JD’A 19–P: THE SMALL GARDEN OF GLORIA STUART prospectus–1986

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The | Small | Garden | of Gloria Stuart | [debossed bonzai] | [#/50 in pencil] | [signature in pencil | 1986 D’Ambrosio.

4 1/2 x 6 1/4 inches: 8 sheets of colored paper: green with holes, brown and yellow with holes, red and pink with holes, brown with text, brown with holes, red and gray with holes, brown with holes, and green and yellow with holes, [17]: title, [18]: copyright, [19]: dedication, [20]: blank, [21]: text in green with debossed bonsai, [22–28]: text with [22–23] folding down from top,[29]: title in gold and green wreath, [30]: blank, 31–33: text [33-34]: text with leaves in paper, 35-43: text, [43–44]: text with leaves in paper, 45–48: text, [49]: art, 50-51: text,[52]: image of Gloria Stuart and text, [53]–57: text, [58]: blank, [59]: paper, [60]: blank, [61]: colophon, [62–64]: blank.

Colophon: 

[red ornament]

This edition of 

The SMALL Garden 

of Gloria Stuart 

was printed on a

Vandercook No. 3

proof press, 

using hand-set

14 & 12 pt. Centaur type, 

by D'Ambrosio, 

who also produced 

the binding.

This is copy number

[red ornament] [# underlined in pencil] [red ornament]

of 50 copies 

and 10 artist proofs.

Art:

[49]: “Satsuki in Moonbeam,” [#/50 in pencil vertically on left], [signature D’Ambrosio ’86 in pencil vertically on right]

[52: Gloria [#/50 in pencil on left], [signature D’Ambrosio ’86 in pencil on right]

Binding: Gold kid leather over boards and cast paper; black canvas over boards.

Clam-shell box with black felt lining

From 19 Years and Counting:

THE SMALL GARDEN OF GLORIA STUART

Edition: 50 numbered copies, and 10 artist proofs

Size: 4-1/2 x 6-1/4 inches

Type: 14 & 12 pt. Centaur

Leaves: 32 - Mouette, and various decorative handmade papers

Binding: Gold kid leather over boards,

and cast paper; black canvas over boards clam-shell box with black felt lining

1986

In Daisies Never Tell (page 64), I wanted the reader to "walk through a field of daisies" before the story begins. In this book, I wanted the reader to travel through a forest during all the seasons of the year. The cover is cast paper (backed with mesh fabric for rigidity) in the form of trees with human-like trunks. Cutout areas around them allow the viewer to see beyond and within the cover to the first signature of varicolored papers which have openings to reveal the many hues of a forest's yearly cycle. Most of the fibers were dyed with fabric dyes except for one folio which utilized California Burgundy wine. That was the only way I could obtain the precise color that I was seeking. The rest of the binding in shiny gold kid reflects the Hollywood film industry and its role in this story about human relationships and bonsai plants.

Gloria Stuart truly does have a "vast" small garden of bonsai plants. Without her, as inspiration and advisor, this book would have never been created. She wrote her own speech which she gives to her bonsai plants in the story. The 11-color serigraph of her printed on handmade paper has real lantana blossoms encircling her hair-line.

The paper that I made for this book consists of cotton fibers. I embedded real bougainvillea bracts in some paper, and nasturtium and Martha Washington geranium petals in others. They were then coated with methyl-cellulose paste for protection and permanence. The raised gold initials were made by first painting the letter image with three separate coats of water/plastic-based white glue, and then gilded with 23K leaf. The uneven lines of type in the preface poetry convey fluttering tree leaves, and were hand set using 2 pt. leads to fill in the spaces. & The black clam-shell box is the size of an average book even though this book is much smaller. This was done to please some collectors who said that smaller books did not fit well in their bookcase. 

