Joe on Joe, About Joe and Joe with others

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JD’A 8: A CHECKLIST by D'Ambrosio – 1977

JD’A 25: NINETEEN YEARS AND COUNTING [A RETROSPECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY 1969 TO 1988 by D'Ambrosio – 1989 

Jon 1: A Maverick in a printing office, by Joe D’Ambrosio Matrix 9, Winter 1989.

Jon 1—O: A Maverick in a printing office, by Joe D’Ambrosio Matrix 9, Winter offprint 1989.

Jon 2: "The Compulsive Printer of Portage, Indiana," Matrix 11, Winter 1991, pp. 53–59.

Jon 2–O: Offprint of "The Compulsive Printer of Portage, Indiana," Matrix 11, Winter 1991, pp. 53–59.

Jon 3: Manuscript of IS IT A BOOK, OR IS IT ART? by D’Ambrosio, alternate title Artist Books: The Controversy Continues…. Initial manuscript with 2nd version of 12 pages, in a few corrections. Part of CSL archive.

Jon 4: PROTECTIVE STRUCTURES FOR TREASURED WORDS —THE BOOK-IN-A-BOX  from CSL Foundation bulletin #44 July 1993

Jon 5: norman e. Tanis & the santa susana press by J. Anthony Gardner & Joseph D’Ambrosio BCC News-Letter LIX 1 Winter 1993 pp. [3]–11.

Jon 6: HAND BOOKBINDERS OF CALIFORNIA 25th Anniversary Book, special copy for Sandra Good that has postcard from Joe to her dated 11/17/97– 1997

Jon 7: Collecting the Book Arts for Institutional Libraries by Joe D’Ambrosio BCC News-Letter LXIII 3 Summer 1998 pp. [67]–73.

Jon 8: A Next of Robins, Alternative Story 1999

Jon 9: Fine hand bookbindings for Book Club of California publications: an exhibition at the Book Club of California, San Francisco, January 10-February 26, 2001. Has image and information about A Typographical Masterpiece.

Jon 10: Engaging the Viewer in Design, Construct, Engage: artist books published by Ed Hutchins –2003 Accordion fold book. One sheet maze with multi-cuts (87 x 56 cm., folded to 22 x 14 cm.) printed on both sides. When opened one side displays

JD’A–BBC–43: A Memoir of Book Design –2003

JD’A–BBC–43–O: A Memoir of Book Design offprint: The End–2003

Jon 11: Working with Poster/Broadsides from Matrix #26, Winter 2006.

Jon 11–O: Offprint of Working with Poster/Broadsides from Matrix #26, Winter 2006.

Jon 12: Grolier Club Bookplates Past and Present — 2023

Jon 13: Visual poetry: treasures of the Book Club Library — 2023, Has information about Al Aaraaf.

Joe in ABR

#1, 2000 Essay “Commentary” by Joe D’Ambrosio

            As many of you know my latest book will be my last…

Book Review of Debra Madison’s Fractured by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Pamela S. Wood’s The Fourth at What Cost by Joe D’Ambrosio

Essay “On a recent trip to Florence, Italy….” by Joe D’Ambrosio

Essay “Whence Artists’ Books” by Joe D’Ambrosio

#2, 2001 Essay “Commentary” by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Gloria Stuart’s ‘ENISHI’ by Joe D’Ambrosio

Essay “FEEDBACK” by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Ward Ritchie s Variations and Quotations by Joe D’Ambrosio

#3, 2001 Essay “Commentary” by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Zelda Tanenbaum’s IT'S ABOUT TIME by Joe D’Ambrosio

Essay “FEEDBACK” by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Lynd Ward’s MAD MAN'S DRUM A Novel in Woodcuts by Joe D’Ambrosio

#4, 2001 Essay “Commentary” by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Artemio Rodríguez’s In Achikoli iwan in Temilo by Joe D’Ambrosio

Essay “Featured Binding, a Swedish guest book”- Joe D’Ambrosio

#5, 2001 Essay “Commentary” by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Pamela S. Wood’s Color By The Book by Joe D’Ambrosio

Review of Pamela S. Wood’s Keepsake #1 by Joe D’Ambrosio

Exhibit Review “This is not an Artist’s Book,” Tucson Museum exhibition includes art structure by Herb Stratford by Joe D’Ambrosio

#7, 2002 Book Review of John & Allison Brebner’s The Choice by Joe D’Ambrosio

Exhibit at UCLA Clark Memorial Library revie "Who was Frederic Prokosh” ... with drawing of Prokosch by D’Ambrosio by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of R L Stevenson’s Summer Sun, printed by Lyceum Press by Joe D’Ambrosio

#8, 2002 Essay “Commentary: Prokosh, revisited; ethics in art” - Joe D’Ambrosio

Exhibit Review "In Stitches" review of art exhibition in Scottsdale- Joe D’Ambrosio

#9, 2002 Essay “Commentary” by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Bill Tonnesen’s Tonnesen, Twelve Months to Fame and Fortune in the Art World by Joe D’Ambrosio

Poem “The Yet Unborn” by Joe D’Ambrosio

Exhibit Review “writing to be seen " at New York Center for Book Arts by Joe D’Ambrosio

#11, 2003 Essay "Elizabeth Clark Howard: The Artist as Artisan" by Joe D’Ambrosio

#12, 2003 Book Review of Maryline Poole Adams’, POLONIUS’ P’S & Q’S by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Maryline Poole Adams’ CHRISTMAS DINNER, An ABC Advent Calendar by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Pamela S. Wood’s The Magician’s Assistant by Joe D’Ambrosio

#13, 2003 Book Reviews of Ellen Jantzen’s Tea For Two Fables and “Uterlibet” The Cookie Jar by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Ellen Jantzen’s Pater Noster in Nine Languages by Joe D'Ambrosio

Book Review of Maksim Gorky and Lenin in Hungary “A Revolution in Miniature” [3 books, one with illustrations] by - Joe D'Ambrosio

"Happy Birthday, ABR" by Joe D’Ambrosio

#14, 2004 Book Review of William Fogg’s Terra Australis by Joe D’Ambrosio 

“A GIRDLE BOOK” by Joe D’Ambrosio

#16, 2004 Book Review of Tommaso Durante’s Medusa at Rest by Joe D’Ambrosio

#17, 2004 Essay on MICHAEL ANDREWS by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Michael Andrews’ child by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Michael Andrews’ woman by Joe D’Ambrosio

Book Review of Michael Andrews’ Stone probably by Joe D’Ambrosio

#20, 2005, Book Review of William Fogg’s illustrations in The Harlots House by Oscar Wilde [Gray Beard Press] by Joe D’Ambrosio

#23, 2006, Exhibition review of "an Artists' Book Artist's Book" (which was atThe Brooklyn Museum in 2000) by Joe D'Ambrosio

Book Review of Carol Barton’s The Pocket Paper Engineer by Joe D’Ambrosio

#24, 2006, Essay "Altered Books - Enhancement or Plagiarism?" by Joe D'Ambrosio

Book Review of Tara O’Brien’s The Story of Little Goose by Joe D’Ambrosio

#25, 2006, Essay "Is an Artist's Book Really Art" by Joe D’Ambrosio

Clamshell case now available for ABR Volume Two, send check to Joe D’Ambrosio

#26, 2007, Book Review of Barbara Burton’s Tea Bag Sculptural Book by Joe D'Ambrosio

Essay "How Much Are You Worth" by Joe D’Ambrosio

#27, 2007, Book Review of Dan Mayer’s BOOK BOUNDARIS by Joe D’Ambrosio

Essay “Dan Mayer’s Untitled “V”" on music inspired by this work by Joe D’Ambrosio

CD that has images and a 3 minutes musical ode by Joe D’Ambrosio

onJ in ABR: Joe in Artists’ Books Reviews

On Joe or his work

#16, 2004 Book Review of Carol Cunningham’s DRAGONFLY, haiku and watercolors by Marylne Poole Adams — binding done by Joe D’Ambrosio

#20, 2005 Book Review of Joe D’Ambrosio’s The Diamond Wager by Ann Whipple

#27, 2007, Book and CD Review of Joe D’Ambrosio’s OAXACA and the SAGUARO CACTUS - Music for Contemporary Ballet “A JOURNEY FORWARD REVISITS THE PAST” by Edward H. Hutchins

onJ 1: Fine Print, announcement about The Ondt and the Gracehoper with info by L.G.—October 1975.

onJ 2: Fine Print, announcement about Trapeze with info—January 1977.

onJ 3: Fine Print, announcement about D’Ambrosio’s Checklist to 1976 (says for sale for $1.00)—October 1977.

onJ 4: Oviatt’s 24-karat exhibit by MONICA ARENAS Sundial paper of CSUN—1984.

onJ 5: Treasure?, by Esteher Kihn Beamer, Joe mentioned as helping with ending—1985.

onJ 6: Fine Printing: The Los Angeles Traditon, by Ward Ritchie—1987. 

onJ 7: Club has received an extraordinary book from .. Joseph D’Ambrosio, .. The Small Garden of Gloria Stuart, by Albert Sperisen, Book Club of California [BCC] News-Letter LII-4 Fall 1987 p. 100.

Jon 8: Hagerstown Bookbinding and Printing Calendar for 1988 – 1987: for month of December with photo of Birds in Paradise and note on Joe.

onJ 9: Abracadabra Newsletter 4-1-88 1988 announcement that Type-Faces: Ward Ritchie, Amando Blanco, and D'Ambrosio scheduled for May publication.

onJ 10: Artists of the Book 1988, A Facet of Modernism. Small garden of Gloria Stuart mentioned on page 10, picture of Small Garden of Gloria Stuart on page 19, [section] 22 Joe D’Ambrosio about Joe and the Small Garden of Gloria Stuart on pages 24 and 25. The Catalogue of an Exhibition held at the Boston Athenœum June 15 through August 19, 1988.

onJ 11: Fine Printers: The New Generation in Southern California, by Ward Ritchie 1988. Copy at CSUN inscribed by Ritchie to D’Ambrosio, photo of D’Ambrosio signed by him with many other photos signed by printers, handwritten note from D’Ambrosio to Norman Tanis 7/3/88.

onJ 12: Abracadabra Newsletter 9-1-88 1988 Joe D’Ambrosio one of founding members and who to send checks to for subscription. Announcement of Typefaces celebration.

onJ 13: Joseph J. D’Ambrosio elected to membership…The Ides of March, being two love poems, the first dated March 1983, written by Gloria to Ward Ritchie,..bound by Joseph D’Ambrosio… by Albert Sperisen, BCC News-Letter LIII-4 Fall 1988 pp. 108 & 109.

onJ 14:… Type-faces: A Photographic Study of Ward Ritchie….designed and printed and boxed with a clever cut-out and embossed design, all by Joseph D’Ambrosio, by Albert Sperisen, BCC News-Letter LIV 1 Winter 1988 p. 21.

onJ 15: A Maverick in a printing office, by Ward Ritchie and Gloria Stuart Matrix 9, Winter 1989.

onJ 15–O: A Maverick in a printing office, by Ward Ritchie and Gloria Stuart Matrix 9, Winter offprint 1989.

on J 16: D’ Ambrosio—Nineteen years and counting,…show… (January 9-March 30, 1989)…To commemorate this retrospective show of his work, the Club commissioned D’Ambrosio to create and produce 100 posters in 25 silkscreen colors and two letterpress impressions, BCC News-Letter LIV 2 Spring 1989 p. 53.

on J 17: From Phillip T. Bevis, … we have received a tribute to his friend Joseph D’Ambrosio, a silkscreen portrait of Zane Grey in six colors, signed and numbered (25/125) by the artist (1981)—which we added to our D’Ambrosio exhibition. … also …The Little Sand Crab, BCC News-Letter LIV 3 Summer 1989 p. 77.

onJ 18: Fine Print, Information about The Inscriptions at Tor House and Hawk Tower, Gloria Stuart and Joe D’Ambrosio by D. Steven Corey—October 1989.

on J 19: gift of 7 broadsides from Joe D’Ambrosio, and David BCC News-Letter LV 1 Winter 1989 pp. 16 & 18.

onJ 20: 'Paintings' go under cover by Marsha Park Sundial paper of CSUN 1990.

onJ 21: CA State Library Bulletin #32 - July 1990—Summer exhibits: on D’Ambrosio exhibit in California Room with photos of 4 books in article, Small Garden of Gloria Stuart on cover and photo of Joe on back cover.

onJ 22: D’Ambrosio’s … this “renaissance man,” .… His inventiveness is mindboggling, …another stopper! The book, Old Wine, Fine Wine by Roy Brady, BCC News-Letter LV 4 Autumn 1990 pp. 114 & 115.

onJ 23: CA State Library Bulletin #35 - April 1991—D’Ambrosio named Foundation Fellow.

onJ 24: Joe gifted an early Acorn Press book written by Dr. William C. Gray… by Albert Sperisen BCC News-Letter LVI 2 Spring 1991 p. 44.

onJ 25: CA State Library Bulletin #36- July 1991—Article on Triptych and photo on back cover.

onJ 26: Letter in response to Joe finding book he gifted BCC News-Letter LVI 3 Summer 1991 p. 77.

onJ 27: note on obtaining copy of Nineteen Years and Counting: A Retrospective Bibliography, 1969 to 1988, and quote from Joe. BCC News-Letter LVIII 1 Winter 1992 pp. 26 & 27.

onJ 28: Not Quite A Book by William E. Ashley, Sure, First Issue, May, 1991.

onJ 29: CA State Library Bulletin #41 October 1992—article about workshop and Triptych.

onJ 30: CA State Library Bulletin #43 April 1993—Triptych on cover and reproduction of annex by D’Ambrosio.

onJ 31: mentioned in association with Beware the Ides of March, and Evenus by Gloria Stuart BCC News-Letter LIX 1 Winter 1993 p. 18.

onJ 32: CA State Library Bulletin #46 - January 1994—Letters in Terrazzo will greet library users by - D’Ambrosio.

onJ 33: CA State Library Bulletin #50 - January 1995—Photo of rotunda floor and illustration.

onJ 34: Announcement of program: Monday, June 26, Joseph D’Ambrosio, BOOK ARTIST Explaining the history, design, conception, and implementation of books in The Book Club Exhibition: D’ Ambrosio 1986 and Beyond. BCC News-Letter LX 3 Summer 1995 p. 17.

Jon 35: CONTEMPORARY DESIGNER BOOKBINDERS edited by Philip Ward1995 double-page spread on Joe.

onJ 36: ”Nineteen Years and Counting” a few copies of poster remain… BCC News-Letter LX 4 Fall 1995 p. 16.

onJ 37: List of postcards for exhibitions include: January 9, 1989: ”Nineteen Years and Counting” by students of Richard Hoffman…and January 19, 1989: *Southern California Reception for D'Ambrosio by Bruce Washbish BCC News-Letter LXI 1 Winter 1996 1995 p. 16.

onJ 38:…LX: Commute My Sentence is written by our own Ann Whipple, …this book is published by Joe D’Ambrosio as his first publishing venture at his new Studio D’Ambrosio, Phoenix, Arizona…by Albert Sperisen, BCC News-Letter LXI 3 Summer 1996 p. 88.

