Update from the Bindery at Pegana Press

Just a quick update to let you know where I’m at with the binding process. As you may know Pegana Press is a small press run by the two of us, Mike and Rita Tortorello.

Under ordinary circumstances our books take about 8 to 10 weeks to bind from start to finish, and most of that time is spent under weight.

I am experiencing a delay of about 3 to 5 weeks due to the pandemic, but am just about ready to get books under weight in this upcoming week.

I will continue to update you with progress reports as the books are bound.  You may expect your books to be finished by no later than June, if all goes as expected.  We are doing our best to stay safe and we hope you are too.  Thank you for your patience and your understanding at this time.

An Update for February 2019

 

It’s still early in 2019 and we’ve already released Clark Ashton Smith Poseidonis Cycle II, a deluxe letterpress edition with illustrations by Justine Jones and an introduction by Donald Sidney-Fryer.




In February, we released a letterpress chapbook of H.P. Lovecraft’s story, The Moon-Bog with illustration by Jim Pitts.



And Mike just finished a fine letterpress broadside of Edgar A. Poe’s poem The Conqueror Worm with illustration by Harry Clarke.

Which brings us up to date with the doings at Pegana Press.

You can see these and other works on our website at PeganaPress.

Poseidonis II - A Progress Report from The Bindery

Clark Ashton Smith
Poseidonis Cycle II
The Age of Whelming

Hand set letterpress printed, handbound illustrated edition.
With an introduction from Donald Sidney-Fryer and illustrations by Justine Jones.
Available from Pegana Press 2018

The first one dozen books were bound in on Monday, December 3rd and will rest under weight for 5 weeks.  I had hoped to get them bound and sent out by Christmas, but it just was not to be.  Never the less, work is now proceeding smoothly on the second batch of books.  Yesterday, I sewed the signatures and I spent today folding the endpapers and tipping them in.

I’d like to share a peek behind the scenes...One of the things I discovered when I was first binding Poseidonis Cycle I, was how fragile the end papers were for that book.  Mike had chosen a handmade paper from Nepal made of papyrus with gold streaks in it.  The first book I bound with it turned out fine (beginners luck, I guess), so I proceeded to bind the first batch of books, only to discover that the binder board was showing through where there was gold.  Why it didn’t happen on the first book, I have no idea.  The solution, was to simply line the back of the endpaper that attaches to the binder board with an extra piece of paper which solved the whole problem.

Since we’re using the same endpapers for Poseidonis Cycle II, I spent the afternoon lining them.  It’s an extra step in the process, but well worth it, to achieve the effect of decadent antiquity, we were going for with that paper.

Check back for further updates.

Rita Tortorello
The Bindery at Pegana Press

Poseidonis Update

Clark Ashton Smith: Poseidonis Cycle-The Age of Whelming.  Illustration by Justine Jones.  Pegana Press 2018.

Mike is finished setting and printing Poseidonis Cycle The Age of Whelming.  He is currently setting type for the book titles for the cover.

Justine Jones has provided us with two fantastic illustrations.  Once we get the final versions of the illustrations, they will be sent to be digitally printed in town.

Rita will begin cutting the book boards by hand starting next week, Mike will begin the process of folding and collating the book pages, and the binding process will begin when the illustrations come back from the digital print shop.

To reserve your copy at the special preorder price visit PeganaPress online.

Pegana Press - Since 2009

This month, we celebrate 9 years in business.  It was in July of 2009 that Mike acquired the Vandercook sp15 and Pegana Press came into being.

Since then Mike has printed 13 books and 3 broadsides.  Book number 14 is currently in the works.

To celebrate our 9th anniversary, we are offering A discount on selected books.

Paris, A Poem by Hope Mirrlees was the first book printed and released at Pegana Press.

The Men of Baldfolk by Lord Dunsany

Zothique Prism 1 and 2 by Clark Ashton Smith

These books are specially priced at 20% off the regular price through the month of July.  You can find them on our website.

Illustrations by Justine Jones

Once again we are excited to include the artwork of Justine Jones for our upcoming publication Poseidonis Cycle-The Age of Whelming.  Clark Ashton Smith.

Justine did the frontispiece for our chapbook Zothique Prism II-The Garden of Adompha and she has a real feel for bringing the characters and scenes of Smith’s stories to life through her art.

Currently Justine is involved in two other projects, so we feel lucky that she will be able to make time for this project before our deadline.

You may visit Justine Jones

And we found even more of her work at  Tumblr 

Poseidonis Cycle - The Age of Whelming

Pegana Press 2018

For years we have been dreaming of printing more Clark Ashton Smith stories of Poseidonis and now, at last the moment is here.

