Chance Press

The nice thing about the name “Chance Press” is that it’s easy to remember, and it is simple. The not-so-nice thing about it is that other people may end up using the same (or a similar) name. Bill at Bottle of Smoke Press probably doesn’t need to worry about this.

Recently, an anthology of comics by women (“Womanthology”) raked in an unprecedented $109,000 on Kickstarter. There is a minor controversy brewing right now because the publisher doesn’t plan to pay the contributors (who, it should be noted, all agreed to donate their work to the anthology in advance). Instead, she wants to use the money to start a comics imprint called “Chance Comics.” With 100K in startup funds, I have no doubt that this imprint will bury us in the search results under scores of Amazon.com listings for the books, as well as her own website, and the general chatter about the new imprint – which should be helped by the controversy currently being stirred up by Womanthology.

I’ll just go on record that no one who publishes with Chance Press will ever hear a pitch about donating work to us for the exposure. We generally pay in contributor’s copies (currently that means around 20% of the print run, depending on the specifics of the individual edition), because we can’t afford to pay in real money – we’ve sunk at least a few thousand dollars of our savings into the press, and while we break even or make a little profit on each book, that inevitably gets invested back into equipment and other material needs not specific to one project.

We’ll keep plugging along as “Chance Press,” since we’re in it for the long haul. If other people end up using the name too, there isn’t much we can do about it (besides sue them, I suppose), and hopefully the diversity and quality of our publications will keep intact the identity of “Chance Press” books that we’ve worked so hard to build. And speaking of Chance Press books, tomorrow I will finally drop the details of our three fall releases, all of which comprise the most exciting book launch in our short history.

Who wants a drink?

Normally, we don’t accept submissions, since we like to spend our time working on books rather than reading and responding to things. However, there are a couple openings in our schedule for early 2012 that we’re trying to fill.

The first project we want to do is the next installment in our widely respected Chance Press Research series. What we’re looking for: well-written, extensively researched, and above-all READABLE essays about literary or cultural topics. Something that sheds new light on a well-known author or makes a persuasive case for a lesser-known writer/artist/musician/etc. We don’t want another essay about gender relations in Joyce’s Ulysses. Or anything that uses the word “diagesis.” Check out our past Chance Press Research titles for examples of what we have published in this series.

The second project is a good, old-fashioned fiction book. No novels! Max page count is 60, less is better. Short stories or one longer story. We’re pretty wide-open on this one – if you think it’s good, we just might as well.

Notes:
- Send submissions in an email attachment using Microsoft Word to books (at) chancepress (dot) com.
- Previously unpublished work only.
- Include a cover letter! At least tell us who you are and a little bit about yourself.
- Be clear about anywhere else you have submitted work that you’re sending to us.
- We will answer yes or no ONLY. We publish what we like, and our taste should have no bearing on your own opinion of your writing.
- We will answer every submission – if you haven’t heard from us yet, we haven’t read your submission yet.
- When you see an update at the top of this post that says submissions are closed, then submissions are closed. Otherwise, fire away.

Also – keep in mind that we’re swamped right now with the slate of publications we have coming out this fall/winter. We may not get to your submission for a few months, during which time you may feel free to submit it elsewhere AS LONG AS YOU TELL US YOU’RE DOING IT. And thanks in advance for submitting!

Last you heard, we were working on a hardcover, deluxe edition of the Inkpoems book by MJP. Because the paper MJP uses for these works of art is so distinctive, I wanted to use it to cover the boards of the hardcover, making it the dominant component of the binding. Originally I thought I would use it more as an accent, since my idea was to include an original ink poem with each copy as well. However, one of my pet peeves in art vs book collecting is how individual pieces of art are valued so much more highly than art that is attached to a book… that the uncouth book drags the spiritually pure artwork down to the level of a commercial object. (For evidence of this, refer to the results of a recent auction of work by Charles Bukowski in which a painting that literally looks like it was finger painted in diarrhea sold for over $10,000, while a drop-dead mint copy of his most collectible book (Post Office) with a much more attractive painting tipped in sold for $6,600.) So, rather than using the 300-year old paper as a design accent, I decided to make it the centerpiece of the book and then ask the artist to paint an original ink poem on each cover. This way, the art isn’t a bonus or an add-on (or something you can carefully separate, frame, and later sell at auction) – it IS the cover. Take that. This book is for book collectors, not art collectors.

The problem, however, is that the paper is fragile. Normally, to bind a book like this, I would use Gudy adhesive film, since, as I’ve previously noted, I’m not particularly worried about Gudy breaking down chemically and staining the cloth over time, since it is very stable (and the bookcloth we use has an acid-free paper lining, providing an extra layer of material between the adhesive and the cloth). In this case, though, I don’t want a pressure-sensitive adhesive anywhere near the old paper. It would probably be fine, but I’m not taking any chances with it – it is remarkable that it has survived 300 years in the first place, and so I only want it to come into contact with materials that meet the highest conservation standards.

