Rare books from Vamp & Tramp, Booksellers, LLC

Sonoma, California:: Eastside Editions,, 2004.. Edition of 20. 22 x 17"; 28 pages. Letterpress printed. Twelve multiple-plate color etchings with linocut borders. 11 text pages with decorative linocut border. Printed on handmade Abaca paper. Bound in cloth covered boards. Slipcased. Edition of 20: 10 portfolio sets; 10 book sets. Colophon: "Cyrano De Bergerac was the true life inspiration for the romantic figure of Edmond de Rostand's 19th century plan and one of the more curious thinkers in early modern Europe. He was a satirist, swordsmen, poet, and philosopher who indeed had a prodigious appendage. The book, excerpts of which are translated here under the title Journeys to the Moon and Sun, consist in equal parts of sci fi, philosophical speculation, metaphysical drama, theological humor, and freak show satire. The scales of the world are turned upside down and found to be wanting. "  David Berona, Image & Narrative, "Art Hazelwood: A Graphic Witness of… Read More

Atlantic Beach, Florida:: Linda Broadfoot,, 2005.. Edition of 50. A combination of handset letterpress and computer generated work. Letterpress was used to print the text using metal type on a flat bed press on a Vandercook Universal III using Hahnemuhle Biblio and Copperplate papers at the Letterpress & Foundry of Michael and Winifred Bixler. Then digitally reproduced small Giclée prints of the artist's original 20 x 24" Polaroid image transfers were printed archivally on Crane's Museo paper using an Epson 4000 printer. A modern day Cabinet of Wonders. Broadfoot uses A. S. Byatt's "Things Are Not What They Seem" to accompany her images as "a numinous guide to viewing" these wonders of nature. The insects shown were selected from the Florida State Collection of Arthropods. Broadfoot: "In the spring of 2001, I began to borrow insect specimens from the Florida State Collection of Arthropods. Carefully transporting this delicate cargo to… Read More

Portland, Maine:: Rebecca Goodale,, 2012.. Edition of 5. 13.75 x 12.5 x 3.5"; 24 pages. Handcolored silkscreen prints with paste patterns. Letterpress printed text. Wedding cake binding. Housed in three quarter clamshell case. Rebecca Goodale: "This is a book I have been working on since 2010. In its 11 chapters it conjures up memories of white animals (and plants). Although this book is not specifically about flora and fauna protected by the Endangered Species Act, the book brings to mind how human impact has created islands of territory that limit DNA pools and lead to such anomalies as albinism, leucism, melanism, and piebalds. In fact two piebald white tail deer in our neighborhood were the start of my poetic remembrance in chapter 5. So, although there isn't a specifically labeled threatened or endangered species in this collection, I feel I am still working from the same point of view with this volume. "The binding is referred to as a compound dos-à-dos or… 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

Portland, Oregon:: Diane Jacobs / Scantron Press,, 2012.. Edition of 21 + 2 AP. 8 x 8 x 2" box containing 8 twice-folded prints (7.375" x 7.375" closed) and a felt with paper-pulp spoon. Images letterpress-printed reduction linoleum and wood blocks, pressure printing, polymer plates. Handset title page and colophon. Materials: gampi paper, wool felt, cast paper pulp, porcelain. Cast paper pulp spoon attached to block of wool felt. Bamboo box with hinged lid and three dropdown hinged sides. Cast porcelain turkey wishbone adhered in triangle hollowed on inside of the lid. Signed and numbered by the artist. Diane Jacobs: "Personal experiences brought Nourish to fruition: visiting Opal Creek's pristine ancient forest, witnessing a breathtaking starling murmuration, listening to musical compositions that transcend cultural boundaries, and sleeping under the expansive starry night sky. Nourish comes from gratitude and a desire to celebrate the wonders of our natural and created… Read More

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:: Thomas Parker Williams,, 2017.. Edition of 5. 11" in diameter x 2" high. Seven-sided wood case. Laser-cut face plate. Copper panels with patina and laser transfer design. 10 printed laser-cut panels with mechanical parts for actuation. Instruction sheet included. Signed and numbered by the artist. Thomas Parker Williams: "Revelation is an interactive artist book that uses a new construction I call the cascading rotary structure. "I was inspired by the cut-up method of writing developed by Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs in the 1950s. For the text I used excerpts from the final book of the New Testament, 'The Revelation of Saint John the Divine.' It is the most Burroughs-like book in the Bible. "The illustrations are my interpretations of the original first-century text. Its powerful, often violent imagery was thought to predict the end times, and was used as a weapon against various factions of believers. Over the… Read More

