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The Artist's Book tradition in the San Francisco Bay Area has existed for well over a century. In 1895 a group of bohemian artists and authors published The Lark, a ragingly successful literary magazine printed on the cheapest bamboo paper available in Chinatown. By the following summer the principals — Gelett Burgess, Bruce Porter and Porter Garnett — grew tired of their success and launched Le Petit Journal de Refusées to print work that had previously been rejected by at least three publications. Printed on scraps of wallpaper, the magazine was cut into a trapezoid. "Within the memory of man, the shape of the magazine has not varied from the severe rectangle," wrote Burgess, adding, "We thought of burning the edges, but the mood dissolved."
The earliest manifestations of the contemporary artist's book came out of the post-World War II literary small press scene as publishers experimented with format and illustration in their poetry volumes. Wallace Berman issued Semina, a packet-by-mail magazine, from various West Coast addresses (several numbers came from his houseboat moored in Larkspur) in the late fifties and early sixties. Each issue was hand-assembled from photos, drawings and poems printed on a warped 5 x 7" tabletop platen press on scavenged paper. Throughout the '60s and '70s Graham Mackintosh of White Rabbit Press produced imaginative works by Bay Area poets of the Jack Spicer circle, frequently bending the rules of typographic allusion. He printed Richard Brautigan's poems for Please Plant this Book on packets containing seeds of the plants described. The unsung heroes of the burgeoning artist's book movement of the '70s and '80s were Holbrook Teter and Michael Myers at Zephyrus Image Press in San Francisco (and later Healdsburg). They circumvented the fine press world of libraries and collectors by giving away their publications. These mysterious and timely works lampooned the foolish and never failed to connect with worthy causes. Origami played a big part in the engineering of their most successful ephermal works. Even their literary works made self-conscious references to their structure. The carefully considered formats were just part of the Zephyrus Image aim. Disregarding all traditions they used the press for its greatest potential: to effect social change.
—Alastair Johnston
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1945-1980 