Jon 39: Westward bound: an exhibition celebrating book arts in the West: Exhibition Catalog – 1998.

onJ 40: A DESCRIPTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY of THE PRIMARY PUBLICATIONS of CHARLES BUKOWSKI by Aaron Krumhansi, 1999. information about Not Quite Bernadette.

onJ 41: …only twelve copies remain… of Ray Bradbury’s Christus Apollo: …, BCC Quarterly News-Letter, LXIV Number 2 Spring 1999 p. 29.

onJ 42: gift, of Ray Bradbury’s Christus Apollo: … book, designed and executed by Joe D’Ambrosio, BCC Quarterly News-Letter, LXIV Number 3 Summer 1999 pp. 83–84.

onJ 43: Joe D’Ambrosio reports …that his latest, “A Nest of Robins,” is sold out BCC Quarterly News-Letter, LXV 1 Winter 1999 p. 29.

onJ 44: Joe D' Ambrosio and LX Commute: My Sentence by Dr. Adela Spindler Roatcap BCC Quarterly News-Letter Summer 2000, LXV Number 3 pp. 83–84.

onJ 45: Ever-inventive Joe D’Ambrosio has now patented a hand-made, adjustable hard cover for paperback books BCC Quarterly News-Letter LXVI 1 Winter 2000 p. 26.

onJ 46: Twentieth century United States miniature books by Robert C. Bradbury 2000 lists many of Joe’s books.

onJ 47: Cards for exhibitions: June 96’: D'Ambrosio; 1986 and Beyond: A Retrospective Exhibit by Joe D’Ambrosio, Dec. 99’: Movable Books from the collection of Margaret L. Class by Joe D’Ambrosio BCC Quarterly News-Letter, LXVI 4 Fall 2001 p. 112d.

onJ 48: Peter Koch is right that “lead ain’t dead,’ and we even include polymer plates, as well as the freeform design Joe D'Ambrosio exhibits in A Memoir of Book Design, 1969-2000 ($175). by Jeremey Cole BCC Quarterly News-Letter, LXVIII 4 Fall 2003 p. 119.

onJ 49:…for Artists’ Book Reviews: Mr. D’Ambrosio has devised a very attractive clamshell box …BCC Quarterly News-Letter, LXIX 1 Winter 2003 p. 26.

onJ 50: CA State Library Bulletin #78 - Spring / Summer 2004—Joe D’Ambrosio present Spectacular Book.

onJ 51: Lunch at Albert’s: Reflections on Joe D’Ambrosio's A Memoir of Book Design by Adela Spindler Roatcap: BCC News-Letter LXIX 2 Spring 2004 pp. [43]–48.

onJ 52: Note that Joe is honorary member of SBCC and there is a quote from A Memoir of Book Design BCC News-Letter LXIX 3 Summer 2004 p. 85.

onJ 53: Oscar Lewis Award given on February 7, 2005 to Joseph J D;Ambrosio for… BCC News-Letter LXX 2 Spring 2005 p. 61.

onJ 54: I CAN’T FLY A DVD Book Ballet ... to the music of “Capriccio for Oboe and Orchestra” by Amilcare Ponchielli… by Adela Spindler Roatcap: BCC News-Letter LXXII 2 Spring 2006 pp. 42–43.

onJ 55: Review of A Memoir of Book Design, by Adela Roatcap in Matrix 24 pp. 158-9.

onJ 56: Memories of Joe D’Ambrosio, Artist of the Book by Gary E. Strong CSL Foundation bulletin #96—2010, pp. 14–17.

onJ 57: A number [of Carol Cunningham’s books] were bound by her good friend, Joe D’Ambrosio. BCC News-Letter V LXXIX 1 WINTER 2014 p. 16.

onJ 58: California Public Library Literary Services: Thirty Years by Gary E. Strong CSL Foundation bulletin #110—2014, picture of and information about the Tribute to Gary Strong book.

onJ 59: Joe mentioned in article about the Ward Ritchie collection… by Henry L. Snyder: BCC News-Letter LXXX 1 Winter 2015 p. 28.

onJ 60: CA State Library Bulletin #113—2015 Joe D’Ambrosio, The Book As An Art Form, 8-6-2015 https://cslfdn.org/2015/08/06/joe-dambrosio-the-book-as-an-art-form/

onJ 61: My Life of Book Collecting and Librarianship by Gary E. Strong 2016.

onJ 62: A Catalog of Ordinary Madness by Abel Debritto 2024 information about Not Quite Bernadette.

This book documents the work that I had done up to 1977 (including my collaboration with Mr. Mundell). He set all of the type by hand and printed it. The illustrations were printed from what was then termed Nyloplate (or "black light" plastic plates). He had the camera and all of the associated sundries in his garage print shop. Mr. Mundell had worked for many years at R.R. Donnelley & Company (printers of the famed Sears' catalog). He said that Mr. Donnelley himself had given him the equipment when he retired from the firm.

[image of A Checklist opened and showing front, spine and back]

Since I was not limited by the subject matter of the text, I was free to do whatever I wanted with the binding. I chose to experiment by serigraphing one color (black) in two printings of perpendicular lines on light gray paper. The screen was prepared by drawing diagonal lines in one direction with a grease pencil. Water-based glue was then coagulated on top of the silkscreen mesh. Oil-based solvent was then used to clean the screen of the marks made by the grease pencil. This did not disturb the glue because it is water-based and thus unaffected. This created openings in the screen (for ink to penetrate onto a piece of paper) of only the slanted lines that I had drawn. Once I had printed the first set of diagonal lines, I could use that as a reference to show me how to draw diagonal lines going in the opposite direction, and thus create an image. Because the grease pencil is soft it leaves lines of variable thickness, and thus gives a graduated tone. The actual effect is somewhere between an etching and a lithograph. The image, although abstract, still shows enough recognizable shapes to give the viewer a frame of reference. It is simply a landscape. Clouds are overhead, and the sun is on the front cover while the moon is on the back cover. The orbs are suspended above mountain tops. The mountains themselves are held up by earth columns creating arched caverns within them.

Say what you please

Of what you would do, 

When events befalling others

Suddenly befall you;

For chances are .....

They will, 

And,

You will....

Do what is ne[vertical]cessary to cope with [upside down] the situation

[1977]

Intro from 19 Years and Counting:

I was raised raised in the confinement of a close-knit ethnic Italian American family. One can imagine my astonishment while growing up to find that the world was overflowing with varied peoples and tongues and traditions. All of my cognizant younger life I ached to communicate with the outside world through the medium of the theater: oral words, visual settings, and music. As I grew, I realized that my aspiration would not be achieved as there simply was not the funding available for formal education in these areas. I must admit to a shyness on my part to aggressively pursue my goals. So l chose an opportunistic path which led to graphic art and engineering. At the age of thirty-five (1969), I found that mental sanity required that I return to my dream. I tried to write a musical play but my inexperienced background would not permit it. Somehow, in some manner unknown to me, I discovered the medium of the book as my communication tool.

My first book, You Dress "Funny," was in reality an idea for the musical play I was then trying to write. The "book" of the show became the text, the lyrics became the poetry, and the music became the graphic art. Thus the story in book form is counterpointed on three separate levels just as a musical play is on a stage.

Binding came a few years later and added yet another dimension which literally

"bound" the inner levels more closely together to form an entity which must be appreciated as a whole. Years later cast paper would add visual depth. And the use of handmade paper-some embedded with real foliage and some with California Burgundy wine-dyed fibers-added a tactile surface no finger could resist.

I began with absolutely no experience on a tabletop Adana (English) printing press which I purchased from a mail order house. This is reflected in the poor quality of printing in my earlier works. When the Adana refused to respond to my needs, I became associated with Elmore Mundell, the Compulsive Printer of Portage, Indiana, and his marvelous Vandercook proof press. Mr. Mundell taught me an unusual method of typesetting and letterpress printing which fit perfectly into my unorthodox method of communication. When 1 moved to California in 1979, our association diminished, he expired, and I strove to print wherever I could find a press. I revived the Adana for one book (Daisies Never Tell, and used the Woman's Graphic Center in Los Angeles for another (Birds in Paradise). I was finally able to obtain a Vandercook No. A proof press through the persistence of a wonderful lady, Miss Gloria Stuart, and that is the printing press upon which this page is printed.

As you go through the years with me, please notice how my style changes, but, more importantly, please notice how each new work builds upon the experience gained from the previous one. I have made numerable errors along the way, and you will see how those mistakes turned into assets which I do not believe I could have attained any other way; I continue to make mistakes.

-D'Ambrosio - July, 1988

A Maverick in a Printing Office

D'Ambrosio on D’Ambrosio

In 1969, when I first began my chosen path as an artist working in the book medium, book dealers said they did not want to carry fine art, and art dealers said they did not want to handle books. Thank goodness, twenty years later, attitudes are beginning to change. Looking back, I believe the single most important thrust to the book arts renaissance has been the computer revolution and mankind's need to justify that the human hand is capable of more than operating a video terminal. I use the word, renaissance, because the book arts are not really new. If I were living a few centuries ago, I would probably be a scribe in a monastery illuminating manuscripts. What I do today is to learn from the roots of the book form, and build upon those roots to take the book into new realms of creation. If I am called an intermediate within the book arts, it is because I try to show the reader that what l am doing has a basis in the past.

Since I write, set type by hand, print letterpress, do the art work, and then bind my books, I strive to bring all the facets of book making (including making the paper in some cases) together to form one object, which requires the reader to bring all of the pieces together to understand the whole. The text is prime and dictates the aura of the entire work, and I am somewhat surprised that many think of me only as a binder of books. Perhaps that is because they only know my work through exhibitions where binding is usually the area most easily displayed. Or, maybe it is because my bindings are so unusual, and reflect my separate engineering and art training. But, so is my writing unusual, and so is my typesetting. In Daisies Never Tell (1982), I introduce the reader to a daisy that speaks. From my conversation with the flower, one can identify with the human cycle of birth and death. It is a profound subject which I attempt to treat with humour and pathos. I bound the book in California cowhide and glass.

The cowhide with its uneven textures is more appropriate for the earthy daisy than Moroccan leather. The glass allows the reader to see through the cover into the interior of the book. I use layering effects in my work to allow the reader to see beyond objects and thus give a feeling of perspective through depth.

In The Small Garden of Gloria Stuart (1986), I achieved depth by making the paper for the first signature. I dyed the fibres for the separate pages with different fabric dyes and 'pulled' holes in the paper as I was making it. The result is a four-folio signature which allows different colours to be exposed at various levels. This lies just inside the front cover which is cast paper with open areas between human-like tree trunks. The entire design is meant to allow the reader to walk through a forest during all the seasons of the year before getting to the title-page. In this manner, the reader has a sense of the story and is in the correct emotional state to begin reading the words. Visual effects throughout the book continue to heighten the reader's emotional involvement in the text. The glitter of gold kid used for the balance of the cover is meant to suggest tinsel town because the story concerns a bonsai garden and human relationships within the Hollywood film community. The book needed the pizzicato that only gold could give to it.

Using a musical term is quite appropriate for me. My childhood dream was to become a composer and write Broadway musicals. Gilbert and Sullivan, and Rogers and Hammerstein, were my early idols. I channelled my desire into the book form by producing my first book, You Dress ‘Funny' (1970). I transferred the book of the musical into the text; the lyrics into poetry, and the music into the graphic art work. Over the years, I have experimented by moving these three forms around within the book para-meter, and ultimately branched out beyond the footlights into the theatre-house itself with the binding of the book. Birds in Paradise (1984), is a culmination of fifteen years of experimenting within the book form and embodies all I had learned up to that time. I honestly did not know what direction I would proceed into next, and thought that perhaps I had nowhere else in which to take the medium. Then I met Gloria Stuart and Ward Ritchie.

For much of my earlier years of working within the book medium, I kept a low profile so would maintain my own attitudes and be unaffected by outside impressions. As a professor at the University of Southern California once told me, 'You are your own best kept secret.' No more. Just before l met Gloria and Ward, I thought my brain had gone about as far as it could in advancing my work. But now, twenty years and thirty-six separate books after I began, there doesn't seem enough time to execute the new ideas emanating from it. I only wish I had Gloria and Ward's energy, and, of course, no need for sleeping. Perhaps if I had Ward's capacity for spirits - but that is his 'best kept secret' for longevity.

I was trained in letterpress printing by Elmore Mundell, the Compulsive Printer of Portage, Indiana. I was living in Chicago at the time. His unorthodox methods were perfect for the direction I set myself. We worked on a number of books together until I relocated in Southern California, and he unfortunately expired. I learned about paper technology from Gordon Hueter, paper conservator to the Art Institute of Chicago at that time. I learned silk screening from a book on the subject, and binding by first dismantling a bound book and then from a technical manual to clarify what I had discovered. I attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago which is mostly a commercial art institution. I did not graduate from it but obtained basic design essentials from it. I left it when I realised that my work was beginning to look like other's who had attended the same school. My contemporary art knowledge was gleaned from working with a French art dealer in the Chicago area, Gilles Abrioux, who put together many fine corporate art collections nationally, and privately had one of only two complete collections of Henry Moore prints in the world. 

My engineering background was gained from the Illinois Institute of Technology and the knowledge gained there is probably the most important asset to my present work. Creative writing continues to intrigue me and I will never learn enough about the task.

A hallmark of my work is that I use materials for their tactile surface and colour. After all, one does hold a book in one's hands and touch is very important. A reader's eye is also important. Using the natural surface of a piece of material is not unlike my use of wood for a woodblock print. I try to find a piece of wood with plenty of grain in it. I want the viewer to instantly know the basic origin of the medium. In The Twilight of Orthodoxy in New England (1987), there are three woodblock prints. One is of Thomas Paine. After I cut out Thomas Paine's likeness in the block, I further scored the grain of the wood to enhance its printing texture. When looking at the print, there is no doubt that it was done from a piece of wood. This visual technique was used by Munch and Nolde, and is not new. Applying it to portraiture may be.

Needless to say, some of my toughest problems are those bindings done for someone else's text. I am literally 'bound' by the author in my will to compliment without overpowering. A recent example is the design binding I did for Ward Ritchie's latest work. It is a bibliography of his Laguna Verde Press simply titled, Laguna Verde. I wanted the binding to reflect all that letterpress printing entails. I decided to laminate the archival boards of the covers so that a gutter would exist at the top and fore edges. I then inserted 10-point Della Robbia type into the gutter. The type extends just beyond the boards. If an inked brayer is run across the type and then the edges of the book pressed into paper, a comment on Ward Ritchie and his press will be printed. My biggest problem was the ambience of the material to cover the boards. I got my answer from Gloria Stuart. She has an old shirt which she wears when printing. It is one which Ward has used to clean the ink from his press and is mottled in various colours. I did the same thing with cloth. The effect clearly suggests what the text is all about.

I have been called eclectic because my entire design style is dictated by the subject matter of the book and changes accordingly. I have also been called mad because of some of the book constructions that I attempt. Mad or eclectic or not, they all have, and show, roots within the traditional craft of book making.

IS IT A BOOK, OR IS IT ART?

By JOSEPH D'AMBROSIO

In the autumn of 1969, I began my career as an artist working within the book medium. (See Matrix 9). I write, design, set type and print letterpress; artistically illuminate, bind, and sometimes I even make the paper, for my limited edition books. Over twenty years ago when I first began, book dealers refused to carry my work because, they said, it is not a book --- it is art! And, gallery owners refused by proclaiming that it is a book, not art! We have advanced a long way since then, but the question is still with us: Is it a book, or is it art?

A simplistic answer that I often hear to that question turns out to be another question: why can’t it be both? And, the answer to that question is that the written text is, while the traditional production of a book is considered a craft rather than an art. So, what is the fuss all about?

