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Peter and Donna Thomas ~ California (formerly Good Book Press) |
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| Artists' Books by Peter and Donna Thomas One-of-a-kind Miniature Books by Peter and Donna Thomas Miniature Edition Books by Peter and Donna Thomas |
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| Each of these miniatures were produced in an edition. Please notice that several of these are now in the last few copies of the edition. They are listed chronologically. | |
| Love of Nature Sayings, quotes, and proverbs |
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Miniatures by Donna Thomas for which she produced only a unique book. Some were lavish production with original research, others, original illustrations of well known quotes. Most of these books feature her calligraphy and watercolor paintings. They are often full bound in leather with leather onlays in a slipcase with chemise or in a clamshell box. |
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Bear Clover 3 x 2.125"; 9 pages. Casebound miniature flutter book. Text pages framed in contrasting green paper. Text pages sewn to flutter pages. Full bound in brown oasis goat skin with raised bands on the spine, front and back covers. Multi-color leather onlay of bear clover on front board. Housed in clamshell box. Pastedowns and sides of clamshell box covered in maps of Yosemite. Peter and Donna Thomas: "Bear Clover forms a fragrant carpet under pines in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Donna painted the watercolor illustration of a bouquet of bear clover while in the Sierra. The text, which describes the plant, is from John Muir’s text My First Summer in the Sierra and is hand written with numerous illuminated initial letters. Full bound in brown oasis goat skin with raised bands on the spine, front and back covers. The front features a multi-color leather onlay of bear clover. A sachet of dried crushed bear clover is included with the book, and provides the reader with a smell of what Muir was writing about." |
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The Sportsman and the Squirrel 2.125 x 1.75"; 13 pages. Casebound miniature flutter book. Four watercolor illustrations by Donna Thomas. Bound in brown goatskin with inset panel of squirrel fur. Housed in paper covered clamshell box with paper title label. Peter and Donna Thomas: "This book has a fable written in 1899 by San Francisco journalist Ambrose Bierce. The fable is written in the style of Aesop, but has a non-Aesop twist. ... The cover features an inset panel with squirrel fur that Donna tanned herself."
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Squirrel (OKLOUPOS) 2.5 x 2.4"; 9 pages. Handmade paper. Limp vellum binding. Slipcased with ribbon pullout. Peter and Donna Thomas: "Six lively illustrations of squirrels of North America are cut in silhouette over a handmade paper accordion. The binding is a 'limp vellum' binding and the translucency of the skin reveals an illustration of a squirrel on the front cover. The slipcase is bound on the top and bottom with squirrel skin that Donna tanned using an old way of preserving skins that uses non-toxic animal brains! " |
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Trout 2 x 2.75"; 11 pages. Miniature casebound flutter book. Handmade papers by Peter Thomas. Watercolors by Donna Thomas. Bound in suede with leather onlays. Housed in clamshell box with paper title label on lid. Box interior lined with marbled papers matching endpapers and pastedowns. Peter and Donna Thomas: "This quote by Mary Austin is from The Land of Little Rain, written in 1903. It describes a lovely Sierra mountain scene. Five paintings of trout (painted while backpacking in Yosemite from fish that [the artist's] hiking partners caught) are interspersed with the text. Full bound in grey pig suede with raised panels covered by leather onlays to create a mountain landscape. A three-dimensional trout of layered multi-colored onlays that has been blind tooled is inset in the front cover." Donna's original watercolors are of a golden trout, a cut-throat trout, two rainbow trout, and a brook trout. |
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Nature Paints 2..625 x 2.25"; 18 pages. Casebound miniature. Four double-spread watercolor illustrations. Calligraphy, binding, and original paintings by Donna Thomas. Handmade paper by Peter Thomas. Leather binding with onlays. Housed in leather bound clamshell box with marbled paper sides. Peter and Donna Thomas: "The paintings were made by Donna when she was backpacking in the Northern Yosemite region. ... Full leather bradel binding with leather onlay imagery of a mountain and lake landscape scene. The endpapers are re-drawn and hand-colored topo[graphical] maps of the region where the paintings were made." The watercolors depict four North Yosemite sites: Tower Peak, Matterhorn Canyon, High Emigrant Lake, and Otter Lake. The text is a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson's Art: "Nature paints the best part of a picture…" |
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Sit and Knit 2.75 x 2.4"; 12 pages. Miniature casebound flutter book. Handmade paper by Peter Thomas. Knitting, painting, and binding by Donna Thomas. Full leather binding, with leather onlay of knitting swatch, with metal knitting needles inserted. Housed in clamshell box. Peter and Donna Thomas: "The text is a short quote by William Howitt about folk art knitting in rural England. The book has hand written/calligraphed text, an opening initial letter painted with gold, and four miniature knitting samples, including "aran cables" and "fair isles" (which Donna knitted for the book) stitched in a window created between two pages. ... The binding is a kind of accordion, one Donna developed and now calls the woven spine binding. Knitting needles are used to hold together the piano hinge spine." |
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The Imagination 2.5 x 1.75"; 14 pages. Accordion with two inset accordions. Full leather bound in green Moroccan leather with six-color leather onlay. Housed in a clamshell box. Decorative art work based on Arabic designs.
