#walter hamady

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Friday!

For the last Friday of 2024, we’re featuring John’s Apples, produced by Walter Hamady’s Perishable Press in Mount Horeb, WI, in 1995, in a limited edition of 125 copies. The book contains thirteen paintings by American artist John Wilde (1919-2006).and twelve poems by American poet and author Reeve Lindbergh (b. 1945). The book is made with a variety of papers including papers from Japan, Europe, and domestic paper handmade by Hamady’s elder daughter in Perry Township, Ohio. According to the colophon,the book was made “pretty much by Hand using passé technology.”

Walter Hamady (1940-2019) founded Perishable Press in 1964. The press was one of the first to produce work with a Vandercook proofing press, and is known for its innovative use of type and paper. In a profile of Hamady from 1991, Mary Lydon, his colleague at UW-Madison, suggests his books work to deliberately frustrate the “too adept reader.” This reader is frustrated and forced “to regress and, to recapture something of the pleasurable mystery (and frustration) of preliteracy” (155).

Appropriate then, that the text of the book is built on the poetry of Reeve Lindbergh, a children’s writer, and daughter of Charles Lindbergh. The playful verses sometimes sit opposite a relevant produce-related painting from Wilde. Other poems are printed on translucent paper through which you can make out Wilde’s vegetal shapes. The poems appear to be ekphrastic – composed directly from the paintings.  John Wilde (1919-2006) was a frequent collaborator with Hamady, and both taught for many years at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

This book comes to us from the collection of the late Dennis Bayuzick.

View other Fine Press Friday posts.

View other books from the Dennis Bayuzick estate.

View more work by Walter Hamady in our collection.

-- Amanda Haag, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[multcolib]

When letterpress and other book arts classes visit our special collections, they almost always want to look at the great work by Perishable Press proprietor, Walter Hamady. And his Gabberjab #7 (aka, Travelling, or, NeoPostModrinPreMortemism, or Dieser Rasen ist kein Hundeklo (II), or, Interminable gabberjabb number seven, or, A typographical clarification of the interchangea(æ)bility of books, boats and texts or a study : parthenomic G-sections ideal gyros or limipsd quantippsi, or, An interjacent discourse with visible language, or, A continuation of artists as dogs and other zootomical zooids, or, Integrated translations from Greek and German, or, The Aquifer as conduit of human consciousness, or, Similar (and familiar) properties of real yogurt, typography and the art of the book, or...) is a book they can’t put down...

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Friday!

This Friday we feature another book from legendary Wisconsin book artist Walter Hamady’s (1940-2019) Perishable Press. Parking Lots, a poem by Clarence Major (b. 1936), was published in Mt. Horeb, WI, in 1992, in a limited edition of 130 copies. Laura Dronzek illustrated the book. The colophon indicates that this is Perishable’s first attempt at a “combination accordion double-pamphlet binding.” The papers were handmade in Mt. Horeb and Japan. The type was handset Sabon Antigua, printed “without electrification using several colors.”

In a 1997 interview with Callaloo, Major – a prolific novelist, poet, and painter – connected his experience of writing to his experience as a visual artist:

“Well, I’m a visual thinker. I imagine the thing before or as I am developing it on the page, and I can see it…But in writing and in painting, you don’t put everything in. Even if you’re a Nature painter, for example, you go to Nature for inspiration and you change it. It’s never really been a matter of translating Nature to the canvas. It’s a matter of selecting and rearranging nature, which is what you do when you write a scene. You select the elements that are going to make the scene come alive. And anyway, you could not possibly put everything in.”

The accordion of Parking Lots is bound on each end with removable covers built of maps, and a parking ticket - from the Arcus Ticket Company, Chicago. These covers partially obscure two of Dronzeks dark, propulsive figures, human bodies turned vehicular, driving on all fours, wheels for hands and feet. “In searching for the essence of parking lots” Major finds onion rings, “fast romance,” dumpsters, pick-up trucks, “People on foot / not welcomed,” but also “Ants. Yes, ants.” He watches his step. “They have a point of view, / you know.”

See other Fine Press Friday posts!

See more National Poetry Month posts!

--Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Friday!

This week we present another work by legendary Wisconsin book artist Walter Hamady (1940-2019), this time in collaboration with UWM Faculty – former and current – Lane Hall and Lisa Moline. The Pool was published sometime between 1989 and 1991 by Hamady’s Perishable Press in Mt. Horeb in a limited edition. The text draws from Toby Olson’s 1990 novel, Dorit in Lesbos. The illustrations are Hall’s – though the colophon suggests they were completed collaboratively along with Moline, Hamady, artist and type caster Kent Kasuboske (1964-1994), as well as Olson himself, while staying in Perry Township, during “one of the most fœtidly hot Springs ‘on record’….” The book is printed on Hamady’s handmade Shadwell paper in shades of blue and teal. Our copy is signed by Olson.

Born in the Chicago area in 1937, Toby Olson is a novelist and poet, who won the PEN/Hemingway award in 1983. More recently he’s collaborated with composer Paul Epstein; one of these projects, Dorit, was an opera also adapted from Dorit in Lesbos.

The text is printed in “plenteously respaced” Monotype Gill Sans. Early on, it runs on both verso and recto, but then soon gives way to blank versos. Midway through, a large collage image by Lane Hall unfolds. Hall, professor emeritus of UWM’s Department of English, was a student of Hamady’s at UW-Madison’s Print and Book Arts program during the time this book came together. Hall and Moline are longtime artistic collaborators, and co-founders of the Overpass Light Brigade.

Watch a presentation of Walter Hamady’s archive with the Library of Congress.

View other Fine Press Friday Posts.

Enjoy other wonderful books from Perishable Press.

