#plain wrapper press

It’s Fine Press Friday!

Suite Lirica: En Homenaje a Wallace Stevens is built around a poem by Spanish writer José María Martín Triana. The book opens with Wallace Steven’s poem, “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour,” which served as Martín Triana’s inspiration; his own poem is then presented in Spanish, after which follows a translation into English by Alastair Reid. American writer and children's book illustrator Leo Lionni illustrated the book with intaglio prints pulled by Gino Berardinelli. Gabriel Rummonds and Alessandro Zanella of Plain Wrapper Press printed the book in Verona, Italy, in 1982, in a limited edition of ninety copies, each signed by Triana and Lionni.

Handset monotype Dante was printed on Cartiere Enrico Magnani handmade paper. The top edge of the paper is gilded, and the sides and bottom finish in deckles. An author’s note before the colophon was translated by Rummonds. The Plain Wrapper press printer’s mark adorns the burgundy box. The spine is quarter bound in goatskin, with dyed vellum covering the boards.

In his note, Martín Triana explains his “devotion” to Stevens, an artist after “the true meaning of things.” He contrasts this impulse with what he disparaged as the “Carnavalesque falseness” of contemporary Spanish literary trends. He suggests that the book “could easily have been called Variations on the Final Soliloguy of the Interior Paramour, not only as an homage of devotion to Stevens, but also as an indication of my complete acceptance of the ideas of the most European of American poets” of the 20th century.

This book comes to us from the collection of Jerry Buff (1931-2025).

See other books from Jerry Buff.

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--Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern

It’s Fine Press Friday

Gabriel Rummonds is an extraordinarily fine letterpress printer who wrote the definitive manual Printing on the Iron Handpress (1997). Rummonds was a set-designer in New York, an industrial designer in Japan for Fraser China, a book designer at Alfred Knopf, and a commercial attaché at the U. S. Embassy in Quito, Ecuador, before establishing his Plain Wrapper Press in 1966. He was also the founding director in 1982 of the well-noted MFA program in Book Arts at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. 

The title shown here, Circhi e Cene (Circuses and Suppers), with two poems in Italian by Andrea Zanzotto, English translation by Beverly Allen, and two, color etchings by Joe Tilson, was printed in a limited edition of 150 copies in 1979 on an 1847 Washington handpress by Gabriel Rummonds and Alessandro Zanella (who became a partner in the Plain Wrapper Press the year before) in Verona, Italy. The type was handset in Jan van Krimpen’s Spectrum and printed on handmade Cartiere Miliani-Fabriano paper made especially for the press. Calligrapher Golda Fishbein produced the the title lettering and the etchings were pulled by Giorgio Upiglio in Milan. The edition is signed by the poet and the artist, and our copy is a gift from our friend Jerry Buff.

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It’s Fine Press Friday!

This week we present Journeys in Sunlight, with poems by Dana Gioia and etchings by Fulvio Testa. Printed in an edition of 90 copies by Richard-Gabriel Rummonds on an 1884 Luigi Ghisi Albion handpress for his Ex Ophidia imprint in Cottondale, Alabama in 1986. Rummonds was assisted by Antony O’Hara and Cary Wilkins. The book is signed by the poet and the artist. The type is handset Dante from Harold Berliner’s Type Foundry in Nevada City, California. Richard Brough did the title-page lettering. The paper, printed damp, was handmade at the Cartiere Enrico Magnani in Pescia, Italy. The book was bound by Craig Jensen in a dark brown morocco spine, with boards covered with gray Zerkall Amora mouldmade paper marbled by Paula M. Gourley in olive-brown, dark blue, and umber with gold fleck. It is housed in a drop-spine box covered and lined with medium brown Bamberger Iris cloth and a paper label printed in black with “EX OPHIDIA” and pressmark no. 3.

Richard-Gabriel Rummonds is considered to be one of the finest handpress printers of the late twentieth century. He was born in Long Beach, California in 1931. He founded his Plain Wrapper Press in Quito, Ecuador in 1966 printing Eight Parting Poems, a keepsake for his friends. He later moved the press to Verona, Italy in 1970. Rummonds became well-known for his private-press edition of Seven Saxon Poems by Jorge Luis Borges in 1974. Rummonds printed 38 titles under the Plain Wrapper Press imprint from 1966-1988 (UWM Special Collections holds five). He founded the Ex Ophidia press in the early 1980s when he was appointed the director of the book arts program at the University of Alabama. Rummonds printed four fine press books under the Ex Ophidia imprint, with Journeys in Sunlight being the last. Rummonds switched his focus to authoring books about working with handpresses, such as Printing on the Iron Handpress (1998), Nineteen-Printing Practices and the Iron Handpress (2004), and the memoir Fantasies & Hard Knocks: My Life as a Printer (2015). In 2014, Rummonds started using the imprint Ex Ophidia Press as a fine literary press.

Journeys in Sunlight is another wonderful gift from our friend and benefactor, Jerry Buff.

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