Poseidonis Cyle - The Age of Whelming will include the following:
Tolometh
The Double Shadow
A Voyage to Sfanomoë
Atlantis, A Poem

More details can be found on our newly redesigned website.

Zothique Prism II - The Garden of Adompha

Pegana Press Zothique Prism II - The Garden of Adompha 2018

Mike has just finished the latest letterpress chapbook from Pegana Press and Rita is sewing them this week.  Look for them to ship next week.  There are still copies available to order on our website 

Zothique Prism I and II chapbooks

Zothique Prism II - The Garden of Adompha

The Garden of Adompha frontispiece by Justine Jones

Mike and Rita of Pegana Press are excited to announce that our latest chapbook is nearing completion and is available for preorder on our website.  Zothique Prism II contains Clark Ashton Smith's story The Garden of Adompha in letterpress and features the compelling artwork of Justine Jones, who has often found inspiration within the stories of Clark Ashton Smith.  You may find some of her work here.  We feel that she has really captured the spirit of the story, and are proud to feature her artwork in our latest offering.

We're now on Patreon

Our Website is PeganaPress.com

Cutting Paper for CAS

The paper arrived a day earlier than expected, so Mike got to work cutting it down to page size immediately.  That was Thursday.

Today he did a little maintenance on the press and tomorrow he will be ready to begin printing the new project, a letterpress chapbook edition of The Garden of Adompha by Clark Ashton Smith.  

Up Next: Clark Ashton Smith

Pictured here is a galleytray of type awaiting the arrival of our paper shipment.  When it arrives, Mike will print the first page of the latest chapbook from Pegana Press,  Zothique Prism II - The Garden of Adompha. 

We will keep you posted as we go with news of this publication.

What’s Next from Pegana Press?

Just a quick post from Mike and Rita at Pegana Press to share our latest news.

Mike has finished printing Lost Tales volume 4 with stories from Lord Dunsany.  And Rita is now binding that volume available in deluxe edition or chapbook on our website.  Photos of the finished book will be available within the next day or two.

You may also recognize the chapbook pictured above, as our Zothique Prism by Clark Ashton Smith.  Mike is now doing a 2nd Zothique chapbook, which he began typesetting today.  And we will be talking more about that in another post.

That’s all for now.  Happy reading.

Zothique Prism

I'm nearing completion of a very limited and beautiful chapbook for one of Clark Ashton Smith's stories from Zothique, the Earth of the Dying Sun.  The edition will feature a new illustration rendered by Robert H. Knox, well known for his Necromonicon Press artwork.

The chapbook is being letterpress printed on snowy white watermarked German Fine Edition paper and will be hand sewn into blue gray French heavy covers with ornate titling.

Zothique Prism is available to pre-order and will begin shipping in about a month.  Here's a link to the website page with more information.

Of Silk and the Hammer

We've been making some slight changes to the binding for The Men of Baldfolk and Other Fanciful Tales. The black cotton cloth we were using on the test dummy for the quarter bound spine really picks up dirt and shows the scoring of the bone folder so we've gone to a beautiful black, shimmering silk moire material that really looks great I've also added more information about the contents for the book and posted an audio excerpt from one of the unpublished stories.  Work progresses on the new Lovecraft edition; I'm in receipt of some beautiful color illustrations from our artist.  I will share his name and some images soon.  We invite you to visit the page and look and listen.

https://www.peganapress.com/the-men-of-baldfolk.html

A Fold In Sime

I've just completed the next to last step for my part of the work on The Men of Baldfolk and Other Fanciful Tales by Lord Dunsany.  While listening to baseball on the Grundig windup radio I've been preparing the Sime watercolour illustration for the edition.  This entailed measuring six inches and then scoring each with a bone folder.  The sheet is then folded in half and smoothed down with the bone folder with wax paper over it, otherwise the paper gets marks on it. From there each sheet is trimmed to about 6 3/8 inches.  This leaves a small tab which allows it to be sewn into the book signature.  I then trimmed the eighty signatures to a nice even edge.  Whew!
The only thing left for me to do now is print the spine titles.
This deluxe limited edition is available for preorder and can
be viewed on our website.  We invite you to visit and look
around.

