California in Relief. Thirty Wood Engravings by Richard Wagener

San Francisco: The Book Club of California, 2009 Book. As New. Hardcover. First edition. One of 300 copies signed and numbered by the artist. Introduction by Victoria Dailey. Tall quarto. Title page wood engraving plus 30 wood-engraved plates. Illustrated title page printed in red and black. Half dark green cloth with printed paper spine label, gray/brown boards with wood-engraved illustration repeated from title page. Publisher's matching slipcase of with printed paper spine label. As new. A handsome and important production which went out-of-print immediately upon publication. The book was designed and printed letterpress by Peter Rutledge Koch. The beautiful and original wood-engraved prints, printed by the artist himself, are enhanced by Wagener's short prose pieces describing them. "Not since Paul Landacre mastered the aesthetic and technical challenges of wood engraving in the early twentieth-century has any California artist achieved prominence in the medium until Richard Wagener began to explore it in the 1980's... Wagener's images of nature - his stately Sierra trees, stark peaks and rocky crags - and his urban architectural monuments - the Pantages Theater and the Griffith Observatory - combine to make this work a deeply personal record of distinctive California locations" (Victoria Dailey). .