Ragpicker Press ~ Wisconsin
(Tracey Honn)

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

The Journal of Elizabeth Jennings Wilson 1853-1867
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