That being said, I didn’t really want to start slathering it with glue, either. My glue of choice for this (and really for anything that requires glue from now on) is Beva Gel. I like Beva Gel for a few reasons. First, unlike most PVA formulations, Beva Gel (which is an EVA formulation) has a very low water content, meaning it forms an adhesive layer that sits on top of the material without really being absorbed into it. This can make it difficult to work with, since it dries very quickly, but this property has some advantages as well. It is less messy to work with, since it performs best if left to dry momentarily before being applied and then being brayed heavily after application. Because it is partially dry before application, it can be repositioned without making a mess – and if it dries too much, it can be reactivated (although not fully removed) with heat. But, like I said, given the fragility and thickness of the paper, I didn’t want to start spreading thick glue all over it, fearing that some of the adhesive would be absorbed inevitably, and imagining some detrimental effects that this would have on the appearance of the paper. Also, covering boards with paper is rough on the paper – this is less of an issue with strong paper purpose-made for art applications than it is when you’re using paper made for commercial books in the 1700s. Although this paper is nice stuff – fairly thick rag paper with a really nice feel to it – I was still worried about the paper splitting and cracking where it is folded over the edges of the boards.

So, to add an absorptive layer to the paper and to provide tensile strength, I selected a tissue-weight Japanese Tengujo paper as a lining. I didn’t want something that would be too thick, since that would make the end result too thick and potentially difficult to work with, and I like Japanese papers for their strength – they are often much stronger and much lower weights than Western paper. To join the two layers, I used a heat activated Beva 371 film with a 1ml thickness. This way, there is a permanent, flexible bond between the paper and the lining that further boosts the tensile strength, since it is an actual EVA film and not an adhesive substrate like many films. (In other words, when Beva 371 film is hot, it acts like glue, but when it cools, it feels like very thin SaranWrap.) After letting the adhesive cool, I trimmed the paper to size and applied the glue in order to bind the books.

For the spine, I used Genji bookcloth, which is a Japanese handmade cotton/rayon cloth that is one of the most high-quality bookcloths available. It has a sheen that isn’t really visible in the photos below, but rest assured it looks very cool.

Here are some photos:

Placing the page under the adhesive film

Ironing the adhesive onto the paper

Multiple sheets with the adhesive layer applied

The Tengujo before it is applied to the paper

Ironing the Tengujo onto the paper

The lined sheets, ready to be trimmed and used to cover boards

Final binding, ready to be sent to the artist to be adorned with an original ink poem on the cover

So, what have your fine friends at Chance Press been up to the past couple months? Well, with the restoration of Carol Es’s books completed, we’ve been focusing on our next two projects, which we’re excited to announce:

Coming (hopefully) in June of this year is Ink Poems by Michael Phillips (MJP to you and me). MJP has been cranking these out for the better part of a decade using 100+ year-old paper (sometimes as old as 400 year-old paper) and hand-ground inks to create genre-bending works of cartoon/poetic art. Examples litter the eponymous website: www.inkpoems.com. MJP was warm to the idea of collecting some of our (meaning Justine and my) favorites into a book, so that’s just what we’re doing – 30 ink poems (digitally printed in full color), plus a new introduction for the book, inked by hand by the man himself. 50 or so copies will have Gocco-printed covers – the “trade” edition, if you will. Another 20 will have handmade covers with scraps of 100 year old paper applied in a decorative configuration, plus hand-lettered titles by the author. Finally, we’re doing 8 hardcover copies covered in 300 year-old paper, each of which will have an original ink poem on the cover. These will be ridiculously deluxe, as you’ve come to expect. (Check back  for a post with process photos…)

The second book we’re releasing – hopefully sometime in July – is the first published work of an author we both feel eminently confident is going to move on to a fabulous career as a cartoonist and illustrator (not to mention that elusive, nebulous title of “fine artist”). Brett Harder is his name, and his skill is, not to put too fine a point on it, jaw-dropping. Here’s the thing about Brett – I didn’t expect him to be any good. He got in touch with me over my blog after reading my Serafini article, saying that he began researching Serafini because some people had seen his work and asked him if Serafini was an influence. Now, I’ve become pretty jaded to this line, since I’ve been contacted by more than one person who claims to ‘channel’ Serafini, but instead only channels something that looks like the bottom of the sink after I do the dishes. I was bored, though, and so I clicked over to his website to see what he had. And. I. Was. Blown. Away. The Serafini influence is definitely there, although calling it an ‘influence’ is unfair to Brett, since he was unaware of Serafini at the time he was working on the book we are going to publish, titled Furlqump. Even more remarkable is that Brett is a young fellow – an exciting prospect considering where his talent will be with 10, 20, 30 more years of experience. I don’t really think of the books we publish as investment pieces (although I would be very happy for our collectors if our books did appreciate in value), but this one is an exception, since I can all but guarantee that Brett is going to move onto larger publishers and wider audiences, leaving this as the “lost” first edition of his first book that people are buzzing about on message boards years in the future.

