Rare books from Vamp & Tramp, Booksellers, LLC

[Clonemel, Tipperary, Ireland]:: Coracle,, [2011].. Edition of 100. 5.375 x 8.25"; 138 unnumbered pages. Ribbon marker. Red linen covered boards. Title information stamped on spine. The only text of the book is this: "The book is the manifestation of the poem." At the books beginning, the text is printed in reverse on the recto, but shows through, in proper order, on the next verso. Midway through the book, there is a switch: the text is printed in reverse on the verso, but shows through in proper order on the preceding recto. The purity and playfulness of this book document yet again a subject that has fascinated Simon Cutts: finding the objective correlative for concrete poetry in the book.

San Francisco:: Pettingell Book Bindery / Art Hazelwood,, 2011.. Edition of 20. 12 x 13" fold-out boxed opera set with screenprinted covers. Includes miniature stage set, seven two-dimensional puppets that fit into groves in the stage floor, six engravings that act as changeable background drops, and a booklet with libretto. Engravings printed on Hahnemühle Copperplate paper and Lana Gravure paper. Screenprints printed on Hahnemühle Bugra paper and Arches Watercolor Hot Press paper. Booklet (8.5 x 5"; 24 pages) printed on Mohawk Superfine and set in Verlag, Chronicle Text, and Lithos Pro. Signed by Hazelwood. Art Hazelwood: "Tora Bora is a reverse engineered opera. The Seventeenth Century etcher Jacques Callot’s illustrations of scenes from operas inspired the thought—what if all that remained of an opera were etchings from a few scenes? How, for example, would the Magic Flute be reconstructed from that? With this in mind Art Hazelwood and Klaus-Ullrich… Read More

San Francisco:: Pettingell Book Bindery / Art Hazelwood,, 2010.. Edition of 10. 16 x 18"; 72 pages. Sixty woodcuts printed by the artist on Masa paper in editions varying in size from 25 to 50 of which numbers 11 - 20 were bound by the artist in a hand-sewn hardcover book format. Prints tipped onto Arches cover text paper. Each print numbered, titled, and signed. Art Hazelwood: "From 1986 to 1993 I traveled around the world, living in Europe and Asia and in various parts of the States. My primary interest however was traveling in Asia. The intensity of travel lured me on to see more and more. Experiences of people and places left their mark and I have tried to give back some of that feeling. The Tibetan nomads, Vietnamese 'cyclo' drivers, Japanese 'salary man,' Sikhs, Thais, and Uygurs that make up this series are the actors on an impossibly crowded world stage. It is this sometimes overwhelming encounter with the world that these prints seek to express. "Prints… Read More

Guildford, England:: Circle Press,, 1979.. First Limited. 40 x 32 Designed and produced by Ronald King with notes & introductory essay 'The Elusive Absolute' by Keith Please. Limited edition of three hundred books with five H.C. copies, forty Artist's Proofs and ten marked Circle Press held for presentation; all the books SIGNED by the artist. Book designed & printed by the artist at Circle Press. Text in 10 pt. Baskerville. The paper is pure rag-made 250 gsm. Velin Cuve Rives Blanc, and the box designed and made at Dorset Bookbinding by Paul Haskell. A beautifully rendered edition of Shakespeare's play with King's own marginal notes and lustrious contemporary illustrations. Cooking the Books: "Antony & Cleopatra is a departure from King's other illustrated classic texts. He himself likens it to a contemporary film script in that it flits from place to place, the scene rapidly changing from Rome to Egypt and back again. Something of this hectic quality… Read More

New Paltz, New York:: Amberwood Press,, 2014.. Edition of 200. 11 x 14"; 18 pages Digital offset. Spiral bound with pictorial laminated covers. Nava Atlas: "When I began working on Deconstructing Elsie, my purpose was to create a visual exploration of the dark side of the dairy industry in a nutshell, from the heartbreaking abuse of cows (as well as the discarded calves that become veal) to pollution of soil and water, dissemination of false information, and much more in between. What I didn't expect was to find such a huge intersection between the stark facts about Big Dairy and ideas about oppression as they pertain to patriarchy and misogyny. Altering midcentury Elsie the Cow advertisements seemed a perfect vehicle for presenting the disturbing themes in these intertwined subjects with a bit of levity. "In the preface of the feminist classic, The Sexual Politics of Meat, Carol J. Adams writes, 'What, or precisely who, we eat is determined by the patriarchal politics… Read More

