THE OLD IN THEIR KNOWING.
Berkeley, CA: Editions Koch, 2005. First edition, limited issue. Presentation copy of this deluxe, slipcased limited edition, LETTER A OF 26 COPIES SIGNED BY KOCH AND BRINGHURST. And INSCRIBED BY BRINGHURST on the colophon "Alas. The colophon is in error. Even Peter / does not always think of everything. / This copy, hand-corrected, is for / Allen Mears, who would have / caught the error. With best / wishes, / Robert 25.II.2006." The colophon has an ink strikethrough of the printed line, "The cover design is adapted from original drawings by Winifred McNeill." The book is a sequence of 12 poems and translations based on pre-Socratic sources. The English text is set in Giovanni Mardersteig's Dante type, designed in Verona and cut by Charles Malin in Paris in 1954. The Greek source texts, printed on facing pages to their English counterpart, are set in Christopher Steinhour's Diogenes Greek, designed in Berkeley in 1996. This deluxe edition book was designed and printed letterpress on vintage Robert Serpa handmade paper from polymer plates in the Berkeley studio of Peter Rutledge Koch. The book is specially case-bound in stiff paper covers, with titling on the spine, printed in red. The stiff paper cover, printed in orange and marigold yellow and black, is a custom made hand-made paper from Magnolia Paper Mill in Oakland, California. The slipcase measures 10.5 x 5.75 x 7/16 inches. The Greek text that is the cover's design is the Greek original of the quotation from Aristotle that serves as the epigraph for the series. The book is housed in a plain deep tan/medium brown paper-covered slipcase. Included with the book is correspondence between Mears and Bringhurst, which includes a two-page TLS from Bringhurst to Mears that describes the genesis of the book, and that contains a two-page photocopy of the type for the covers of the lettered edition, with penciled notes by the author. As described by Bringhurst, "A few of (the English texts) are pretty straight translations. Others are impersonations or meditations or comments of some kind, and the idea of pairing them with some of the scraps of Greek that set them off never occurred to me until the Parmenides project. Some of the scraps are genuine Presocratic fragments." Bringhurst goes on to say "Somewhere along the line I forgot to include the Greek original of the quotation from Aristotle that serves as an epigraph for the series. We should have put it on page 4, facing the English version. Since I forgot to put it there, I set it in a larger size for Peter to use on the covers of the lettered edition." Fine in fine slipcase, virtually as new.
Item #55878
Price: $600.00