Strum the Chords Blithely

[75] p. 22 cm. Illustrations. "Presented to members of the Zamorano-Roxburghe clubs by Edwin M. Todd, San Francisco, October 1 & 2, 1988." "300 copies printed by Patrick Reagh and bound by Bela Blau." From an on-line posting: "Blau is among the last of a kind--a bookbinder who stitches pages together and creates book covers by hand. It's an Old World craft that automation has all but nudged aside. Blau has toiled in her tidy South Broadway shop at the edge of the downtown garment district for a quarter-century. Her work ranges from matchbook-size miniature books that you can lose in your shirt pocket if you are not careful to 2 1/2-foot-wide editions that almost require two people to open and close. Everything is done by hand at her bindery. Book cover fabrics are individually selected and glued to a hard cardboard backing. Titles are stamped from heavy lead type that is set letter by letter. Pages that customers have had printed elsewhere are sewn together and trimmed, one book at a time. Blau and her four employees can set up their own hand assembly line and produce up to 5, 000 copies of a book if a customer needs that many. Especially fancy books with custom-made matching cover boxes can cost up to $1, 500 each." Very good. No dust jacket. Signed by author. Nice inscription on fep. Limited Edition, one of only 300 copies printed.