Tacoma, Washington:: Anagram Press / Goat Back Press,, 2015.. Edition of 50. 7 x 9" closed, extends to 15 feet; 20 pages including pastedowns. Accordion structure. Digitally printed from watercolor illustrations on archival, 100% cotton paper. Handbound paper over boards. In paper slipcase. Signed by both artists and numbered. Empire Builder is a collaboration between artists Carol Inderieden and Chandler O'Leary; both contributed text and illustrations. The two artists lament the changes they have seen in the American West, changes driven by the thirst for oil and natural gas, changes spawned by fracking in North Dakota and ending in oil refineries of Washington. It is the story of tunnel vision and the attendant environmental consequences. The book "reads like a map - tracing both the route of the Empire Builder train and the path of industry and destruction, in one long, unbroken line." Colophon excerpts: "Seeing the Elephant was a figure of speech that came to… Read More

Atlantic Beach, Florida:: Linda Broadfoot,, 2014.. Edition of 30. Box 6.5 x 7 x 9.5" containing ten 5 x 7.5 x .5" double-sided panels. Poems letterpress printed on Hahnemühle Ingres paper using Perpetua type cast by Michael & Winifred Bixler. Text overprinted with a transparent honeycomb pattern. Archival pigment print images on Hahnemühle Photo Silk Baryta paper. Images and poems mounted on Russian birch plywood, foreedges coated with beeswax, and encased within a fabricated one-half scale maple Langstroth beehive box structure. Title and bee image engraved on the cover. Title page mounted on the interior side of the lid. Signed and numbered. Hive was produced over the course of two years and contains nine poems from The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy with images and design by Linda Broadfoot. Linda Broadfoot: "Hive was created to reveal the wonder of sunlit bees in the air and the mystery of the hive. The images and the physical structure of the book came from my… Read More

[Simi Valley, California]:: Pie in the Sky Press,, 2014.. Edition of 60 + 26 lettered copies. Of the edition there are three states: Deluxe (Lettered copies); Standard (numbered 1-25); and Special (Numbered 26-60). Printed letterpress. Handset California Old Style cast by M & H Typefounders and Gothic XX Condensed wood type. Printed using photopolymer plates and hand-carved Gomuban relief plates. Signed by the artist on the colophon. Standard: 6 x 9"; 108 pages. Printed on Somerset papers. Bound in simplified style with printed abaca wrapped boards and a cloth spine. Numbered. Rebecca Chamlee, prospectus: "Like the self-taught naturalists of the Victorian era, my recent work examines the intersection of my artistic and scientific interests by collecting and cataloging the natural world. I am inspired to record, interpret, and celebrate nature. "In my new artist's book I observe the natural world around me. Where Stucco Meets Chaparral explores the trails through… Read More

Rosendale, New York:: Women's Studio Workshop,, 2016.. Edition of 49. 8 x 7.75"; 80 pages. Screen-printed illustrations on newsprint, brown paper, and Seawhite sugar paper. Digitally printed text in 10 point Sans and Adobe Garamond Pro on Mohawk superfine paper. Coptic bound, with a wraparound board cover. Signed and numbered by the artist. WSW: "The Tang of Height was inspired by Phyllida's discovery of recurring appearance of box kites in the biographies of nineteenth-century scholars. Taking that shape as a metaphor for philosophical method and 20th-century thinking, the artist ties together the lives of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Alexander Graham Bell, and Nan Shepherd through archival fragments - images and ideas that resonate. These details connect across disciplines, flickering between the abstract and the particular; the philosophical and the personal - a poetry of facts. The screen-printed illustrations, as inserts, float freely of the text and reveal non-linguistic connections… Read More

Tucson, Arizona:: Spaceheater Editions,, 2018.. Edition of 50. 7 x 7"; 52 pages. Perfect bound in illustrated paper-covered boards. Accordion (6. 5.75" closed; 9 pages) insert attached to back pastedown. Interior text block printed by HP indigo. Accordion insert at the rear of the book printed by archival pigmented inkjet. Printed on acid-free Mohawk Superfine paper. Signed and numbered by the artist on the back free end page. Spaceheater Editions: "Trophy is a reaction to the current social and political state of the United States of America and the criminal and immoral administration that currently wields the power in our country. Although superficially the subject matter is the cruelty of the Trump sons, their activities are an indicator of the worldview of the morally bankrupt family and administration of Donald J. Trump."  In 2012 the Trump sons went big game hunting in Zimbabwe. The photos in Trophy are of the sons posing with their kills from the trip - an… Read More

