Moonkosh Press ~ New York
(Diane Fine)

Red
By Diane Fine
Plattsburgh, New York: Moonkosh Press, 2008. Edition of 18.

4 x 6 x 1"; 10 pages. Letterpress and lithography. Accordion structure bound in at pastedowns. Housed in a cloth covered drop-spine box.

Each page is a shade of red associated a general noun, both tangibles — rubies, roses, pomegranates, plums, blood – to intangibles — rage, life, love.

Colophon: "Red is the first book in a series called Colors. The Red Queen's exclamation is from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass."
$200

A Broth for Two Parents
By Eli Goldblatt
2006. Edition of 32.

5.9 x 9.5" Letterpress with hand-wiped photo - etchings. Printed on handmade Alcantara. Sewn into a drop spine box.

How does one address the loss of a child? In this poem Eli Goldblatt voices that greatest grief – a child predeceasing the parent. "I wish my words carried a broth that could at least give you strength to remember him running & talking or learning to talk—his intentions just beginning to enter a language that separates things from the impulse to hold them, emotions from the light or color they conjure & inform."

Accompanied with two photo-etchings by photographer Sue Lezon.

I can't see why a child has to die
& now that I'm raising a child of my own
every child's death is a signpost to say
just how lost I'd be if my son died
or soldiers came & took him away.

$300

Sojourn
By Mario LaPlante and Diane Fine.
Gravel Press: 2002. Edition of 23.

10.25 x 8”, landscape; 40 pages. 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.

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." Serene and elegant.
$750

The Art of Simple Note-taking
By Diane Fine & Tracy Honn
Moonkosh Press & Ragpicker Press, 1996. Edition of 50.

8 x 4", eight pages. The reproductions of a third grader's notebook are from the Cornell Nature-Study leaflets, 1904. The leaflets were used as examples for the instruction of junior naturalists.

A child's note-taking as he/she observes a bean ("been") plant in jar growing. From the conception "I planted a been. I watered it." to "No Change" to finally "My been had some pretty little leaves."
$75

Doubly Bound
By Diane Fine and Tracy Honn
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 Honn. 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.

Featured in the Binding section of the New York Public Library's Exhibit Ninety from the Nineties: "Diane Fine and Tracy Honn collaborated on "Buster's Mother," a story about women's choices that was inspired by a playing card."
$300

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Two Luso Lyrics
By Tom Braga
Plattsburgh, New York: Moonkosh Press, 1994. Edition of 52.

7.25 x 10.25" closed, extends to 28"; 12 pages. A 4-panel accordion with poems on two single signatures attached in the first and last valley fold. Poems Letterpress printed in Bodoni on Magnani Pescia, Tobi, and Kazaguruma papers. Panels two and three are a hand-printed lithograph "with a touch" of letterpress and hand-coloring. Printing/design collaboration by Diane Fine and Mario LaPlante. Singed and numbered by Fine and LaPlante.

Diane Fine: "The poems "Caldinho" and "Down to the Water" embody the Portuguese character of Braga's memories and meanderings."

Colophon (printed on interior back wrap): "It was a joy to elaborate and illuminate Tom Braga's luscious poems. This project was printed while the three of us were colleagues at the State University of New York Plattsburgh in the Spring of 1994."
$175

By Joe Napora
Moonkosh Press and Ragpicker Press. 1987. Edition of 160.

6" x 7". 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.

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

Lists
By Keith Duquette
Plattsburgh, New York: Moonkosh Press, 1986. Edition of 65.

6.1 x 6.8", 18 leaves; 7 pocket pages, 5 x 4.4"; 7 lithographed image sheets, 4.9 x 4.5". Each list printed in handset Bembo on Shadwell and Usumino papers, which has been folded to form a pocket; a lithographed sheet has been inserted in each pocket. Written and collected by Keith Duquette. Lithographs by Mario LaPlante. Hand-set and printed by Diane Fine. Cover stock by Diane Fine and Kathy Kuehn.

A prose poem with puzzling associations in a production so elegant and well-crafted that logical relationships don't seem to matter — maybe the point?
$175

Moonkosh Press Out of Print Titles:
•Beautiful Little Bird
•Fortune
• Forever & Ever
• O