In October of 1991, an exhibition opened at the Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts. The show was titled, CALIFORNIA BOOK ARTISTS. Amid the more than 200 pieces, one could find a finely printed volume replete with exquisite wood block prints in the same display case as a pair of black wing-tip shoes, one upper separated from its sole wherein lay imagery but no text. Jay Belloli, the gallery director, used a qualifying criteria that a work had to be done by a living California artist, and that any collaborative effort had to have also been done by an artist. There are books of metal plates suspended from ceiling wires into which one can peer through a hole in the center (a tunnel book), and even a Greyhound bus book with a hugh two-story high photo of a touring bus adhered to the wall (the book box in which it resides when folded sits on the floor nearby). Some of my bibliophile friends think that the exhibition went beyond the definition of a book, while some artists think that books with printing in them should not have been included. This is precisely what the fuss is all about.

When Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) first made woodcuts for the books produced in Basel, was there any question as to their being works of art? Yes! In a letter to a friend, Durer wrote that many minor Venetian artists copied his work in the churches they painted while publicly decrying them as not being done in the manner of the classics. (The Story of Art, by E.H. Gombrich, p. 256, Phaidon, London, 1953) One must remember that during this period, artists were acclaimed more for their craftsmanship within a particular medium, and snobbery led people to despise men who worked with their hands. It was later in Durer's life that he and the great artists of the period broke down that biased concept. Does this make Albrecht Durer the first book artist? Do not forget that scribes were illuminating manuscripts before Durer. Are the scribes the first book artists? In Persia in the fourteenth century, Middle Eastern artists illustrated romantic fables. Some authoritative sources claim that the Iclandic artist, Dieter Roth (diter rot), may be the first contemporary book artist because in 1957 he produced a pamphlet in black wrappers clamped together with rivets, and it was Dieter Roth who first employed the torn paper sheet as a deliberate artistic gesture. (Peter A. Wick, Introduction to ARTISTS OF THE BOOK 1988, A Facet of Modernism, The Boston Athenaeum, 1988). And, once again, is what he did a book? Or, is it art? Any contradiction in terms should first be scrutinized at its root. Why is this question being asked, and who is asking it? The question is posed because some artists' books are collaborative efforts and contain a text, while others are totally visual expressions with no meaningful text, and presented in a book-like structure. Educational institutions have traditionally guided society's cultural tastes. And, institutions do their job with great acumen as long as a subject fits neatly into a jurisdictional niche. The upsetting thing about an artist's book is that it encompasses competing departments within an institution: the library and the art department. Where is the realm of an artist's book especially if it has a text? The library? The art department? The departmental fight for jurisdiction means that the winner has a broader advocacy. It does make some sensible logic that a book with no text which is pure imagery belongs to the art department. But, as an art structure without a text, is it still a book? "Yes", states the artist, "it is still a book." What if it contains a text as well as visual imagery (etchings, wood blocks, serigraphs, etc.)? And, who has the authority to even answer the guestion?

Perversely, and in some ways a curious reflection on the independance of regional minds; considering that Europeans and Americans drive on opposite sides of a road and spell gray with an "e" in the UK and with an "a" in the USA, I was advised by a Chicago art dealer after my third year in this infant field, to go to Europe to work because that is where artists' books are respected genre within the Fine Art field. At the same time, in the USA, libraries began to suddenly become enamored with the art of the book. Since that time, the roles have reversed. Financial considerations in the USA have forced many libraries out of their artist book-buying binge, and art museums appear to be moving in to continue the interest. Whereas in Europe, interest is beginning to manifest itself within libraries as well as art museums.

Some educational institutions in the USA have endeavored to build instructional courses specifically inclined towards the book arts, and some have been successful while others have not endured. One of the major complaints that I have heard from museum libraries is that the graduates of present courses in book arts are not qualified to skillfully manage the repair of an antique leather binding because they were taught advanced non-adhesive bindings without the knowledge of binding roots. In fairness to those book art programs struggling to survive financially, perhaps one day funding will be such that a comprehensive course of instruction can be maintained. Until then artistic expression can be maintained by students substituting institutional book arts courses with the many workshops being offered by regional book arts facilities.

Some of the oldest forms of artistic expression are in the caves of Southwestern France. And yet, the French, surely without realizing it, have done much to inflame the artists' book controversy. In his introduction to the catalogue of the traveling exhibition, ARTISTS OF THE BOOK/1988/A FACET OF MODERNISM (The Boston Athenaeum), Peter A. Wick states that in the early 1900s, books with original prints in them began to appear in France, and implies they were of the livre d'artiste genre. He uses Balzac's Chez d'oeuvre inconnu (1931) as an example for which Picasso included etchings and wood engravings. In 1961, twenty-seven years prior to this statement, Philip Hofer, in his introduction to THE ARTIST & THE BOOK: 1860-1960 IN WESTERN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), reports that the French have recently awarded books with included original prints a special name or classification: "les livres de peintres." Ward Ritchie, who worked directly with Françoise-Louis Schmied in Paris in the thirties, cannot recall either term ever being used at that time. European continental and American book catalogues have traditionally listed this type of book as a "Modern Illustrated Book." But now that more emphasis has been placed on the book arts, the term, livre d'artiste, seems to be the one that has surfaced to describe a book with a text and included original prints. The term quite possibly is an Anglo invention using French terminology to give it needed authoritative validity. Aside from its questional etomology, does the term accurately describe the subject? No one would quarrel that Picasso's work is not an expression of fine art. Nor would I be so brazen as to condemn Balzac. But, together, within the framework of a highly dressed leather binding (la reliure), which most likely was not even executed by its designer (in true French tradition), is it an artist's book? Literally, is it a book done by an artist? In truth, it is a book done by a number of artists, including craftspeople. So, the term, livre d'artiste becomes hypocritical and confusing unless one is trying to describe a book which was produced by more than one artist, and certainly has a text. Then what happens to the artist's book as a total presentation by one individual with visual matter and no text? It certainly is a book if it at all resembles or opens as one. Is it a picture book? Only if it is illustrative, and a true "artist" is never illustrative (or even graphic for that matter). We can't call it a livre d'artiste - it doesn't fit the criteria. And yet, that's exactly what we do call it: an Artist's Book. We have been bested by our own inability for a better description.

One can't help but wonder why these terms were never used in relation to the conflicting styles of Arthur Rackham and Lynd Ward. Rackham was certainly illustrative, and Ward indeed was innovative in his presentations of wordless stories, yet they were given no terminology to explain their styles and consequently no conflictions arose. Or, vice versa: no conflictions arose because they were not given singular terminology.

An authoritative reference book titled, ARTISTS' BOOK: A CRITICAL ANTHOLOGY AND SOURCE BOOK (edited by Joan Lyons; Gibbs M. Smith, Inc., Peregrine Smith Books; 1985) presents as its basis for artists' books, books which clearly contain graphic art, and fit into the category of livre d'artiste. Graphic art has never been considered Fine Art, and was born when photography replaced narrative art. The book tries to clear the misconception surrounding artists' books, but only succeeds in adding to the confusion by presenting some fine examples of livre d'artiste. But, are they artists' books? The title of the reference book implies that this is so. However, to the book's credit, I did not see the term livre d'artiste used at all and only once is the term livre de peintre used and that within the very ably written section by Sushi Bloch. Martha Wilson of the Franklin Furnace in New York city gave a lecture at the opening reception for the Boston Athenaeum's traveling exhibition, ARTISTS OF THE BOOK 1988/A facet of Modernism. In her talk, she stressed the problem with terminology. She cautioned that the term "Book Arts" is terribly confusing to most people, because they simply do not know what it means. She called for a new description which would be a more clear definition, and hopefully one which would be more self-explanatory. Her wishes have fallen on deaf ears, because years have passed and no change in the term has evolved. Perhaps, because the term is so apt to begin with. Literally, a book by an artist. And, once again, it seems to be a contradiction in terms, because precognition has instilled within us that an artist paints, an artist makes prints, an artist sculpts, an artist makes a construction - but, a book? Someone writes a book about an artist. But, artists themselves do not make books.

Some contemporary artists are indeed now making books. David Hockney and Robert Motherwell are two examples. Motherwell did a series of prints for the Arian Press edition of Ullyses. And yet, these examples clearly fit into the livre d’ artiste category which at this point in this dissertation is somewhat suspect as to the term actually meaning what it says it does. Even Richard Long's recent spectacular work with handmade paper using mud from several rivers worldwide is not a pure all-artist effort. Madeleine Pestiaux in Los Angeles made the paper (is a paper maker an artist or a craftsperson?), and Klaus-Ullrich Rotzscher in San Francisco bound the copies (is a bookbinder an artist or a craftsperson?). The book has no text other than the name of each river silkscreened over its respective sheet of paper. Is it livre d'artiste, or an artist's book? Surely, Richard Long is considered an artist. But, does the fact that all the participants involved with the production of this work are not artists nullify its qualifying as an artist's book? And, neither does it seem to fit into the realm of livre d'artiste because there are no visual prints included within its covers. Can it be both? Only if we return our mental computers to the time when artists were admired more for their acumen within a medium than for the idea they were communicating. Should we blame Donatello and his peers for elevating art above the status of those belonging to the guilds? And, if we do, do we create new problems? Does all of architecture become Fine Art? Photography has recently been elevated to that status even though the same person who took the picture may not be the one who prints it. And, even that is not new. When lithography was born, artists worked upon the stone, but the printing was always done by a craftsperson.

The book arts as we now know them are relatively new. They should be allowed to grow up gracefully with their faults shed by the wayside as they mature. But, we certainly wouldn't let a baby play in auto traffic without offering some form of guidance. This could be accomplished by using an appropriate term. We have been given livre d'artiste, and we are bound to maintain that term for those books which are considered fine press limited editions with included art prints. It's too late to try and change that nor is it prudent at this juncture. What has to happen (and is indeed happening), is that the book arts and artists' books need to be separated, and their terms clearly defined. Bibliophiles accept the word art in the term, book arts, but object to the word, book, when linked to the word, artist. Artists don't seem to mind as long as the printed word is not utilized.

So, where does that leave someone as me who considers his books as works of art even though the printed word is employed. They are not livre d’artiste because I often write the text as well as execute the art work and the binding. When I first began, my goal was to slowly and methodically delete the printed word until visual artwork related the entire plot (much like ballet is to the operatic form). In my fourth book (and my fourth year), I produced ZARATHUSTRA, after Richard Strauss, with respect to Nietzsche. Since the work was modeled after a musical tone-poem and not a text, very few printed words are employed. My next book was to be the pure artistic form. It never happened. I realized that the printed word was so essential to an object called, "a book,” that I abandoned my goal which many artists appear to have undertaken. Where once I was considered avant-garde, I am now thought of as middle-of-the-road. My recent work, OLYMPE & HENRIETTE, by Villiers d'Lisle-Adam, carries on its title page: Livre d’Art by D’Ambrosio.

PROTECTIVE STRUCTURES FOR TREASURED WORDS —THE BOOK-IN-A-BOX

By JOSEPH D'AMBROSIO

The binding of a book has always been intended as a protective structure for the treasured words inside. Like a cathedral, its design must be functional first, and only secondly decorative. This is usually the case, but, upon viewing a Gothic structure, only an engineering student would appreciate the fact that the decorative arches not only hold up the ceiling but in actuality create the very ceiling itself. The Chicago architect, Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) perfectly coined the phrase: "De-sign ever follows function." When one is awed by the shiny gold leaf on the top and fore edges of an old book, one may assume that it is a decorative touch. It is, in fact, a design with a function. The layer of gold prevents dust from adhering to the fibrous edges of the paper pages. Since gold has a slick surface, it is more easily cleaned with a feather duster.

Likewise, fore edge paintings perform the same function. However, in order to view a fore edge painting, undue stress is placed on the spine of the book and care should be taken when doing so.

A slipcase is also a good protective covering for a book. However, a slipcase has an opening at one end which does not entirely keep out dust and light. The abrasive action produced when the book is slipped in and out of it creates another problem, a problem French binders solved with the chemise, a wrapper which protects the covers from chaffing action.However, this action limits a contemporary book designer to a one-dimensional flat surface for a cover. Leather onlays in a cover design would indeed be jeopardized without a chemise.

A box, preferably a clam-shell or side-hinged box, appears to be the best choice for the designer to protect a book. Usually, boxes are austere objects with almost no external design except for a title on the spine area. Why embellish that which is meant to protect the embellishment inside of it? Thank goodness the original cathedral makers did not think along those same lines or Europe would be littered with bread-box-like Notre Dames. And Chartres would not be a tourist attraction. There would be no communication to visually tell passers-by that, "within these walls is something which might spiritually interest and uplift you."

In 1969 when I first began as an artist working within the book medium, I had no intention of including the binding as part of the art-work. It took only two years to realize that bland covers suffocated the work within, that books have a voice inside of them which can't be heard unless an outside voice stirs the interest of a passing reader. My first attempts were rather modest in that they still utilized flat covers, albeit visually conveying an object other than a book. My next attempt, while I was still mired in the concept of flat covers, was to see through the covers to the work inside (Anamorphosis of Eve by F.B. Cornell, 1974). This was done through the use of clear acetate that allowed the viewer to see through the front cover to the title printed on the first page (not the flyleaf as this is a Japanese stab binding which has no flyleaf). It seemed a natural progression that the following year I would attempt a dimensional or sculptural cover (The Ondt and the Gracehoper by James Joyce, 1975). I fashioned a base-relief by building up 26 layers of silkscreen ink to convey the images of the Ondt and the Gracehoper. In order to keep the raised surface from being scratched when the book is wedged between two others in a bookcase, the image was set below a frame around it. However, I had no idea of how to bind the pages within it, so the pages were loose within a book-like structure. This was the first use of the book-in-a-box. It would take a few more years before I could actually bind (or sew) the pages within the box (The Mookse and the Gripes by James Joyce,1977). At this point I called the concept, a Book-in-a-Box, because, simply, that is what it is.

This basic concept has allowed me to stretch into design directions I never before thought possible. It allowed me to create a copper binding with hinged panels (Art Deco by Ward Ritchie, published by the Book Club of California, 1987). The archival box-like structure within the copper covers protects the pages from airborne oxidation as the cover panels naturally tarnish. And, it allowed the cost-cut-ting measure of using ultra thin skiver leather instead of full leather on hinged panels (The Twilight of Orthodoxy in New England by William Nykamp, 1987). These two books are virtually jointless because the panels rotate on plastic rods producing little or no wear to the material used.

But it wasn't until 1990, that I refined the concept of a Book-in-a-Box to a likeness of the sheer purity of an Andre Gide narrative (Variations & Quotations by Ward Ritchie). I used it again for a miniature book the same year (Dance Circle by Carol Cunningham) and again in 1992 for Olympe & Henriette by Villiers de L'Isle-Adam. Each time the design carried slight modifications to keep it structurally sound.

In my latest work, D'Ambrosio's DAVID, 1993, there appears to be no reason for a Book-in-a-Box binding structure. The book is bound in cast paper and Masonic Sheep, and presented in a specially designed clam-shell box to protect the cast paper cover. However, the book within does have a Book-in-a-Box structure. The design on the front cover is a cast paper representation of a marble quarry with a hint of the figures waiting to be released by the sculptor's chisel. A suggestion of the block used by Michelangelo to carve his statue of David is nestled within the quarry. This creates a weak thin area at the top and bottom in the center portion of the cover. The 8-ply archival board uprights used to create the box around the pages are like a structural I-beam and impart the strength needed in those weak areas. This gives strength with protection to the structure.

