In their broadest sense, the book arts are at the core of our inventory. To be sure, the category encompasses the specialties that you see on our homepage, such as Fine Printing, Fine Binding, and Illustrated Books. However, it also includes such things as writing books and calligraphy, fore-edge paintings, books on papermaking, and leaf books.
Read more about one of the book arts, Fore-edge Painting
1980. Original artwork. Pen, ink, watercolor, graphite, and wash on stiff card. The bereaved gather around the deceased's coffin as the undertaker pulls back a veil to reveal a will, taped as a video message. The mourners are a typically Gorey-esque cast of characters, including a shrouded widow, a man..... More
NY: (1980). Photograph of Edward Gorey and actress Tammy Grimes inspecting a postcard for the release of their joint project "Gorey by Grimes," an LP recording of Grimes reading stories by Gorey. Fine in frame, which shows few nicks along edges. (Frame measures 16 1/4 by 19 14 in.). More
c. 1970. Pen-and-ink on three leaves measuring 8 1/2 by 11 inches. The first sheet, on pale yellow stock folded into fourths, contains a panel of six roughed-out storyboards, a more detailed drawing of what became the cover of the published work, and in the upper left, a series of..... More
Boston: Bromer Booksellers, 1996. Small quarto. 26 pp. From an edition of 2,000 copies, this is one of 200 copies signed and numbered by Edward Gorey. Bromer special holiday catalog with previously unpublished, full-color cover design by Gorey, who created the artwork originally for a Nieman Marcus holiday catalogue. When..... More
NY: Abrams, 1996. First edition. Contains an interview with Gorey, analysis by art critic Karen Wilkin, and 200 illustrations. Very fine in illustrated dust wrapper. More
San Francisco: Word Play Publications, 1996. First edition. One of 226 copies, signed by Gorey and by the authors. This illustrated reference work includes ephemera and collectibles, dramatic productions, a list of pseudonyms, and more. The first true Gorey bibliography. Bound in cloth-covered boards. Fine in near fine dust wrapper..... More
San Francisco: Word Play Publications, 1996. First edition. From an edition of 226, this is one of 26 lettered copies signed by Gorey and by the authors. This illustrated reference work includes ephemera and collectibles, dramatic productions, a list of pseudonyms, and more. The first true Gorey bibliography. Bound in..... More
(N.p.): Press of the Woolly Whale, 1934. 32mo. 18pp. Signed and dated by the author. A short treatise on the essentials of book design. Bound in blue paper over boards with title stamped in black. Some toning to spine, else near fine. More
1971. An original illustration capturing a moment of protest by the black community, showing a young Black man raising his fist in a timeless and insistent gesture of power and belief. Jarring in its continued relevancy, the illustration is finely executed in mixed media, including tempera, watercolor, conté crayon, pen..... More
Amsterdam: Aschenbach Galerie, 1989. Penck’s signature raw, “primitive” style, which takes cues from graffiti and hearkens to the concurrent pop art movement championed across the Atlantic by Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, both embodies and communicates the anxious selfhood of one living in Germany during the Cold War. Penck repeats..... More
![Das Antlitz der Stadte [The Face of the Cities]. Armin T. Wegner](/pictures/thumb/30175.jpg?v=1630529992)
Berlin: Tyslander Pres, 1989. Octavo. (60)pp. One of forty deluxe copies issued with a separate color woodblock print, signed by the artist, Felix M. Furtwangler, both on the colophon and on the print. Furtwangler's disturbing woodcuts, brash in their direct confrontation with violence and raw in their emotion, underscore the..... More
Octon, France: Verdigris, 2005. Rothchild’s illustrations—two mezzotints, one of which has been broken up into eight fragments—communicate the pensive darkness of the writer’s desk, laying it, as Bishop does poetically, before the reader in pieces and as a whole. Bishop’s poem was originally published in Geography III in 1976. Her..... More
