Byzantium ~ Canada
(Barbara Hodgson & Claudia Cohen)

Heavenly Monkey: “The Byzantium imprint was established by BARBARA HODGSON for packaging trade books. Her four novels and seven nonfiction books – published by Chronicle, Greystone, Seuil, and others – were all designed by her and feature extensive historical illustrations and original art and photography. Since 2007, and in collaboration with Claudia Cohen, she has concentrated exclusively on writing and designing nonfiction books about specific aspects of design and paper arts. These books, printed letterpress under her direction, are custom-bound by Claudia. By limiting each edition to a very small number of copies, Barbara and Claudia are typically able to spend several hundred hours per copy illuminating the printed sheets with original handwork, including art and graphic samples.

“CLAUDIA COHEN has been working with some of the top names in fine press and artists’ books for nearly four decades, including Gehenna Press, Pennyroyal Press, Cheloniidae Press, the Museum of Modern Art, Grenfell Press, the Whitney Museum, and David R. Godine, to name just a few. … She established her own bindery in Massachusetts in 1983, and moved it to Seattle in 2003. Since meeting Barbara in 2005, and discovering a wide range of shared passions, Claudia has increasingly focused on their collaborations. In addition to planning and designing the bindings and boxes, she enthusiastically hunts down the historical samples frequently included in their books.

“Up until 2019, Barbara and Claudia’s collaborations were published by HM Editions. Starting in 2022, their works will carry the Byzantium imprint.."

Paper Botanists
Cultivators of Artifice
By Barbara Hodgson & Claudia Cohen
Canada: Byzantium Press, 2022. Edition of 30.

4to, 94 pages. Text set in Fournier, printed with a handpress on dampened Arches Wove at Heavenly Monkey. Issued in two states, both bound and boxed by Claudia Cohen. Copies 1 — 10 (and A.P. I — III) extra-bound in full gilt-tooled leather and issued with an additional portfolio of scarcer historical samples (Out of Print).

Copies 11 — 30 (and A.P. IV — VIT) bound in quarter leather with Cohen's paste papers over boards, gold tooling and leather fore edges. With an additional portfolio of oversize images.

"Paper Botanists" is the debut publication of Barbara Hodgson and Claudia Cohen under the imprint of Byzantium. "Paper Botanists" explores the connections between paper and botanical arts. As well as extensive imagery and explanatory text there is also a comprehensive bibliography. The volume contains more than 100 illustrations of herbaria specimens, drawings, nature prints, woodcuts, engravings, lithographs, photographs, marbling and paper-cuttings. Some illustrations are culled from incomplete volumes of botanical texts over the last 350 years, and those specially created by the authors for this book. Paper Botanists is the first of the authors’ collaborations to be published by Byzantium.
$8,500 (Last Copy)