recent progress on
Jump of the Manta Ray
A poem in Spanish by Carmen Boullosa, translated by Psiche Hughes, with images by Philip Hughes
expected to be published in September 2002
Inspired by the sight of a giant manta ray leaving the water, Carmen Boullosa has written an epic and erotic poem for which Psiche Hughes has prepared an English translation. The two texts will run in parallel through the book, interspersed with about 30 small images by Philip Hughes, and the book will be accompanied by 21 full size giclée prints.
This title is leading the pack for 2002. The text is finalised and design mostly complete. We have had proofs from the giclée printers and the results are stunning: Hughes's 21 large images getting all the punch they deserve on the 280gsm Somerset Velvet papers that we shall be using. Nineteen of these images will come on separate sheets, signed and numbered, the other two providing frontis- and tail-piece for the book. The text will be on a more manageable 175gsm Somerset Book paper, and will make a handsome book of about 340mm (13.4 inches) high and 300mm (11.8 inches) wide. The design of the binding and the box that will contain it and the prints is still to be finalised. We plan to be putting sheets through the press in July-August.
An unusual feature of the book is that we shall be printing the text - letterpress of course - in Octavian, a strong typeface, which Monotype only ever offered in 14pt. The type will be machine-cast from digital copy by Harry McIntosh, who has done the casting for a number of our previous books, using the only diecase for the face that we know of, belonging to Sebastian Carter, whose father designed Octavian for Monotype. (In fact, according to Monotype's records only three sets of matrices were ever sold - a terrible mis-judgment by the printing industry if ever there was one! The face is now available in digital format and it must be hoped that it receives the use it deserves.) One excitement has been caused by the fact that the diecase proved to have no accented characters, and yet of course they are needed in the Spanish text. Moreover Monotype Hot-Metal no longer had matrices for those accented characters, so we have had to commission them to cut new punches using the Monotype Drawing Office copper masters and a pantograph punch engraving tool. Philip Hughes and I went to see the punch for the italic e-acute being machined - a rare event and one we plan to have photographs of on our website at a future date.
In December 2002, I shall be giving a lecture to the Designer Bookbinders society in London and I plan to talk about the making of Jump of the Manta Ray. As work on the book progresses I am recording progress with photographs in order to bring things to life at the lecture.
We are certain this will be a stunning book but it will also be our most expensive ever: the price is still to be determined but is likely to be around £1,500 (US$2,500, Eur2,500). The edition will be no more than 50 copies.