San Juan Capistrano, California:: Inkswine Press,, 2021.. Edition of 6. 29 aquatint etchings, woodcuts, chine collé, plus letterpress and screen printing. 15 x 11.5 inches, (38 x 29.25 cm) on 250 gm deckle edge rag paper, quarter case binding. Signed and numbered. Dirk Hagner: "The Lepidoptera series of 11 original prints roots in eastern and western sensibilities, and mythological notions of male-female attraction. It is realized by using gestural spontaneity and the graphic precision of printmaking. The project started with drawings for the woodcuts of the female figure, celebrated in art since the renaissance, and ink brush paintings for the making of aquatint lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) imagery. Asemic writing, printed from relief etchings, provide rhythmic compositional counterpoints. The addition of wood type letterpress outside the chine collé image area expands the visual to the entire page while the rich flat black screen-printed strips at its boundaries… Read More

Waco, Texas:: H. Jennings Sheffield,, 2022.. Edition of 15 + 2 hors commerce. This limited-edition Dos-à-Dos book contains 30 images printed on Canson Edition Etching Rag, plus 2 additional loose prints on Somerset Velvet encased in a custom die-cut envelope with foil-stamp. The Dos-à-Dos structure includes two chapters – Chapter 1 containing 15-black & white prints, and Chapter 2 containing 15-color prints. All images are archival pigment prints, tipped into the book, and are overlayed with Thai Unruhu paper. All photographs are captured and printed by H. Jennings Sheffield from 2017–2022. The hand-made paper is commissioned from Twinrocker Handmade Paper in Brookston, Indiana. The book is letterpress printed on a Vandercook Universal III press. The typography, presswork, and edition are bound by Black Hare Studio. The Forward, Residual Testimony, is written by writer and curator Liz Wells. Jenings Sheffield: "“Going Away from Here” is a collection of… Read More

East Hampton, New York:: Barry McCallion,, 2021.. Edition of 3 variants. 9.25 x 12.25"; 78 pages (57 numbered, 11 unnumbered). 9 folders of original paintings and excerpted text. Laid in relief-carved/ acrylic painted folder with star cutouts ion front cover accented in blue and red outlines as well as gold foil accent in center of each. Materials: unbleached Abaca paper; Old Holland oil paint, Richard de Bas paper. Housed in black cloth clamshell box with handwritten paper title on spine and starry night illustration on front cover. Signed and dated by McCallion. Text excerpts from publication: Nienke Bakker, Leo Jansen and Hans Luijten, editors "'Vincent van Gogh A Life in Letters". London, Thames & Hudson, 2020. Barry, McCallion, Colophon: "Within twenty years of his death in 1890, extracts from Vincent Van Gogh's letters appeared in magazine articles, accompanied exhibitions, and were published as an edition by Ambroise Vollard. In 1914, Theo's widow, Jo van… Read More

San Juan Capistrano, California:: Inkswine Press,, 2022.. Edition of 6. 9.5 x 15 x 3" (24 x 40.6 x 7.5 cm) closed extends to 9.5 x 64 x 1 inches (24 x 162.6 x 2.5 cm); 76 pages. 32 multi-color woodcuts, plus relief etchings and vignettes. Hand-printed on rag paper. Letterpress printed text using Cromwell and Metropolis types. Signed and numbered. Dirk Hagner: "'We saw a flood' is about our ignorance and complicity we exhibit in the destruction of this world brought on by human caused climate change. Its underlying verse structure is based on the anonymous 17th-century British verse 'I saw a peacock, with a fiery tail', an example of a nonsense or 'trick' poem part of a rich tradition of verses rooted in Anglo-Saxon riddles. "This work has been a year in the making. It consists of two facing books of 76 total pages, which are to be viewed and read in tandem. The odd pages of the left-hand book show changing groups of faces with the first half of a verse,… Read More