When I teach a workshop in a Book-in-a-Box binding as I did recently at the California State Library for the California State Library Foundation, I emphasize the need for functional design. I am one of the first to agree that an artist's creativity should not be snuffed out in fundamental rules, but it is quickly apparent to my students that if a Book-in-a-Box design does not function, then it does not fit as decoration either. And, fittingly, vice versa. In the two-day workshop we explored many design possibilities such as using multi-layered designs, various complementary materials, and even openings in the cover to allow the viewer to see into and through the cover to the endpapers. Structural soundness of the materials was stressed every step of the way, as well as the use of archival materials for permanence. Teaching the workshop is a great joy to me because invariably the students will say they cannot create a design in such a short time, or they simply are not creative. Yet, they do, and follow it through to some of the finest creations I have seen. Each one so different, and yet all based on one theme: a Book-in-a-Box structure binding. The next step in the natural progression of this concept's evolution is fairly evident. Can you guess what it is?

Joseph D'Ambrosio is an artist who has worked in the book medium for more than twenty years and currently is a California State Library Foundation Fellow.

His latest work is D'Ambrosio's DAVID (1993).

[image of Anamorphosis of Eve book]

Anamorphosis of Eve, completed in 1974, is bound Japanese stab style with two colors of gray felt and clear acetate that allows the viewer to see through the front cover to the title printed on the first page.

[image of books]

Left: The Ondt and the Gracehoper (1975); right: The Mookse and the Gripes (1977). Both bindings include a gilt relief-serigraph.

[image of books]

Variations and Quotations (1990) is bound in linen and paper over board. Olympe & Henriette (1992) is bound in decorative fabric, blue fabric, and Roma paper over board. Dance Circle (1992), a miniature book, is bound in black fabric and colored papers over board.

[image of books]

Art Deco (1987) is bound in copper with hinged copper panels. The Twilight of Orthodoxy in New England (1987) is bound in black leather skiver and marbled paper with gilt cast paper.

[image of books]

D'Ambrosio's DAVID(1993) is bound in Masonic sheep and cast paper.

norman e. Tanis & the santa susana press

By J. Anthony Gardner & Joseph D’Ambrosio

The San Fernando Valley of Southern California lies north of Central Los Angeles, nestled between the Santa Monica Mountains on its southern perimeter and the San Gabriel and Santa Susana Mountains on its northern. It is popularly known for its suburban sprawl, its own argot, "Valley speak," and the television and movie industries. The Valley is home to many well known artists and also to the highly regarded Santa Susana Press, founded by Norman E. Tanis in 1975.

Tanis was Dean of the University Library at California State University, Northridge, located in the northwestern part of the Valley, from 1969 to 1991. He came from Grand Rapids, Michigan, via the directorship of the Kansas State University library, Pittsburgh, Kansas. During his Northridge tenure he led the library into the automation age—its books today are retrieved from compact storage at the push of a button—and he established the University's Santa Susana Press. The imprint was taken from Northridge’s most prominent visible geographic feature, the Santa Susana Range, one of several transverse (east-west) ranges in California.

During the 1970s, three other fine presses were established in the San Fernando Valley. Richard Hoffman printed from his Van Nuys studio after his 1978 retirement from California State University, Los Angeles. Kitty Maryatt (Two Hands Press) worked in Woodland Hills, Herb Yellin (Lord John Press) published in Northridge. These presses led the remarkable flourishing of fine printing that occurred in the Valley in the 197os, continuing to the present day.

From the beginning Tanis sought to promote the name of the University through the Press and to facilitate a venue for non-commercial works of talented, successful authors. Private moneys for publications were raised by Tanis from the campus Foundation and from the library’s Bibliographic Society. Initial publications were facsimile editions of manuscript and rare pamphlets in the library's Special Collections and were offered to libraries across the country. In 1973 the library printed an offset facsimile edition of Pomponius Mela's Cosmographiea Sive De Situ Orbis to celebrate the dedication of the new Delmar T. Oviatt Library building. The following year the Press launched the American Classics Facsimile Series. The Santa Susana imprint first appeared on number 3 of this series.

In 1975 the Press ventured into fine printing for the first time with a broadside

printed by Pall Bohne. This broadside, titled "Marshall McLuhan," presents a

defense of the primacy of books and printing in the zoth and zist centuries. It was printed on a Washington proof press housed and exhibited in the main lobby of the University Library. The press, purchased from an Irvine antique dealer, was said to have been used at one time by the Orange County division of the Los Angeles Times.

With the help of Herb Yellin, Tanis obtained permission to publish Fertilizing the Continent, a poem by Joyce Carol Oates selected from the Thomas and Barbara McDermott Collection of American first editions donated to the Library in 1976.

The Press's third production was an exhibition catalog of the works of Lynton

R. Kistler from 1927 to 1974. It was designed and printed by Pall Bohne at his Bookhaven Press in Rosemead, California. The Kistler book was featured in the Western Books Exhibit of 1975. The Facsimile Series ended in 1978 and the Press shifted its focus to fine printing projects.

Pall Bohne printed four books and several broadsides for the Santa Susana Press between 1976 and 1978. He also designed a logo which served the Press for many years. Bohne chiseled the logo into slate, a technique inspired by the English master stone carver, type designer, and sculptor David Kindersley. (Tanis's 51-minute videotape interview of Kindersley is in the University Library.)

The Press continued to draw on the rich heritage of Southern California printers—among them Grant Dahlstrom, Ethan Lipton (a student of Richard Hoffman), the Plantin Press, Ward Ritchie, Vance Gerry, Bonnie Thompson Norman, Joe D'Ambrosio, and Patrick Reagh. Dennis Bakewell, Special Collections Curator at the time, edited many of these works for publication.

Patrick Reagh of Glendale began printing for the Press in 1979; by himself or in collaboration with others, Reagh printed twelve books and one broadside.

These were all issued in the irregularly numbered California Master Series. The Press launched the series in 1978 as on ongoing publication project of works by or about California artists and writers. D'Ambrosio, who moved to the San Fernando Valley in 1979, designed, printed, and bound some exquisite examples of the book arts for the Press. They are illustrated in the bibliography of his work spanning 1969-1989, Nineteen Years and Counting (1989). D'Ambrosio's Santa Susana Press production of 

Twilight of Orthodoxy (1987) and Reagh's Husks of Wheat (1987) appeared in "A Southern California Decade: An Exhibition of Contemporary Books, 1980-198g" organized by the Alliance for Contemporary Book Arts in 1990.

In addition to Joyce Carol Oates, the Press published works of internationally acclaimed authors Ray Bradbury, William Saroyan, John Updike, Diane Wakoski, and William Everson. Herb Yellin, also of Northridge, obtained manuscripts and literary rights of some of these well-known authors while he was president of the Bibliographic Society. Carl Haverlin, retired president of the Book Manufacturers' Institute, regularly advised the Press; it was he who suggested the addition of Norman Corwin and Ward Ritchie to the roster of authors.

When William Saroyan was engaged for his Two Short Paris Summertime Plays (1979), he sent a postcard from Fresno to Norman Tanis to set a meeting with Tanis and Yellin on a Sunday at a Santa Monica bar to further discuss the project. Tanis, however, received the postcard the day after the proposed meeting! Saroyan was livid over being "stood up," but the project proceeded in spite of this incident as well as changes in five subsequent galley proofs. (The Tanis-Saroyan correspondence is on deposit at the Archives of Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Tanis's alma mater.) When the book finally came out, Saroyan commented, "I never thought a goddam little college in the San Fernando Valley could produce a book as beautiful as this." By then, beautiful books had become a hallmark of the Santa Susana Press..

Art professors Irving Block and Hans Burkhardt, Tanis's close friends and confidants on campus, frequently lunched and laughed with him at the University Faculty Club, often disturbing their more staid professorial colleagues. Out of these frequently exuberant lunches came the beautifully illustrated Press books of the 198os. Block's skillful artwork was easily transformed into line cuts for letter-press printing. A particularly good example of his creative genius is a book of poetry written by his wife, Jill Block, Tying Shoelaces, published by the Press in 1989. The work of another Block family member, Irving and Jill's daughter, Francesca, had earlier appeared on the Santa Susana Press's list. This talented young writer and poet, whose first books were illustrated by her father, continues her writing career today. Irving Block's work is part of the permanent collection of the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D. C.

Hans Burkhardt produced original limited edition graphic artwork for the Press. A representative example is his series of intaglios for Ray Bradbury's The Last Good Kiss (1984). Known as an abstract expressionist and symbolist painter, Burkhardt taught at the University of California at Los Angeles, California State University, Long Beach, University of Southern California, and the Otis Art Institute as well as at California State University, Northridge. A student and close friend of the artist Arshile Gorky, Burkhardt is famous for his anti-war paintings, among other themes.

The Bradbury book, illustrated by Burkhardt, was designed and printed by Howard Williams. Williams served as Master Printer in charge of the Santa Susana Press Chapel (also founded by Tanis) in the early 1980s. The group used several presses, including an antique Albion press located in Tanis's conference room on the third floor of the Library. In 1981, they produced Homestead Acre Recipes, commemorating the Los Angeles Bicentennial, 1781-1981.

[Illustration from Jean Cocteau & the Illustrated Book, 1990]

By no means was the Press limited in the pursuit of fine art reproduction. In 1978, the photographer Amanda Blanco prepared a photo-essay on Jake Zeitlin, with text edited by Ward Ritchie. The Press issued About Norman Corwin in 1979, another beautiful photo-essay by Amanda Blanco, with a text by Ray Bradbury. Ten years after her first Press publication, Blanco developed her Type-faces: A Photographic Study of Ward Ritchie with a photo-essay on Ward Ritchie, captions by D'Ambrosio, and a Foreword by Lawrence Clark Powell. The essays were enhanced by original photographic prints, not reproductions. Designed, printed, and bound by D'Ambrosio, the portfolio was published in a clamshell box designed to look like the flexible lens of a camera. In lieu of a title on the spine, it carried an indication of a camera's viewfinder. Tanis suspected that the Los Angeles Times Book Review might review this unique publication, so he sent them a copy. The Times staff returned it with no explanation (and no review). An inspection of the clamshell box revealed that they had slit the joint completely, thus separating the cover from the spine! Obviously, the staff had never been exposed to a clamshell box (especially one lacking a title to indicate where the spine might be). Nor did they seem to realize that the clamshell binding would open easily if they merely lifted the cover from its base.

Of all the many fine examples of bookmaking art produced by the Press, the crowning achievement was undoubtedly the 1990 publication of William A. Emboden's Jean Cocteau and the Illustrated Book, designed and printed by Patrick Reagh. It was featured in the 1991 Western Books exhibit and earned for Reagh the prestigious Carl Hertzog award given by the University of Texas at El Paso.

In the Fall of 1993, a large commercial edition, Suddenly A Giant: A History of California State University, Northridge was published. After this, the future of the Press is uncertain. Norman Tanis retired from the University in 1991, taking with him plans for a work about the illustrator George Cruickshank, with restrikes from the original plates, as well as for a miniature about Eleanor Roosevelt as mystery writer.

Norman Tanis leaves his indelible stamp on the character and success of the Santa Susana Press, and he might be described as like Monotype: "flexibly mobile." The remaining pages of his life, however, are still "in press." Tanis recently accepted the post of librarian for the Seminary of Our Lady Queen of the Angels, Mission Hills, California. Might a nearby ridge or canyon inspire him to establish a new press? Whatever he may do, Norman Tanis can be sure of our good wishes and our gratitude for a fine job of work.

[santa susana press bibliography containing 44 titles was prepared by Tony Gardner]

D'Ambrosio is an artist who works in the book medium. He lives in Sherman Oaks.

©Book Club of California 

A Next of Robins, Alternative Story 1999

The bird eats the worm. We eat the bird. We would never knowingly eat the worm. Unless we were in another culture, We knew the bird ate the worm, and yet we blocked that thought out of our mind when we ate the bird. We do something silly like that every day. And, on occasion, we do it in a more sinister way. We do it because we must. In order to cope with a society that has evolved to protect us even as it inhibits us. We chose to be protected. Even though it smoothers some of our basic instincts. And we continue on our way. To do so we must not think of the worm that the bird ate that we ate! Assumed ignorance is our best defense. But, what if we made a pact with our conscience to face every thing at its own true value—no coverups. Impossible? Because of our basic human needs? Would the burden be so heavy as to make us even more combative? What if the bird did not eat the worm? Only a seed—a vegetarian. Would it survive? Of course it would—only to be eaten by something else, as what will befall all of us as we become fodder for the universe. So, in order for that plan to work, we all must be vegetarians—pity the poor green leaty plant!

It appears that only when we shed our basic human need for food can we become the antithesis of the hunter-gatherers. We would not need to band together protecting what we have and fighting other groups for the basics of life. The group methodology of “us” against "them" may abate because there would be nothing we would need to take. The innate urge to want what one does not have which is based in our need for survival may extend to personal treasures, and You [? in right margin] could share this little book with others without fearing that they will steal it from you. Banding together would not be necessary. We would not need safety in numbers. Families, if they exist, would be heritable. It would be a less covetous and conflict-driven society. The solution lies within the nest. What if we grew sustenance within our own bodies by simply using water and sunlight? As a plant. Unbelieveable[sic]? Stick around for a few million years. Why, I understand that we, each one of us, once had a tail!

From prototype at the California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento, California.

Engaging the Viewer

Joe D'Ambrosio

Once, during a hectic Holiday Season, I found myself in a long line in a chain bookstore. The clever marketing ploy of the store was to wind the queue along a wall where books for sale were nested in individual wire racks. To pass the time while waiting to check out, one could conveniently reach out and pick up a copy of a book and quite possibly add it to one's purchases. More than a few people reached out, picked out a book from its rack, ruffled through its pages and either put it back or kept it. What could one possibly glean from a quick glance beyond the dust jacket that had lured one in the first place? The size of the type, the leading (the white space between two lines of type), the illustrations, the number of pages, the color of the background paper, or dialogue versus exposition and description? The answer is: All of the above!

How does all this relate to artists' books that, beyond their commercial value, offer the heart and soul of a human being? Simply this: if an artist can't engage a viewer, the work will go unseen and the creator of the piece will not have achieved the goal of connecting with another human through shared thought or image. And, yes, a consumer may buy a book simply because of the notoriety of the artist/writer but if the "packaging" is not what the reader expects and wants, even that book will remain on the shelf.

I recently toured a bindery and was curious to see a worker ripping the hard covers off literally hundreds of large folio-bound glossy "coffee-table" books about the legendary Beatles. Why? The books didn't sell as an expensive hardcover edition so the publisher, hoping to recover the original investment, was having them redone as large paperbacks for sale at a much lower retail price. This case clearly illustrates that even a notable subject cannot overcome a poor design to attract a viewer.

Does changing the design for commercial reasons compromise a book and destroy its integrity? Yes. An alternative would be to consider design as a necessary and vital component of the book from its inception, choosing materials as well as design features with a target audience in mind, i.e. leather for the staunch bibliophiles and decorative papers with flower inclusions for lovers of poetry and earthly delights.

The single most effective tool to engage a reader can be summed up in one word: aberration. Or, more precisely, aberration in three dimensions structure. We human beings are a curious bunch and we are especially curious about touch. It goes back to humankind's basic desires and stimulation of the senses. By aberration, I simply mean simply a deviation from the standard. It is important that enough of the basic root of the subject be maintained within the design so the viewer can easily discern the aberration's origin. The viewer needs a familiar guidepost to help relate to the unfamiliar design. The unusual becomes acceptable because of an indication of where the design arose. An abstract maze, when rooted in the familiar, is more navigable. However, aberration need not be ugly. Deviation can be absolutely enchanting and lovely if that is the artist's purpose.

