It's Fine Press Friday!
Kim Merker, the noted long-time director of the University of Iowa's Windhover Press (established in 1967), began his own private press, Stone Wall Press, in 1957, one year after arriving in Iowa as a poet to study at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop. This week we present one of his Stone Wall Press imprints, a series of poems entitled Excellency by Hungarian-American author, poet, and editor John Pauker (1920-1991), illustrated with original linocuts by Thomas Kovacs, and handprinted by Merker with Spectrum types on Rives paper in an edition of 230 copies in the same year he established the Windhover Press.
One of Kim Merker's students, the noted letterpress printer and book artist Bonnie O'Connell, wrote that Merker was a . . .
. . . devout adherent of the book as vehicle for text. His voicing of this through type selection and typographic dexterity is evident throughout his design career, where the proportion of text to margins conforms to the canon of the medieval scriptoria. Classical clarity amplifies literary intent. Classic clarity is always evident, but the urge to make these books reflect personal typographic and design style is also manifested. . . . This setting enhances the very understated typographic acrobatics Kim practices.
Our copy is a gift from our friend Jerry Buff.
View other posts with works printed by Kim Merker.
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