So what about it? We’re printing it digitally, in full color in an edition of 100 copies, although we will do another printing of 100 if the initial run sells out. We’ll do a run of 26 hardcovers printed entirely using archival inks for the best possible image quality (take THAT, commercial publishers!) that will be signed (hopefully with a little sketch), and for the die-hards, an amazing, heretofore unseen (except in my own head) binding concept I’m calling a “triple hardcover” that includes an archival print on museum-quality paper. This edition will be printed as close to actual-size as possible, meaning that it will measure around 11″ tall by 9″ wide, printed entirely using archival inks. Obviously it will be limited, so like I always say, let us know if you’re interested so I can mark you down for one. Without diminishing any of our other books, this is really one that you shouldn’t pass up.

What else is going on? Well, we’re doing a little fundraising drive to raise some money to fund the above books, but it isn’t really taking off. If you’re on our email list, you’ll get an email about it shortly – and if the idea of buying stuff from us that isn’t advertised on this site, not available in our store, and only going to be made to fill orders we get through our fundraising promotion (a la Kickstarter), is interesting to you, shoot us an email and we’ll fill you in on the details.

Finally, here is something that Chance Press enthusiasts will like: Justine and my Mother’s Day gift to my mom. One of the benefits of birthing a small press publisher is the possibility that, 30 years down the line, you get a hand-bound hardcover portfolio with archival prints of your son’s wedding printed on museum-quality rag paper. This little number is covered in Asahi book cloth with 300-year old paper for the spine (lined with starched bookcloth so it won’t rip in half), and the interior paper is Fabriano Tiziano. The prints are on Moab Entra Rag Bright 310gsm paper. Not bad for an afternoon’s work.

As a follow-up to my post about archival materials, I thought I’d write about fixing up Scribbles in a Sandstorm. Avid readers may recall that the problem we faced was that a particular kind of tape we used had some undesirable effects on paper – namely, that it turned paper yellow. I’m glad we caught this after a few months, since for the most part, we have been able to remove the tape wherever it was used on paper and replace it with a true archival adhesive (something called “Beva Gel”, which is most commonly used by professional art conservators). Thankfully, the tape hasn’t been in place long enough to ruin either the book itself or the individual prints, although it has left its very pale yellow mark nonetheless. We have been careful to remove all trace of the adhesive residue from the paper so that chemicals in the tape won’t continue the degradation process, and luckily due to the design of the book, these yellow marks get covered up when we re-adhere the prints into the book with Beva Gel.

One note: in my last post on the subject, I described the process of separating pages that have been stuck together: using a spatula or flat knife, you carefully separate the pages and then use an eraser to remove the adhesive residue. Unfortunately, in this case that process didn’t work so well. First, I am not a professional conservator, and so there is the problem of my skill level – it is really difficult not to pierce one of the pages you are trying to separate… and even if you are able to avoid doing that, it is next to impossible to separate the two pieces without some pretty significant handling marks. (There’s a reason why being a conservator is something that takes years upon years of study and practice.) Second, we’re not dealing with tape that has become brittle or lost its strength over the years – the tape we used for this book is still incredibly strong, and it’s also very gummy (and around 0.5mm thick) – so the spatula or conservator’s knife gets gummed up in the adhesive, which makes separating the two pages even more difficult.

For this reason, we made the choice to use a solvent to help release the paper from the adhesive. After some extensive testing, I decided that heptane (sold commercially as “Un-Du” sticker remover) would work well. I researched heptane for many hours as well and found that it is fairly commonly used in the conservation community, unlike other commercial adhesive removers like Goo Gone or similar products. Heptane is a very low-polarity solvent, which means that it doesn’t change the structure of the paper (water, on the other hand, is very high-polarity, which is why it causes paper to warp and buckle). It also evaporates very quickly and is relatively safe (compared to other solvents). Most research I did recommending starting with a low polarity solvent, and if that doesn’t work, slowly increasing the polarity of the solvent (acetone, naphtha, toluene, xylene, etc.) until you get something that does work. Thankfully heptane has worked extremely well, since solvents like toluene are very toxic and also have their own problems – namely “overcleaning,” which means that the solvent cleans the paper beyond its original state, leaving “tide lines” as it evaporates.

