In the SFCB Gallery
Jan 25-Apr 25, 2008

Curators: Mary Austin & Kathleen Burch

Works in the Exhibition

Curators' Statement

Other exhibitions

Green Chair Press

		< Previous | Catalogue | Next > Vico Collaborations III Jack Stauffacher with Dennis Letbetter, Greenwood Press, San Francisco Jack Stauffacher, printer Dennis Letbetter, photographer Giambattista Vico, philosopher The Vico Duodecimo Axiom 65 2006; Portfolio Edition of 45. Wooden letter prints, letterpress printing, and photographs are integrated; printed together on the same sheet of Somerset Enhanced Velvet, using traditional letterpress printing inks for the typography and Piezography inks for the photographic prints (individually printed by Dennis Letbetter after extensive training in Piezography at Cone Editions, Vermont). The Vico Collaborations reference La Scienza Nuova (The New Science), of 1725, 1730, and 1744. Thus, the 13 x 17.5-inch page was determined by the sheet size of a duodecimo before it has been folded, being the size of the first (1725) and second (1730) editions of Giambattista Vico's (1668-1744) masterpiece, The New Science. Wooden type was originally made by a routing machine that was guided via pantograph by hand-tracing a stencil of the letter. Since 1966, Stauffacher has used 65 assorted pieces of wood type given to him by an advertising agency leaving the Printing Building of 300 Broadway. Jack Stauffacher comments on his use of wood type: "Wood poster type - these are letters that were possibly from the late nineteenth-century that were used for circus posters, political posters. They have a patina and a life right on the surface - they're not perfect, they have dents in them, there's shadowy parts to them . . . but when you print them on the press they come alive again with all the imperfections that tells a story that lends to the romance of these letters that I fell in love with. "Taking these shapes, these letters, they are somehow no longer letters in the formal sense, they become more of a shape, an abstraction, and I have used them [within the page size] allotted to the portfolios in a variety of arrangements, different colors, different connections with the text and the photographs. When you work this closely on the press, you don't have it all figured out, you do the whole thing mostly right there in the process." The Vico Collaborations was the subject of an exhibition at Stanford University in 2006. To read more about printer/scholar Jack Stauffacher click here. Dennis Letbetter's website is at www.studioletbetter.com In these two catalogs, you can find out more about The Wooden Letters of 300 Broadway and the Vico Collaborations. To read more about the second Vico collaboration portfolio, click here. To read more about the wooden letters, click here.
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