Spring at Pegana Press

Printing Another Book

Mike is in with the press.  He’s printing another page from Dark Dreamlands II.  I just saw him looking through a magnifying glass to evaluate ink on the paper.

Keeping Pegana Press Running

It’s not all type-setting, printing, and binding.  We lead an integrated existence at the press.  Over the years, we’ve created a balance that allows us to spend less on living expenses, which enables us to put money into making books, which in turn generates income to pay the bills.

While Fall/Winter is the season I can devote to binding the books that Mike prints during the Spring/Summer season, this is the time of year I devote to growing/raising food on our small homestead.

I just got back from the post office where I mailed a couple of books off.  Our post office used to be housed in the general store in a very small community in East Olympia.  I really love that drive.  The community is mostly small farms and homesteads.  The general store is still there, but the post office has expanded to a new building.

Since I was close to the farm store, I drove out to pick up straw.  I can get two bales into the back of the Prius.  After a wet and cold winter, I need to change out the straw in my small barn where the hens like to lay their eggs.  A happy, healthy flock is a big part of our home economy, and allows us to use more income on making books and less on feeding ourselves.

On my way back home, I pass (I kid you not) the cider mill, which is a working farm.  They make fresh donuts daily, and who could resist home-made pastries?  It seemed like the perfect way to celebrate the end of the tax filing season, so I pulled in.  I drove home with the tempting aroma of fresh sticky buns made with a cider glaze.

When I got home, Mike was still printing so I share here, a photo of the page he is currently working on.

And that’s a little peek into life here at the press...

If you’re interested in hand made letterpress books and you would like to help support Pegana Press check out our website or take a look at our Patreon page.

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.

Calling All Dunsany Fans: Lost Tales Volume 4

Lost Tales Volume 4 A collection of rare stories by Lord Dunsany

Available in a letterpress book from Pegana Press.

Frontispiece by Sidney Sime

Table of Contents 

Please visit our website for more information. 

News From Pegana Press

Lost Tales volume 4 pictured here with color frontispiece by Sidney Sime (courtesy of the Dunsany estate).  Rita is sewing these editions currently, and preparing the materials to begin binding them.  The first batch is expected to begin shipping in late February.

We will notify you when your copy ships!  😊

Death Does Not Take A Holiday

I spent the last week folding, scoring, trimming and gathering  sheets for our latest release, Nehwon Vision by Fritz Leiber, with new artwork.  It's a tremendous story from Leiber, a timeless tale of Death, Fafhrd, and the Gray Mouser played out in 20 heartbeats. Well worth checking out.  More information and how to order can be found here.

The new audiobook , The Vengeance of Thor  should be available to download and purchase sometime in the next month.  A truly immersive rendering of rare stories by Lord Dunsany.

Next up a new Dunsany release!

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.

The Book of Dreams

Took a trip to the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair over the weekend and had a great time showing off this display prospectus for the new Deluxe Lovecraft edition Dark Dreamlands.  Dealers in the supernatural and fantastic were especially excited about Michael Hutter's illustrations.  We'll be doing a test binding in the coming weeks and will post some images as the book takes shape.  More information and how to advance order this deluxe and very limited edition of Dark Dreamlands by H.P. Lovecraft can be found here on our website.

The Weight of Time

I visited Ars Obscura and Joel Radcliffe, master bookbinder to take a look at the binding progress for the limited edition Men of Baldfolk and Other Fanciful Tales by Lord Dunsany.  The book looks terrific and Joel does superb, meticulous work.  The books are now under weight and will cure until August 15th and then officially be published and begin shipping.  The special pre-order price will end on the 15th so please visit the website for purchase information.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.

A View From Pegana

As we near completion of the new Dunsany collection, The Men of Baldfolk and Other Fanciful Tales, it seemed like an appropriate time to talk about Sidney Sime and the watercolour illustrations we've been so fortunate to be able publish in Lost Tales III and the upcoming edition.  The illustrations were commissioned by Lord Dunsany, who retained the originals. They were painted for two Jorkens stories and published in the Christmas issue of The Graphic for 1926. When I heard of these illustrations I was amazed to say the least. Sidney Sime and his visions are of course interwoven and part of Dunsany's works, but always in black and white.  And when I saw photos of the original paintings I realized that these had to be shared with Dunsany collectors.  Since the Jorkens stories have of course been published and collected several times, I had no real need to do them again, but felt that it would be in keeping with my desire to bring rare Dunsany material to light to include them in our books.  The Dunsany Estate graciously allowed us to use the one pictured here for Lost Tales Volume III and we will be presenting another exquisite one for The Men of Baldfolk and Other Fanciful Tales.  So after nearly ninety years, and unknown to most of the world we are delighted to share these wonderful visions of the Master painter of Pegana.