The one unknown here is what the heptane-treated paper will look like in 20 years. Looking at the yellow marks the tape has left in a few short months gives me confidence that removing it was necessary, and I can say honestly that I probably would have ruined most of the books if I tried to remove it without the aid of a solvent. For what it’s worth, Un-Du is acid free and photo safe, although those claims are worth almost nothing, as I have learned. Again, the fact that heptane is discussed in conservation literature as a viable product to use in archival applications gives me hope that it won’t turn the paper yellow in 20 years.

So here you go: a photo gallery of restoring Carol’s masterpiece:

This is what the tape looks like before it is adhered to another sheet. For this test, I adhered it to the back of a rejected copy of one of the prints we used in the book.

Now that the paper is down, there is a sandwich (paper on top, tape in the middle, and paper on the bottom). The heptane will need to be applied to both sides in order to remove the tape completely. I apply the heptane sparingly - just enough to get it to soak into the paper where I need it. If it starts to pool, I use the spatula to spread it around.

Carefully, I use the spatula to separate the top layer of the sandwich from the tape. I need to make sure that I am not causing the tape to pull up from the bottom layer of paper, since no heptane has yet been applied there, and trying to lift the tape off would damage the paper.

Now, the top layer has been removed and set aside to dry. A layer of tape remains and will need to be removed from the bottom layer.

I apply heptane to the outside of the paper (opposite the tape). Using a spatula, I coax the edges up and then proceed to very carefully separate the tape from the paper.

For really stubborn sections, I use a conservator's knife. This can be dangerous, though, since it is easy to inadvertently slice right through the paper.

The tape is gone, but now there is an oily stain.

Here is a close-up around 30 minutes later.

And then 24 hours later - no more stain.

We published Dave Donovan as part of our first publication, the poetry anthology A Common Thread. Since then, however, we’ve been wanting to put out a book giving Dave center stage. I am the Circus is that book – a quick burst of four poems pulled from Dave’s past couple years of writing. He’s the kind of writer who doesn’t have a theme or a gimmick – just an unmistakable way of describing the everyday. This is poetry distilled to its essence, with no unnecessary fluff… just bare emotion, the way it should be.

Ordering:

The first edition is limited to 62 copies.
Trade Edition (5o copies): $3.00
Deluxe Edition (12 copies): $12.00

To order, please visit our online store.

Edition Details:

I am the Circus is a hand-sewn single-signature chapbook. The trade edition has a Canson Infinity Mi-Teintes wraparound band printed with Epson Ultrachrome K3 inks. The deluxe edition is sewn in handmade paper wrappers made by Papeterie St-Armand from recycled pulp, adorned by a cover label printed using the same Epson inks, and is signed by the author.

Not to get too sales pitch-y, but the paper for the deluxe edition needs to be seen and felt to be believed – the artist doesn’t use wood-pulp, but instead makes her own pulp using recycled fibrous material, so each sheet is a little different. It is much stronger and heavier than normal paper, almost like a cross between watercolor paper and a flannel shirt.

Pictures:

A few months ago, I posted in the Bukowski.net forum about the materials Chance Press uses, noting that we use a lot of a particular type of tape, and that if there were ever a problem with that tape, all of our books would fall apart. Now, this tape wasn’t some cut-rate crap that we were using to cut corners – the manufacturer guaranteed that it was acid-free and “archival,” and would remain transparent for a very long time. Add to that fact that it is incredibly strong and bonds like crazy, and it didn’t really bother us to pay the fairly steep price of $20 per roll. Some of our books – like Carol Es’s book that I have just about finished – use over $100 worth of tape throughout the entire edition.

Well, last night I was looking at the display copy of Carol’s book, and I noticed that there was some very worrying yellowing starting to appear along the edge of a couple tipped-in pieces. I peeled them off, and I found that the tape had completely turned yellow in a matter of around 6 months. Not only was this tape decidedly NOT archival, it was also very aggressively acidic. I emailed our supplier (who gets bulk rolls directly from the manufacturer, an operation called Provo Craft), and let her know what was going on, and she nonchalantly told me that the manufacturer had stopped claiming that it was acid free due to a specification change a while back, and that she would change the website to take that feature off the page selling the tape. I let her know that it was a pretty big deal to me and that this little spec change that no one had thought to let anyone know about had ruined thousands of dollars worth of merchandise and months of my labor, but she didn’t really seem all that fazed. Feel free to email Provo Craft and let them know that they are evil baby snatching fornicators if you wish – I hate them about as much as I hate the Westboro Baptist Church these days. This very thing – a manufacturer changing a superior product into a shit-erior product without telling anyone only to save a few cents – had been voiced to me, and I guess I just hoped that it wouldn’t actually happen. But there you go.

