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Thirty years after we published our first book, ‘Venice Approached’, it seemed fitting to mark 2022 in some way. Perhaps unconventionally, we have done this not with a conspectus of our output over those three decades but instead with a book about the travails of printing, and about the serendipitous but disaster-laden story of one book in particular, our tenth, ‘Venice Visited’, which was five years in the making and the product of much luck and much angst. Each of the components that went into the book had its story: the type, the text paper, the illustrations, the cover papers, the printing. At one point things went so badly wrong the project was very nearly abandoned. This book tells the story.
‘Only the printer knows’ runs to twenty-four large pages, the text hand-set in 14pt Dante, and printed on a dampened hand-made laid paper, probably part of the making by Batchelor for the Bruce Rogers Lectern Bible published in 1933. As such the paper has had a history. This book has been printed on folded half-sheets and we decided to keep the deckle edges and not to have the bottom and fore edges trimmed even though some have become a little dusty – it is part of the paper’s history.
There are three variants in an edition totalling 62 copies – only copies of variant C are still available at £90 plus shipping. The book itself is quarter-bound with bright yellow cloth on the spine, and a paper by Jemma Lewis on the boards, 350mm by 250mm. Each copy contains a four-page fold from the original book and a copy of the original four-page prospectus.