#daniel keleher

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Wood Engraving Wednesday

Fritz Eichenberg

German-American illustrator and wood engraver Fritz Eichenberg (1901-1990) produced these ten, full-page wood engravings for a 1982 edition of The House of the Dead, Fyodor Dostoevsky's (1921-1881) early-1860s semi-autobiographical novel of convict life in a Siberian prison camp, printed for the Limited Editions Club by Daniel Keleher at his Wild Carrot Letterpress in Hadley, Massachusetts in an edition of 2000 copies signed by the artist and the designer/compositor Michael Bixler.

Beginning in 1850, Dostoevsky spent four years in a penal labor camp at Omsk in western Siberia, and after a further six years in exile he returned to St. Petersburg to write this narrative of the horrifying experiences he witnessed while in prison. As part of this edition's promotion, the Limited Editions Club described it as "De Profundis, Russian Style." Eichenberg's somber engravings adequately capture the torment of life in the harsh conditions of a Siberian katorga. Click or tap the Alt descriptions for the lines each engraving depicts.

View other posts with illustrations by Fritz Eichenberg.

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It’s Fine Press Friday!

This week we present Vowels by Arthur Rimbaud with watercolor woodblock prints by French artist Henri Cartier-Bresson, who is much more well known for his innovations in photography, and translation by Wallace Fowlie. It was printed in 1996 for the Limited Editions Club in in an edition of 300 copies on handmade Tosa Hanga paper by Daniel Keleher at his Wild Carrot Letter Press in Hadley, Massachusetts. The edition was designed and handset in Perpetua and Gill Sans Serif by Dan Carr and Julia Ferrari at their Golgonooza Letter Foundry in Ashuelot, New Hampshire.

Henri Cartier-Bresson painted three swirling watercolors for Vowels, and they were translated into multi-color woodblocks by Keiji Shinohara at his studio at Wesleyan University in Middleton, Connecticut. The Monthly letter of the Limited Editions Club notes that “each of the three illustrations required the cutting of anywhere from twenty-three to thirty separate blocks – one for each color that you can perceive in the prints. Only a talented artist imbued with complete dedication could accomplish such consummate work. Shinohara himself, naturally, printed the entire edition: some three hundred sets of three prints, which – multiplied by an average of twenty-five blocks per illustration – comes to at least 22,500 operations!” The paper used for the prints was hand-milled in Japan.

The book is signed by Henri Cartier-Bresson. It is another fabulous donation from our friend, Jerry Buff.

View more Fine Press Friday posts.

–Sarah, Special Collections Graduate Intern