October 2010 – Page 3 – Green Chair Press Blog

Jane Austen Coasters

I’ve been printing a few new coaster designs, and this is the first one — a set of quotes from Jane Austen. 9 coasters, 3 quotes.

Printed in brown, the quote from Pride and Prejudice is “There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”

Printed in green, the quote from Emma is “It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for any body who asks her.”

Printed in purple, the quote from Northanger Abbey is “It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire.”

See more here.

Tramps

The above print is “Tramps! A Miscellany of Printers Portraits” — a limited edition two color letterpress print by Dan Wood and Katherine Cummings. They used images selected from the hundreds of recently scanned printers portraits at the Daniel Berkeley Updike History of Printing Collection in the Providence Public Library and focuses on early printers of the 15th and 16th centuries, with Benjamin Franklin and a few other later eccentrics thrown in for good measure.

Available for sale here. First seen on the printeresting blog.

Side note: The Providence Public Library Special Collection has a nice blog called Notes for Bibliophiles.

Erotica Botanica

I met book artist and printer Catherine Michaelis at a book fair in Seattle in 2004. We’ve swapped a few of our books and I’ve been following her on her blog. She recently finished a book for the Sandy Gallery’s Pop-Up Now! A Juried Exhibition of Movable Books. Catherline says of her book

Enter the sensual Erotica Botanica through an unfolding caress of its leaf shaped pages. Delicate flowers with enticing organs float up from the folds above a bed of leaves and seed pods. Erotic verse, written by flowers and pollinators, inspires the viewer to contemplate the sexual desire of plants.

One of the poems is

Bandy-legged bumble bee
your furry belted belly
tickles me

On her blog, she wrote several posts about her inspiration for the poems, the images and shapes. You can see them here (unfortunately, you have to read the posts backwards, probably my biggest complaint about blogs!).