[uwmspeccoll]

Thank Goodness! Another Fine Press Friday! 

This week we bring you, Travelling or, NeoPostModrinPreMortemism or, Dieser Rasen ist kein Hundeklo (II), or, Interminable Gabberjabb Number Seven….” (the title continues with fifteen alternative titles) by the infamous Wisconsin book artist, letterpress printer, fine press publisher, papermaker, and educator Walter Hamady, published under his own press, Perishable Press Limited, in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, in 1996.  

The Gabberjabb series, of which there are eight titles, is a stream of conscious reflection of the artist’s mind. Hamady disrupts the flow of silent reading by pushing the use of footnotes to its limits. It can cause much frustration to a viewer should they attempt to read it like an ordinary codex. These interventions make the reader hyper aware of the book form. Text becomes symbol and our trust in the meaning of language is disrupted.

Hamady plays with symbol and sound by exchanging images with letters. Notes are printed throughout the book denoting dates and measurements. A list of tables and their dimensions stands in for a table of contents, the foreword offers the definition of a foreword, and the appendix is an anatomical relief print of the human colon and appendix. 

In this book, number 7 of the Gabberjabb series, Hamady includes a signed and notarized permission from his colleague at the time, Professor of French literature at University of Wisconsin Madison, Mary Lydon, to use her essay “The Book as the Trojan Horse of Art: Walter Hamady, The perishable Press Limited and Gabberjabbs 1-6.” Making an already self-referential series, all the more so. 

The colophon notes that the production of the book employed “an unthinkable number of press-runs, typefaces and sizes, ink colors, hand/mould/machine-made papers, and odd applications.” He makes use of found objects and printed materials, and many of the papers use were handmade at his won Shadwell Paper Mill. 

This Gabberjabb is limited to an edition of 125 copies, each signed “at least fifteen times” throughout by Hamady. Our copy was a gift from Wisconsin artist, letterpress printer, and educator Dennis Bayuzick from his collection.

View more posts about the Perishable Press

View more Fine Press Friday posts

Teddy, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[uwmspeccoll]

Fine Press Friday 

Celebrated Wisconsin painter and printmaker John Wilde’s 1985. is a collaboration using the eccentric journal of the notorious Wisconsin book artist and fine-press publisher Walter Hamady for that year, with Hamady’s unusual humor once again mystifying the poor writer of this post in attempting to read the colophon. Published in 1992 by Hamady’s Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin-based Perishable Press Limited in a limited edition of 130 copies, this book includes a wide array of printing techniques. from rubber stamps to perforation to letterpress, all encased in a unique sewn-boards binding by Gary Frost that made its debut with this book. With typesetting done by Lester Doré in numerous sans-serif typefaces and printed on a variety of white and ivory papers, the book gives readers a scattered, bewildering view into Hamady’s mind enhanced John Wild’s surrealist imagery. 

While this is our first time featuring Wilde’s work, a quick glance at our catalog reveals that Wilde and Hamady appeared to work together often, not surprising considering a mutual connection to the University of Wisconsin-Madison between them. Their similar artistic stylings form a unified aesthetic, feeling as though it might be the work of one eccentric artist rather than two. 

View more posts on work from the Perishable Press.

View more Fine Press Friday posts.

-Emily, Special Collections Writing Intern

[uwmspeccoll]

It’s Fine Press Friday!

One of the most impressive aspects of our varied holdings here at Special Collections is our sizable collection of Wisconsin- and Milwaukee-focused work. Today’s #Fine Press Friday focus, Last Light, features poetry by renowned Wisconsin-native author/publisher August Derleth alongside illustrations by noted Wisconsin artist and illustrator Frank Utpatel, with an introduction by Madison, Wisconsin, writer Mark E. Lefebvre. It was published in 1972 by The Perishable Press in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, and hand-printed by the legendary Wisconsin artist, letterpress printer, fine press publisher, papermaker, and educator Walter Hamady. The types are hand set in Sabon Antiqua and Initiales Cristal and printed on multicolored pages handmade by Hamady from the discarded clothing of Derleth, Utpatel, and Hamady in Perry Township, Wisconsin. 

Utpatel’s wood engravings depict serene nature scenes inspired by Derleth’s tranquil wanderings and subsequent poetry. “There are the memories, the words and the wood engravings detailing nature which alone remains in the last light. Freedom absolute.” A common theme throughout the collection is the essence of movement, shown by the titles “Approaching Rain” and “Walking By Last Light”, which might indicate Derleth’s state of mind in finishing what would prove to be his final work before his death in 1971.

Longtime collaborators, Utpatel’s illustrations reflect Derleth’s words so seamlessly that they seem to be devised by a single imagination. Hamady’s personal perspective appears in his usual characteristic and highly-eccentric, self-deprecating colophon that refers to this work as ordinary --really? This collection of work i

s anything but ordinary.

View more posts on August Derleth (with one also illustrated by Frank Utpatel).

View posts on other work by Walter Hamady and The Perishable Press.

View more Fine Press Friday posts.   

View more posts with wood engravings!

-Emily, Special Collections Writing Intern

[uwmspeccoll]

Flora and Sylva

This week we are featuring Flora by Kent Kasuboske and Laurie Belshan, printed at their Laurelfield Press in the spring of 1987. Together Kasuboske and Belshan researched and wrote the text describing the history and physical characteristics of the five plants featured. Laurie Belshan wrote the short poems found within the center of each square of text. The illustrations are linocuts by Kent Kasuboske, printed from blocks. The cover is constructed with Shadwell paper from Walter Hamady and the text paper is Rives heavy weight. The type is Spectrum, with Optima used for the headlines.  

View more posts from our Flora and Sylva series.