SAPPHO; MEHRETU, Julie and Anita Cowles Rearden (illus.).

£750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Poetry. First edition, number 215 of 426, numbered and signed by Mehretu, who created the 20 abstract etchings that accompany the side-by-side translations. The introduction is illustrated with 23 unpublished wood engravings created in the 1870s by Anita Cowles Rearden (1861-1944), which depict coins from Mytilene and images of Sappho, Alcaeus, and Aphrodite.The volume was inspired by Arion Press's discovery of a manuscript biography on Sappho, created jointly by Rearden and her husband, lawyer Timothy Henry Rearden (1839-1892). The publishing house first found the text at the University of California, Berkeley, and later identified Rearden's illustrations at the library of the Swedenborgian Church in San Francisco. The couple arranged for their work to be published, but the project never materialized at the time. Since 1974, Andrew Hoyem's Arion Press has been producing fine limited editions in the heart of San Francisco, using letterpress equipment dating from the 1910s. Overseeing every aspect of book production in-house, they are the only unified hot-metal type foundry, letterpress workshop, and book bindery in the United States. Hoyem won the San Francisco Living Treasure Award in 2010 for his decades of contribution to both book arts and the city.

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