Ornography

Sarah Moody came to work as an apprentice in my studio in November, 2020. Since then she has been the primary printer on five books: Three Constitutions, A Pattern Book of Càdiz Ornaments, Dispatches from the Lizard Brain, A Checklist of the First Sixty Books Published by Russell Maret, Colored Objects, and the soon to be released This Wisp of a Thing Called Civilization. She also typeset the Checklist, assisted with typesetting both the Pattern Book and the redacted volume in Three Constitutions, and bound the Checklist and Pattern Book. Much of this work would not have been completed had Sarah not been working with me, but, due to our studio schedule and my work process, she has not been privy to many of the design decisions and considerations that went into making these books. As part of her apprenticeship, I wanted Sarah to produce a book in my studio from start to finish, one in which she made the primary design decisions, while I occasionally glanced over her shoulder. Ornography is the result.

Over the years I have accumulated a small but diverse collection of printer’s ornaments and flowers, most of which I have never used. I have often thought of printing a specimen of them, but, whenever such a project began to percolate, I ended up designing my own ornaments instead of using what I had on hand. Then, while visiting St. Paul, Minnesota in 2022, Gaylord Schanilec showed me the typographic scroll of his Man Before a Mirror project, on which is printed a sonnet by Wilder Bentley which includes these lines: “Art’s perverts and subverters are a blight on all the arts, like printers that hoard flowers yet never use them.” The die was cast. On days when there was little else going on in the studio, I had Sarah begin to set pages for a little book of ornaments.

The resulting book was designed, printed, and bound by Sarah Moody. It is printed on 145gm wove paper from the now-defunct Zerkall papermill, sewn long-stitch into stiffeners, and covered with antique Japanese katazome paper. The book is housed in an archival paper slipcase. Ninety-five copies have been printed, each signed and numbered by Moody.