Harold Berliner, Printer ~ California
(1924 - 2010)

GENESIS
Illustrated by Helen Siegl
Nevada City, California: Harold Berliner, 2004. Edition of 350 plus 25 hors commerce.

9.125 x 12"; 110 pages. Illustrated by 9 woodblock prints by Helen Siegl, with some background blocks in linoleum. Printed letterpress, with 16 pt. Lutetia type, and required 153 separately mixed inks to print the blocks. Bound with a special red cloth with title in gilt on spine.

Full-page woodblock print tipped in for each story in Genesis. Plates: Creation; Creation of Birds and Fishes; Creation of Animals; Adam and Eve in Eden; The Flood; Abrahams' Sacrifice; Jacob's Dream; Joseph's Dream; and, the Blessing of the Tribes.

Text for the Genesis version from The New English Bible, with the Apocrypha (The Delegates of the Oxford University Press and The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press 1961, 1970).

Hermann Zapf: "What a wonderful and perfect publication is your Genesis ... (it) is a complete unit of typography, illustration and binding."

Harold Berliner: "I'd like to tell you more about Genesis, which took 20 years. First look inside the cover of one for Professor Zaph’s commentary on it. Then you should know nearly all the colored pages were printed from hand carved wooden blocks, by Helen Siegl. I know of only one other place where they used such carvings since perhaps 1600. This is my friend Hans-Ulrich who bought my casting equipment and took it to his shop in Switzerland.

"Then the type setting here was done on our Monotypes, and took a long time, as did the printing, registering these wooden blocks while keeping the ink in just the right quantity. As expensive as the book is, we lost money on this great project, but the satisfaction made it worth it."
$400

Knights and Valentines
French Love Songs of the Fifteenth Century
A Florentine Chansonnier from the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent
(Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Manuscript Banco Rari 229)
Translated by Max Knight
Foreword by Howard M. Brown
Text established by Brian Jeffery
Illustrated by Wolfgang Lederer
Nevada City, California: Harold Berliner, 1989. Edition of 285.

7.5 x 11.5"; 124 pages. Printed letterpress on Ragston paper. Typeset in Monotype Bembo. Bound in red cloth over boards with title in gilt on spine and gilt decoration on front board.

Foreword: "The verses presented in this book are translated from French lyric poetry of the late fifteenth century. The rondeaux, bergerettes, and chanson, which Max Knight has here turned into English verse, represent only a small sample of the vast number of such poems that were written by aristocrats and courtiers, who created these elegant little gems either for their own amusement or for the enjoyment of the fellow members of their set. Many of the poems were intended simply to be read silently or recited aloud. Some may have accompanied courtly rituals or entertainments; others may have revealed to a particular lady or gentleman the fact that another member of their circle secretly yearned for her or him; and possibly many of the poems were intended merely to display the poet's skill with words. Some poems, including all those offered here, were set to music by leading French and Flemish composers of the time, and they were then performed ... for the entertainment of the members of high society, not only in France and Burgundy, but also in Italy, Germany, and virtually every other country in western Europe."

Forty-eight short, spirited poems: "I am not such a gallant knight / to function ten, twelve times per night…." The Table of Contents lists the titles in English as well as the original French (or Italian for the few Italian originals); the verses appear in English only.
$300

When We Belonged to Spain
Old California Tales
By Susan Myra Gregory
Edited with a foreword and notes by John D. Short, Jr.
Decorations by Wolfgang Lederer
Nevada City, California: Harold Berliner, 1983. Edition of 375.

6.5 x 9.9"; 75 pages. Letterpress printed with Lutetia types on specially made Ragston paper. Footnote typeface Romulus. Smyth sewn bindings. Cloth over boards.

Harold Berliner: "Old California tales from the period prior to 1822 when California belonged to Mexico for 26 years."
Charles E. Chapman (Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley), Introduction: "[W]hen Miss Gregory uses the title When We Belonged to Sprain, she is strictly correct, according to traditional usage, though many of her tales have their setting in the Mexican and even the American periods. She is indeed dealing with the vital days of 'Spanish California.'

"... Each story represents some phase of the things Californians have felt about their past, but have been unable to put into words. 'Na Gracia' is illustrative of the simplicity and religious devotion of the middle classes. In 'The Combat of El Arroz' is depicted one phase of the survival, in Spanish California, of the customs of Old-World Spain - in this case the submission of even grown men to parental authority. Nanita, in 'The Curls of Ana María,' was a type of the old Indian house-servant, privileged and almost tyrannical in exercise of authority over her masters...."

There are twelve stories from Gregory in this volume, stories told to her by her mother.
$150

A Christmas Carol
in prose being a ghost story of Christmas
By Charles Dickens
illustrated by Wolfgang Lederer
Nevada City, California: Harold Berliner, 1976. Edition of 750.

9 x 12"; 122 pages. Illustrated endpapers. Printed on Ragston paper in Baskerville type. Buckram over boards. Titles in gilt on spine and gilt decoration on front board.

The classic Christmas tale.
$225