East Hampton, New York:: Barry McCallion,, 2018.. Edition of 3 variants. 13 x 10"; 18 text pages, 9 original linoleum block prints. Handwritten text on beige Rives BFK paper. Lino prints enhanced with acrylic inks and paints. Includes two original carved blocks of the prints adhered to the interior of the box. Signed and numbered by the artist McCallion has handwritten the text of Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado". The text is accompanied by McCallion's original artwork. Poe's short story is a revenge plot with the resulting punishment.  McCallion's lino cuts begin with the narrator meeting his "friend" Fortunato on the street at Carnival time. He lures Fortunato to test a cask of Amontillado. Our next image is of the long and winding spiraling staircase that Fortunato descends to the catacombs (the next lino image). The images continue as the fate of Fortunato is revealed. The last image being that of the narrator building a wall… Read More

New York:: Eleonora Gomez Bas,, 2003.. Edition of 3. 6 x 9" closed; extends to 114". Text in Spanish and English. Inkjet printing on archival paper. Concertina binding. Numbered. Includes separate colophon "a brief note on the content of this book". Eleonora Gomez Bas: "'Home and Back / Entrehogares' combines a poem in Spanish and English throughout the book, with accompanying photographs taken during my life in Caracas (Venezuela), and New York City.  "Having left my home country to move to Venezuela at 10, and later on moving to the United States at 24, attachment, separation, impermanence and adaptation have been major themes in my life since an early age. In my work 'Home and Back / Entrehogares', I use images and poetry to explore my journey of adaptation over the course of the past twenty years. Images blend into each other, depicting a process where I flow from place to place, sometimes more seamlessly than others. Words reflect my search… Read More

El Sobrante, California:: Lisa Kokin,, 1992.. One-of-a-Kind. 7 x 9.5 x 3" closed; 20 panels Materials: shoe last, gameboard pieces, ribbon, grommets. Text embossed into board game pieces. Wooden shoe last hinged. Pages created from gameboard pieces with ribbon binding. Title board nailed to shoe last base. Signed and dated on the bottom of the base by the artist. Lisa Kokin: "A Jacob's ladder-type book with a humorous poem that I wrote after being verbally harassed on the street. … The shoe last is kind of a metaphor. I was being sexually harassed for my weight by some guys leaning out of a car -- symbol of oppression, crushed under the weight of sexism...something to that effect. As always I try to do when talking about serious subjects, I use humor as a vehicle for accessibility.

El Sobrante, California:: Lisa Kokin,, 1993.. One-of-a-Kind. 3 x 8.5 x 2.5"; 10 leaves. Materials: globe parts, leather, paper. Mixed media collage. Binding two holes with leather cord. Lisa Kokin: "'Si Fidel!' is a book made out of a cut-up globe. The text relates to a dream in which I became a close confidant of Fidel Castro. Only when I was sure he completely trusted me did I reveal that I was a lesbian." Lisa Kokin uses a variety of recycled and found materials to make book art. She says: "My definition of 'book' is open-ended, a freedom which is in many ways attributable to my lack of formal book art training. I am blissfully unaware of all the rules I am breaking as I go about my routine of sewing, stapling, riveting and otherwise reassembling objects to transform them into something readable. My books address themes which have preoccupied me for many years -- loss, the rescuing of memory, cultural and sexual identity, and a critique of the… Read More

El Sobrante, California:: Lisa Kokin,, 1993.. One-of-a-Kind. 7.5 x 9.5 x 4"; 16 pads making 32 pages. Materials: rubber; latex-coated mini-pads; leather; photo transfers; found objects. Mixed media collage. Bound with leather run through two holes in each leaf sewn to rubber glove. Covers made of rubber glove, rubber balloons and top of rubber hot water bottle. Includes cloth pathology bag. Lisa Kokin, Mixed Media Books: "My definition of 'book' is open-ended, a freedom which is in many ways attributable to my lack of formal book art training. I am blissfully unaware of all the rules I am breaking as I go about my routine of sewing, stapling, riveting and otherwise reassembling objects to transform them into something readable. My books address themes which have preoccupied me for many years -- loss, the rescuing of memory, cultural and sexual identity, and a critique of the prevailing social values." In this mixed media book Kokin uses text from a Scientology… Read More