Bone Songs

Newark, VT: The Janus Press, 1992. Paperback. Fine. Paperback. 8 of 150 copies. Signed by the author, artist, and binder. Inscribed from Ruth Fine to Nina (Matheson), a bibliophile, ex-rare book dealer, and the director emerita of the Johns Hopkins Welch Medical Library, on occasion of her 60th birthday. Born in 1933, Claire Van Vliet is one of the most acclaimed book artists practicing today. For over 60 years Van Vliet and her Janus Press have produced wonderful works of art in book form. Van Vliet started Janus Press, located in Vermont, in 1955. The press embodies the age-old tradition of book making, yet it also experiments with innovative book formats and structures. In addition to the more than 90 artist's books that Van Vliet has published, she has also created hundreds of drawings, prints, pulp paintings, and broadsides. She has been a recipient of many awards and honors, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1989.

According to "The Janus Press - Fifty Years" (2006), This was Claire Van Vliet's first book publication after her receipt of the MacArthur. She says that the non-adhesive book structure used for this publication "just fell into place, came out of the blue, fully formed, in Abiquiu" (page 29). The poems featured in this book and the drawings that inspired them were also created in New Mexico, not far from where Claire was visiting in Abiquiu. The book was later completed at Claire's home in Vermont.

Bound in an interesting binding structure of 40 french-folded sheets held together with woven strips of vellum. Illustrated with line drawings of skulls by Ruth Fine, printed from polymer relief plates. The poems are printed in Gill Sans Light caps on Barcham Green Royal Watercolour Society paper. The book is housed in two non-adhesive fitted slipcases of drum vellum and Barcham Green Renaissance IV paper. Clean and bright. Unpaginated. [40 pages.] Size: 8 x 10 inches. ARTB/102623.