February 28, 2014  /  The afternoon part of the day

An intimate look at the books of Ken Campbell and Historia Naturalis

 So, in addition to Chris Manson’s Posada event, Ray Nichols had been wanting for several months to visit the Library of Congress, which holds a complete collection of work by British letterpress printer and bookmaker, Ken Campbell. The original idea was to just stop by the Reading Room after lunch and request a few examples for a few of us to look at.

Earlier in the week Ray listed the five Campbell books that most interested him  in an email to Mark Dimunation. Mark sent back an email stating they were on a cart behind the desk waiting on him.

Having seen the size of our hardcore lunch group and our excitement at seeing Campbell’s books, we guess he went back and set up an intimate presentation for us in the Rosenwald Room.

The LoC has the best service anywhere.

Mark Dimunation, Chief of Rare Books at the Library of Congress, wrote a compelling article on book artist Ken Campbell in Parenthesis, a magazine published by the Fine Press Book Association. Ken’s work often has a large number of overprintings which creates a dense, textural quality and gives the production a spontaneous feel.

This is our gathering in the Rosenwald Room. Note Whitney, who looks like she really, really wants to be the first one to have eye contact with the next page Mark is going to expose. From the left is Bill Roberts, Tray Nichols, Casey Smith, Jill Cypher, Whitney Conti, Herschel Kanter, Pat Manson, Mark Dimunation and Chris Manson.

Mark walked his way through each of the five books, providing personal thoughts and stories about the printer and his process. Ray’s main interest in Campbell’s work was to see The Word Returned, shown above. The book was a massive undertaking requiring dozens of overprintings to accommodate the repurposed zinc stencils. The 40 or so copies required a staggering 66,000 impressions to complete.

The book lived up to its reputation. Photos cannot convey the physical and visual weight of each page, the tactile nature of the surface, or the subtlety of the color.

We needed to show one photo of Ray taking a slow and quiet page-by-page look.

Jill Cypher and Pat Manson look through Ten Years of Uzbekistan (1994). The following description is from Mark’s article in Parenthesis.

“Ten Years of Uzbekistan takes the aggressive physical gesture to the level of metaphor, as the faces of people who vanished during the Stalinist sweeps are obliterated in Alexander Rodchenko’s album. Here layers of overprinting obscure and censor the faces of the missing victims, each of them bordered by a zinc frame. The framing device proved recalcitrant as printing progressed; the zinc plates consistently popped and lifted. Campbell attacked them with a barrage of staples, leaving the frame with a menacing texture that translated to the page.”

Below is a closeup showing the texture resulting from the staples. [Make a note to try this on our Vandercook at Lead Graffiti.]

Mark even went back and brought out another couple of Campbell’s works. He seemed happy surrounded by Campbell devotees.

As an added story, Ray Nichols had also been reading the history of the Doves Press which mentioned that the Doves type had used a 1476 printing of Historia Naturalis by Pliny the Elder (23-79 AD) printed by Jensen in 1476. An ex-disciple of William Morris, T.J. Cobden Sanderson had purchased a copy of the book from the estate of William Morris. Cobden Sanderson used the type, the first example of roman type and simply a beautiful page of pure typography, as the basis for the Doves Press house font and design style. Commissioned in 1899 by Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker, punchcutter Edward Prince’s single-sized 16-point type was used in all of the Doves Press publications and was a key element of the Press’s influence on modern book design.

So, Ray also wanted to take the opportunity to see Historia Naturalis. As another example of Dimunation’s enthusiasm, he brought not one copy, but two, for us to look at.

          “Why two copies?”

          “Because I can.”

Bill Roberts, of Bottle of Smoke Press who had ridden down with the Lead Graffiti group, owns a page of the Historia Naturalis and took a bit of his time to search through the book, looking for his page which started with an initial capital “H.”

“Ah, there it is.” Every so often a day comes by when you wish you could read Latin.

An aside: When you go to the Library of Congress bring a sharp 10x loupe with you. Looking at things close is nice.

You can almost imagine Chris Manson, who was watching, asking, “You going to try and sneak that out?” To which Bill would probably have replied, “No, not today.”

And then Chris saying, “Well, I’m going to take a shot at it.”

Mark explains some touches in SKUTE AWABO [AWABO SKUTE] (1992) to Jill and Pat.

It was a really, really special day.

On the way out through the Library of Congress’ atrium, the group from Lead Graffiti got some ideas for a new entrance-way for their studio.

A few words to anyone who loves really nice books. Get a Library of Congress Reader’s Card (free) and spend an afternoon every month soaking in the beauty found in books.

Text & photos by Ray Nichols, Jill Cypher & Tray Nichols