And that which is pleasantly desirable will lure more effectively than that which is singularly abhorrent.

Intro from A Memoir of Book Design:

When I first began designing books in Chicago in 1969, my goal was to create a visual environment for the written word. And, in so doing, I hoped to evoke emotion in the mind and heart of the person reading the text—previously a task for italics and boldfaced type, and, of course, diacritical marks such as exclamation points and question marks. I wanted to extend the depth of emotion to greater levels through graphic artwork. I had no idea that the work would evolve into three-dimensional and structural depth, tactile surfaces, and, in essence, an engagement of all the human senses (including hearing and smell) to highlight the telling of a tale. When I first began, I did not set out to make a book. I set out to write a musical play. My childhood aspiration was to be a musical composer. I can faintly recall at a very early age seeing an upright piano in my grandparents' living room, hitting a key with one of my fingers, and being amazed at the sound that my action produced This was my first indication that a physical movement by me could produce a response in a separate object. In effect, I was the controlling factor, and my very presence mattered. It also helped that my close relatives (of which there were many) encouraged me. It is usual within our close family structure to enforce one's positive assets (and discourage negative ones). I asked Santa Claus for a piano every Christmas from then on. When I didn't get one, my parents dealt with my disappointment by reminding me that, with six children, the family was too poor for such an expense, and that everyone had to share in the celebration of the Nativity equally. Maybe this is why I have never really believed in Santa Claus, or in receiving something for nothing.

As a child I had a very lonely existence. Even though I had at first a sister and two brothers (and later, another brother and sister), I seemed to be always in my own little dream world. I was sheltered and coddled by my parents because I was a weak, thin, frail child, suffering from erratic muscle spasms—chorea, or St. Vitus's Dance. I guess my actions were an embarrassment because I was generally left alone to find my own diversions. Actually, because of my condition, my parents, through overprotection, would not let me engage in play with other children for fear that I would be hurt. So I grew up channeling my activities into solitary pastimes. And I recall that at first it really didn't bother me. I enjoyed my own company. I turned my interests into miniature stage settings with screw people for thespians. Small metal screws worked best because the flat nut heads would keep them erect. I created elaborate sets with lots of draping curtains, and as I grew older I would buy original cast recordings of musical dramas and play them along with my miniature performances. I had no idea what the actual musical play was about, so l improvised and made up the story line as I went along fitting it to the music.

At a very early age, and without realizing it, I began to create greeting cards for family members. It is pretty embarrassing to see some that have been saved from that era, but they were the beginnings. I wrote the verse and did the artwork. Then, as I grew older, I began making Christmas cards that had more than one folded page-multiple pages, but still not a conventional book. It was not a pamphlet either-just a story line with pictures. The pictures, however, were not illustrations, but graphic representations that required deciphering while one was reading the legible poetry. I guess I have always wanted the reader to play an active part of my creations by having to exert intellect and imagination while reading them.

My somewhat pampered existence, coupled with my artistic manifestaions, made me think that I was someone special. Perhaps this pompous view of myself was meant to block out the negative aspects of not engaging in social discourse with others, but it worked. And so it made me illogically think that any show of creativity was bad because it stifled interaction with others. I then suppressed my artistic nature because l wanted to play just like other children. I was lonely, and much of my future work would focus on how we all need one another-even when we think we don't. I felt that the creativity that was coming out of me at that time would damage a normal childhood, and I worked very hard at suppressing anything that would brand me as abnormal. Another reason for this posture was a result of what I was being told by my parents: I was not to do anything that would embarrass the family, especially since many of my actions were considered eccentric in polite society. What I did not realize at the time was that my need for others was a silent cry associated with my coming of age sexually. The notion that the suppression of my creative energies would make me naturally desirable would in later years manifest itself in physical maladies.

It took suppressing myself for thirty-five years and finding a good psychiatrist to unleash all that was building inside of me. I had been through four years of active U.S. Navy duty, which included radio operators' school and teletype maintenance school; a starting job at the local Chicago electrical utility (Commonwealth Edison Company) as a mail boy working my way up to an engineering assistant's position; attending The American Academy of Art but never graduating, and the Illinois Institute of Technology to become an electrical engineer, and still not graduating-symptoms of my building inward frustration. I began to incur stomach problems. A good friend suggested a doctor. When the doctor found nothing physically wrong, he recommended a psychiatrist, and the problem was solved. The security of a steady job was frustrating the energy within me. Even though the prospect was frightening, I needed to shed the safety net my steady job provided. Protection stifles freedom of expression, because one is cautious not to offend the provider of the paycheck that pays the rent, buys the food, and keeps one under a roof when it rains. I needed to create. I needed to create the musical play of my boyhood dreams.

At the age of thirty-five (which is rather late to begin a new career) | tried to do just that. But with no musical education, I felt that I could not write decent music to go along with my lyrics and plot line. I certainly could not blame my parents for not providing a piano or musical instruction for me. I could have obtained both at any point along my way. Was | lazy or just trying to live the normal life I feared would elude me if I gave in to my creativity? Perhaps the simple answer is that I was not ready. Still, something was lurking in the back of my mind, because as I grew I asked questions about musical notation from those l encountered who possessed that knowledge. Was I seeking my destiny even though I did not realize that I was doing so? I still don't know what prompted me to turn my musical play into a book. I guess it just seemed to be the most practical thing to do. I didn't even question the fact that it would have to be printed in multiple copies to be a book. I saw an English-made Adana tabletop printing press advertised in the downstate Galesburg Dick Blick art catalog and I sent for it. I purchased a book on How To Silkscreen and followed its steps with no difficulty. I used the story line of the musical as the text of the book, and inserted the lyrics of the songs (as poetry) in those places where a song would be inserted in a musical play. I used emotional graphic artwork in place of the actual music. For nine months I devoted my nights to working on that first book. When friends asked me to go out with them, I turned them down. Many became angry with me, but | at last had a mission. Social relationships were no longer a priority. I would create what I was meant to do in my life-and then I could die!

One day someone will figure out what makes us do what we haven't a clue we are doing and then the surprise of living will be gone. Maybe that will be a good thing, but all of my creative experiments have shown that chaos is the best creator.

When I finished the book, I felt my existence had finally been justified. I sold all of my furniture, piled the Adana and accessories into my Volvo, and headed west for Seattle to get a meager job sweeping floors while I waited for death to finally claim me. But something changed my attitude along the way. I took the book along with me and showed it to people that I met. The response I got in San Francisco from book store owners was that this was something never before seen and that it was a good thing. When I got to Seattle, 1 knew that I had to return to Chicago and pick up the pieces and do another book. I gave Seattle a try (two weeks), and then drove back to Chicago at speeds so fast that I destroyed the clutch on the air conditioner of the Volvo somewhere between Boise, Idaho, and Salt Lake City. I was happy for two reasons. One, I had another mission in life, and, two, I didn't have to die immediately-that part of my destiny could wait a while. 

Since I began with the premise of turning a musical play into a book, l knew what I wanted to do. Classical ballet is my first love, even before musical plays. My goal was to slowly, with each new edition, eliminate the words until the book communicated without language-with visual images only, just as a ballet communicates with no words but music and movement only. I came close to that goal three years later with my fourth book, Zarathustra, and soon realized | was making another mistake. Without the printed word, I felt I could no longer call the structure that l was creating a book.

Now, where is that definitely inscribed in the basic laws of life? No-where. My premise that words are necessary in a book may not agree with yours. A structure with words does not solely determine if a thing is a book. A book is a consolidation of communicative thoughts strung along in a series (words, images, words and/or images) and presented in any structural form that carries and enhances its message. In order to be a "book," the structure must not reveal the entire communicative thought all at one time, but in unfolding successive sections. If a thing is an artistic structure without words and can be comprehended all in one visual sweep without the viewer's physical participation (i.e., turning the pages), then its form corresponds to a sculpture as an artistic expression. Is a brush painting which hangs on a wall and includes legible words a book? Of course not. Why? It is necessary to delve into the artist's intentions to understand why. The words would have been laid onto the canvas purely for visual effect and not necessarily to be read. The artist is using words as visual images along with other images on the canvas to communicate a thought or idea or statement. The words are not intended to be read, but to be seen, even though they can be both. The fact that they are legible enough to be comprehended is a device which the artist employs to gain your trust. You may certainly understand the words you are reading, but you may not comprehend the shapes and colors that are presented with it. The fact that there is something that you find familiar leads the viewer to delve further into the work to discover the relationship and thus the artist’s purpose in creating the piece.

The fact that I felt I needed words to accompany images in order for my work to be classified as a book is my own personal artistic opinion. It does not mean that a purely illustrative series of pages is not a book. In Mad Man's Drum, by Lynd Ward (1930), a complete series of pictures without words relate the story. The pages are bound within a hard cover, and because each section of the story is revealed in segments (by turning the pages), it can clearly be considered a book. Some may claim that it is like a cartoon with illustrative panels to tell a story. A cartoon has words as well as pictures. Mad Man's Drum is clearly not a cartoon, but a serious early attempt by an artist using the medium of the book, other than a canvas, to convey a message.

My next big hurdle was to find a venue for my work. That was not so easy. The local art dealers told me that what I was doing was a book and had no place within the fine art market. And the local bookstores told me that what I was doing was art and had no place within the book market. I did, however, find one art dealer in the Chicago area who sold European artists' books. He encouraged me to continue my work in Europe. But the knowledge that what I was doing was being done in Europe led me to think that if I stayed in Chicago and continued my work I would be at the beginning of a new form of art in this country. At that time Europe was usually ahead of the United States when it came to the subject of art. So I continued to create books as an art medium for several years, selling very little as I went along, until | happened to meet a local book dealer who also sold art prints.

I had at that time produced F.B. Cornell's Anamorphosis of Eve, which had additional prints not bound within the book. The prints were for sale separately so it seemed only natural to investigate a shop that dealt in graphic art prints: J&S Graphics. To my amazement it was more of a book store than a graphic art gallery. I was euphoric and probably spent the entire day talking to the clerk, Tom Joyce, and the owner, Larry Kinnetka. Together we set up a formal opening at the shop for Anamorphosis of Eve, and Larry gave me some fatherly advice in the privacy of his office: "You'll never get rich producing your own work or some obscure writer's. Do something by a famous author, and then the collectors will need to buy it." I brought up the fact of copyright laws, but Larry didn't think anyone would come after me for an edition of only fifty to one-hundred copies. Later, when Tom Joyce suggested I do James Joyce's The Ondt and the Gracehoper, from a book titled Two Tales of Shem and Shaun (a work in progress), which he had in the shop, I still refused to plagiarize. I wrote to the U.S.

Copyright Office to do a search and see who owned the copyright. The answer came back that there was no U.S. copyright on the material. I found that difficult to believe but I had my affirmation on government letterhead so I went ahead with the project. Years later I learned that Two Tales of Shem and Shaun is included in Finnegans Wake and thereby copyrighted as a part of another entity. But Larry was correct. For an edition of fifty copies, no one bothered to prosecute me. I made so little income off the book that it would have cost both parties more in lawyer's fees than was actually involved. At one point a London book dealer came to Chicago and bought my remaining copies of The Ondt and the Gracehoper. However, he did not pay me on the spot, and later when I tried to get payment from him in London, my requests went unanswered. It took a letter from me to the famous and influential London book dealer, Bertram Rota, explaining my predicament, and payment was forthcoming. I was still ignorant of the Joyce copyright when two years later I did the second of the two tales, The Mookse and the Gripes. At one time for a Raymond Chandler piece I contacted the executrix of his estate through her agent in London. But I was informed that she would not allow me to do an edition of only fifty copies, and I did not do it. I did send one of my miniature books as an example, and promised her some artist's proofs of the edition, but I was still refused permission. There was no reason given. I can only guess

She felt that notenough royaltincomewold.

While on the subject of copyrights, allow me to clear my conscience and set the record straight on another matter. Mr. Mundell (The Compulsive Printer of Portage, Indiana), whom I collaborated with on the printing of the Joyce books, brought a number of works to my attention, all of which were by famous writers and surely had copyright protection. One writer was Dashiell Hammett. I was told that Hammett was under strict contract to the Hollywood Studios at one time. In order to do outside work he had to write under pseudonyms, one of which was Mary Jane Hammett, and, hence, "The Crusader" Mr. Mundell and I printed it without formal permission. The short story had appeared in print only once, in The Smart Set magazine some time in the 1930s. The magazine copyrighted all of its stories under a blanket copyright for each edition. They were long out of business when Mr. Mundell and I came along.

I call myself an artist working in the book medium, rather than a book artist. I am definitely not a craftsman. If I were, I would not have tried some of the structures that I have created. A craftsperson fabricates what he or she has been taught to fabricate. A craftsperson plays by all of the rules. An artist deviates from the rules. However, I have always maintained that the evidence of a broken rule must be accompanied by an indication that the person who broke it knew full well the rule existed, thereby justifying the breaking of the ruler 

Another problem for me over the years has been the authoritative hierarchy within the book arts academy. Most subscribe to the French notion that no one person does two things well. Every aspect of book production must be done by a competent person within that singular field, and no human being has the capacity to be an expert in more than one. Hence, everything from the writing to the binding is the work of a different person. And that notion has much merit. However, it means that the core of the work becomes fragmented and is pulled in many directions at one time as each ego working on the project follows his or her own agenda. The ensuing conflict is basically an asset to the finished product, but the entity that evolves is no longer the pure reflection of a singular being: the writer. When I worked with Mr. Mundell, he was trying to produce a "fine press" book, and I was trying to produce an "artist's book." What evolved was something in between the two. This is not a bad thing, and probably explains why I need the printed word as an integral facet of my work. It was only later that I realized that progress is made by reaching out beyond the acceptable, and to do that, one must take risks not compatible with collaboration. An artist's book may be done as a collaboration to satisfy the pundits. Even so, when it is done by more than one artist, it ceases to be a unified vision of a specific subject. And only through experimenting within a given field can one expand to create new areas of expression.Does a painter share a canvas with another painter?

©Book Club of California 

Working with Poster/Broadsides

BY JOE D’AMBROSIO

A BROADSIDE communicates an announcement using typographic images. A poster relies on typography combined with graphic imagery to further enhance the message. Since I use typographic images also as an integral part of the graphic image, l use the term poster/broadside to describe the result. The origin of my poster roadsides is as serendipitous as my other works, and the firs evolved out of a need to move a particular project forward.

In I982 I was working on a book, Daisies Never Tell. Usually, when I work on a project, it is done with no preconceptions as to how it will eventually look after it is completed. I begin with an idea, and then allow the visuals to evolve along with the text to move the project forward. Approximately half way into the production of the book, I lost the flow of the plot line. I decided to pause from that project, work on something else for a while, and allow time to suggest my direction. At the time I had as a printing device an Adana tabletop flatbed press that was imported from England. It had a very small printing area (probably no bigger than a single octavo), and deteriorating rollers.

