I have a Friend who writes, reads incessantly, sings soprano, plays piano and guitar, sews, draws, cooks, dances, gardens, cleans a much-loved but large and dusty old farmhouse and, every morning and night, tends a gaggle of animals.
But now, in her spare time, she has really gone and done it.
She has made a book.
I don’t mean she wrote a novel. That’s almost old hat. She made a book.
No one in the world of printing books for a living would help her, not in the way she envisioned. So she took her dream to her husband, who said, more or less, “I’ll build you a press.” They studied up, and he did it. I’ve seen the benign-looking contraption he engineered sitting in an upstairs room now dedicated to publishing.
So these two, with the help of a few artistic friends, spent billions of hours turning a copyright-expired story by L.M. Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables, into Low Door Press’ first product. A hundred years after Kilmeny of the Orchard’s first run, husband and wife printed and folded, and Lanier spent a season sewing signatures by hand. Her artist-sister painted the frontispiece, and an artist-friend tried his hand at the art of old-fashioned letterpress.
There was sweat and tears and maybe a little blood. The result: something solid and beautiful to touch and smell and put on a shelf high so tiny hands can’t reach.
It’s not a book to read in the bathtub.
Its soft, ivory pages are sewn with Irish bookbinders’ thread, and the bookcloth chosen is Dover linen. The headbanding is silk, and the end papers, a lovely brown floral print, are Italian cotton. The cases were debossed and inked on an early twentieth century engravers’ press.
For the last year, the project’s progress, or sometimes lack thereof, has been the first topic of conversation at our ladies book club meetings. Though a couple of us have gone over to the dark side (Kindle girls, you know who you are), each of us adores books, especially old books, and is captivated by the idea of whipping one up (!) from scratch.
Yesterday I met Lanier’s labor of love for the first time. She was off on a jaunt to England, and one book club gal’s husband brought two boxes of Kilmeny to a halfway point on another member’s front porch, where I was to pick them up. (No one was sorry to be involved in the effort if it meant a look at the book.) I was charged with bringing them to be sold at Hutchmoot, a gathering of folks just eccentric enough to appreciate this effort.
So I gathered them up in my arms and set them in the trunk and sat on the tailgate and peaked. Why I cried, I’m not sure.
Was it the periwinkle cover and the acid-free, rag content paper? The expertly chosen font and the charming Low Door Press logo? Was it Lanier’s gorgeously written introduction? Yes, yes and yes. But I think I cried mostly because a kindred spirit’s dream was being held in my hands.
That, my friends, is not something that happens every day.
[...] writing partner wrote this loving tribute to my Kilmeny, if you’d care to read it. And while you’re at it, do yourself a favor and enjoy her [...]