Where this really hits us hard is with Scribbles in a Sandstorm, a book in which we’ve invested close to $1000 (if not more) and countless hours of our time. I have been working on this book since April of last year (while fitting in some other projects here and there), and in a recent surge over the last month, I had almost finished all the copies in the edition. And now this. The main problem is that this book uses the offending tape everywhere – in the binding, to adhere the cover print, the title page, and the colophon, and to tip in all the other material. First order of business is to take care of people who bought the book – and we will do that, either by reworking the actual sold copies or by making a brand new copy.

I don’t think that I will have to redo any of the binding, since this tape is only used to reinforce the hemmed edges of the bookcloth (the center is adhered using another adhesive), and so there is no part of the book that exerts any force on the tape (something that could cause the tape to de-bond if it dries out and becomes brittle). Nor do I have much concern that it ever will become brittle – it may have turned yellow, but even the pieces I pulled off are very tacky. Still, all bets are off with this stuff, and if the tape were used anywhere that might fall apart, I would redo the bindings. But, since I really can’t see that happening, I’m not too worried about it. Additionally, the tape is sandwiched between acid-free bookboard and a hemmed layer of paper-backed bookcloth – meaning that the chemical in the tape would have to penetrate two layers of cloth and two layers of paper before they reached the surface of the book, where they would be visible. Again, this is very unlikely.

Anywhere the tape touches paper, however, needs to be reworked. This is out of what could be termed “an abundance of caution” – I have only seen the yellowing so far in two places – on the colophon page of the display copy and on the colophon page of a one-off book we did back in September (the Porcellino/Van Sciver Z-binding). Both of these instances involve the same type of paper – Canson Infinity Rag Photographique, which is known for its exceptionally smooth surface. In working with this paper, I have noticed that the coating is very delicate and prone to staining from just about anything – even a light pencil mark is very difficult to erase without creating a smudge. And in all the copies of Carol’s book, it is only one colophon page that is turning yellow. Still, in seeing what has happened to the tape over this short period of time, I am not confident that the problem is limited to these few instances. In the best case scenario, the yellowed tape will not affect places where it is used to adhere thick watercolor or printmaking paper to boards (such as on the covers of the hardcover CPR books we released last spring), or dark-colored Fabriano paper (such as in the Larding hardcovers). In the worst case, those too will become stained over time, and we’ll have a number of books to rework. (As an aside, I should note that we stand behind all the books we’ve made, and if a book you bought from us suffers a defect relating to a non-archival material, we will fix it.)

The day this went down, I was a mess – a tightly wound ball of rage who could only think of how horribly wrong everything had gone – and considered shutting down Chance Press forever. But, once my temper tantrum subsided, I got to work researching how to fix this problem… and if there is a silver lining to the whole thing it’s that we were forced to take a critical look at our practices and firm up our stance on the whole notion of “archival” as it relates to our books.

The idea of what constitutes “archival” is debatable in the first place. Many people simply use it as a stand-in for “acid-free,” since anything with an overly acidic ph generally tends to degrade more quickly than one that is ph-neutral. But acid-free doesn’t tell the whole story, since there are plenty of other variables that can cause paper, cloth, board, thread, and adhesive to degrade over time. If handled with cotton gloves and stored in a light-proof box made from acid-free board in a humidity-controlled environment, a standard piece of Japanese paper (like Mulberry) will last an incredibly long time. If handled regularly by normal people and left exposed on a shelf, it won’t. So is the paper archival? It is acid-free and made by hand from very durable plant fibers, but how long it lasts depends more on how it is stored than on the paper itself. Concerning storage, most products sold as “archival” are either acid free, or ideally they will pass the ANSI test for “photoactivity” (IT9.16). This means that the materials in question have been subjected to an accelerated aging process and then applied to substances like silver (which is present in photographic prints) to see if the tested material will cause a chemical change. To pass the test, the material has to produce no chemical change to the substances on which it is tested, meaning that in real world conditions, the material can be applied to a photographic print for hundreds of years without distorting it in any way. The PAT (“photo-activity test”) is a good benchmark to test the long-term stability of a product, but it only tests one small sliver of that product’s reactivity. For instance, an adhesive tape such as 3M’s Preservation tape (which is used by professional framers) has passed the PAT, but no data is available on things like how long it remains adhesive, what affect it has on the inkjet coatings of digital art papers, and how many years it takes before the adhesive goes cloudy or yellow. Because it has passed the PAT, one can assume that it is sufficiently stable to last a very long time, but how long remains to be seen except by conservators hundreds of years from now (as long as the world hasn’t been destroyed by nuclear or environmental catastrophe by that point, rendering the entire notion of “archival” moot).

