Have you ever experienced planning a project, visualising it and then being disappointed with the result? This happened to me with my silk cover for Dance, the book that I’m about to have printed. I was going to screenprint the covers on paper or silk.
I imagined a richly glossy print and instead it was pale, disappointing and putrid. This was after dyeing the silk, backing it with paper, blogging it, washing screens, and setting them up in the dark room. 2 days work down the drain! So now I have to re-asses. Why did I want screenprinting instead of digital printing? I thought the screenprinting would show evidence of the maker’s hand (mine) and be rich. So I swallowed hard, and went to the printers who are doing the book and asked for trials on my choice of paper – Zerkall Wavy. And the results are amazing! The colours are rich and I’m delighted! (the photo doesn’t do it justice!)
So it’s time to think again. I need to get this book finished for my exhibition in October – as well as frame the originals etc. etc. I’m just going to let go of the silk covers and revisit the idea of screen printing later and do just a few covers. I’ll have to skip the 25 de-luxe copies that I had planned.
Christopher has written exquisite poetry and I have just about finished the lay-out of this 28cm X 12.5cm book. It will probbaly be printed next week. The paper is a Naturalis and the cover and dust-cover are 100% cotton, so it feels nice too. This is going to be a a small run of 175 copies – the first 25 will be for Christopher, the model and me as well as the libraries (cool to have books in the Bodleian) and for reviews. This means that there will only be 150 books available and no second editions! I’d rather do my next book than re-run a book. It will be launched at the exhibition in mid-October and sold there and at the Fine Book press Fair. There is an early bird offer (orders before 15th October) – see the website.
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