$425
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Ab ovo: From the Egg 2.25 x 1.75". Shaped in an oval like an egg with egg shaped accordion pages. Bound in full leather with leather onlay cover decorations. Slipcase made with a clear mylar front (for viewing book/egg) and paste papers. An Easter-egg book with nine quotes about the egg. "A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg...." |
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My Dad's Desk 2.7 x 2.2"; 7 pages. Miniature accordion fold with leather inlaid boards. Each page has a pocket with a found object. Peter Thomas: "A few old pencils from Donna's dad's desk inspired the creation of this book. There is no written text; watercolor illustrations, painted on yellow handmade paper, and the small objects in the pockets tell the story."
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| Each of these miniatures were produced in an edition. | |
Train Depots 3 x 2.25"; 44 pages. Letterpress printed with handset metal type using 14 point Centaur for the text and 24 point Old Town for the titles. Printed on Peter's handmade paper. 9 line drawing illustrations. Handbound by Peter and Donna Thomas in black leather with the title stamped on a wood panel inset in the front cover. Peter Thomas: "This is a short history of train depot buildings in the United States. There are 9 line drawing illustrations of train depots, printed in black ink on a blue square. The blue square was printed from small blocks of wood found at the site of an old train depot in La Grand, California, and was printed so that the color offset on the reverse side of the page as well." |
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Miniature Leaf Books 2.975 x 2.25" with 30 pages. In an edition of 120 regular copies, six special copies, one vellum copy. According to this text, there are at present four known miniature leaf books – this volume being one of the four. Includes a definition and history of leaf books. Tipped in are leaves from three miniature books: an American “thumb” Bible published in 1831; a Bryce "Ellen Terry" book, The Shakespeares [sic] Glossary (Glasgow, 1904), and the American Tract Society's Dew Drops, circa 1847). Descriptions of each leaf sample and the book it came from. Letterpress printed on (according to the printer) a cranky old Pearl treadle press using Joe Halton's linotype for the text and handset Neuland for the titles. Text paper by Peter Thomas from bleached denim rag; the endpages have flecks of paper from Keble's Reports (1686). Case-bound using Peter Thomas’s handmade paper toned brown with a wash of raw umber. The title on the cover, the paper the title is mounted on, and the sample on the title page are all from "Keble's Reports." Text written in 1997, set in type in 1998, but not printed until 2005. Although Peter Thomas wrote the text, the research is based largely on information provided by John Class. |
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| Love of nature is reflected in many of the Thomas’s’ books. | |
In the San Joaquin Valley 2.9 x 1.6"; 12 pages. Accordion miniature. Letterpress printed using handset metal Canterbury type. Floral cloth covered boards with paper title. Peter Thomas: "The text is a quote by John Muir, written in 1868, about his walk across the then wildly verdant San Joaquin Valley. There is a line drawing illustration, by Donna Thomas, of the landscape Muir described. It is woven through the text, and runs along the bottom of the accordion pages. The illustration is printed with a rainbow roll, and the color gradates from red/brown in the mountains to brown/green at the ground. The paper was handmade by Peter from cotton rag, with sprays of flowery pulp painted colors splashed across the sheet. The book is bound with flowery cloth covered boards with is a paper label on the front. The book was secretly made for Donna’s 51st birthday and so there are 51 copies." |
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Nature Paints 1.75 x 2.25"; 18 pages. Accordion with endpages bound in. Four double-spread inkjet reproductions from original watercolors. Calligraphy, binding, and original paintings by Donna Thomas. Handmade paper by Peter Thomas. Wooden boards with paper title on front cover. The North Yosemite sites: Tower Peak, Matterhorn Canyon, High Emigrant Lake, and Otter Lake. Peter Thomas: "The text is a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The original was calligraphed onto paper panels that were glued onto maps showing the areas where the drawings were made. There are 4 double-spread watercolor paintings of Sierra scenes that were painted on site in the Sierra while she was backpacking. This edition was color copied onto handmade paper Peter made specially for the project." |
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Spring Wildflowers ABC 2.875 x 2.1875". Images color printed on accordion-folded handmade paper. The book is case bound in a full paper binding painted and decorated with stenciled images of plants. Paper all handmade by Peter. Twenty-six watercolors of wildflowers native to the California coast range painted on site by Donna Thomas.