It just so happens that Justine’s childhood best friend is a professional conservator who now tends to historical archives in various locations around Europe; that is to say, she is a good resource for these types of questions. When I emailed her for help with this issue, she gave me a bunch of good ideas for salvaging and reworking the Carol books where we had used the offending tape – the strategy is to lightly heat the adhesive and then to use a long, flat knife or spatula to carefully separate the layers of paper and then to remove the adhesive residue with an eraser. There are harsher chemicals available for this (things that have long organic chemistry-sounding names that end in –ylene), but these will probably react negatively with the prints that are on the other side of the paper, so some gentle hours spent dragging an eraser over the adhesive residue should do the trick. As far as what to use instead of the tape, that’s where things get tricky.

Tammi (that’s the conservator) admitted that she was definitely the wrong person to ask about what types of tape are safe, since conservators stay away from pressure-sensitive adhesives altogether. (For reference, a pressure-sensitive adhesive is any adhesive that bonds without the aid of moisture or heat.) Again, the problem is that even tapes that do advertise as acid-free may contain all types of other non-acidic chemicals that are very harmful over the long-term to paper, and even the very best of them (such as 3M Preservation tape) have not been in use long enough to assess their long-term implications. Another problem with pressure-sensitive adhesive, at least from a conservator’s perspective, is that they are not “reversible” – meaning that they don’t become unstuck easily, if at all (usually the aforementioned harsh chemicals are required). Reversibility is the other side of the “archival” coin, and one that I am much less concerned with as a book maker. I want the books we make never to come apart, but I wouldn’t feel the same way if I were relining 500-year old canvases or repairing very old documents. So, suffice it to say that Tammi was not very sympathetic about the acid-free dupe, since in her opinion, our books were in trouble from day one the minute we chose to use any type of pressure-sensitive adhesive.

Instead, Tammi recommended the bookbinding staple of wheat paste, or failing that, PVA glue (which is very good – although how good is dependent on the particular formulation – but not reversible). My problem with wet adhesives is that I have a very difficult time using them in a way that doesn’t cause the paper to warp or buckle. This can be a consequence of the amount of glue used, or it can be caused by too much water in the formulation, or not enough weight applied during drying. I made the decision before starting on Carol’s book not to use any wet adhesives for that very reason (the binding is such that any warping of the paper or boards could cause the book not to “work” (meaning, the spine wouldn’t be able to be attached). Additionally, using a wet adhesive and then following the correct protocol for drying (hold in place with pressure, then place between layers of non-adherent synthetic paper and absorbent paper outside the synthetic, all under weight for at least several hours) would have caused each book to take an unrealistically long time.
This brings me to another issue that needs to be taken into account: how much our books cost. If I knew that we could sell Carol’s books for the $500 or so (if not more) that you see fine press books like this command, then I would feel more comfortable taking 2-3 years to produce the entire edition. Unfortunately, we are not a fine press, and we also want to have a steady stream of releases rather than one very significant release every few years. And so, we reach a point where we need to adopt certain less-than-archival methods to build our books that enable us to cut down on steps like weighting and drying wheat paste or PVA glue.

In other words, when deciding what archival methods to use, we need to keep the following things in mind:

• How much we expect the book to cost
• How much time we can devote to making it
• The potential negative effects of using a non-archival product

And, our goal is to come up with the most ideal balance for each project. This doesn’t mean that we want to cut corners wherever possible; it is more like we start by looking at only the most archival adhesives and decide where these A+ products aren’t totally necessary, given the realities of the project. For instance, if I had to do Carol’s book over again, I would still use pressure-sensitive adhesive for the binding, despite Tammi’s warnings. However, I would obviously not use the same tape, or even the Xyron adhesive film that we used. Knowing what I know now, Xyron is probably fine, but possibly not. It is acid free, but I don’t know what else is in it, and I do know that it is made by a big art supply company in China who could change the specifications without notice, leaving us in the same position. Instead, I would use a product called Gudy, which is manufactured in Germany by a company called Neschen whose main business is very high-end adhesive films for framing and other archival applications. Gudy is reversible with certain chemicals and has passed the PAT, which suggests that it is suitable for book arts applications. Is Gudy a true archival product? Probably not, but I have a high level of confidence in it, and my feeling is that it will last for a great many years before falling apart.

I feel the same way about the 3M Preservation tape (“the best of the worst” in Tammi’s words): it is very likely perfectly fine to use in long-term applications, and I don’t have much worry about using it to adhere pastedowns to low-to-medium-priced books. We just finished up a new book by David Donovan, and I used 3M tape on the pastedowns for the special edition, which we are pricing at $12. But what if the pastedown was an original watercolor painting by Dave? Or, in a less hypothetical example, a sketch by Carol that needed to be tipped in? Here, it is much more important to me to use a true archival adhesive. Adhering cloth to board is fairly simple – the cloth just needs to stick to it for a long time. But, as noted earlier, when dealing with paper-on-paper, a lot more can go wrong than the adhesive losing its strength. Even though I would be 99% confident using Gudy or 3M tape, proceeding with these materials on a piece of original artwork or a limited edition print would leave me feeling anxious as to the future of the material.