(Iowa City): Naughty Dog Press, 2002. Five folding wallets, each of which uses a Jacob’s ladder format that allows it to open either from the left or right side. On the internal panels of each wallet Emily Martin has printed opposing statements—”I am a patriot/You are a traitor,” “You have..... More
Seattle: Windowpane Press, 2004. A cube of 42 notched cards, twenty-six of which bear a democratically-minded alphabet. The letters are printed in red and overprinted in black ink with words expressing central tenets of democratic government, with all its positives and negatives. The remaining cards are devoted to calls for..... More
(Vancouver, BC): Heavenly Monkey, 2020. Octavo. 112, (2) + 8 proofs bound-in at rear. One of fifteen deluxe copies, bound by Claudia Cohen in full limp vellum, with a matching box and the addended proofs. Initials throughout are simplified variations of Griffo's type for Ottaviano Petrucci's 1513 Paulina de recta..... More
Paris: Three Star Books, 2018. Square folio. (50)ff. One of forty copies, signed by the artist, A.A. Bronson. Fifty identical tearaway posters of “AIDS,” using an appropriative design based on Robert Indiana’s 1967 “LOVE.” The relation of AIDS to love, both conceptually and artistically, and its adaptation into a repetitive..... More
1986. Twenty-seven assorted art pieces, including xerographs, lithographs, mixed-media collages, and prints, accompany nine text pieces to present an alternative catalogue of the early years of the AIDS epidemic. The book supplemented the exhibition, “Art for AIDS: A Creative Response to Crisis,” which took place from October 10 to November..... More
Chicago: Starshaped Press, 2019. Single sheet; folded, the recto provides a synopsis of Farrell’s fraught summer of 2018, when her daughter underwent nearly eight weeks of chest radiation treatments to stem the growth of tumors around her lungs. The side effects were devastating, and the following winter was awash with..... More
Gambier, OH: Unit IV Arts, 2021. Sheffield’s visual and poetic meditation on “lostness” stems, particularly, from an article on Lost Person Behavior, which is the science of applying profiles to know how and where to search for someone, and, generally, from the pervasive and at times either abstract or tangible..... More
Portland, OR: Relay Replay Press, 2011. Wang’s book unfolds through layers of memory in a most literal way, containing within its small self a multitude of images and textures to mimic the scrapbook recollections of a human mind. This particular mind is that of Arnie Metz, one of five seniors..... More
Boston & Vancouver: Bromer Booksellers & HM Editions, 2015. 72pp. From an edition of 120, this is one of thirty-five deluxe copies. Winner of the 2016 Miniature Book Society Competition Distinguished Book Award. Designed and printed at Heavenly Monkey, this lovely miniature memoir and bibliography contains stories of pleasure, coincidence..... More
(Vancouver): Heavenly Monkey, (2015). Two large quarto volumes. (55); (50)ff. From an edition of thirty-six copies, this is one of thirty, signed by the two authors. Binder Claudia Cohen and book designer Barbara Hodgson, makers of The WunderCabinet, Cutting Paper, and a four-part series on color, come together once again..... More
Vancouver, BC: HM Editions, 2015. Small octavo. 16, (6)pp., + 11 plates, + (4)pp. One of six A. P. copies. Signed by the contributors: Barbara Hodgson (author, illustrator, and designer), Rollin Milroy (printer), and Claudia Cohen (binder). An exploration, in theory and practice, of the intersection of art and science..... More
Vancouver: Heavenly Monkey, 2003. 6ff., + 30pp. accordionfold strip. One of fifty copies signed and numbered by the author. Initial signature includes a brief introductory essay by Jim Rimmer of the Pie Tree Press and Typefoundry about the new typeface showcased here. The type is called Duensing Titling, named after..... More
(Vancouver, B.C.): Heavenly Monkey, 2010. Broadside measuring 22 by 15 inches. One of thirty copies—this copy marked "Position proof." Unsigned. With full-page illustration of a hermaphroditic figure, titled "The Botanist," and two smaller text figures of mushrooms, all from drawings by Atsushi Fukui. Sylvian was the former frontman for the..... More
