29 June 2011

The Autobiography of William Henry Donner

Okay well my time off work has so far been spent on many things other than my great plans for my blog. But here I am back for a moment. This is off-topic, but I wasn't sure where else to put/share this.

I just got my hands on a copy of The Autobiography of William Henry Donner. William Henry Donner is my great-grandfather, though not biologically. He adopted my grandmother after he married my great-grandmother. For both of them, it was their second and final marriage.

This book is interesting on multiple levels, but the level you might naturally count as the first is its aesthetics. So I thought I would reproduce the text of colophon here. I may supplement this with a photo and/or scan later. Note that the color is in the original, i.e. this was a two-color print, with red headings and black text!

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM HENRY DONNER has been privately printed in an edition of one hundred copies by Clifford Burke at Cranium Press, San Francisco. The type is a variant of Eric Gill's Perpetua from the Stephenson Blake Foundry, set by hand. It is printed on hand made Tovil, from the English mill of Barcham Green. The photographic prints were made by Larry Kunkel, who also supplied the photograph on page 25. The binding was designed & executed at the press by Diane Burke. Fall 1973.

2 comments:

  1. Here are pictures of moulds used to make Tovil paper: http://papermoulds.typepad.com/simon-barcham-greens-pap/2011/04/featured-moulds-31-m254-f-j-head-laid-demy.html. I certainly recognize the watermark.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hm, that link to the pictures of the mould did 'linkify' as I had hoped. I guess I should have used "preview" before posting. Here's another try: Featured Moulds 31 - M254 F J Head Laid Demy - Simon Barcham Green's Papermaking Moulds.

    ReplyDelete