The Old-time Printer

Baltimore: Xavier Press, 1988. Taddeo, Paolo. vi, 18pp. Samuel Clemens's account of his formative time spent as a printer's apprentice, presented as a speech at a dinner for New York printers. Illustrated with a frontispiece portrait of Clemens and a vignette depicting a compositor setting type. This copy is in a designer binding by the Italian-British bookbinder Paolo Taddeo. Onlays of salmon, grey, and black morocco form the shape of a piece of lead type, outlined in palladium-leaf tooling, creating a symmetrical design on each of the covers. The artist chose the letter H for his design, citing the letter's visual stability and steadiness, "with both feet firmly planted on the ground." As someone whose first language is Italian, he also notes that his selection of the letter H is "controversial," since it is not pronounced in his native language and gives him difficulty in spoken English. However, he writes, "in my mother tongue it's a letter of vital importance in the way that it changes the sounds of the consonants it attaches to." Housed in a clamshell box that contains a drawer for the two pieces of seven- and ten-point type included with the book. Taddeo was elected a Licentiate of Designer Bookbinders in 2013 and has twice won the Arthur Johnson Award in the organization's annual competition. (2 1/2 by 2; 65x53mm).