Because I am still trying wherever possible to avoid wet adhesives, the other option is heat-transfer adhesive or film. An extremely highly-regarded product developed specifically for professional conservators over 40 years ago and researched extensively is known as “Beva” or Beva 371, which is the standard formula. Unfortunately, Beva 371 is toxic enough to melt the skin off your face, and it can only be used in shops where full respirators, chemical-resistant gloves, and industrial eye protection are available. Beva 371 works (as far as I can tell) by suspending adhesive in a goo of toxic chemicals that are, somehow, not toxic to paint, canvas, or paper. When the toxic goo dries, the adhesive is left on the canvas in a totally inert form – only after being heated to a fairly low 150 degrees F does it become tacky and adherent. As it cools, it forms a bond that is very strong, unless it is reheated, at which point it releases (making it highly reversible). Then, by applying a new round of toxic chemicals (which again are safe to use on canvas, paper, and paint), the residue can be removed from the canvas entirely, as if it were never there.

Fortunately for archival adhesive enthusiasts, Beva 371 is also available in a film format, which basically applies all the above steps up until the heating to a piece of mylar film. This works like double-sided tape, although the pain-in-the-ass factor has been augmented. One side of the film is coated with Beva 371 which has been dried and covered with a silicone release paper. (So no toxic vapors or caustic goo, just good old-fashioned archival adhesive.) To use it, you remove the release paper and position the Beva side down on one of the materials you are sticking together. Using a heated spatula, you warm the adhesive to 150 degrees, allowing it to form a bond with the material. After it cools, you remove the mylar film and place the other material over it, heating it again to cause the adhesive to form another bond. When it cools, the two materials will be stuck together. I have some Beva film on order (as well as another product called Beva Gel, which is a much-less-toxic version of Beva that I want to experiment with, although I’m pretty sure it was a waste of money), and I will play around with it – right now it sounds like the best compromise between wanting to use a dry adhesive and using a true archival adhesive to tip the prints into Carol’s book.

Hopefully all of this makes sense and sounds reasonable to our collectors. Our main goal is to make books that we as collectors would want to buy, but we also want to be up front about how the sausage is made, so to speak. Our books won’t last if they sit in direct sunlight for 5 years, if your dog chews them, if you use them to blow your nose, etc. If we use Beva in a book, and you leave that book in your car, it will liquefy in the heat, and it might get ruined (although Beva is so reversible that we could repair it for you, since we’re nice like that). But, we put enough care into the details that they will most likely last a very long time if properly cared for. And obviously, if you’ve purchased a book from us and would like to know about any issues with its construction that could negatively affect its lifespan, let us know, and we’d be happy to go through it with you.

This was a fun one – a gift for Justine for her birthday this year. Ray Ceasar is her absolute favorite artist (I think he’s amazing as well, but I don’t like him anywhere near as much as she does), and we have a few books by him (including one in a clamshell case with a signed print), but I thought it would be really cool to have a handmade book of his work.

Skip the next part if you just want to see pictures and be done with it. Here are my notes on the design:

1) I went back and forth with the paper size. I had a surplus of 7″ x 7″ boards from Carol’s book, and that seemed like a good size for this book… I only had images from Caesar’s website, and to print them with a high enough resolution, I was limited to around 3″ x 3″ images – so anything bigger than 7″ x 7″ would have looked silly. (For printing geeks – I printed these at 220 dpi. I experimented with 180, but it started to look pixelated, and the sharpness of the detail in Caesar’s artwork is important. Recently Justine got her hands on some larger images that will print 5″ x 7″ at 300dpi, so I will probably make another edition for her birthday next year.) So anyway, back to the paper – most inkjet paper comes in 8.5 x 11 and 11×17 (and then bigger sizes and on rolls), and the 11 x 17 is really expensive. Not that I should spare any expense on my dear wife, but I thought of it kind of as a copout just to blow a bunch of money on a 25-pack of 11 x 17 paper, when all I needed was a few sheets. At first, I planned to use digital ground on some Arches watercolor paper, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it would probably look messy… and I even did some test prints of one of Caesar’s images, and the detail just wasn’t as fine on the digital ground as it was on the inkjet paper.

Ultimately, I decided to go with standard 8.5 x 11 paper (Moab Entrada Rag Bright 300gsm, 2-sided), with which I’ve always had really good luck printing. (In fact, I often use the Moab color profile when printing on Canson inkjet papers, since I think the colors pop a lot more than with Canson’s own profiles.) To bind the paper into the book, I first cut the paper to size – 6.5″ square. Then, I cut strips of bookcloth and sandwiched the opposing pages in between two strips, effectively creating a single 6.5″ x 13.25″ leaf with a joint in the middle (the extra .25″ being the distance in between the two pieces of paper, which was necessary for them to fold in half). This ended up creating a really nice look, where each page had a cloth border that matched the cloth I used on the front.

