Owner of Small Press Is Bound to Well-Made
Books
(October
4, 2000)
Back
to Aldus Society In the News
By
Bill Eichenberger, Dispatch Book Critic
He
loves everything about books. He loves the words and the ink and the typefaces
and the paper and the bindings.
A
bookmaker, Graham Moss loves to read books, of course, and also to touch them.
No
wonder, then, that the security guards at the Philadelphia Museum of Art eyed
Moss suspiciously last week as he perused an exhibit devoted to Japanese master
Hon’ami Koetsu.
After
all, Moss could barely contain the urge to turn on some romantic music, dim the
lights and caress the scrolls.
“I
can understand why they won’t let you touch this art from the 17th century,”
Moss said recently with a laugh. “But it was very disappointing for me not to
be able to pick them up, to actually feel the paper -- because you can’t tell
just from looking at them. Books have such a tactile quality.”
Moss
is the founder and owner of Incline Press in Oldham, England -- a private press
that makes books available primarily by subscription, printing them in limited
runs of 150 to 300 copies.
He
opened the press in 1993 and, later that year, published the Oliver Goldsmith
poem The Deserted Village with a set of contemporary illustrations. In 1999, he
was joined in the running of the press by Kathy Whalen.
Other
Incline Press books include The Rose Bud, the Rose, and the Thorn, a set of
three poems by Robert Burns with a wood engraving by Ann Trout; The Dogs Meat
Man, an anonymous tale from circa 1820 with embellishments by Joseph Crawhall;
and Playing Gershwin, a story by Robert Graham with hand-colored illustrations
by Peter Allen.
In
1933, printer Peter Gill defined a private press as one that “prints solely
what it chooses to print, whereas a public press prints what its customers
demand of it.”
“We
print the things that interest us,” Moss said. “We don’t print anything
that doesn’t excite us. So our subscribers don’t simply get our books; they
get us.”
As
far back as he can remember, Moss was intrigued with books.
“I
read Jack London’s Call of the Wild when I was a child. I can still describe
that book to you now: It was covered in blue cloth, and the dust jacket had
seagulls on it.
“And
I was fascinated with title pages. I understood that the title pages told the
story of how the book had been put together, that this is when the book had been
reprinted, this is when the typeface had been changed, and so on.”
Merely
to read books was never enough, Moss said.
He
had to own them.
“I
had scarlet fever in the days when scarlet fever killed people,” he said. “I
was kept in isolation in the hospital, and when I left the hospital I made my
mother replace all the books I’d read there.”
A
book is more than the sum of its parts, as Moss is fond of saying.
His
press, therefore, takes great care in choosing the appropriate ink, typeface and
paper.
Moss
owns a book published in 1768 by John Baskerville, a pioneering 18th-century
printer.
A
former history teacher, Moss likes the idea not only of owning a piece of the
past but also of reproducing it: He plans a book on Baskerville.
“It’ll
be Baskerville’s text but my art,” he said. “I gave a blank sheet of paper
from the (1768) book to a papermaker. He analyzed it and came up with the same
paper -- amazing. It’s the same color, the same texture, the same thickness.
It reacts to ink in exactly the same way.”
Many
printers love designing books but dislike the tedium of actually putting them
together.
Not
Moss.
“I’m
happy to work slowly. I don’t even have to work at slowing down,” he said.
“I just don’t understand when people complain that their e-mail is slow.
What are we talking about? Seconds? Fractions of seconds?”
All
of his books are made by hand with “archival-quality materials -- linen thread
and not polyester, nothing that damages the paper.”
His
favorite machine is powered by foot.
“I
honestly enjoy every single part of the process, from the imaginative work to
picking up a screwdriver to repair the press when something’s got loose,” he
said.
Ultimately,
Moss is as interested in whether a book “works” as in what it says.
Roger
Payne, another 18th-century printer, made books that are difficult to open --
because they were “sewn and glued too tightly,” Moss said.
Baskerville’s
Milton, on the other hand, is Moss’ Milton of choice.
“The
paper’s good, it’s attractively decorated inside and out, and it opens
beautifully.
“On
one level, everything I do is ephemeral. The only thing that saves my books from
being ephemeral is other people’s interest in them.