1753

2019 Selection

Designed by Jamie Murphy at The Salvage Press

Bookbinder: Craig Jensen

Bookbinder: Marc Hammonds

Woodworker: Mark Landers

Categories: Printed Publication

Industry: Cultural

Tags: Letterpress

This is a protest book which aims to make tangible the current outrageous homelessness crisis in Ireland. The book includes a short text that introduces the concept but is mainly carried by the scale of the text block and the imposing nature of the binding. The book is made up of 110 sections of 16 pages resulting in 1760 pages total. The binding is in an adhesive-less medieval style on raised double linen chords with ebonised oak boards tapered to fit the swell of the spine. The book is for the most part devoid of content (the seven printed pages include half title, title, introduction, colophon, pressmark), with each empty page dedicated to one homeless family (there were 1753 homeless families in Ireland in the lead up to Christmas 2018), the scale of the situation becoming very apparent when these pages amount to a book eight inches in thickness.

The type is 24pt Méridien. The paper is 145gsm Zerkall. Bound by Craig Jensen and Marc Hammonds at BookLab II, San Marcos, Texas. The boards are ebonised oak. Eight copies have been produced, each housed in a solander box.