2) Binding: I was originally going to do a variation of the removable spine binding on Carol’s book, but I ended up changing my mind at the last minute. My goal was to have both boards covered inside and out with the burgundy bookcloth, since I like the pattern a lot and thought it complemented the artwork. But, after seeing it laid out, I decided that it wasn’t totally necessary to have both sides of the boards covered, and that pasting down some toothy white watercolor paper would be good as well. This also made it easier to bind the pages into the book – when I sewed the signature together, I sewed it with an extra “page” – that being a strip of bookcloth sewn on backwards, so I could just adhere it to the inner edges of the boards opposite the spine and then cover it with the watercolor paper. Instead of a spine made from bookboard, I made it out of paper, adhered the boards to it, and then covered the whole thing with cloth. For a larger book, this wouldn’t have worked, since the hinge (between the front and back covers and the spine) is on the inside, which makes the book not want to lay flat. For a 12-page art book – especially one that was meant to be displayed facing out – this works well, since the book easily stands up on its own.

3) The front cover – it took me awhile to get this right. I had thought to do a pastedown, but I thought I could take it a step further and glue the pastedown straight onto the front board, cutting windows in the bookcloth that would expose the cover images. I had to try it a couple times using paper instead of cloth in order to get the windows positioned correctly – and then I had to make sure to cut the windows so I could hem the edges, since a cut edge of bookcloth is never very pretty looking.

4) The pop-up – Justine loves pop-up books, so I wanted to adapt her favorite image into a pop-up. I’m not great with Photoshop, so it took me a while to make the background – the original image is a portrait of two characters in front of a printed wallpaper pattern, so I needed to reproduce the pattern after removing the characters. The small size here probably worked to my benefit, since it’s harder to see the not-so-great job I did on that step. After that, I just needed to make a print of the original image and cut out the elements in the foreground to attach to the background print. This was my first attempt cutting something this intricate, and the 300gsm paper didn’t cut so easily, even with a fresh scalpel blade. Next time I do this, I’ll probably use 190gsm paper for the foreground part of the pop-up, so the cut looks less jagged. Another mistake is that there are parts of the foreground that are not supported, which has cased them to bend a little bit as the pop-up has been opened and closed. Not bad for a first try, but I think I can do better – and in fact, we’re planning on incorporating pop-ups into at least one of the books we have in the pipeline.

All in all, I’m happy with how it came out (and Justine was too). It took me a full day of work to print and bind it, although most of the design by that point had been worked out over the preceding couple months.

Pictures:

Well, it’s pretty irresponsible to start working on a new title when I still haven’t finished making all of Carol Es’s book, and I still haven’t finished making the entire special edition of Acontextual Drawings… kind of feels like I started watching TV before I finished cleaning my room. Nevertheless, we’ll be releasing this pretty soon – as soon as we have the colophon pages back from the author, in fact. The deluxe edition will be limited to 12 copies and comes in 8 different colors, while you get a simple light blue or light green for the trade edition. We’ll make a formal announcement when the book is done – but here’s a teaser for now…

Originally released as part of the very limited-edition artist book “Scribbles in a Sandstorm”, this excerpt from Los Angeles-based artist Carol Es’s sketchbook is now available from Chance Press as a standalone publication. Drawn somewhere between insomnia and dreaming, these sketches suggest the multilayered oil and mixed-media canvases for which Es has become renowned, but in a more vital, immediate state. Readers familiar with the artist will recognize familiar tropes from her work (including the momentous birth of Dan), but this work is for the uninitiated as well… an outsider artist herself, Es’s sketches turn no one away, instead communicating emotions fundamental to the human experience in a deceptively simple manner.

Ordering:

The first edition is limited to 60 copies:

Trade Edition (30 copies): $7.00
Signed Trade Edition (20 copies): $14.00
Deluxe Edition (10 copies): $25.00

To order, please visit our online store.

Edition Details:

Sketches is a hand-sewn single-signature chapbook, measuring approximately 4.25″ x 5.5″. The trade edition is hand-sewn in Canson Mi-Teintes wrappers with an archivally-printed cover pastedown. The signed trade edition, in addition to being signed by the artist, also sports a sewn-on dustjacket made from Japanese Mulberry paper.

The deluxe edition is hand-sewn in Fabriano Murillo covers with French flaps. The rear flap is convertible so that the book can be either shelved wearing the included Japanese Mulberry paper dustjacket or with the dustjacket tucked inside the flap (a very clever, if unnecessary, feature). Each copy includes two archivally printed pastedowns as well as an original sketch on the title page. Deluxe edition copies also ship with a hand-embellished Gocco print on Canson Montval watercolor paper.

Pictures: