Windfall Cover

The newly completed cover of Windfall has been the object of much musing. After spending so long with the poems, it's satisfying to see this book come together in a cover that, to me, really covers it. The cuts in the wood seem like little portraits of inexplicable sensations and the reference to a landscape with its struggles and flows is a fitting companion to the poems.

Windfall, the collection of poems by Erin Bertram, won first prize in our first poetry contest. The woodblock print is the work of another entrant, John Charles Shippey.

We first became acquainted with Mr. Shippey when he sent an unusual entry to our contest. The large manila envelope was full of fragrant old papers of faded typewriter and hand lettering. A drawing of the construction plans for a wooden deck and a shopping list added to the appeal of the refreshing, almost hallucinatory quality of the poems. Little notes about life, art and time filled the margins. There was also a conspicuous absence: the entry fee.

Cameron and I savored the perusal of the package over wine with a house guest named Chance. The next day I hauled out my favorite typewriter and answered John's letter assuring him that we would undoubtedly work together soon. It turned out that he was a friend of regular Sauvage contributor, Sophia Kidd. In her company we made a trip to neighboring Ventura to meet John. To our delight, he loaded us up with exquisite woodblocks and played guitar with us at his beautiful apartment one of the most cohesive residences I've visited. Shown below is the wood-working bench in the corner of the kitchen. In the other room were a bed and typewriter.

This is hopefully only the first of many collaborations with this beautiful soul and a cover that will live well wrapped around Windfall, words as sharp and subtle. The book will be bound and available in April 2010.

How to Make a Valentine.

Lettre Sauvage was featured in video on the website of our hometown paper the Ventura County Star.

Tegan was kind enough to come by and help out with the demonstration.

Thanks to Anthony Plascencia for the production.

sliding titles

Another gem: the cover of Lloyd C. Douglas's 1929 novel Magnificent Obsession, which was later adapted for two films. For an intro to cinema course, I recently assigned the 1954 Douglas Sirk version as part of a study on "surgical melodrama" (the other film was Kim Ki-Duk's Time, from 2006). I think the steep incline of the letters in this title design points to how quickly things can come undone in that sharp-edged subgenre. It's like a door half-open, words spilling out before the story's even begun.

ornaments

I recently discovered, via a Google image search for the frontispiece on a rare edition of Borges' Library of Babel (I love the fortuitous linkages that can happen while searching for things online, like a Surrealist party game), the smart and delightful feuilleton blog. There I found some of the loveliest ornaments I've ever seen on the cover of a 1945 edition of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

In addition to the repetition of the motif, the uneven delicacy of the ornament offers a sense of a hand-picked bouquet carefully arranged around an afternoon table, or an archaic stringed instrument that produces a thin reedy lilt. As John Coulthart notes, the backwards-swinging "y" is especially enchanting, and is so cleverly employed for this story of wayward time and its consequences.

Community Studio

Lettre Sauvage offers training in letterpress printing, book design, simple binding and rents the studio for $10 an hour to trained printers. We're no longer scheduling group workshops since it's been more convenient for everyone to make appointments and pursue individual interests. You can check out our workshops page for examples of things to make while you learn the ropes.

Our Community Studio program has been a way for us to meet romantic, detail oriented people and share our love of letterpress. A few of our guests are Faith and Kathryn of Creative Shift Design, Jennifer from Ambrosia Creative who posted cool photos of our studio, and David and Serg of Hertz-lion.

The photo above is of the lovely Faith with her hand on the steel lever of the C&P. Tours are free. Come on down.

APIS

Named upon reading the following lines in Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn:
“Now for the aluminum wings with which to fly to that far-off place, the bright country where Apis, the father of fornication, dwells.”

APIS is a journal of art, literature and essays presented as an offering to the erotic --sensual, hyper-real, striking, mystical, awful, gripping-- realities that collect our minds and senses in seeming unison, with orgasm and true love as prime metaphors.

An all letterpressed, hand-bound limited edition of 123 to be released in 2009. Write to info@lettresauvage.com for more information.

Submissions are still being accepted.

To date, contributors include:
Poetry & Prose: Lorinda Ann Neumann, Sophia Kidd, Gina Covarrubias,
Art & Photography: Dame Darcy, John Nichols (from the collection), Ken Volok, Doug Anderson

Editor's Note:

I enjoy working on an erotic collection because it keeps my mind on essentials. Much of my time is spent doing work that exists in a sort of spiritual mid-range: helping people along with their projects, keeping the house clean, using a calendar and online banking. These are the guts of life that must run smoothly. And, when I turn my attention toward the erotic, the tuning of the senses, the waking of the heart, I see that my other work plays an important supporting role as clean, bright foil for ecstasy.

