Page last updated: December 27, 2023
All pages Copyright © 2023 by Pinyon Publishing
Pinyon Review 22—Limited Edition
Color, 40 pages, 3 3/4” x 5 3/8”, Hardcover, Hand-painted cover
Printed on Mohawk Superfine Paper
Hemp Heritage Paper
100% sustainable, archival, made in the USA
Smooth-textured with natural specks from the hemp and recycled paper content.
Pressing
Before sewing, we press pages and cover stock in a family press.
Susan’s father bought the press at a flea market in Munich during the summer of ‘69, while he was living and teaching in Italy and Germany. The press caught his eye for pressing plants like his grandfather ... So he balanced it on the handle bars of his bicycle to bring it to his temporary home and eventually back to California.
He later gifted it to botanist and bookmakers Susan and Gary Entsminger in Colorado.
Sewing
On winter nights with music playing and dreams twinkling in the sky,
we punch holes with a bookbinder’s awl
and sew the pages and cover together with linen thread reinforced with beeswax.
Voilà
We are happy to present this beautiful edition to you.
Mohawk Loop Paper
Forest Stewardship Council certified, 100% post-consumer waste
wind-powered, carbon neutral, milled in New York
Vellum texture and heavier weight, bright printing and an enduring feel in the fingers.
Inviting you to turn pages slowly, to read and contemplate with strength and ease.
Cutting
Covers printed then cut. Interiors cut then printed.
Cover Art
Photograph “Mount Tai” by XIA Haitao, Text Designed by YIN Xiaoyuan
Book Block
Interior text blocks printed and assembled together with covers.
Seaside art on title page and throughout the issue by Liz Meer.
Japanese Hand Drill
The smooth clean action of the hand drill bores 2-mm holes through the book block.
Drilling through a few pages at a time, requiring ultra precision to keep pages aligned,
this stage of the process requires great time and concentration.
Japanese Stab Binding
Finally, the books are bound in a traditional 4-hole design
Sewn with Irish linen thread
reinforced with raw beeswax from the Midwestern U.S.
supplied by the best candle factory in the world just up the road here in Colorado: BlueCorn Beeswax
From Our Little Cabin to Yours
Om. Peace ! Peace ! Peace !
Falling As Snow Angels: You and You and You
This winter I started hiking and swimming in and around the mountain town of Ouray, just up the road. A friend called the night before the anniversary of my mother’s passing and told me about the lap lanes at the hot springs pool and all the safety precautions they had for Covid. So the next day, after months of isolation, I ventured out, a little more each time.
I climbed and swam and was nourished with gratitude for friends, poets, artists—family falling as snow angels from the sky, to let go the fire in our lives.
This is what Pinyon Review is: You and you and you, in relation—falling into pages, into the palms of our hands. I watch you as if you had orchestrated it. The themes you write about and make pictures of, like the breezes nudging open my door a few inches, flying in from many places and many times. You thread together in harmony.
I wasn’t thinking about the Pinyon Review when I rolled up the prayer flags with my friend’s poems and art, tucking them into my backpack.
I was imagining how high we’d climb off the Ouray Perimeter Trail to find a place to let the words and images breathe with the wind and the below-freezing sunny air.
I climbed through deep snow to a cluster of aspens, set the prayers sailing, smiled and tried to keep my fingers warm while photographing the scene.
Cleaned up and left only my solo tracks, to melt.
A couple of months later during an online bookbinding class, I learned the wrap-around cover structure. The magic of the image unfolding appealed to me, as did the idea of unfurling the bios of the contributors.
For the Pinyon Review, I designed the structure with three configurations:
- Flap sliding into a slot on the front, when the journal is closed
- Flap in a slot on the back, when reading the issue
- Flap open to unfurl the list of contributors and to view the full image.
Printed on fine textured, 100% sustainable Mohawk paper, milled in New York.
Paper cut, folded, and sewn by hand. For You and You and You.
Printed on Mohawk Renewal Straw Paper:
Straw is a byproduct of wheat farming. Every year, after the wheat harvest, thousands of acres of straw are either burned off or plowed under. Now that straw is being reclaimed for paper pulp.
Coming to you from September on the pinyon-juniper plateau.
Rabbitbrush, sage, wheatgrass, snakeweed ...
Our Fall Issue
This back-to-back book structure celebrates the dialogues—recognition of self and other—among writers, readers, artists, languages, and styles.
Exploration through trusting the beauty of words and images as they echo and evolve among us.
The cover drawings are laced with lines derived from the poetry, prose, and art from the 21 contributors in this issue.
36 sheets (72 pages) of 80-lb paper
Writing or Drawing ...
Ideal for ink, pencil, pastel, crayon, & charcoal.
Each book for this issue has a hand-painted cover.
Paper painted with acrylics in a paste medium.
Drying.
Then ironed flat.
Paintings are folded longitudinally (with the paper grain). Then cut into 3 pieces: 2 covers + 1 sheet for collages and labels.
Printed sheets are folded individually and then grouped into “signatures.” Title pages are removed for decoration.
I cut various rectangles and triangles, and arrange and paste them on the interior title page. Each book is unique.
The decorated title pages are then incorporated back into the signatures, which are pressed before sewing.
After sewing, I take half the pages and flip them over. This creates a tight, square spine and foredge.
Then shape the spine with a bone folder and press again.
Tipping on blank endsheets to the front and back of the bookblock.
Adding a support to shape the cover spine.
Bringing the cover and the bookblock together.
A name
And gratitude
… Sun Gathering
Thanks,
Peace ! Peace ! Peace !
This Heart-of-the-Shadow issue of Pinyon Review is a special, small, hardcover edition—good for winter evenings. The theme evolved out of the central story, “Pilgrimage,” by Suzanne Kelm. The poems surrounding the story offer related ways to consider the heart, individuals, relationship, nature, and spirit.
Each book has a unique hand-painted cover. The paintings were created with an underpainting of soft pastels, then acrylic “night” layered on top, and finally marks made through the dark to bring back the light using various tools, including a heart-block stamp my dad made.
Underpaintings
Acrylics in paste medium
Mark making
Wait: I begin to glimpse a thing. A luminescent shape. A milky belly with a navel? Wait—because I shall emerge from this darkness where I am afraid, darkness and ecstasy. I am the heart of the shadow.
—Clarice Lispector, Água Viva
The issue is accompanied by a blank journal.
Original hand-painted covers with indigo endsheets.
60 sheets of 80-lb Hemp Heritage paper applicable for ink, pencil, pastels, and light wet mediums.
Page gatherings hand-sewn on bookbinding tapes. Spine treated with archival wheat starch paste, Japanese tissue, muslin, and crash/super.
Traditional handsewn silk endbands.
Two sizes: 5 1/4" x 3 3/4" x 5/8" and 3 1/2" x 4 1/8" x 5/8"
Enjoy