The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars

A lot of my work making books for Pegana Press reminds me of a Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story in which the Mouser can only concentrate on small, seemingly insignificant details and items.  The setting of the type with little bits of metal, viewing the printing under a magnifying glass, pulling tiny cat hairs off the ink rollers, etc., etc., etc.  I've now reached one of my favorite points in making a book with The Men of Baldfolk and Other Fanciful Tales by Lord Dunsany.  All the printing is done and I've been folding pages for the past few days.  Nearly a thousand pieces of paper to fold and carefully crease while keeping them as square as possible. Then collating the pages into their signatures and trimming each one. There's something very soothing and therapeutic about repeating the same sequence over and over to create tidy piles of pages. Somewhat like mowing a lawn with all the neat straight rows. Very little thinking or decisions to make; what a relief.  Seeing all the months of work slowly taking shape as a book is immensely satisfying. Knowing I'm almost done and the relief that comes with it.  We got back the test print of the rare Sime watercolour frontispiece and it's quite lovely  I will be posting the story titles of the book soon on the website as well as more images.  It's going to be a beautiful book and we hope you're as excited as we are.

Of Dingbats and Ornaments

I have a variety of ornaments, borders, and dingbats which I use in our editions.  Many of these are cast as sets and sold that way. Some of the more ornate fonts have them included with the typeface and are meant to complement the typeface.

The embellishment of the text within a book using ornaments and dingbats is a reflection of  the intrinsic hand drawn quality of mankind's writings even from earliest times.  The language itself was defined on stone or papyrus with the use of symbols and drawings.  William Morris,  Roycrofters, and many others carried on this tradition on paper and even had artists doing watercolour initials and borders by hand for their editions.

I've begun printing the last story for the new Dunsany edition, The Men of Baldfolk and other Fanciful Tales, a beautifully lyrical prose essay that is reminiscent of the atmosphere evoked in Mona Sheehy but written in 1908. We received the paper we hope to use to cover the boards for the book and we'll share some images soon.  The rare color Sidney Sime illustration is in the printing process and will be ready soon and Rita is continuing her binding. She is completing the last sets of Lost Tales.  There are very few of the sets left so if you've been thinking about getting them don't put it off!

Next up will be an edition of Lovecraft's early dream stories that I will begin in the spring.

This Week At The Press: New Projects and More

This week has been busy at Pegana Press.  Mike is finished printing The Golden Key, and we are just waiting for the watercolor frontispiece to arrive from the printer before we begin the binding process.  It won't be long now.  Just a reminder, the special preorder price on this book is only offered until the release date.  This book really is special.  Charles Van Sandwyk has done some outstanding work, as usual, adding to the beauty of this offering.  Truly an heirloom quality book to treasure.  And limited to 80 copies.


Mike is already two pages into the next printing project, and we will be announcing details about that book soon.

Today, Mike is in the recording studio working on some audio readings with music.

And in the bindery, Rita is finalizing The Golden Key binding design, as well as binding our last available Clark Ashton Smith book, The Age of Malygris.  This final finished book will make two only, available at the press.  If you've been wanting to add The Age of Malygris to your collection, please don't hesitate to order while we still have it.

For Dunsany collectors, interested in the Lost Tales 3 volume box set, the last finished set went out this week, and I will be working on binding 4 more sets and making slipcases for them as time permits.  They are currently on special, so if you'd like to add this set to your collection, please order before the sale price ends.  But please allow 2 to 3 weeks for availability.



Finally, our webpage had a remodel last weekend and we think we've improved it, making it funner and easier to navigate.  Stop by and see if you agree.  https://www.peganapress.com/

Cheers for now, from Pegana Press.

Scenes From Fairyland

I've printed several of the illustrations for The Golden Key using the magnesium dies and they've turned out beautifully.  We are so pleased Mr. Van Sandwyk has provided these wonderful drawings to decorate the prose imagery of George MacDonald's Fairyland.  The special preorder price will end very soon.   Rita has done a test binding with the Florentine endpapers and it looks stunning. We invite you to visit our website for more information and images of the book.

The Harvest of the Blade

The parent sheets of light green paper being cut down for the "Old Man of the Sea" illustration page from The Golden Key by George MacDonald.  Every page of our books are cut by hand with this nifty german guillotine whacker.  Once I get the metal dies back they'll get locked into the press and the pen and ink illustrations will be printed.  More information about this limited letterpress edition of The Golden Key and how to pre-order can be found here.

A sheaf  of Lord Dunsany material I've been reading through in consideration for the next Lost Tales edition. All will be unpublished or uncollected.  It's hard to choose because Dunsany's writing is all so enjoyable. Even his reviews of stage productions from the early 1900's have a lyrical quality and depth that is hypnotic.
More information about the Lost Tales series can be found here.