The Girl from the Sea
Old Stile Press, 2009. Full Leather. Near Fine binding. Item #9379
Folio. [56] pp., illus. Limited edition, number 193 of 195 copies, signed by Onken at the colophon. A skilled and imaginative design binder and a graduate of the American Academy of Bookbinding fine binding program, Brenda Gallagher has engaged with this modern telling of a story that comes from a long tradition of Celtic and Norse selkie stories. Full bound in green goat with onlays in fish leather that capture the movement of the waves in green, blue, and gray. Gallagher's binding wonderfully complements the tale, both thematically and artistically as her bold stylized cover shares a harmony with Onken's woodcuts. But even subtler details bring this text and binding together, like her skillfully woven silk endbands and the painted top-edge, a lovely sea-green with the suggestion of vegetation, as though looking down on the top-edge of the book is to look down into the sea. Housed in clamshell box.
A finely printed and illustrated selkie story written by Brown in 1984 and first published here by the Old Stile Press. The cuts by Onken are beautifully done and are indispensable in conveying this story of a selkie who has been separated from her seal skin by a fisherman, trapping her in her human form. Perhaps the most striking of Onken's cuts is only found on the publisher-issued binding as a pictorial pastedown on the front board. Gallagher, whose engagement with this text is not limited to the binding, relays the tale of disappointment when purchasing this book unbound and necessarily without this woodcut—perhaps the woodcut that resonated with her the most. Since the printer had no extra copies of the illustration, Gallagher was driven to locate and contact Onken who had neither print nor the block from which the illustration was printed. Instead, he offered to lend her a good drawing of the image. From this image, Gallagher cut her own linoleum block and printed the illustration, remarkably true to the original. That print serves as the front fly leaf in her binding—a one of one lino print. An exceptional designed binding by an American binder coming into her own.
Price: $3,250.00