Why I endeavoured to print a sheet much larger (II × 15 ins) can only be attributed to my instinct to start a project without considering too fully the difficulties involved in completing it [2].Concentric coloured letters emanate from the centre of an image of a daisy in an anthropomorphic stance - stem akimbo and leaves like arms. I was using serigraphy [silk-screen] extensively at the time so that is the medium employed for both the image and the titles. The random letters do not spell out any words. They are placed because of their shapes - some capitals and some lower case depending upon the need for ascenders or descenders, conical points or curved surfaces. Since the letters are associated with a floral work, their col-urs are gradational—from very dark green to lighter green as the rings work their way outward from the central daisy. Thirty-three colours later, the poster/broadside was completed. The titles were hand-cut from a lacquer stencil (as were all of the colours) and then fixed to the screen with a soluble liquid such as acetone. At that time water-based inks were not available, but I would still choose oil-based inks because the colours are more vibrant.

It should be noted that the medium of serigraphy (silk-screen usıng only hand-made stencils — no photographic stencils) is basically (rather as pochoir) flat colours laid one next to the other to create a carpet of graphic design. The use of a halftone gradation in the colours is not natural to the medium. It can be done by utilising a split font whereby two different coloured inks are laid side by side on the plate and then blended in the middle by pulling the squeegee across them, Or it may be done by overlaying transparent colours over one another.

The year after I completed the Daisies Never Tell poster/broad-side, 1 was invited to have a one-man exhibition at a gallery in Northern California. The reception to the relatively new genre of artists' books was so overwhelmingly warm and wonderful that I resolved as soon as I returned home I would do another poster/ broadside to commemorate the occasion. I finally had a large enough printing press a Vandercook no. 3 that I had purchased at auction) that would accommodate a large piece of paper so the titles could be printed by letterpress. The scene is the view I enjoyed of the Pacific Ocean from the house in which I stayed [I, opposite].

The sunset, however, is the first time that I used letters which may be read as well as seen as visual images. They are all of the people responsible for mounting the exhibition, with the name Heidi at the centre. Not all of the colours in this image are stencilled. The plate for the trees was created by drawing the branches and the leaves (all those images to be printed in a single colour) on a stretched piece of silk with a grease pencil (with an oily rather than a graphite base). Then the entire screen was coated with water-based glue including the grease-pencilled images). The silk was then washed in a solvent which dissolved the greasy image of the pencil, but not the water-soluble glue. This left only the image openings on the screen, through which the ink could reach the paper. It gave the trees a feathered look, as opposed to the sharp edges of a cut stencil. This technique cannot be used if the inks are water-based, as they would remove the non-printing areas and eradicate the image.

Not to be outdone by their rural cousins, that same year I was asked to address the Colophon Club of San Francisco [3]. Since there are so many O's in the word colophon, I decided to elaborate on them in the title by making them larger than the other letters in the word, and expand on them in the visual area by placing the city not on hills but on the rounded apexes of the O's with the word again gigantically repeated in the background along with the fog coming in from the ocean. My notes remind me that it took sixteen runs to complete this print. However, some colours had to be reprinted more than once to keep the landmarks of the city in their proper place and thus convey believability. I think it was done entirely with lacquer stencils except for the grey clouds which were probably done with a grease pencil. The size of the print is the same as most of the others, a quarter of a 22 x 30 ins BFK Rives sheet. 

It was another three years before I did another poster/broadside.

In 1987, at the request of Norman Tanis, Dean of Libraries at California State University, Northridge, I completed one for a book that the university (Santa Susana Press) had commissioned me to design and print: The Twilight of Orthodoxy in New England [4]. 

It is about Thomas Paine’s age of enlightenment at cross purposes with the era's prevailing Christianity. have always been attracted by light and dark and how the two contrast to bring out crisp edges to various shapes. Some of my early paintings were conceived not for subject matter alone but to show how areas of light and dark could be used to heighten the emotion conveyed by the various shapes. The image on this poster/broadside is a good ex-ample. Background letters rise in ascending shades of colour from behind a totally black rounded shape (the earth) with a country church complete with a spire at its apex. The fire and brimstone subject of the text is thus alluded to by the contrast of the varying shades of colour. The letters do not spell out any words and are placed for their particular shapes to complete the composition.

However, the huge T in the centre is intended to convey Christ's cross and the large curlicue S just below is snaking from the church's spire, itself embedded in an I, and snakelike enough to convey the sin of sloth.

The following year, 1988, once again saw me working on a commission for Santa Susana Press of Cal State, Northridge. This time it was Type-Faces: Ward Ritchie, a portfolio of Amanda Blanco's photographs of Ward [5]. Since the subject is not only Ward, but also photographs, my conception was to look at Ward Ritchie from within the lens of a camera, and allow all the light entering the camera to show as letters when they hit the negative film. The central letters around Ward's image had to be rounded so they could frame the spiral opening of the camera's shutter. Exploding outward beyond the inside of the camera and onto the white margins are the letters that spell out Ward's last name.

This explosion of letters would also manifest itself in the next poster/broadside in the following year, 1989, with D’Ambrosio: Nineteen Years and Counting [6] which I dıd to commemorate not only the publication of my bibliography, but the opening of my retrospective exhibition at The Book Club of California in San Francisco. It is an explosion of letters flying out and away from a book that is opened to pages that display B and C respectively for Book Club. The Club's bookplate is reproduced at the base of the open book. I used as many different typefaces for the letters as it was possible, and injected one personal comment. At the top of the montage of letters is a lower case g without a serif on the top bowl, a reference to Bruce Rogers's Arrighi italic, and typographic quirk that has always annoyed my sense of proper type design.

All of the plates are created with glue resist. No grease pencil is used in this technique. Water-based glue is applied to the screen only in those areas that do not get printed. When the glue dries it resists the ink. Printing can only be done where the ink can pass through the openings in the silk screen. Once again, this method can work only with oil-based inks.

By 1992 I had worked extensively with paper sculpture, especially for the book D'Ambrosio's David. When the proposal from the then State librarian, Gary Strong, came to commemorate the California State Library's 150th anniversary in the year 2000, I immediately thought of the façade of the Romanesque building itself which has steps rising to three double doors, and a Georgian marble statue on either side of the outward doors. Each door would compose a separate serigraphic print, and paper sculpture images of the statues would be placed in their proper positions: a three-dimensional triptych that would be issued for the occasion.

While working on the previous project became aware that the old library building was running out of space and that a new library because the entrance was mostly glass, the display cases and any was scheduled to be built; it would have an entrance rotunda, but artwork would be on a balcony surround rather than the main floor. I mused: If there is no space for artwork on the rotunda main floor, how nice it would be if the artwork could be put into the toor. Ten years earlier I had done the poster/broadside for Daisies Never Tell in which random concentric letters surround a daisy flower in the centre. I redesigned it in a larger format to be executed not in serigraphy, but terrazzo. After all, isn't a library a 'house of letters' [9]:

Within the imagery of many of these posters I have used sequences of letters which tor the most part do not spell out any words. They are used as building blocks to create new shapes, and, while so doing, they imply that the shapes have texture that is of an intelligent nature. This has annoyed some who firmly believe that letters are the property of words and are thus sacred objects of human communication and should not be tampered with. And there are others, who, as the electrician installing the dome lighting over the rotunda floor while the installation was being executed, came down from his ladder to tell me that he put together some of the letters in the rotunda floor (where there are no intentional intelligent words) and they spelled out: City of Man. As time passes and language evolves, perhaps I shall find more unintended phrases in other examples of my work.

___________________________________________________________________

Adela Roatcap reviewed his A Memoir of Book Design in Matrix 24, pp. 158-9.

Joe D'Ambrosio. p. 13–14 and 14c

by Ward Ritchie 1988. 

Many of the new generation of Southern California printers are more innovative than their predecessors of the 1930s—even the then—controversial Merle Armitage would appear to be an archconservative compared to the creators of the 1980s. Of these, Joseph D' Ambrosio, who regards himself as "an artist working in the book form," is perhaps the most original. Compared with some of the productions of contemporary book creators, however, he considers his work to be "middle of the road." D' Ambrosio still believes the function of a book is to be read and to convey meaning, a concept that often appears to be alien to contemporary designers. The fact that he also writes most of the books he prints may account for his beliefs. His books are different, each one a separate concept into which he integrates the text, the deco-rations, and the binding.  They are achieved with minimal equipment ingeniously used.

D'Ambrosio originally lived in Chicago, where he worked as a draftsman for the Commonwealth Edison Company while attending the American Academy of Art. He bought for himself a silk screen printer and a small Adana press with a chase size of only seven inches by ten inches. On it he laboriously printed his first book, including in it colorful silk screen illustrations. Unable to afford a commercial binder, he learned binding by reading a book, and since that time he has created many innovative bindings that could not be done by a commercial bindery.

After struggling with his first few books, he gave up attempting to print on his Adana press, which was certainly not intended to be used for printing books. The late E.H. Mundell, the so-called "compulsive printer" of Portage, Indiana, heard of D'Ambrosio's difficulties and offered to do the presswork for him. Theirs was a satisfactory arrangement until D' Ambrosio moved to Los Angeles in 1979. For awhile he printed on the Vandercook press at the Women's Graphic Center in downtown Los Angeles before finally getting a Vandercook for himself.

D'Ambrosio has printed several ambitious books in California including Daisies Never Tell, Birds of Paradise, and The Small Garden of Gloria Stuart. His books are ingenious, exotic, and unusual in concept and execution. It takes him approximately a year to print, illustrate, and bind an edition of fifty copies.

Oviatt’s 24-karat exhibit

By MONICA ARENAS

Staff Writer

The kind of books Joe D'Ambrosio puts out are not the kind of works that one finds in the Matador Bookstore, and it is unlikely that any of them appear on a professor's syllabus.

However, those who like their books bound in 24-karat gold or tree bark may want to catch D'Ambrosio's exhibit at the Oviatt Library, For the local artist has 16 books on display, all hand bound and individually printed.

The rarity of the exhibit is due to the elaborate art work D'Ambrosio adds to each of the books. For the binding, he uses not only gold and bark, but also leather, suede and glass.

"Books are to be touched and experienced," D'Ambrosio said. “Books should be understood and admired not only, for their literary content but also for their artistic qualities,“ he said.

One example of his work is "Masks." Written by Carol Cunningham, the miniature volume actually has a three-dimensional wooden mask on the cover. The 125 books in D' Ambrosio's limited edition all contain tiny illustrations depicting masks from different countries.

Also found in the exhibit are two works by James Joyce, "The Ont and the Gracehoper" - a box book containing 50 numbered. unbound pages - and The Mooks and the Gripes." The covers of these two books are adorned with a 26-layer relief covered with 24-karat gold sheets.

D'Ambrosio said that because he individually makes and numbers each plate in his garage "some editions have taken up to one year-and-a-half to complete.” D'Ambrosio, who attended the American Academy of Art. and the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, has bound 16 separate works, 11 of which he wrote himself. The works contain 500 books in their first editions.

Some of D'Ambrosio's most sought-after works are found in private and public collections, including the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Huntington Library in San Marino, Rockford College in Illinois, and the New York Public Library.

Reference librarian Don Read said the library has purchased six of the 16 works using funds provided by the Bibliographic Society, an on-campus library support group.

Among the books found on display are: "Trapeze," "Venus Explord,” "Daisies never tell," "Zarathustra" and others.

Read said students and faculty who wish to take a closer look at the books can ask the library staff for further assistance.

The exhibit will remain in Oviatt Library until Feb. 21.

A Maverick in a Printing Office

Ward Ritchie on D'Ambrosio

We are living in an age when technology is developing and changing so rapidly that yesterday's concepts are obsolete today and today's will be abandoned by tomorrow. Micro-computing, which is the basis of much of this development, has had such hypergrowth in the past half-dozen years that more electronics were manufactured in the past year than even existed at the beginning of the year. In a recent lecture at the California Institute of Technology, Gordon Moore, the chairman of Intel Corporation, concluded that 'If the same progress had been made in the auto industry over the past seven years you'd go a million miles per hour and get half-a-million miles to a gallon of gas. It would be cheaper to throw your Rolls Royce away than park it down town in the evening.?

While the evolution experienced in the printing industry has not been as spectacularly explosive, the methods of printing have changed so completely during a generation that even such former great designers and printers as Bruce Rogers, Sir Francis Meynell and Stanley Morison would hardly recognize the mechanics that now produce printing. Most of the equipment traditionally used for centuries past has been discarded and replaced with computers, cameras, lasers and offset presses.

Some of this equipment and the solid lead types have been salvaged by artists and amateur printers who, often irreverently, have been transforming the old craft into a new art form, calling their creations "Artist's Books'. In these the content is usually subordinate to the visual expression.

It would be difficult to give an exact definition of an "Artist's Book', as even the term 

'Book' is a misnomer in most instances. The shape, the appearance, the materials are subject to the whim of the creator. I have seen 'Artist's Books' in many guises — accordian folds twenty-five feet long, pleated pages, unfolding fans, a gutted old book filled with montages, a bundle of printed strips of paper that can be haphazardly arranged and rearranged to create a textual mishmash. One creative artist even glued together the pages of an old book and exhibited it as an "Artist's Book'.

The artist and printer Joseph D'Ambrosio is equally innovative, but more traditional inasmuch as he adheres to the true book form. He was an emigré from Chicago to Southern California some ten years ago. In Chicago he worked as a draughtsman for the Commonwealth Edison Company and one day, on sudden impulse, he bought a small Adana press and acquiring a bit of type, cautiously began to print. He had been attending classes at the American Academy of Art and decided he'd combine the processes and make a book which he would write, illustrate and print. It was a frustrating experience, as the baby Adana was hardly suited for book printing. Fortunately, a generous friend, E. H. Mundell, who called himself the 'compulsive printer' came to his rescue and offered to do the presswork on his larger equipment. Since D'Ambrosio had difficulty in finding a binder who was willing to undertake his intricate bindings he had to learn the craft himself with the help of some books in the local library.

After completing a few books with Mundell's help, he moved to California in 1979 to devote his full time to the writing, illustrating, printing and binding of his own books. As the Adana press was impractical, he would set his type and then carry it across town to the Woman's Graphic Center in the Woman's Building to print on their Vandercook proof press. This was an organisation which had been formed a few years earlier as a protest against the lack of recognition given women artists by the local museums. However, they were tolerant and allowed this male intruder to use their equipment. Eventually he was able to purchase a Vandercook of his own and became self-sufficient.

While D'Ambrosio's creations are usually considered to be "Artist's Books' because of the novelty of their conception, his adherence to the basic form places his work in an intermediate area. He would probably prefer recognition for his writing, illustrations and typographic innovations, but his bindings and colourful, handsome posters have received the most recognition and acclaim. Yet his books must be considered as a whole.

In his Birds of Paradise he combines a variety of papers - a domestic text paper with Japanese tea chest, Japanese lace, stark black Ingres, foils, French marbled and wood-veneer. They are ingeniously combined, some laminated with see-through lace work and others used to form pop-up forms of multi-coloured serigraphed (silk screen) paintings. It introduces a new dimension in bookmaking which qualifies it as an 'Artist's Book'.

As I have mentioned, his bindings are possibly his most original contribution to this new art form. Gloria Stuart has described the innovative binding he created for The Small Garden of Gloria Stuart. For his Birds of Paradise he serigraphed the cover in a brilliant multi-coloured image of cranes in the Japanese style of painting. This is enclosed in glass, framed with a border of black and gold kid leather. The spine is created of six matchstick bamboo staves, sewn together vertically with ten differently shaded threads - from pale beige to dark brown - to make a surprisingly functional hinge.

