blog posts on the creation of the first book (in two volumes) can be found here (complete with unicorn pictures) and a .pdf description can be found here. It will be an edition of 15 copies and likely to be at least 10 volumes issued over the next 8-10 years. Please contact us if you would like further information about what is very likely to be a defining work of 21st century book art.