(Fine Binding) Prima che tu dica Pronto. (Before you say Hello) Plain Wrapper press, ltd, signed edition of 75 (1985, in Italian and English)

Italian text and English translation. Signed. Plain Wrapper Press. One of Gabriel Rummonds finest books, with illustrations by Antonio Frasconi. --- --- Cottondale, AL, Plain Wrapper Press, 1985. Hardcover in tray case, 12.25" x 7.5". 1st Edition, limited to 75 numbered copies, signed by Calvino and illustrator Antonio Frasconi. This is copy no. 52. Printed on an 1847 Washington handpress at Gabriel Rummonds & Alessandro Zanella's Plain Wrapper Press. Housed in a cloth covered traycase with the publishers signet on the front. Hand-set in Berthold Post Mediaeval with Post Mediaeval display; text in 16D. White Magnani handmade wove paper printed damp on a Washington handpress in black and blue; woodcuts printed by Antony O'Hara and John Coleman. Bound by Craig Jensen in quarter leather with decorated paper over boards.? Original Italian text of Calvino's short story followed by English version translated by William Weaver, Calvinos longtime translator. Illustrated with 4 colored woodcuts by Antonio Frasconi. (Smyth item 37) Some faint foxing on the paper edge and in the margins of some pages. ---- ---- Very solid tray case with very light shelf wear. In all Very Good+. ---- ---- ABOUT: Book collectors worldwide acknowledge GABRIEL RUMMONDS (1931?2024) as one of the world?s pre-eminent handpress printers of the late Twentieth Century. For almost 25 years, using the imprints of Plain Wrapper Press and Ex Ophidia, he printed and published illustrated limited editions of contemporary literature on iron handpresses, primarily in Verona, Italy, and Cottondale, Alabama. Rummonds has had several exhibitions of his work in Rome, New York, San Francisco, and Verona, culminating with a major retrospective exhibition held at the Biblioteca di Via Senato in Milan, Italy, in 1999. Many of the world?s most famous museums (including The Museum of Modern Art and The Whitney Museum of American Art) and libraries (including the rare-book libraries of Harvard University, Princeton University, Stanford University, The University of Georgia, The University of Oregon, and The University of Texas), as well as numerous private collections of fine printing, house his books. -- -- The University of Alabama appointed Rummonds the founding director of its MFA in the Book Arts Program in 1984. Several of his students have become prominent fine-press printers. He has also given workshops on Problem-Solving on the Cast-Iron Handpress at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY, and at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. Rummonds authored four trade books on printing: Problem Solving and Printing on the Cast-Iron Handpress (Rochester Institute of Technology, 1991), Printing on the Iron Handpress (Oak Knoll Press & The British Library, 1998), Nineteenth-Century Printing Practices and the Iron Handpress (Oak Knoll Press & The British Library, 2004), and Fantasies & Hard Knocks: My Life as a Printer (Ex Ophidia Press, 2015). He won a prestigious ?Fifty Books of the Year? award for excellence in book design from the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Publisher Mark E. Fischer and late Publisher Emeritus Gabriel Rummonds relaunched Plain Wrapper Press in 2021. -- -- Sadly, Rummonds passed away on Friday, August 23, 2024, at age 93. Over the past three years, however, he had worked tirelessly to revive the press, which will continue to publish fine-press editions in the tradition that he established over 50 years ago. plainwrapperpress. 1st Edition, limited to 75 signed, numbered copies.