Books Are My Utopia
Calligraphic aphorisms by Will Rueter
Eighteen aphorisms on the theme of books by Will Rueter, proprietor of The Aliquando Press. Calligraphy reproduced from polymer plates, with original elements added to each one by Rueter.
Edition of 36 signed copies, printed on a variety of papers. Uniformly bound and boxed by Claudia Cohen. The sheets were sewn into a folded handmade paper structure with gilt-stamped title label on the cover. Large 16mo, 20 leaves. 2020
This project was conceived as an opportunity to collaborate across the 2,000 miles that separate the HM and Aliquando studios.
Similar in concept and execution to HM’s An Alphabetic Accumulation, Will selected, designed and wrote out each aphorism to fill a recto page. These originals were then used to create polymer plates for printing. Some elements – words and/or ornamentation – were omitted, and Will then added these to each sheet, thus every sheet includes some original calligraphic embellishment by him.
The authors quoted in the collection are, in order of appearance: Helen Keller; Bohuslav Martinu; Stefan Zweig; (anonymous); George Santayana; William Morris; Martin Luther; Richard Rodriguez; Paul Auster; T.J. Cobden-Sanderson; Raul Mario Rosarivo; Rabbi Nachman; Joseph Conrad; Herman Koch; John Ruskin; William Blake; Francesco Petrarcca; and Tertullianus.
Because Will shares HM’s fondness for paper, a variety of hand- and mouldmades were used in the collection. Three of the aphorisms are fold-out sheets that were printed by Will at his studio in Ontario (the rest of the book was printed at HM).