Type

An interesting and frustrating development for a typesetter is when you're going along setting a page from a story, and suddenly you run out of a particular letter.

It happened to Mike just this week, so now he's waiting to finish setting the page until more  t s arrive in the mail.

Last year, this same problem cropped up with the capital  F s when Mike was setting A Tale of Roscommon, one of the Lord Dunsany stories in Lost Tales volume 3.

Lord Dunsany, Lost Tales volume 3 from Pegana Press 2014

I think it was a pretty close thing with the capital  O s in this story as well.  As you can see in this photo, the character names are Mickey O'Finn, Father O'Groman, and Jimmy Flynn.  When the author really gets going in the story, The F s and O s start to pile up on a single page, as the characters interact.

It's just these little things that pop up in the printing world that keep you on your toes.  Something you would never even think about unless you spend your days typesetting little pieces of metal type, one letter and space at a time.

I know I never did.

Hope you're having a good week end.  I'm off to glue titles on more copies of The Golden Key.  Thanks for checking in on our blog.

--Rita

Binding The Golden Key pt 5

Today I finished binding 10 copies of The Golden Key.  They are resting under weight tonight, and will continue to for up to two weeks.

We're using Bertini paper from Italia for the end papers, and I'm still getting used to it, even though I've  worked with it a bit when binding the dummy copies.  The Lama Li Lakta paper from Nepal (used for the Lost Tales books) is very forgiving, almost like cloth.  This Bertini is stiffer paper and less forgiving, although very sturdy.

It looks wonderful in the book, but it's a different entity entirely to work with.

The Golden Key/Pegana Press Bindery

This photo was taken after the book had been under weight for 2 hours.  I was happy to see that the paper was drying beautifully.

There is still one step to go, attaching the titles, but that won't be for at least a week.

I hope you enjoyed seeing this peek into the binding process.  I wanted to share about our process because I was reading recently about other presses that market their books as being hand bound.  I found myself wondering how they can offer their books so cheaply and make hundreds of copies.  Then I found out that those books are made using machines.  What we're doing at Pegana Press is really pretty unique in today's world.

Binding The Golden Key pt 4

I decided to take a quick break from binding to post some photos of one of the cases I'm working on this afternoon.  First I glue the fabric to the boards and add the spine treatment.  Then I set the joint next to the spine...

The Golden Key/Pegana Press Bindery

and wrap the case around the book block.

The Golden Key/Pegana Press Bindery

Here's the finished case looking very pretty.

The Golden Key/Pegana Press Bindery

The case binding with it's book sits under weight over night to give the binding a nice shape.  Tomorrow I'll begin gluing the books into their bindings.

Back to work now.

Binding The Golden Key pt 3

It's Sunday the 11th, and I want post a reminder to anyone who still wants to order their copy of The Golden Key at the preorder price, that today is the last day to do that.

Before I go back to the bindery, I wanted to post some more photos of the binding process for this project, so you can see all the love that goes into your copy of this book.

Here are the spine reinforcements which always take so much time.  Early on, I tried to do this on a paper guillotine, but the pieces would shift, and cut unevenly, so I have had to cut each one by hand.

When I first started doing this, I would only get one usable one for every two I cut.  I've had a lot of practice since then.  ;)

The Golden Key/Pegana Press Bindery

Here is the yellow book cloth, just cut into sections across the grain from a roll of dubletta cloth.  I will be able to bind three books from each of these sections.

The Golden Key/Pegana Press Bindery

The next step is to make the case bindings.  With cloth and binder's board and glue.  This is the fun part of binding for me.  Taking all the hand prepared materials and making something that begins to resemble the finished book.

The Golden Key/Pegana Press Bindery

I will wrap each finished case around its book block, set the joint, where the book opens, and then allow it to rest under weight overnight, before binding the book in on the following day.

Well now, it's back to the bindery.  More later.

Binding The Golden Key pt 2

Yesterday I finished up the day by attaching mull and headbands to the book.  I let them dry over night.  I was really pleased with the result when I looked through them this morning.  The headbands I chose are golden.

