Signing the book, a bit of lunch and some collating

The final piece of printing had been done, the sheets folded and inserted to form sections. John Abell had now to sign each copy of the colophon page before the sections were collated into books. Happily this coincided with John having finished cutting the two lino blocks planned for the cover, so a trip to Catchmays Court was organised to include our mutual friend, Bill Garnett, of Pomegranate Fine Art.

 
  As John signed, I slipped the page into its section and we talked . . . about . . . what more appropriate than "what shall we do for out next book"! These photographs show the aftermath of all this, a little lunch, during which the pile of signed sheets was pushed ignominiously to the edge of the table!

 

The next day saw Frances performing her lonely dance round the piles of sections to produce ever-growing piles of collated copies - ready for transport to the binders. That is when I have completed the final printing, of the cover blocks.

 As mentioned in an earlier post, I hasten to take photographs of the blocks themselves so that the effect of the artist's original coloured drawing can be seen and remembered when the black ink of the printing obscures it for ever.

Good Progress with The Dead Officer

 I can hardly believe it, but the lengthy slog of printing The Diary of a Dead Officer is almost at an end and the binding process can begin. John Abell is at the moment cutting blocks for the papers that will cover the book and the printing of these should be my final task.

Frances has been folding sheets as they are completed and recently has begun to insert sheets into others to form sections. This is one of the most exciting moments in the whole process as I begin to see images and passages of text in their true relation to  one another - rather than to what was next to them on the press.

The above is the 'emblem' that appears, very effectively, on the book's halftitle . . . pointing atmospherically towards the rest of the book.


 


 This photograph was taken of John during a recent visit to Catchmays Court . . . during which I was able to show him my printings of his linocuts which (as you may remember from an earlier post) he will never have seen printed before!

Rather than photographing complete pages, I have today directed my camera at various details of blocks and have taken advantage of some 'stage-lighting' provided by the winter sunshine.  You will therefore not get a full idea of what the book will look like but the power of these images will, I am sure, make an appropriate initial impact.