TREES / LADDERS 1995

A$1,800 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Limited edition

Melbourne : Hybrid Production, 1995. Folio, lettered wrappers, six sheets, folded, woodcuts by John Ryrie, poems by Alex Selenitsch, in timber slip-case by Hamish Hill measuring 50 x 27 x 4 cm Limited edition of 20 numbered and signed copies. Printed by John Ryrie using garamond, imprint rondo hand-set monotype, on Arches 200 GSM, the cover on Khadi 320 GSM, the box made from various suburban forest timbers. In this instance, the folio is numbered 9/20, and is made of Elm and Silver Ash. While visiting John Ryrie to talk about a printing job, I noticed that his studio was filled with paintings, woodcuts and little sculptures on the theme of trees and ladders. For the previous decade, I had been writing poems on the same themes, and the fact that some texts were ready, that John had some wood-blocks ready, and that we had been brought together by some other reason meant that a book was something we had to do. John and I began with a selection of poems and prints, and produced a number of dummy designs, with the format being finally established when we found some discounted paper. Care was taken to distribute the poems and prints so that they both made sense sequentially. This produced some startling cross-references, startling because we had produced our prints and poems without knowing of each other s work. We also designed the book to make sure that even though the publication is unbound, a flattened and framed extract would make no sense, so that one would always have to un

• Binding: Hardcover

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