Hardcover
1988 · Northridge CA
by Blanco, Amanda; with a foreword by Lawrence Clark Powell
Northridge CA: Santa Susana Press. Near Fine. 1988. Limited Edition. Hardcover. [brown cloth clamshell box has some minor scuffing to the underside; mounted plates are in Fine condition]. (B&W photographs) SIGNED by the subject, master printer Ward Ritchie, on the title page and also on Plate 12, latterly with an inscription "For old friends from the 1930s -- the Petits"; additionally SIGNED by Lawrence Clark Powell on the limitation page. "Designed, printed and produced by D'Ambrosio, using hand set Della Robbia type and a Vandercook No. 4 proof press . . . under the direction of Norman E. Tanis, Director of Libraries, California State University, Northridge." Contents: ii [title page]; iii-v (Foreword by Lawrence Clark Powell); followed by Plates 1 (WR at work, 1984), 2 ("The 'burden' of printing by hand on an antique Albion press"), 3 ("Setting the frisket"), 4 ("The man and his press"), 5 ("Anticipation"), 7 (Grant Dahlstrom, Jake Zeitlin, WR, and LCP -- the Zamorano 'Compadres' -- at the Clark Library, 1980), 9 (Irving Block, Norman Tanis and WR at an exhibition of WR's books at the Oviatt Library, 1985), 10 ("A good sport"; WR with a tennis racket), 11 ("Gosh! Isn't this fun?"), 12 ("Ward Ritchie: A man for past, present, and future centuries," 1986). Each of the photographic plates is a 4x6 black-and-white print mounted on 2-ply archival board; the text is printed on the same type of boards. [NOTE that Plates 6 and 8 are not present.] The plates are followed by two boards containing "About the Photographer," plus the limitation page stating this to be No. 24 of sixty-five copies; these latter three boards all un-numbered. NOTE also that two of the plates have the previous owner's address label on the verso. NOTE also that there may be another missing board; the order was jumbled when I acquired this, and I'm not certain if the limitation page belongs at the end (where I've placed it) or at the beginning. (There is no page numbered "i", which makes me slightly suspicious.) At any rate, the set IS incomplete, with only 10 of the original 12 plates present, and is commensurately bargain-priced. [Another NOTE: the scanned image is of Plate 1.] Signed by Collection of Signatures . (Inventory #: 24850)