“His Magnum Opus” & “A Tour de Force”
Papermaking by Hand in America.
Colored frontis. and over 150 tipped-in illus., facsimiles of paper specimens and ream wrappers, & photographic illus. Large folio, orig. cloth-backed decorated paper boards, printed paper label on spine. Chillicothe: Mountain House Press, 1950.
Limited to 210 (?, see below) numbered copies, signed by Hunter who, for this book, made his own paper, type, and ink, and set all the type himself. “The most authoritative history of early American papermaking is Dard Hunter’s sumptuous, large folio Papermaking by Hand in America, a tour de force on one-man bookmaking, set by the author in a handcut type and hand-printed on handmade paper manufactured at the author’s own mill…Hunter spared no expense to record and evoke the paper mills of the preindustrial era.”–Bidwell, “Paper as evidence, artefact, and commodity” in The Book Encompassed. Studies in Twentieth-Century Bibliography (1992, ed. by Peter Davison), pp. 75-76.
A fine copy preserved in a red morocco-backed box. Bookplate of Haven O’More.
❧ Schlosser 41–“The last work of the Mountain House Press and the author’s magnum opus, this book provides a history of American papermaking by listing and describing the first paper mill in each state from 1690 until 1811, six years prior to the introduction of the first paper machine into the United States. There are in the book 123 facsimiles of documents and watermarks and forty-two reproductions of labels used by these early paper manufacturers. The thick folio volume was to have been issued in an edition of 210 copies, but the author’s own bibliography says that only 180 were completed. The book is printed on Dard Hunter’s paper.”.
Price: $9,500.00
Item ID: 5922
