#Wookey Hole Mill

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Typography Tuesday

In 1934, nine years after establishing his own Seven Acres Press in England, American letterpress printer, poet, and educator Loyd Haberly (1896-1981) became the controller for the great Welsh fine-press publisher Gregynog Press. He remained there until 1937 when he returned to America to teach at the college level and continue his own fine press work.

In 1936, his last year at Gregynog, Haberly wood-engraved six floriated initials, purportedly designed by the notable British calligrapher Graily Hewitt, for a Gregynog edition of Xenophon’s Cyrupaedia: The Institution and Life of Cyrus, the First of that Name, King of Persians, the first time Philemon Holland’s English translation had been reprinted since 1632.The initials for the edition were hand-colored in red and green, as seen in the sample page above taken from a Bonhams advertisement for a copy of the book.

In 1984, the revived Gwasg Gregynog reprinted all six engravings in this small commemorative keepsake entitled Floriated Initials, with a brief text in Monotype Baskerville on handmade paper from Wookey Hole Mill. Our copy is another gift from our friend Jerry Buff.

View other posts with floriated initials.

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[eiruvsq]

Artist & Illustrator:

Amy Rose

"I recently bought some beautiful 60 year old handmade paper from @vintage_paper_co_uk and I am using it to do some small originals that I will have for sale ."

"Original Bantam Study in Watercolour now available in my Etsy. I used this beautiful handmade heritage paper made in Wookey Hole mill, Somerset, England in the 1950s that I bought from @vintage_paper_co_uk I am planning on making prints of this piece 🖤 ."

"Prints of my Bantam Study are now available in my Etsy shop, I have a 20% off sale running all Easter weekend, no code required 🐇🐓."

https://www.etsy.com/shop/thefloralfoxart

https://www.instagram.com/thefloralfoxart/

https://www.instagram.com/vintage_paper_co_uk/

[uwmspeccoll]

Staff Pick of the Week

For my Staff Pick, I’ve chosen to share more from what I think I would say is my favorite book in the collection, Lac des Pleurs by Gaylord Schanilec and his Midnight Paper Sales press. It’s a beautiful book, and we’ve posted about some of the wood engravings of fish and the marbled paper it’s bound in previously. However, it seemed a shame to me not to share the other engravings from the book. What I love about the book is that it feels so complete—it’s well thought-out in every aspect and you can really feel the quality of every element from the type, to the engravings, to the paper. 

The color engravings shown here are wood engravings, and the black and white engravings of fish are zinc engravings. My favorite of the wood engravings is the pelicans. The book also features a large, wood-engraved fold-out map. The wood engravings are printed on Zerkall mouldmade paper and the text on handmade Barcham Green Tovil and a mouldmade paper from the Wookey Hole Mill. The map was printed on handmade kozo paper. 

I highly recommend seeing this book in person if at all possible so that you can see the true size and colors of the prints and the marbling and feel the texture of the paper.  A lot of work went into the making of this book and it shows!

I also like the content of the book, with one of my favorite passages shown here. It reads: 

“There is a resonance in the world we can sence, I think, when we become aware of those who have come before us. But it’s more than a resonance of sound: it involves all our sences. Thoreau was approaching the end of his life as he passed through Lake Pepin, and wrote: ‘I stooped to pluck a flower & smelled the fragrance of spring stronger & nearer than ever.’ When I smell the spring fragrance and think of Thoreau on Barn Bluff, it’s not his face that comes to mind, or even his words—I smell the fragrance of spring. 

Now, when the bluffs come into view, I listen.”

-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Friday!

This week we present The Paper Makers Craft with verse by Oliver Bayldon and illustrations by Rigby Graham, printed in an edition of 400 copies in 1965 by Will Carter at Cambridge for the Twelve by Eight Press. Our copy is signed by John Mason, who was a papermaker and proprietor of the Twelve by Eight Mill in Leicester. Mason writes in the colophon:

“We produced this book because Oliver Bayldon chanced one day to visit my small paper mill, and watched entranced the transmutation of growing things into sheets of textured paper. He came again bearing sacks of stalks, roots and leaves, and stayed himself to turn them into paper. One day he brought these verses, his own free translation from a 17th century Latin poem Papyrus by Father Imberdis S. J. of Ambert, the papermaking district of the Auvergne in France. Will Carter agreed to print it for us.

Most of the white paper used for the text is from Millbourn at Tuckenhay in Devon. The small amount of thinner white was made at Wookey Hole in Somerset. Jack Green produced the grey green sheets at his Hayle Mill in Kent. The rest of the coloured paper is from my Twelve by Eight Private Mill in Leicester.”

View more Fine Press Friday posts.

–Sarah, Special Collections Graduate Assistant