That we might enjoy a ride on the surplus of our labors. That our bodies, our hearts, our minds, our souls, our books, might come to fullness. And, of course, that somebody at sunrise will be distraught with love!

The making of the publication is just getting started. Evaluating submissions, editing, designing the book are coming along. Raising the money is loathsome. And yet, I know that the work will emerge from this mess totally pure.

And in closing, I was delighted to find that the Advanced Papyrological Information System goes by the acronym APIS!

Yma at Work

Yma Ray is the youngest worker at the press. Her jobs include mixing ink, making monoprints, counting envelopes and cutting scrap paper into even smaller stacks of pieces on the guillotine.

There comes a time when real work is a welcome break from all the games, songs and activities we so carefully plan out to practice simple things like counting and spelling. Checking items off a list or counting envelopes and paper are jobs Yma enjoys and she likes knowing that she's really helping.

I read about including children in work in the book Better Late than Early by Raymond Moore. Here's a brief excerpt from the Moore Foundation site:

Work. Constructive, skill-building, entrepreneurial work builds children's self-confidence, creativity, and self-control, and does it more quickly. It is the most dramatic and consistent cure for behavior and personality problems. If you give children authority to manage your home to the extent that they can accept responsibility, they mature rapidly and naturally. Make them officers in your home industries. There is no more certain key to happy home education-or other schooling-regardless of institutional level. We've seen no one fail, rebel, or burn out.

Begin small. Start your children to work when they start to walk. Add freedom as they accept responsibility. No cash allowances! Let them earn their way, helping you make or grow and sell cookies, muffins, bread, wooden toys, vegetables, or service lawns, baby-sit, etc. By 6 or 8, many can run businesses. See Minding Your Own Business (MYOB) for more than 400 cottage industries. Do comparison shopping: apples/oranges, Grapenuts/Sugar Pops, etc. (nutrition, frugality, and math lessons). Let your kids use your checking account to pay your bills. The bank corrects their "math papers."

And also, for a stark look at creepy child labor, check out the photography of Lewis Hine.

the Forest Drive

The long yearned for review of word and image is finally on the press.

The plan is to work closely with a few writers and artists in the studio to form a cohesive book/object/utterance in honor of the Forest Drive in all our lives. So far poems by me (Fiona Spring), Desiree Morales and Sophia Kidd and drawings by Chance are in the mix.

Some notes on development:
The challenge has been the conflict between the desire to produce the highest quality edition and the lack of monetary resources. Finally the brilliance of the whole thing took root and I realized that the answer would be to utilize fine papers that we have on hand and set all the poems in metal type rather than ordering costly photopolymer plates. Now I'm inviting artists to carve linoleum or work with sandragraph techniques (as above) using materials we have in the studio.

The edition will be around 80 copies and a smaller number may be hard bound.

An Evening in Fillmore

Lately we've been out to meet our neighbors every chance we get. Whether it's at Golden Gate Park or at the local library, We are in a sociable mood!

Yesterday we spent the evening in downtown Fillmore showing off our Pilot table top press. To our amazement, the man who used to teach letterpress at Fillmore High with the equipment we now use was one of the first visitors at our booth. We'd never met before and there was excitement all around. He seemed so pleased to know that the presses are still in use. He was the perfect picture of a shop teacher with a freshly pressed short sleeved shirt and matching blue canvas pants. A dapper and cheerful man we hope to see more of so we can learn the origins of our beloved machines.

Yma set up her snacks and stuffed animals on this brick planter pictured below.



Downtown Fillmore is lovely! As the night came on a cool breeze brought oaky and citrusy smells into town. All the little antique shops were tricked out for the Art Harvest and offering some great deals I might add. I felt proud to be a resident of the Heritage Valley.

Art Predator Cranks Press

Art Predator just posted a blog about working here at our studio on elegant business cards (above) and stationery. Her design sense was really impressive. She took stock of what was available and quickly put all the elements together in an expression of her mission as a writer.

This kind of collaboration is really what Lettre Sauvage is about. In a day-long workshop we can cover a lot of basic printing skills and vocabulary while creating valuable paper goods.

The studio is also available for rental. We can shift gears to a support/resource role for printers who have trained with us to get set up for a project like printing their own book or making cards. Use of the press includes storage space, getting in on bulk paper & supply orders, sitting under the oak tree and a library of books about books.