The incredible amount of time and labour put into the production of his books is evidenced in his Daisies Never Tell. To introduce his subject and give the reader the impression of entering a field of daisies, he has cut an irregular opening in the front cover of the leather binding in which glass is laminated. It exposes a succession of leaves of the pages with the corners cut in a variety of daisy forms to give a further feeling of the daisy field. The title-page continues the theme with a pop-up illustration of daisies.

The concept of The Twilight of Orthodoxy in New England which he designed, printed and bound for the Santa Susana Press of the California State University at Northridge is quite orthodox. That is, except for the binding, which is unusual and possibly unique in its conception. The binding is a clamshell box with marbled paper sides and doublures, with a square-back leather spine of two piano hinges of 1/16 in. plastic rods around which leather strips are woven. Laminated to the front cover is a bold three-dimensional Image of sun rays made of cast paper coated with white glue and gilded with gold leaf.

D'Ambrosio's books are ingenious and totally original, while they transgress tradition as the late John F. Kennedy counselled us in his eulogy to the poet Robert Frost, 'If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.’

Not Quite A Book

From Sure, First Issue, May, 1991

by William E. Ashley. . .

NOT QUITE BERNADETTE is a classic Bukowski short story that made its first appearance in HOT WATER MUSIC in 1983. Neell Cherkovski, in his biography HANK, quotes BUK as being pleased with the clarity of these stores and felt they are "closer to the vest. You can tell that things are going good when you find yourself enjoying the writing." NOT QUITE BERNADETTE has lively characters who interact with a poet who is famous to Bernadette but still is a very suspicious burden to society. She gets him going with her ongoing tale of unappreciated love. Frustrated after his advance is repulsed, he turns to his trusty bottle to satisfy his virility. After the bottle fails, he dangerously lacerates his cock. This is a finely woven tale that includes; Do we really see things as they are?, Fear of castration, voyeurism, near rape, misdirected signals of love, uncaring medical personnel and shame. There is so much life and understanding in these few pages. Art with words. So many images and insights.

The illustrated NOT QUITE BERNADETTE is a Bukowski-Johnson-D'Ambrosio collaboration. All three are writers and artists, with their best blended to go beyond any of the individual parts. The project was conceived by Jack Bourdelais, who has been a Charles Bukowski and James W. Johnson collector for years. In 1988 he contacted his friend and bookseller Jim Lorson about a special Bukowski book. NOT QUITE BERNADETTE was chosen with the permission of Black Sparrow Press. Johnson, who also enjoys BUK, started a process that involved initial etchings and then a full run of 9 prints. Two of the first etchings were found to be too graphic (not for BUK), and are only to be found separately or in the Special edition of 15. D'Ambrosio was then contracted to do the book design, printing and binding. Greybeard Press has started off with an ambitious project. To date, this is a solo effort from them. Currently there are no plans for a trade edition, which would allow many to enjoy this great blending of talent.

The pictures chosen show great insight into one of the main thrusts of the story - NOT QUITE. Just as Margritte did with his famous painting — This is not a Pipe - Buk has captured this in words. James Johnson has astutely magnifled several of these instances. The titles are all variations of Not Quite: zipped, a bandage, shut, stuck, a job, caring (the doctor), rape, and Bernadette (the bottle), All add to the nuances of the story and are enjoyable by themselves. The etchings are done on zinc plates. Some of these plates are included in the special editions which also have the pictures colored. Johnson is a poet and artist who lives in his studio in Lubbock Texas. In the colophon he notes his interests are "Making art, having a sexual relationship, eating and drinking" in that order. His poems have a rap/ street sense and his art, with artistically sexual elements, often have a dark aspect. His most recent work is CURES FOR A HEALTHY WORLD. Jim Edwards describes this work as the chronicles of "A Pathological mechanic who has raided the household tool chest in order to sadistically prune away any and all modes of self-expression." It is a poem with graphic art. Shown are two dozen people who experience violent solutions to their often trivial problems. The self-proclaimed doctor is the last picture which is titled A CURE FOR LIFE. This is a self portrait; one eye open, shot in the neck, laying in a coffin. This show will be at the Robinson Galleries in Houston, June 6 through July 6, 1991.

The format and presentation of the book is a work of art in itself. Augmenting the text and pictures, D'Ambrosio has achieved a perfect balance where all elements are brilliant and still harmonious. The pages are torn and cut to tease the reader. Partial and provocative glimpses of the art is viewed until the page with text is turned to allow viewing of the entire etching. There are also stimulating configurations to the pages with the text interwoven and well placed. The pages of the book are uniquely mounted on lucite rods, a format that D'Ambrosio has developed. This allows the book to lay flat and to be optimally viewed. The union is a delight. For the special and deluxe copies there is also a bold back side that is done in paper and sculptured on the cover.

In an article in Matrix, D'Ambrosio states, "The text is prime and dictates the aura of the entire work. I strive to bring all facets of book making together to form one object. I write, set type by hand, print letter press, do the artwork and then bind the book." In some of his work, he has made the paper. He has made his books the essence of his being. As he states in his bibliography. "My heart and soul are in all my works." He tries to have, and has achieved, a very organic sense in his work. He understands how to "allow" his work to grow; creativity with experimentation. Much more than the visual sense is pleased; it must be expertenced. Leaving a career in engineering for art, he started making books as a total art concept. He has now done more than 40 different books. There is a special skill and sensitivity in all his work.

The book is being showcased in an exhibit at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor March 30 through June 16, 1991; Wednesday-Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is one of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and is located in Lincoln Park. Admission is $4.00 for non-members. The show of 27 books is: 'By its Cover: Recent work from The Hand Bookbinders of California'. D'Ambrosio has two other books shown: OLD WINE, FINE WINE? and DANCE CIRCLE. There is also a demonstration on the steps in book binding.

Copies are available from Lorson's Books, 116 West Wilshire Avenue, Fullerton, CA 92632.— two extra etchings — all encased in a clamshell box.

The DELUXE EDITION is $1,500.00 — 25 copies - sculptured paper cover design — etchings not colored — encased in clam-shell box.

The REGULAR EDITION is $950.00 — 35 copies — without colored etchings, cover design or clam-shell box.

5 hors d'commerce copies complete the edition of 80 books. Additional unbound sets of the nine, not colored, etchings are available at $600.00 per set.

This is more than a book, more than art, an experience that can be savored.

Joe D' Ambrosio and LX Commute: My Sentence

By Dr. Adela Spindler Roatcap

AMONG THE MANY impressive items, such as S. Gale Herrick's gift of Matrix,  that stunningly printed and indispensable yearly "review for printers and bibliophiles" from John Randle's Whittington Press, included in "Gifts to the Book Club" (January 24 through March 27, 2000, at the Club), one small book stood out for the quality and elegance of its front cover - Ann Whipple, LX Commute: My Sentence. Designed and typeset by Joe D'Ambrosio in his studio in Phoenix, Arizona, this small artist's book was published in 1996 in an edition of 250 copies. Typical of the work of Joe D'Ambrosio are books which elude definition as books through their sculptural effects or a variety of graphic media. In this case, L X Commute prompts the viewer to ask, "How did he do it?" or "How did he achieve such vibrant colors?"

Now, it has been a truism that one should not judge a book by its cover, and I venture to suggest Ann Whipple's book as a fascinating read. But here the cover adds an artistic dimension to the text. For those of us who live in San Francisco, that smallish big town surrounded on three sides by water, the Golden Gate Bridge, leading north to Marin, Sonoma, and Mendocino, and the Bay Bridge, which takes us east, to Berkeley and Oakland, are strong symbols of the unique geographical position. Since Mrs. Whipple's story concerns her daily travels across the Bay Bridge on an AC Transit bus, the LX Express (now LD), D'Ambrosio created a striking steel-blue image of the Bay Bridge towers and, in subtle hues of yellow, rose, and green, he depicted the treacherous, whirling waters of San Francisco Bay. How did he do it? In Joe D'Ambrosio's own words:

I cut the paper plates from 4-ply paper board and coated them with white glue. As the glue was drying, I either stippled them with a brush or used brush strokes to create different effects. The use of the white glue came about by accident. When I first tried this method, the force (or suction) of the printing press quickly tore the plies apart. So I simply used white glue to hold the entire plate together. It was then I realized the effect I could achieve if I worked with the white glue surface. Not only have I raised the surface of the paper plate with white glue; I can also create effects by tearing away parts of the plies of the board where before I was building them up. All of my paper plates are now in my archives at the California State Library in Sacramento.

One more feature gives this little book its unique character. On a felicitous suggestion from Susan Acker of the Feathered Serpent Press, tiny black buildings, just one or two, but sometimes a whole row of houses or factories, were interspersed throughout the text. As we travel with our author on her LX Commute, the text obliges us to see, as from the window of a bus, the changing scene. Perhaps even the blue-gray paper was meant to suggest early morning or our characteristic evening fog. One more distinguishing characteristic - LX Commute is a bona fide artist's book: signed by artist Joe D'Ambrosio on the front cover. But the price is a mere $45, unusual for a book of this quality. Does D'Ambrosio still have a few copies at hand? You can find out by writing to him at 4449 North 12th Street, #A5,

Phoenix, Arizona 85014-4520.

Lunch at Albert's:, Reflections on Joe D'Ambrosio's A Memoir of Book Design

by Adela Spindler Roatcap

IT’S BEEN OVER TWENTY YEARS since Steve Corey invited me to lunch at Albert Sperisen’s place on Twnty-ninth Avenue. “You’ll like him,” Steve; "he knows everything there is to know about books." It was at Albert's that I first saw the work of Joe D'Ambrosio. Now, while holding in my hands a copy of Joe's A Memoir of Book Design: 1969- 2000, I can only imagine how pleased Albert would have been with this handsome book. It's the Book Club of California's 216th publication. It was written by Joe D'Ambrosio, designed and printed to his specification, with attractively lettered endpapers, front cover quarter-bound in blue-gray paper patterned with his "baby birds with open beaks." There's an introduction, a chronologically arranged description of all his books, decorative bindings, and lettering projects. There are over one hundred and seventy illustrations, almost all in color. There's a list of posters, prints, and broadsides. I'm drawn into reading further by the earnestness of Joe's autobiographical narrative. Our protagonist, like Dorothy in the Land of Oz, struggles to find his way to the land of artist's books.

Joe D'Ambrosio was born in Chicago during the waning days of the Great Depression. Early on he discovered music, or rather he found that just by flexing one of his little fingers he could make a sound on the upright piano in his grandparents' parlor-or that "a physical movement by me could produce a response in a separate object." Powerful insight. Would Santa bring him a piano? As Joe was one of six siblings, the devotedly prayed-for instrument did not materialize. "I have never really believed in Santa Claus, or in receiving something for nothing," our hero tells us. His disappointment brought about a life-long attitude of "I can do it by myself," as reflected in his artistic credo:

An artist's book may be done as a collaboration to satisfy the pundits. Even so, when it is done by more than one artist, it ceases to be a unified vision of a specific subject. And only through experimenting within a given field can one expand to create new areas of expression. Does a painter share a canvas with another painter?

Yes, Joe. The history of art is chock-a-block with painters sharing their can-vases. William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti collaborated in painting the portrait of Jane Burden. Some of Leonardo Da Vinci's canvases have caused graybeards to duel over who painted what. Peter Paul Rubens hired specialists to paint feet, hands, drapery, etc. It's heartrending to discover that such admired artists as Jan Van Eyck, William Blake, or Henri de Fantin-Latour "shared" their canvases with wives, children, or apprentices while they, we hope, were out drumming up new business. Aren't artists entitled a few foibles, to little white lies?

Joe D'Ambrosio's career in the graphic arts began with Christmas cards. Starting with a single sheet, he moved on to multiple pages and texts made up of lines whose "graphic representations required some decipherment." After a stint in the U.S. Navy, decades of acquiring skills in electrical engineering and art, Joe, while healing from an illness, finally began printing "visual environments for the written word." That was in 1969. Margot Fonteyn and Rudolph Nureyev were dancing at Chicago's Civic Opera House, and though Joe had planned to write for the musical theatre, it was classical ballet that became "his first love among the arts." How is it, he asked himself, that in ballet the story line (what Lincoln Kirstein called the "plot or pretext") is told by non-verbal languages such as music and gesture? Could books communicate the meaning of their text without using words? (Could "pre-text" exist without "text"?) Read on.

Playing with words is symptomatic in the world of Art and Artist's Books. There's "Art," in the learned sense of the word, and "Art" which, like "Love," no one can quite define but everyone recognizes. Can children, monkeys and elephants make Art? Can they make Artist's Books? Really? There is Art without Craft and Craft without Art. There are "artsy" books without Art, and "crafty" books without Craft. Like Dorothy, we're lost in the Land of Oz. Joe makes clear his attitude towards the artists/craftsman conundrum:

I call myself an artist working in the book medium rather than a book artist. I am definitely not a craftsman. If I were, I would not have tried some of the structures that I have created. A craftsperson fabricates what he or she has been taught to fabricate. A craftsman plays by all the rules. An artist deviates from the rules. However, I have always maintained that the evidence of a broken rule must be accompanied by an indication that the person who broke it knew full well the rule existed...

Art takes effort. It takes ten years of daily work for a ballerina to learn to stand gracefully on her toes. Shouldn't an artist's book be as breath-taking as a dancer’s pirouette? In A Memoir of Book Design D'Ambrosio lays bare every detail of how he manages to "stand on his toes." This book can be read as an instruction manu-al. It was an American writer who said the "tricks" with which artists achieve their goals are the saddest secrets of their lives. Joe tells us:

...I wanted my readers to be entertained. Isn't that what a musical play does? I did not want my readers to be aware that I was planting seeds in their minds. Sneaky? The seeds could only mature when associated with a situation outside the reality of the book. Hence, the flowering of an idea may occur only when the subject is ready and willing, much like hypnosis…

Joe printed his first five books on a tabletop Adana press. With each new book he re-defined his artistic goals, becoming proficient at serigraphy, design, and creating ever more complex binding structures. Bindings, says Joe, must always reflect what's inside a book. The story begins before the book is opened. When his Adana wore out, he found that Elmore Mundell, an enthusiastic letterpress printer in Portage, Indiana, with a Vandercook No. 3 proof press in his garage, was willing to help.1

In 1989 Joe published his first retrospective bibliography: Nineteen Years and Counting. He handset the Della Robbia type, printing the book by hand on a Vandercook No. 4, completing seventy-five copies and ten artist's proofs. Nineteen Years and Counting is a precursor to the 2003 A Memoir of Book Design. The earlier book is, of course, a more exciting artist's book-but the Memoir, printed offset using 10 point digital Della Robbia on Mohawk paper in an edition of 350 copies and bound by San Francisco's Cardoza-James Bindery, is a more complete narrative and, for now, at least, still available to collectors.

In the pages of his books, as well as on his bindings, the design and placement of the letters is key. What better example of this than the stunning mosaic (or ter-razzo) floor decoration Joe D'Ambrosio designed in 1992 for the California State Library in Sacramento. His task was to create a device (made up of letter forms which did not actually spell out any words) for the foyer of "a house of letters." It's my favorite among his many lettering design projects.

Any book is "bound" to go astray. This is the case with Joe D'Ambrosio's binding of the Mr. Whistler's Ten O'clock commissioned by Albert Sperisen. Joe and Albert met at Gloria Stuart's in Los Angeles. Thereafter, Joe was invited to lunch at Albert's whenever he visited San Francisco.