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Half Dome: 3 x 2.25", 32 pages. Two black and five 3 color block print illustrations by Donna. Hand set, letterpress printed on paper handmade by Peter Thomas. Coptic bound with redwood boards. A story about Yosemite’s Half Dome, its discovery and first ascents, is told in a footnoted text. |
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Song of Creation 2.75 x 2.125”; 10 pages. Color-copied illustration. Ten-page double pop-up accordion structure bound in covered boards. Love of nature is reflected in every facet of the book, from Donna's panoramic watercolor view of Yosemite Valley—by her reckoning the most majestic bit of nature on earth—to the plant fibers in the green, handmade cover paper and, of course, Muir's timeless text. |
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Landscape of the John Muir Trail 24 accordion pages, 2.63 x 2.13". Bound in painted handmade paper with a paper slipcase. |
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| Several of the Thomas’s’ books are based on quotes from an admired person from history. Or, sometimes a proverb will surface to be a lovely book. | |
No Form of Love: A quote by Eleanor Roosevelt 2.13 x 1.63" with 21 inch scrolling page. Letterpress printed on Peter's handmade paper, using old wood and various metal typefaces, with a rainbow roll of ink that goes from red to purple. No two copies are exactly the same. The back of the scroll was printed with hearts that were carved in a linoleum block by Donna for Peter on Valentine's Day. The scroll is wrapped around a capped brass shaft. This scroll unit is slipped inside a hole that was drilled into a small paduk wood block. This block was in turn glued as a textblock into the covers of the book. The outside cover is made from Peter's handmade paper. It has a title label glued on the front cover. This label which depicts violets and the script initials "E.R.", as E.R. signed her letters, was printed from a linoleum block carved by Donna: ER states that in her day it was the custom to give violets as a token of affection to ones' lovers. The book was made as an expression of love: love of material possessions, book structures, words of wisdom, complex ideas and freedom of choice. The text was taken from one of Eleanor Roosevelt's personal notebooks. It was written as a comment on a book she was reading at the time, as a statement that one should be free to choose whom one loves. |
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Love is Everlasting: 1.25 x 1.3", 10 accordion pages. Color copied onto paper handmade by Peter Thomas. Accordion bound between covers wrapped with Hawaiian tapa cloth (a traditional cloth-like material made by pounding the inner bark of the Originally a one-of-a-kind book that Donna Thomas had hand painted and hand lettered. The proverb is in Hawaiian and English: "Love is worn like a wreath through the summers and the winters, love is everlasting." |
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TIME I$ 2.5 x 2", 5 pages. Letterpress printed, on Peter's handmade paper, using old wood and metal types and images of clocks which Donna carved out of linoleum. The cover and end pages both required at least ten press runs to print all the different clocks and the various settings of "time is time." The binding, made with wood and Peter's handmade paper, is another variation in their series of "Stick Structure" books. The printed pages are folded and glued over wooden dowels which have been painted gold. These "pages" can turn: they are set in holes drilled into a wooden framework which has also been painted gold. This differs from previous "flap books" as it has the text mounted inside the back cover. A space has been created behind the text to hold a one dollar bill, which can be removed. The one dollar bills were ordered direct from the US Treasury and are sequentially numbered, thus the number on the bill matches the book's edition number. This book is about time and money. On one side of the page is what Ben Franklin has to say, what Mark Twain has to say is on the other side. Peter's text is on the cover, end pages and the one dollar bill.
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Peter and Donna Thomas Miniature Books Out of Print Titles:
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Page last update: 06.25.09
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