From A Memoir of Book Design:

This book is a direct result of my meeting Ward Ritchie and Gloria Stuart, and we became very good friends for many years after. One day while I was living in Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California, the telephone rang and to my surprise it was the great Ward Ritchie, the doyen of fine printing and typography in Southern California. He said that Gloria had seen some of my books at the Beverly Hills home of Martha Jacobsen (who years later would become the Martha in my book, Martha on Copper Mountain - 2000). Gloria was visiting her because they were both enrolled in a silkscreen artists class. Ward asked if he and Gloria could come over to meet me. I was ecstatic with joy and we three immediately found the companionship amiable. This led to Gloria inviting me over to her Brentwood home for a Hollywood party. I was dizzy with excitement at meeting the movers and shakers of the film industry and at one point went out into Gloria's garden for a cigarette. I knew that she had been a great silent and talkie film star and that she also had become an accomplished artist. What greeted me in the garden was a total surprise: a sea of bonsai plants. I walked back into the house and the first thing I said to Gloria when I saw her was, "I'm going to do a book about you." She was flattered but later said that she didn't think I was really going to follow through on my pronouncement. This is the book.

The book is a satire about the Hollywood movie system, the star Gloria Stuart, and her bonsai garden. Anthropomorphically, her botanical community is suddenly thrown into the human trauma of success and failure within the spiteful Hollywood milieu. The result is tragicomic and very human in spite of roots and leaves and limbs and trunks. ro The small book is presented in a black cloth-covered clam-shell box that is the size of a standard book. The book itself is much smaller than the case, but larger than a true miniature. This serves a number of purposes. One, many clients who are not normally miniature collectors commented that a miniature book upset the arrangement of books in their bookcases, hence my decision to make the presentation case much larger than the book, which is indeed not a miniature, but smaller than the usual volume. Secondly, the small book within a large case makes the book look smaller than it actually is. Because the story is about miniature plants, I wanted a smaller presentation, but there was too much material for a pure miniature-thus a size that fits nicely into the palms of a reader's hands. I try to utilize the basic fact that books are very personal and private objects. They are held within the hands and, while fondled, transmit thoughts to the brain.

The book block [A "book block" consists of all the sewn and glued pages minus the cover boards.] is bound in gold kid leather to reflect the glitter of the Hollywood scene. The gold frames a cast-paper image of three anthropomorphic tree trunks (two female and one male) with leafless branches. The reader can see around the trunks and branches to the first signature of colored paper. Since this was the first time I had used cast paper as an integral structural form, I was not sure how it would endure. Consequently, some copies of the edition have crinoline backing the cast paper for support, and some do not. I found it annoying to open the cover and see the web of crinoline on the back of the image. I later realized that it was not necessary to reinforce the cast paper on an area this small.

In order to make cast-paper images, one needs a mold into which the wet paper fibers are pressed. A clay model is first made and then a reverse-image cast is done from the clay. When I first began, I used plaster and coated it with a release substance so the paper fibers could be released from the mold when they had dried. This proved to be too inconsistent. The finished paper did not always release properly. I have since had good luck with liquid rubber latex. A layer is painted onto the clay model, allowed to dry, and then another layer is applied, until the mold is sufficiently thick to hold the wet paper fibers. I usually back the mold with plaster to give rigidity to the piece when lam working on it.

In Daisies Never Tell (1982), I wanted the reader to "walk through a field of daisies" before the story begins. In this book, I wanted the reader to travel through a forest during all the seasons of the year before discovering that the story is about botanical miniatures (bonsai plants). During the process of making the paper for the first signature, I created holes in the paper by handpicking pulp away from different areas of the screen before it is couched. These openings allow the eye to see past the first color to those beneath it and on subsequent pages. I used fabric dyes for the intense colors, and in some cases, I placed by hand a different colored fiber in a hole I had just created. The effect is one of a multicolored sheet of paper. Miraculously, the colors did not bleed into one another but remained separate and distinct from one another. One color, however, eluded me. It is in the center of the signature, and it is the folio that has printing on it informing the reader of what she or he is actually doing: "Wander through forest leaves in summer; autumn; winter; spring, and sense the seasons before wandering through..." The color had to be compatible with the already-chosen seasonal colors. And, like many times in my career, the answer came to me when I awoke one morn-ing. Without realizing it, I obviously contemplate my problems while in a somnolent state. Wine! The color wine makes when it stains a white tablecloth. So, I purchased three gallons of cheap California Burgundy wine, and swatted the flies that it lured to the vat while I pulled the sheets of paper in my then garage workshop sans air conditioning.