The procedure at Albert's was always the same. After a spare though elegantly presented lunch in the wood-paneled dining room overlooking his carefully manicured back-garden, one was ushered, generous drink in hand, into Albert's dark green, shuttered drawing room, where the almost imperceptible sounds of Mozart wafted in air. On the walls hung many framed drawings or prints by Eric Gill, on which Albert was "the" expert, Rockwell Kent, etc. The fireplace was surrounded by bookshelves which, when I first saw them, were bulging with a collection of first editions relating to American expatriates in Paris, such as Alexander Calder, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and others. As time went on the shelves thinned out, the prints became scarce. The grandest of grand pianos took up at least a quarter of the room. On its music rack, Albert proudly displayed the poster for the 1989 D'Ambrosio: Nineteen Years and Counting retrospective exhibition at the Book Club of California. The poster (still available from the Club) depicts an open book with letterforms, punctuation marks, and printing devices floating like ballet dancers from and in front of its pages. Albert would settle down into his tall, wing-backed chair, smile, light a cigarette, and the discussion was on, Albert surveying his listeners as intently as Velázquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X, the Grand Inquisitor. Lighting one cigarette after the other, Albert would soon be enveloped in smoke, while the Velázquez likeness would metamorphose into Francis Bacon's vaporous study of the Spanish master's painting. But I digress.

For knowledge of printing, of books and their trade, for questions of art, fashion or taste, for intimate details of what the book community was doing, Albert Sperisen was your man. Occasionally, as when Serge Diaghile's visit to Oscar Wilde and his interest in Aubrey Beardsley's Salome was mentioned, Albert would jump out of his chair, sprint up the stairs and return brandishing a "gem" he knew full well I couldn't resist. I was glad to find both English language first editions of Salome, (the "pure" and the "profane"). The "pure" one, the one with gold peacock feathers on a green cover, has the bookplate of Martha Cobb Snow, Jane Grabhorn's mother. An hour's lecture on the Grabhorn Press and its printers followed. Then Albert sprinted upstairs and brought down the Limited Editions Salome with pochoir illustrations by André Derain. When Albert had refreshed our drinks, taken his position by the fireplace and lit a fresh cigarette, we chatted till dusk. He was the greatest of Wizards. Albert minced no words, and insisted his guests not mince theirs. He had delightful stories to tell about his W.W. II adventures. Did he really, in 1945, when Paris was full of American GIs, fly through l'Arc de Triomphe? Why not? Albert could do anything. He even stopped smoking. One afternoon he brought out a drawerful of cigarette cases. Would I like to have one? I asked which was his favorite. He took out a solid silver one engraved with his initials, AS-which happened to be my initials as well. I wrote a check wondering what would be next.

They were special, those bookish afternoons at Albert's. Anyone might be asked to lunch once. Being asked a second time was a mark of having passed the acid test. Being given a copy of Mr. Whistler's Ten O'clock signified graduation.

In 1940, Albert Sperisen, Harold Seeger and Lawton Kennedy printed three hundred copies of Mr. Whistler's Ten O'clock; Being a talk delivered by James McNeill Whistler in London February 1885, at the Black Vine Press. There is a "JP" monogram watermarked in the paper. The book was chosen as one of the "50 Books of 1940" by the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Albert planned to have some copies specially bound for an exhibition at the Book Club. Joe was the recipient of a copy and he describes how he went about creating the binding:

I chose to highlight Whistler's flamboyant monogram, JMW (or MJW). The letters of the monogram are cut out of four-ply archival board so that it is possible to see through the letters and beyond the board. The board is then wrapped with light blue paper and laid over another board which is lined with gold tea-chest paper. So, instead of looking beyond the cutout monogram, the viewer looks through the board to the gold paper. Thus the monogram appears to have a shiny gold surface. Another layer of board covered in the same blue paper is then laid on top of the preceding configuration, with an opening to display the monogram in its entirety. The front cover is actually three tiers of four-ply boards. Cloth makes up the balance of the covers. The title is calligraphed on the spine. Once again, the protective slipcase has a cutaway area for easy access. The same fabric used to quarter bind the book is used on the edge openings of the slipcase as a trim. Its purpose is mainly decorative but does function to make the friction area where the book slides in and out of its case wear a little longer than if it were paper-but not much longer.

In his 10 O'clock, Whistler spoke of Art with all the vehemence, all the passion of a man who'd rather be bankrupt than alter what he feels to be true.2 "Art," Whistler said, "is a Goddess of dainty thought, selfishly occupied with her own perfection." Joe confides to his reader that although he still strives for perfection he now knows full well that perfection does not exist for him. Really?

Whistler went far in his vituperation of the despoilers of Art: "those manufacturers of gee-gaws, those hucksters" and (is nothing sacred?) "that Hammer-smith crowd." In this new Millennium, Joe, may we still return, as Whistler wished, to that fabled era in which Art flourished, those happy days when "the Amateur was unknown-and the Dilettante undreamed of"?

"Whistler was quite a maverick," Joe says, wondering how he kept such wealthy and powerful Victorians glued to their seats until midnight. (Yes, that's why it's called the "10 O'clock lecture.") Is it possible, Joe, that after a late-night, many-coursed Victorian dinner, the gentlemen having been at the clarets, ports, and brandies, and ladies foolish enough to have eaten being so uncomfortable in their laced-up stays and tight corsets-is it just possible that these Victorian worthies would not have ventured a whimper had Gabriel himself appeared among them and blown his horn at them? Maybe Albert's dear Mr. Whistler, so full of American indignation and self-righteousness, had finally learned when to speak and when to keep his peace.

As for Joe D’Ambrosio—well, Santa Claus never blessed him with a piano, but life has its little compensations. To you, Joe, the Muses bestowed priceless gifts of Inspiration and Originality. Mind you, a lack of Originality is the deadliest malaise in the field of artist's books. As for Inspiration, isn't the devastating lack of joyful Inspiration what book artists dread more than anything?

So, whatever happened to Joe's exquisite 10 O'clock binding? It's lost. When A Memoir was being assembled, not even an illustration of it could be found. And alas, our dear Albert is no longer among us-that he may invite us to lunch and reveal the secret of its fate.

I've enjoyed reading A Memoir of Book Design. It's been like having a Christmas chat with an old friend in a room filled with beautiful books, watching the log crumble in the fireplace while sharing a glass of good California wine-drinking from crystal goblets and seeing the crackling flames reflect on the glass. I've found much here concerning the wisdom of life-knowledge that can only be learnt by living. Joe says that, having done one's best work, "as with one's children, one must let go of them and go on with one's own life; they have a life of their own." How he endears himself to his readers when he writes, "My heart and soul are included in everything I do." That's all.

DR ADELA SPINDLER ROATCAP

1. Joe D'Ambrosio, "The Compulsive Printer of Portage, Indiana," in Matrix 11, Whittington Press, 1981, pp. 53–59.
2. In 1878 Whistler won one farthing damages in his flamboyant libel suit against John Ruskin, who had accused him of "flinging a pot of paint at the public face." The expenses of the trial bankrupted Whistler. Mr. Whistler's Ten O'clock was first published in London by Chatto and Windus in 1888.

Memories of Joe D'Ambrosio,

Artist of the Book

By Gary E. Strong

[image of A Nest of Robins book]

I first met Joe D'Ambrosio at a garden party at Chuck Monell's home in Hancock Park in 1985: Friends had gathered to celebrate the noted printer Ward Ritchie's eightieth birthday. What a treat for this green "Californian" to join with Ward and all of his friends. Of course, Gloria Stuart was there, but also Larry and Faye Powell, Bob and Lorraine Vosper, Jake Zeitlin, John Dreyfus, Muir and Agnes Dawson, Glen Dawson, and a host of others; too many to really remember all of the names.?

But it was my meeting with Joe that sticks in my mind. Chuck took him and me into the alcove in the living room and introduced us. He encouraged Joe to show me his latest book, Birds of Paradise, that Joe had finished the previous year. Almost embarrassed, Joe pushed it over to me. I was not prepared for what I would see. A new world of books opened for me on that day. Sure I had seen beautiful rare books; what good self-respecting librarian hadn't been in a rare book room or two. We certainly had them at the State Library, and my history of the book course at the University of Michigan had introduced me to the possibilities.

This was a new experience. The book covers were glass covering a set of incredible serigraphs, signatures bound with bamboo rods. But it was inside the covers that dazzled the eye. The double-page folding screen, the inset patterned paper encircling bold type, the decorations throughout were all something quite dif-ferent. There was something about this experience that would stay with me through my association with D'Ambrosio that spanned that time until his untimely passing. Incidentally, my copy of the broadside Joe made to commemorate the event of the day is numbered "1/100" which he slipped to me during that meeting. He told me the "dignitaries" were all to receive those marked "AP." I treasure that to this day along with most of the broadsides joe created over the years.

I was later to learn that he had been in Los Angeles only a short time, coming from Illinois where he had ventured into the creation of artist's books after a career in engineering. His almost apologetic nature that someone would appreciate his work would follow our relationship over many years. As our friendship grew, I would often stop by his print shop-half of the garage in the San Fernando Valley where he would have otherwise parked his car—to catch up and visit. I was always welcomed as a long-time friend. I began collecting his books; actually a stretch for my budget with a family and an all too small salary paid to the State Librarian of California. Each became a treasured addition.

As we began to plan for the 150th anniversary of the California State Library, it was to Joe that I turned to create something very special to mark that event. The result was a triptych of the front of the State Library rendered with cast paper of its two statues and the three entry doors. Credit to myself and Gary Kurutz was arrayed in the rendering of the work. That limited edition would mark the anniversary. Joe produced a prospectus in which his interpretation of the California poppy would serve as an ornament. When I arrived at UCLA, Joe used that ornament as the background for a bookplate that he created for my own collection. When my wife Carolyn and I established in endowment at the UCLA Library on my sixty-fifth birthday, Joe used that design again to create the bookplate that will note our contributions into the UCLA collection in future years.

With the triptych project behind us and a project to construct the Library and Courts Il on the horizon, I approached Joe and asked if he might be interested in designing the floor of the entryway to the building. We had talked about such a commission over time and it was now time to see if it could be executed. Joe's design was a burst of random letters encircling a stylized "CS in the center. It would be rendered in terrazzo under Joe's careful eye. Today this is one of the highlights one crosses as you enter this building, a living testament to his legacy among book artists in California.

During the time when the State Library hosted the California Center for the Book, Joe presented classes, always filled, on book arts topics. He had done this in various places in the past, and having him in Sacramento for these was a treat. I recall one such visit where he insisted on coming to our home and making Carolyn and me dinner. The risotto was memorable. Joe also began a long-term relationship with The Book Club of California and the Sacramento Book Collectors Club, creating exhibitions and keepsakes that are precious to those who were lucky enough to pick one up at an event or gathering. His attendance and talks at both of these groups were legendary.

In March of 1994, Carolyn and I drove to the Bay Area to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the California Literacy Campaign. Hundreds of learners, tutors, and library staff were gathering for a gala celebration of reading and literacy. Coming off of the elevator we ran into Joe. I could not believe our luck. Here he was; but why? We chatted a moment and he made some lame excuse as to why he was there-obviously flustered with our meeting. As I was rushing off to open the festivities, it didnt really cross my mind until later in the evening, when I looked down from the dais to see him sitting in the audience. During the course of the evening's program, I was presented with a "one-of-a-kind" volume that the staff had orchestrated without my knowledge. They had gathered individual written greetings and best wishes from every program and many leaders in literacy that Joe had assembled and bound together with an introductory section. Carolyn and I sat up into the night reading them all, and it is a high spot of my D'Ambrosio collection.

I would leave Sacramento in 1994 and move to Queens, New York City, but my relationship with Joe would flourish. He had moved to Arizona after the Northridge earthquake, so when Carolyn and I would visit Scottsdale during the February retreat from New York winters, we would catch up. Joe would set aside a copy of every book or broadside that he did, sending it along to me for my growing collection. When I decided to curate an exhibition at the Queens Library on the "Book as Art," I asked Joe to create a broadside for the exhibit opening and exhibited many of his books as an integral part of the exhibition. He would design a personal bookplate for me using the Queens "Q" as a design element.

For our daughter Jen's wedding, I asked Joe if he could create a book similar to what he had done for me earlier as a gift to Jen and her fiancé Josh. We placed bond paper and pens around the tables on that day, people wrote messages to the newlyweds, and we gathered them together. Joe created a truly wonderful remembrance of the day with a unique design that included blank pages for Jen and Josh to add memories of their lives together over the years to come.

During the past six years, I have worked to fill in the gaps of my D'Ambrosio holdings, acquiring a number of his one-of-a-kind commissions, mostly from his friend and collaborator Jim Lorson, as well as from the rare book market. As Joe experimented with books on CD, he made sure I had some of the mock-ups he used to produce these electronic creations.

It is difficult to say enough about someone who influenced one's life in so many ways. Joe's friendship, our collaborations, and my appreciation for his talent, artistry, and belief in creating beautiful things will be remembered and treasured.

ENDNOTES

I. Joe D'Ambrosio died on September 18, 2009. The State Library has many examples of his work including mockups, trial proofs, letters, and photographs. Joe created for the Library & Courts Il Building a spectacular terrazzo floor celebrating the Roman alphabet. Dr. Monell, then a resident of Hancock Park, Los Angeles, served on the Foundation's Board of Directors for many years.

2. The names mentioned at this garden party included distinguished librarians, book collectors, antiquarian booksellers, and book artists.

3. ”AP" means artist's proof.

Gary E. Strong is UCLA University Librarian, former director of the Queensborough Public Library California State Librarian, and founder of the State Library Foundation. He is a generous donor to the Foundation and has formed a truly elegant collection of California fine press books.

[notations on images]

(Opposite page: Top) A Nest of Robins (1999) shows D'Ambrosio's incredible imagination and skill. In addition to this copy, the Library has four experimental models of this delightful miniature book.

(Opposite page: Bottom) This photograph beautifully captures the gentle and beaming nature of this brilliant book artist.

(This page: Top] In 2003, Joe generously created this miniature keepsake on the occasion of the hanging of the Gregory Kondos oil painting On the Sacramento River in the reading room of the Braille and Talking Book Library.

(Bottom left) Joe created for Gloria Stuart this binding with castpaper of her The Inscriptions at Tor House and Hawk Tower. The Library has copy eighteen of fifty copies.

(Bottom right) Using a variety of materials, Joe produced this stunning binding of leather, copper, and hand-marbled paper for his retrospective bibliography, Nineteen Years and Counting. It was published in 1989 in an edition of seventy-five copies. The Library has copy number five.

D'Ambrosio created this extraordinary binding for The Small Garden of Gloria Stuart. It is copy number forty of fifty copies.

The tide page and binding for Oaxaca and the Saguaro Cactus (1996). The Library has copy number three of twenty-five copies of the deluxe edition. It is bound in Clansmen Niger goatskin with an inlaid figure of cactus on the front cover.

(Left Middle and bottom) Printer's plate and silk screen printing in honor of Gary Strong's contributions to the State Library. A copy hangs in the rotunda of the Library & Courts Il Building.

(Below) A Memoir of Book Design, 1969-2000 superbly documents his notable career as a book artist. The binding shown here is copy nine of twelve copies of the deluxe edition. It is bound in morocco grained leather, copper, and crumpled paper. It features a self-portrait on the front cover and a sunrise / sunset on the back.

Preliminary drawing for Birds of Paradise.

Ann Whipple recenty donated this artist's proof copy of D'Ambrosio's The Diamond Wager. A miniature book printed in 2005, it demonstrates the amazing blending of his artistic and engineering abilities.