Elizabeth Steiner ~ New Zealand

Small Poems About Birds
By Linda Gill
1999 . Edition of 50.

13 x 14cm with 23 pages of varying sizes, using a variety of papers. A two section book with Elephant Hide paper cover. typeset in Linotype Baskerville. Designed and bound by Elizabeth Steiner.

This book needs to be viewed on a flat surface to appreciate how the small pages conceal the text on one side while hinting at the content of the visible text on the other side of the open book. If you open the book at the center (Yarrahapinny, Burrell Creek), you will notice that the right hand page is cut short of the fore-edge to expose the blue page beyond. This whole spread is about the colours of Australia, the desert and endless distance.
$98

Pacific Fan
By Elizabeth Steiner
(c 2002). Edition of 50.

5.75 x5.75”; 9 pages. Designed and constructed by Elizabeth Steiner. It fits nicely in a square envelope with simulated buttons tied with a thread for closure.

This brightly colored origami style booklet makes you fee you are holding various and several fans as you turn the pages.
$90

Moeraki Boulders
By Elizabeth Steiner
1998. Second edition of 25, following a first of only 5 copies.

5.5” diameter in 6.25 x 7.5” box; 11 layered pages. A round tray built into clamshell box holds the book. The box, covered in paste papers with a titled cloth spine, allows for easy storage.

This native legend of a geographical formation tells how boulders came to be strewn on a beach. A large ancestral canoe, the Te Ataiteuru, crossed the great ocean Kiwa but was wrecked on a reef. The cargo floated to shore coming to rest on a beach along the Otago Coast of New Zealand where it turned to stones that came to be known as the Moeraki Boulders.

A round book composed of various interlocking sheets. Steiner's interest in book structures is impressively demonstrated here. The nonadhesive concertina is simply bound at the spine so the book can be opened out into a necklace-like chain of deep earth-toned pages—reds, greens, blues, browns. Each page is layered, the printed fore sheet backed by a textured page. Textured papers were handmade into deckled circles by Steiner for the edition using ginger stalks, banana leaves, and New Zealand flax. Paste papers and Canson Mi-Tientes form the links in the chain. Each spread is a display of five different papers.
$350

Recollect: Italy
By Judy Haswell.
Illustrations by Elizabeth Steiner
1999. Edition of 50.

5 x 8.25”; 20 pages. Letterpress from Linotype 156 Paragon Italic on Canson Ingres text sheets. Minimal adhesive. The binding was executed by "sewing" or "weaving" the pages together at the spine with strips of Elephanthide paper. Housed in an Elephanthide wrapper.

A flowing series of remembrances, that could be one day or many, linked by setting, in which places and objects occupy real time or act as triggers to excursions of memory. "I learn to take advantage of open doorways and will interrupt whatever journey I am on," writes Haswell, "to see what's inside, around the corner. To the extent that sometimes I never arrive." The text, broken seamlessly into sections that read like stanzas in a prose poem, is set, in a few instances, on a narrower measure to accommodate the visual play. These discreet text units, shifting as they do in placement and form, add to the meandering, musing quality of the piece.

Churches and cafes visited, authors read, unnamed characters and occasional encounters become part of a tapestry of thought. Steiner brings the book alive through carefully crafted collage, taking her clues from the richly "illustrated" text, for instance: "The 'embroidered' church has hangings draped all around the top, around architraves, alcoves, around balconies and pulpits . . . appliqued, embroidered . . . ." and "Glimpses of private gardens through hallways; and at night, painted ceilings and lit-up chandeliers through the windows of the apartments above."

With unusual collage illustrations by Elizabeth Steiner. Various textured, marbled, colored and printed papers are layered into collage drawings and inserted into windows cut into the pages. In addition to creating her own unusual binding structures, Steiner has collaborated with Claire Van Vliet on developing nonadhesive bindings used in some Janus Press books. Richly detailed and satisfying.
$350