The main title page follows, and then pages of poetry preface a second title page that precedes the actual story. The type for the lines of poetry for the preface was intentionally set in an uneven manner using two-point leads to raise or lower a letter so that the entire effect would be that of leaves fluttering in the wind on the branches of a tree. When Ward and Gloria heard (and saw) what I was doing, they shook their heads in disbelief because it is so labor intensive. In the case of the first page of the preface poetry, a bonsai tree is debossed without ink into the cream-colored paper with the fluttering lines of poetry printed along the areas of its branches. This is followed by a double-page spread whereas the image of the bonsai tree is composed of fluttering lines of type while its urn is serigraphed Subsequent pages have the type images floating within a large area of white space, which gives the entire image the same sense of freedom as a tree in a vast meadow.

A second title page follows the preface. Serigraphy is used to embellish the background. Then letterpress printing announces the title, while raised gold leaf globs surround the circular presentation. The raised areas were created by building up at least three applications of white glue (each application must dry before another can be applied), and then applying gold leaf to the raised portion. Keeping the liquid glue within its raised boundaries is difficult enough, but harder yet is applying the fixative to hold the gold leaf over the raised portions. It is so fluid that it wants to roll off the raised portion onto the paper proper. That would make the gold leaf stick to areas where it should not. Very thinly applied fixative is the answer, and then the drying time must be altered because the gold leaf can be applied only when the adhesive is just tacky and not completely wet. After all is completely dry, another coat of fixative can be applied to protect the gold leaf. However, I do not do this because l think another coat decreases the brilliance of the gold leaf. Nor do burnish as others might. I polish the leaf with the same soft brush that use to apply it.

The first page of text carries a majuscule "O" in raised gold lea ringing a serigraphed tree branch. The method is the same as mentioned before, using coats of white glue to build up the relief of the letter. The paper for the pages of text (which I did not make) is French handmade paper called Mouette. It carries the silkscreenec colored ink and the built-up white glue quite nicely. The texture i exquisite with its soft pebbly surface indicating its being couched on a large mesh screen. However, there were numerous imperfections within the sheets and it was very difficult to print letterpress upon it. Occasionally the type would hit an unwanted inclusion, and the thickness of each sheet was not uniform. However, in all its vagaries, it does heighten the overall rustic appearance of the work.

Thus far in the presentation of the text, no page numbers have been used. Now, a quarter section of the image of a flower frames each lower corner of rectangular text block with a page number within one flower center. I drew the quarter image flower, and had a number of printing plates made. In some of those plates I drilled a hole where the center of the flower is, and inserted the lead type numbers within the hole. It was not difficult as the metal plates have a type-high wooden base which snugly holds the square shoulder of the lead type in its place while printing.

After page thirty-three, a poem is printed on paper that I made. As stated, the bulk of the paper for this book is Mouette, which was handmade in France. But, as I have also stated, if I need a certain kind of paper, and I can't buy it, I will make it. In this case I needed the embellishments away from those areas printed by letter-press. If they were in the printed area the type being pressed into the paper would hit them and print differently where they met and where they did not meet. Bougainvillea bracts were used not only because of their color, but also because a gardener in California told me that while cleaning a dark attic area he had seen bracts that held their color even after seven years away from their branches. And, as long as the bracts are hidden from the light within a closed book, their color should last for many years (not so for the lantana flower, as we shall later see). The bougainvillea bracts (thanks to my then neighbor, Shirley Rastatter, who had an arbor of them) are not laid onto the wet fibers immediately. I did this with various flowers on my first experiment and the colors bled. It was a nice bucolic effect but not what I was aiming for, so I gave that run to Gloria and she used it as note paper. The bracts were laid on the paper surface when it was damp but not sopping wet. Then they were coated with methyl cellulose, an archival glue used by conservationists for repair of torn paper. Then finally a layer of very thin paper tissue is laid over the entire sheet of paper and once again coated with methyl cellulose. All of this was done before the printing of the type took place.

