See, Say, Bone, Lessons from French

Item Details

[Los Angeles:], Paradise Press, 1988, Boards.

7½ x 5¾ in. Unpaginated. Main text in French printed on paper made by David Carruthers at La papeterie St-Armand in Montreal. Interspersed with Kozo overlay leaves with an English translation and manuscript “corrections” to the text by Jean Gabriel Adloff. Printed by Susan King in American Garamond and Twentieth Century.

Hand-bound in Coptic style by Shelley Hoyt. Decorative paper (made at the Paradise Press) over boards. Manuscript label. A fine copy of a scarce book.

One of 125 copies inscribed by Susan King on the colophon.“I became fascinated with the way a foreign language is taught to beginning students. By my second French lesson I was writing down directions, phrases used by the instructor, or short sections of the text, Langue et langage, 4e edition, that leapt off the page as interesting examples of a culture other than my own. These notes sparked a series of short prose pieces which appear here…I wanted a visual element that was not an illustration: my beginner’s essay corrected in French handwriting gave me an element that is both abstract and literal. What started out as a simple project became more complicated as Dr. Jean Adloff, my French instructor and also a writer, greed to collaborate,” (colophon).

Susan King began printing in 1975 at the Women’s Graphic Center at the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles. King and Judy Chicago had helped establish the Woman’s Building, where King studied with Sheila de Bretteville and Helen Alm, and took classes with Bonnie Carpenter, Kathleen Walkup, and Frances Butler. She began using the Paradise Press imprint in 1978 with the publication of Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride, her first letterpress book, in 1978. In 1980, King, Kitty Maryatt, Marion Baker, and Bonnie Thompson Norman founded the Women of Letters , a letterpress printing organization for women, in Los Angeles. King’s other books include Women and Cars (1983), which includes quotes from women drivers ranging from Gertrude Stein to Nancy Drew, and I Dream Atget (1997), which reflects on King’s interest in pictorialism and the work of French photographer Eugène Atget. King now lives in Kentucky, where she continues her work in book arts, photography, and textile art.