Moonkosh ~ New York

Doubly Bound
By Diane Fine and Tracy Hoon
1994. Edition of 70
8.5" x 6.5" Boxed set of thirteen sewn pamphlets that chronicle different aspects of Buster's Mother's life. Buster's Mother is based on a found image from a turn-of-the-century playing card. Each pamphlet is assigned a volume number and a title. The book ends with an elaborate, non-representational gouache painting that references the traditions of quilts, china painting and illuminated manuscripts. Each book in the edition of seventy contains one of these unique paintings. Baskerville and various display faces were printed letterpress on Mohawk, Magnani Pescia, and Lana Ingres. The pamphlets are houses in a cloth covered box that unfolds revealing the title page.. Doubly Bound is a collaboration between Diane Fine and Tracy Hoon. It is a result of their desire to write a book about the choices and paths of women's lives. The heroine of the work, Buster's Mother, is the character used to address these ideas. Through her the complexity of our choices and expectations, the anxieties these produce, and the necessity of aesthetic expression.
$300

The Journal of Elizabeth Jennings Wilson 1853-1867
By Joe Napora
1987. Edition of 160
6" x 7" This book is printed letterpress on hand-made and Ogawa paper using Palatino foundry type. Marginal ornamentations appear throughout the text with a central folio of illustrations. The soft cover long-stitch binding is sewn on a strip of velum. From the prospectus: This book is a collaborative publication of (the) Moonkosh Press and Ragpicker Press consisting of poems based on the journal of Elizabeth Jennings Wilson, a woman who lived, worked and traveled West in the middle of the 19th century. Through her observations, from the simplicity of apple parings at the home of friends' to her fear for her brothers away at war, this poem cycle traces the growth of an American woman from girlhood to adulthood.
$150

Fortune
Diane Fine & Pati Scobey. This magical volume, suggestive of oracles and game boards including astrology, fortune-telling, and games of chance, was inspired by the human enterprise of trying to determine what lies ahead. Relying primarily on enigmatic, open-to-interpretation images, the accordion volume begins and ends with á la poupee etchings that imply the whirling cosmos. The movement of the book is toward the center. Subsequent spreads from both the front and back depict symbols and words symbolic of human concerns, desires, and aspirations. At the heart of the book, a gameboard unfolds with "pieces" fixed to the squares. All movement, then, must come from within the imagination of the reader/viewer-- thus, the oracle as an expression of the inner gambit. Engagingly printed by lithography, intaglio, and relief processes undertaken during a residency at the MacDowell Colony. Accordion fold with pamphlet-stitched center spread. Black-green acrylic-painted tyvek covers with handpainted title and cover image--a roll of the dice! A black and white stone lithograph suggests the deep night sky and backs the accordion pages. (4.5 x 3.25 opens to 18.5 inches.) Very limited edition of 10. Engaging.
$250

Forever & Ever
By Diane Fine and Beth Fine Kaplan. Photographs by Sue Lezon. Two sisters, one diagnosed with breast cancer, come to terms with the disease and its effect upon their relationship. They explore the role Judaism plays in coping with illness through the ritual and history of tefillin or Sh'ma, a central Jewish prayer practiced by the wearing of a sealed box upon the forehead and a leather strap around the left hand. The gravity and resolve of their entreaty is underscored by the fact that women have been traditionally excluded from the practice of wearing tefillin. Letterpress. Accordion bound in hard covers. Signed by both sisters. Edition of 75. (4.75 x 3.25 inches; 22 pp.)
$140

Sojourn
By Mario LaPlante and Diane Fine. A photographic record accompanied by brief textual reveries of "a few boundless days" on the Northern California coast. Fine and LaPlante, who have collaborated on earlier bookworks, set up camp on a beach just south of the Oregon border. They took what was offered—a spray of seagrass, a clifftop structure, a cemetery, the sea. They made marks in the landscape—a footprint, stone sculptures, collections of crab claws—and the sea erased them. They took photographs of everything and developed lingering impressions. They captured the rugged, foggy coastline in grey-toned and slightly blurred black-and-white images that suggest the cool misty environs. Photographic spreads are interspersed with etched images, which suggest the movement and color of the sea, and are printed from intaglio wiped plates in teal ink. Textual observations are spare, like haiku, capturing the rhythmic, insulated quiet of a seascape: "Unconsoled, the music of the wind and tide lulls us to sleep. Consoled, the music invites us to wake." Letterpress from Bodoni and an "unidentified" Gothic face on Lana Gravure paper. Photographic images are photo-etchings from polymer plates. Bound in black bookcloth over boards with matching slipcase, both decorated with symbolic images of sea and salt. Edition of 23. (10.25 x 8 inches, landscape; 40 pp.) Serene and elegant.
$750

Moonkosh Press Out of Print Title:
Beautiful Little Bird