The next piece of paper that I made is on page forty-four. It utilizes geranium flowers and leaves. Because it takes many months to produce an edition, the time period is critical to what species of living plants are used. In this case regular geraniums are sometimes used, and at other times it is the Martha Washington variety, which blooms in early spring in Southern California. The production method is the same. The vertical stem of the capital "A" on the facing page is once again raised and gilded. Note that the type is justified on the right side and not the left where it usually wold be.

Up to this pint in this particular book I have used various shapes to contain the words and the messages they convey. After the abstract forms used in the preface, I switched to justified (aligned evenly) rectangular text blocks. At this point I changed and began experimenting with a form I had not seen before in contemporary books. Many book pages, if not using justified margins, are justified on the left margin only with a ragged right margin. This is done on both pages of an opened book. I now justify (align the edges of the lines of type) on the left side for the verso page, and the right side for the recto page. [Verso is Latin for left hand page, and recto for right hand page.] This creates an even edge on the outside margins of both text blocks. The ragged edges are now parallel to one another within the gutter of the folded area. It also creates a frame around the outside of the entire double page spread that frames an abstract form now serigraphed beneath the text. The outline of the frame is illusionary and supplied only by the imagination of the reader without the reader's even knowing that he or she is supplying the outline. Why do this when it appears no one else has utilized this form? Originally, the basic reason was to frame the abstract visual beneath the text. How-ever, the implied frame around the double page spread also keeps the eye within a cordoned-off area and concentrates the communicated thoughts to make them more deeply felt. The text that you are reading is a direct result of this revelation. Some typographers may feel that the reason this has not previously been done is that since we read from left to right, it makes it difficult for the eye to adjust to each line if it has to hop around to do so. As you can see, it is compatible if the designer fills in the open space at the bottom of a paragraph with ornaments as is the case here.

The next major serigraph is "Satsuki in Moonbeam." This was a joyous experiment in light and dark utilizing silkscreen inks. It is night and Satsuki (an azalea plant) sits motionless in her pot beneath a tree in Gloria's garden. The stars can be seen twinkling in the dark blue night sky background. The leaves of the tree over Satsuki keep her in the shade and away from moonlight except for a small aperture within the canopy that forms a spotlight shining directly on the soon-to-be movie star because a Hollywood director spotted her and chose her to take a screen test for a very important background movie role. The paper for this print is Umbria. Even though it does not have a smooth surface, its pulp is more evenly distributed than the Mouette paper and the fifteen colors of silkscreen inks used for this print are more easily controlled. If I had known of Umbria when I first began this book, I would have used it 

The eleven-color serigraph of Gloria Stuart is also printed on paper which I made. The lantana blossoms which surround the crest of her hair line had to be positioned precisely on the paper so they would not intrude upon her image. The tiny blossoms were originally orange but have since turned brown in the copy that I have, although some are light brown and some are dark brown. All came from the same plant, but l am not a botanist to tell why they vary. Because I am not a bonsai grower either, without Gloria Stuart's technical help, this book could not have been completed. She gave inspiration and advice, and even wrote her own speech that she gives to her bonsai plants at the end of the story to quell their fears when they are distraught to the point of panic because one of their own has just failed a screen test and consequently missed out on becoming a stellar luminary. They had hoped, as in comparable human traits, that the notoriety would have lifted their statures as well.

The paper inlay (doublure) within the back cover is Umbria over archival single ply board. The corners of the covers are rounded because there are no right angles in nature and this is a book with a botanical background. The rounding of the gold leather proved to be a problem. I found that overworking the leather caused the gold to begin to wear away. The cure was to paste wax each piece of leather heavily before working with it. Also, overlapping the leather over the cover boards while at the same time rounding the corners caused excess material to build and wrinkle in the corner areas on the inside of the covers. The edges of the leather were cut on an inward bevel and turned over the edges of the board covering only the thickness of the board. The flat piece of leather that surrounds the inside of each cover has its outer edges cut at an opposite bevel. Where the two bevels meet they are glued and form a perfect right angle with no lapse in between. I was chastised for using brassy gold leather on a book, but only by someone who didn't know what the book was about. But that is another story that I will return to later.

©Book Club of California