TRAIANVS: A Folly for Bibliophiles was begun after a conversation with Robert Bolick about architecture and typography. For bibliophiles and lovers of typography, the inscription at the base of Trajan’s Column is often considered the highest state of perfection of the Roman alphabet. This “bibliophilic folly” is a celebration of the epigraphy, the iconography, and the architecture of the Column of Trajan.

The work is a collaboration of many people with specialized talents. Al Lancey of Swanzey, New Hampshire, cut the metal sheets for the sliding covers; the Silpell Company in Torino, Italy, supplied the sheets of stone leaf that were used to cover the metal plates. Sarah Pike of FreeFall Laser in North Adams, Massachusetts, laser cut the title into the stone leaf. Darren Honey of the Ideal Board in Walpole, New Hampshire, designed and crafted the ebonized walnut boxes.

High resolution digital reproductions of the Piranesi etchings of Trajan’s Column in the public domain were available for download on Wikicommons. Marie Orton, Professor of French and Italian at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, translated a complete, and perhaps the first, English version of Piranesi’s printed marginalia describing the various scenes on the Column. The images, with the English translations inserted next to the original Italian, were printed on Arches Cover White 270 g/m2 paper with a Canon iPF6400 inkjet printer. Linda Lembke, book binder and book arts instructor from Guilford, Vermont, dry mounted the prints onto acid-free boards which she hinged together using Japanese paper to make the large accordion folds (the leporello).

The small tête-bêche (“head-to-toe”) book that is hidden within the box was printed on Somerset Book Wove paper and bound, or more properly “woven” together, with Zanders Elephant Hide paper strips using a non-adhesive technique developed by Elizabeth Steiner. Claire Van Vliet, Steiner’s co-author and collaborator for Woven and Interlocking Book Structures, modified the Gioia II structure for her book of Alan Loney poetry entitled RISE: Governors Bay Sept/Nov 2000, published by The Janus Press in Newark, Vermont, in 2003. This Abecedarium/Addendum further modifies the Van Vliet modification.

Rutherford Witthus printed this book during the first months of 2023 at his studio in Walpole, New Hampshire. At some point the contracted form of Piranesi’s name “Giambattista” was misspelled as “Giambattiste” on the main title page. The sheets were printed and became part of the book and the misspelling was noticed too late to reprint and rebind the entire edition. As Leonard Cohen sings: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

Robert Bolick describes the book in his Books on Books page: https://books-on-books.com/2021/10/28/bookmarking-book-art-rutherford-witthus/

Images, unless otherwise noted, by Peter Roos, Photographer.

RUTHERFORD WITTHUS

RUTHERFORD WITTHUS