The next step involves making the cases for the binding.  During the design process, I bound a dummy and glued the front title to the cover.  This worked really well for The Age Of Malygris/Clark Ashton Smith/Pegana Press 2014, because that title was on a really thin paper.  The paper we're using for the title of The Golden Key is much thicker and I could see that it would be subject to wear unless it was inset into the cover.

That means before making the cases, I need to make the insets into the boards used for the front cover.  This is done by hand, as crazy as that sounds.  But I've had a lot of practice with the Lost Tales books.

The inset of this book is quite large, because it has to accommodate the illustration on the front title.  I made two more dummy bindings with the insets to make sure the design would work.

Besides getting the boards ready, I need to cut the book cloth to the right size.  I've always used a cotton dubletta cloth on all our books, so I've continued with dubletta and for this edition we've chosen yellow to fit in with the title.

Another important step is to create the spine reinforcements which create a flat spine for our letterpress spine titles.  This was decided upon when we made our first case bound book for the Lost Tales series.  Having books in our collection with traditional spines, has taught us a valuable lesson about how paper titles glued to a spine can chip and crumble with handling over time.  The books with spine reinforcements create a flat spine, and those seem to cause less wear to a paper title.

Therefore, each spine reinforcement also has to be cut by hand.  This is one of the hardest jobs to get precise, but I feel that this extra step is worth the work and time to ensure that the paper titles stand up to handling over time.  This photo shows the case binding with a (white) paper liner to help reinforce the book and a spine reinforcement in place.  This is what the finished case looks like, all ready to glue a book into.

I'm planning on making the cases on Saturday.  More later.

Binding The Golden Key

At Pegana Press we make all of our books by hand from start to finish.  

I'd like to share the binding process here with you, and I'll be taking photos as I bind The Golden Key.

After Mike trims and collates the pages, he hands them off to me in the form of signatures.  This is a beautiful book to work on and I'm really enjoying it.

I start by piercing the holes for sewing into each signature.  They have to line up, so the book will be even.  I use a template and a stabbing cradle and pierce each one by hand.

The next step is the sewing.  For The Golden Key, I used linen thread and linen sewing tapes.  I am binding in batches of 12 to 14 until I catch up with the preorders, so I sewed a stack of books before moving on to the next step.

Today I tipped in the end papers, which were cut and folded by hand.  I have to wait for the end papers to dry before moving on the next step, gluing the spines.  Once that glue has dried, I round the spines.  This afternoon, I will add mull and head bands.

Tomorrow, I will be cutting cloth and spine reinforcements.  The reinforcements create a flat spine for our letterpress titles to be glued to. 

Back to the bindery.  More later.

A Name to the Book

Doing the title page to a book after long months of printing is a refreshing and inspired time.  Although it's the beginning it signifies an end.  We hope you like it.  The special preorder price for The Golden Key is due to end on August 31st.  I'm now on the final steps of finishing the book and will keep everyone posted.  More information can be found here. 

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.

The Pen of Fairyland

     We are now in receipt of the pen and ink illustrations by Charles Van Sandwyk for The Golden Key edition and they are really superb.  Charles has created a wonderful aeranth flying fish creature which will decorate the title page.  He's done an incredibly detailed and sublime portrait of The Old Man of the Sea for the interior of the book. Quite breathtaking!  The book will finish with an ornate rendition of The Golden Key itself facing the last page.  He's now working on the watercolour painting which will face the title page and reportedly be a magical forest scene set in Fairyland from the beginnings of the story.
     Rita is starting on a trial binding for the book with the beautiful yellow cloth and blue ornate endpapers that are reminiscent of the William Morris Victorian style and should complement MacDonald's brilliant novella very well.
The Golden Key is still available for Pre-Order at a special price and can be found here.

     In Lord Dunsany news, I've nearly completed the first story for the audiobook of Lost Tales.  My musical collaborator has created a Golden Age of Spain feel for the story Romance that supports the lyrical prose of Dunsany beautifully.  I hope to have the audiobook done in a few months for public release.  I'm continuing reading through rare and unpublished stories for the new Lost Tales book and planning the design. Printing will begin very soon for this volume of Lost gems from our guiding visionary Lord Dunsany.

     For those waiting for more Clark Ashton Smith I am of course in preliminary phases of design and planning for Poseidonis Cycle II "The Age of Ending" which should occur in the Spring.  It will really be nice to have all the Atlantis stories together in a set with these magical bindings and paper.