March 2025: Currently in the press is the next publication from Byzantium, Textile Designs on Paper: An Archive from Early 19th-Century France. For this book the team of Barbara Hodgson and Claudia Cohen has been joined by textile historian Susan Meller, whose archive of original gouache design samples forms the book’s focus. The edition of 26 copies will be issued in late 2025.

Two HM projects are being developed. The more ambitious is another collaboration with Briony Morrow-Cribbs: Joshua Bell’s poem ‘Sci-Fi Violence,’ elaborately embellished with Briony’s intaglio prints. We hope to issue it this fall. Details to follow.

The Bell poem probably will be preceded by a short work about the history of publishers printing a few copies of a book on blue paper. Aldus was the first to do this, and the practice was soon adopted by other printers (primarily in Italy). Why did it start, and why blue?