#monotype centaur

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It’s Fine Press Friday! 

Novelle Cinque: Tales from the Veneto, translated and edited from the original Italian by George H. Bumgardner, is illustrated with four watercolor facsimiles from the 16th century manuscript and constitutes a major part of the “Refugio de miseri” (the refuge from misery), containing five short stories that detail the misery surrounding young lovers in Venice. Our edition was translated into English for the first time from the manuscript residing in Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University and was designed by Martino Mardersteig, who also oversaw the letterpress printing in the Stamperia Valdonega in Verona, Italy. Mardersteig was notably connected to the Officina Bodoni, a private press in Verona specializing in hand press to create beautiful and incredibly high quality books, through his father Giovanni Mardersteig. The elder Giovanni designed the Dante, Griffo, and Zeno typefaces based on the popular Old Humanist types of European printing in the early 20th century. This edition was printed in Centaur typeface designed by Bruce Rogers, another Old-style typeface similar to typefaces designed by Mardersteig. It was printed on Pescia paper made specifically for this edition by Cartiere Magnani and bound by Legatoria Recalcati in Milan. There were 1950 copies published by Imprint Society Publishing in Barre, Massachusetts in 1974. 

The colophon on the original piece indicates that the manuscript belonged to an Antonio Angelieri and Bumgardner notes in the introduction that the first story is an original belonging solely to this collection, while the following four stories were previously printed as part of other collections. The fifth story, “Justa Victoria,” was printed by Officina Bodoni in 1943. In a strange twist, he believes that the manuscript was given to Angelieri as a wedding gift, although the stories contained in this piece are anything but wedding-friendly. He describes the collection as “an antecedent to Romeo and Juliet”.

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-Emily, Special Collections Writing Intern

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It’s Fine Press Friday!

In today’s edition of #Fine Press Friday, we offer Paul Petrie’s Strange Gravity designed by Freeman Keith of the Stinehour Press and Charles E. Wadsworth of the Tidal Press. Our copy is one of 300 case-bound copies printed letterpress in Monotype Centaur and Arrighi on Mohawk Superfine Text in 1984 by the Stinehour Press in Lunenburg, Vermont. Wadsworth’s original drawings for the book were reproduced in offset lithography by the Meriden Gravure Company in Meriden, Connecticut. 

This work is described as a collection of songs rather than a collection of poetry by the author, with the consideration that they were composed with meter, rhyme, and especially pitch in mind, acknowledged by Petrie in the foreword as not being particularly in style during the time of publishing. He writes, “My one worry is not the suitability of the genre to the age, but the worthiness of these particular poems to their kind.” Much of this collection carries a melancholy feeling that is echoed by the soft black and white illustrations that depict gentle, sweeping movement with ease. The poetry and illustrations hint towards a waning interest in continuing life, particularly the first and title poem Strange Gravity:

What but some huger, darker planet swimming out of the night could break this ancient spell and wean me from this green world of light?

The Stinehour Press, founded by the legendary Rocky Stinehour, was one of the premier fine-press publishers in the country from 1952 to 2008. The Meriden Gravure Company was a venerable, quality offset-printing company founded in 1888 that merged with Stinehour in 1977 and closed in 1989, with its presses moved to the Stinehour Press. Rocky Stinehour died in 2016 at the age of 91.

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-- Emily, Special Collections Writing Intern