The Devil's Artisan

DEVIL'S ARTISAN #64, SPRING/SUMMER 2009

ARTIST AT WORK: GERARD BRENDER A BRANDIS / WOOD ENGRAVER AND BOOKWRIGHT

Original printed wraps. 108 pp. Octavo.

DA 64 (Spring 2009) features a professional biography of wood engraver and bookwright Gerard Brender à Brandis and is guest-edited by Gerard's sister, the novelist Marianne Brandis.

The issue includes twenty-eight reproductions of engravings made at various stages of the artist's career, as well as a dozen photographs of his studio in Stratford, his Albion Press and a few of his handmade books.

Topics covered in the text include Childhood and Youth, Art Studies and Early Work, Wood Engraving, Teaching, The Beginnings of Printing and Book-making, The Trip of 1971, and the Acquisition of the Albion Press, First Books Printed on the Albion, The `Papermaking' Trip of 1977, Wayzgoose and the Chapbooks, The Porcupine's Quill, and Other Publishers, Collaborators, Books Containing Gerard's Own Writing, Major Books of the Late Brandstead Years, The Move to Stratford, Stratford Books, and Work in Progress.

The Rogue's Gallery features wood engraver Wesley W. Bates.

The Dingbat, Ornament and Fanciful Initials feature includes a bunch of Bugs, Birds, Mammals (a Bear, a Boar and a Beaver) and Some Very Nice Fish.

The occasional photographs include Wes Bates at the launch of The Point of a Graver (1994), Wayzgoose in Grimsby (2002) and a couple of snapshots taken at the West Meadow Press in Clifford.

Printed offset on the Heidelberg KORD at the printing office of the Porcupine's Quill in the Village of Erin, Wellington County, Ontario, Canada. Smyth sewn into 16-page signatures. With coloured endleaves, hand-tipped, front and back.

Keepsake laid in is after a wood engraving, hand-watercoloured by G Brender à Brandis. Printed digital four-colour on an Indigo Press at Ampersand Printing (Guelph). The cover was printed offset by Tim Inkster at the Porcupine's Quill and features two additional wood engravings by G. Brender à Brandis.

As of May, 2009 the Devil's Artisan is also available digitally at zinio.com

Guest editor Marianne Brandis (l) with Gerard in the kitchen of his heritage salt-box house in Stratford. (Credit: Don Bragg)

The Devil's Artisan is remarkable in Canadian publishing in that most of the physical production of our journal is completed in-house at the shop on the Main Street of Erin Village. We print on a twenty-five inch Heidelberg KORD, typically onto acid-free Zephyr Antique laid. The sheets are then folded, and sewn into signatures on a 1907 model Smyth National Book Sewing machine.

To take a virtual tour of the pressroom, visit us at YouTube for a discussion of offset printing in general, and the operation of a Heidelberg KORD in particular. Other videos include Four Colour Printing, Smyth Sewing and Wood Engraving. Photographs of production machinery used on these pages were taken by Sandra Traversy on site at the printing office of the Porcupine's Quill, December 2008.