Kingston, Ontario, Canada:: Transformer Press,, 2019.. Edition of 10. 12 x 12" closed, opens to 36 x 36"; 9 panels with 9 panes within. Materials: quilting fabric scraps, thread. Screen printed text. Signed and numbered by the artist. Lise Melhorn-Boe: "Counterpanes is a meander book that opens out to resemble a quilt, with nine-patch squares. These fabric books were screen-printed in an eccentric edition of 10 … using up drawers-full of quilting fabric scraps. For the edition of 10, I cut over 900 4.5" squares. There is one book in reds, and there are four in oranges, three in purples and two in greens." Four of the middle patches in four of the panels contain a poem by Hazel Hall. "Hazel Hall lived in Portland, Oregon, in the early 20th century. She was confined to the upper floor of her family home, where she took in sewing to augment the family's income, and wrote poetry. At least 35 of her poems are directly about sewing; many others use… Read More

[Salt Lake City]:: Marnie Powers-Torrey,, 2017.. Edition of 50. 5.5 x 5.75" folded cotton wrapper with pockets and tie closure. Text and textural elements printed letterpress from polymer plates. Pockets contain instruction pamphlet/travel journal, items for completing project, and completed boustrophedon of the poetry. Signed by poet and artist. Numbered. Marnie Powers-Torrey: "In November 2018, Amie Tullius invited Marnie to contribute to the production and dissemination of a traveling literary journal 'Train Tracts', a collaborative effort led by Amie and Stefanie Dykes of Saltgrass Printmakers. Marnie was paired with writer Rachel Marston, Assistant Professor English at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University in Minnesota, who offered a challenging text for interpretation and visual translation. The final edition of thirteen was due to the post office by January 31, 2019 so that the tracts, twelve editions of collaborative artists books by printmakers/book… Read More

San Juan Capistrano, California:: Inkswine Press,, 2020.. Edition of 14. 18 x 4.5 inches when folded (44.7 x 11.5 2.5cm); displays to 18 inches tall x 58.5 inches long (44.7 x 148.5 cm). Accordion structure. Gold paper chine collé, screen printing, and letterpress. Screen printed on gold Mulberry paper and rag. Signed and numbered by the artist. The work features a poem by Frank Bolles - "The crow". Bolles (b?lz) (1856-1894) was an American essayist and poet.  Dirk Hagner: "The book's title is given in three languages, all meaning the same thing. 'Tripod' in English, 'Dreifuss' in German, and 'SanZuWu' in Chinese. "The interest in this piece arises from mixing far Eastern mythology with Western poetic sentiment, and avoiding the Western notion of associating crows with bad tidings. The project combines a traditional dividing screen look with contemporary typography. "In Chinese mythology and culture, the three-legged… Read More

Milwuakee, Wisconsin:: Evelyn Patricia Terry,, 2021.. Series Variant, each unique. 3 x 3"; 6 panels including book boards. Miniature altered book. Materials: intaglio prints, screen prints, pastel, thread, artist's hair, permanent ink. Includes collage and handwritten text. Signed by the arist. A miniature version of Terry's original serires "America, Guests Who Came to Dinner (and Stayed)." Evelyn Patricia Terry: "'America, Guests Who Came to Dinner (and Stayed)', an altered book series, transforms books with cut, torn, sewn and glued original prints, drawings and handmade paper produced during my 50-plus year printmaking and drawing career. The distinct group of books re-purposes my 1981 screen print edition of 68 black ink images on white Stonehenge paper for each book's interior pages. The book covers repurpose predominately, assorted etchings, colored screen prints and pastel markings and sometimes handmade paper.  "Unchanging, this… Read More

Morgan Conservatory, Cleveland, Ohio :: Toby Millman,, 2019.. Edition of 15. 4.25 x 5.5"; 72 pages. Letterpress and inkjet printing. Mounted and hinged print ephemera. Printed in two versions, on Mohawk Superfine Cover and Neenah Howard Linen, each with 13 ephemeral objects. Hard cover, drum-leaf bound. Bound in red book cloth with title stamped on front cover. Produced at the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland, Ohio in July and August of 2019. Signed and numbered by the artist. Toby Millman: "'Family Business' … began from my father's accumulated stash of business cards related to the now defunct import/export electronics company started by my grandfather, Irving Kryss, and his brother, Josef, in the early 1970s. The business once had offices in Miami, Chicago, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tokyo, Colón and Caracas and the photographs and ephemera accumulated over the years tells a story of family, immigration and capitalism and the struggle to earn a living on one's own… Read More