Jules Remedios Faye ~ Washington                                       Share this page:
(Stern & Faye, Printers / Grey Spider Press / Street of Crocodiles)

TypeCon,: “Jules Remedios Faye is proprietrix of Stern & Faye Printers — a letterpress print shop and hand bindery established with her husband and partner, C. Christopher Stern. Jules apprenticed at the age of 17 to a letterpress job shop in San Francisco and worked several years in commercial print shops throughout San Francisco and Seattle. She met Chris in 1987 in Seattle while hunting for a press. In 1994, they combined their print shops and began working collaboratively as Stern & Faye, Printers. For the next 14 years, Jules and Chris published limited edition fine press poetry chapbooks and offered commercial letterpress and hand binding services to produce commission books, job work and ephemera. After losing Chris to cancer in 2006, Jules continues to offer relief printing, hand bookbinding and letterpress printing services to a large community of artists, writers, graphic designers and others. She is a guiding force behind the C.C. Stern Type Foundry."

Compiled by Jules Remedios Faye
With introduction by Sandra Kroupa
[Sedro-Woolley, Washington: Street of Crocodiles Printery, 1995. Edition of 195.

6.25 x 8"; 253 unnumbered pages. Front and back matter set in Bodoni Book and printed by Jules Remedios Faye on a Vandercook 4 Proof Press. Type cast by Jim Rimmer at his Pie Tree Press & Type Foundry. Case bound in Japanese cloth over boards. Black pastedowns and endpapers.

Sandra Kroupa, Introduction: "Throughout history women have gathered together to create art, support each other emotionally and share their lives. The quilting bee was a model for ‘The Ladies Printing Bee' which assembles the work of women printers, evoking a complicated crazy quilt. … Much of the work of average women, even in the twentieth century, is hidden, incorporated into daily life and consumed. Using 'women's work' as the theme of 'The Ladies Printing Bee', this book attempts to support, validate, document and share the work of women printers."

Jules Remedios Faye, Preface: “I sent out an invitation which offered to document present printing history by publishing a sampler of women’s work in the relief printing, private press and book arts fields. … Not only was I interested in collecting the work of this disparate group, I also wanted to investigate why they became printers, why they chose letterpress.

“The order in which the signatures in this book are placed is entirely a subjective arrangement based on a visual sense of harmony rather than groupings based on thematic content, or arranged alphabetically, for example. In no way does the order or position of a signature make any comment on the merit of the work. Finally, keep in mind that this sampler represents only a fraction of what lady printers are producing worldwide."

Contents:

Preface / Jules Remedios Faye
Women's work : women in the book arts, past, present & future / Sandra Kroupa
Women's work / Colleen Shannon (Press of Appletree Alley); poem by Lucy Larcom
Hands all around / Sally Green (Brooding Heron Press & Bindery)
Threshold / Sheila Coppola; poem by Sara Lisa Bingham
Dear Berit / Elsi Vassdal Ellis (Eve Press)
Pie talk / Lisa Baudoin (Rollingpin Press), Kathy Kuehn (Salient Seedling Press)
The mothertongue / Jocelyn Dohm (Sherwood Press); poem by Charle Saether; prose by Mary Milbank

Brown

To marble the edges of books or paper / Claire Bolton (Alembic Press)
Bookmarks / Valerie Frey (Knickerbocker Press)
Handiwork / Janice Frey (Magpie Press)
Ever since Dinah / Carol Stonebhurner, Felicia Rice (Moving Parts Press)
One-day portrait of an alphabet junkie / Jenny Sapora (Blue Juniper Press)
Love / Elizabeth Serjeant (Possibility Press); poem by Riemke Ensing
Fortune teller, masthead, circus act / Rebecca Blissell (Rolling Bones Letterpress)
Keeping score / Tina Hoggatt
Los perdidos: from the cab journal / Catherine Michaelis (May Day Press); prose by Marie-Elise Wheatwind
On the role of the needle in women's work / Bonnie P. O'Connell (Penumbra Press)
Onion / Alisa Golden (Never mind the press)
Agatha, saint / Bridget O'Malley (Honmai Press)
La Fiesta brava / Jules Remedios Faye (Street of Crocodiles Printery)
Work of the heart and soul / Barbara Robertson
Estate sale / Pamela Rups (Moveable Feast Press)
O, reconciliation / Dawn Plourd (Sammer b Press)
Woman's work / Madelyn Garrett (Sub Rosa Press)
Affectionately yours / Dorothea Black (Scrabbletown Press)
The sum / Barbara Dolliver (Wentletrap Press)
Women work / Martha Miller (Cliffonian Press)
Summer 1959 / Bonnie Thompson Norman (Windowpane Press); poem by Paige Nelson
The annual women's Teanaway art weekend / Marilyn Crosetto (Waterland Press)
Paper dolls / Mare Blocker (M Kimberly Press)
Ex libris / Judith Haswell (Donek Press)
Spell for resurrection / Rusty North (Sagittarius Press)
I love printing bees / Marie Dern (Jungle Garden Press)
Woman as uroboros / Kris Caldwell
A woman's work is never done / Marylee Bytheriver (Lunation Press)
The wife of Bath's prologue / Anne Bingham (Hurdy-Gurdy Press)
Our house (actual size) / Karen Wesler
Night flight / Carol J. Blinn (Warwick Press) Index

$1,200 (Last 3 copies)

Small World Alphabet
Wood Cuts by Michael Dal Cerro
Seattle, Washington: Grey Spider Press, 1992. Edition of 75.

Oblong 10 x 8.25"; 27 pages. Printed from the blocks on Mohawk Letterpress paper. Decorated endsheets Ingres Antique. Bound in green cloth with illustrated title label on front cover and paper title label on spine. Printed and bound by Chris Stern. Numbered. Signed by the artist. Spine slightly faded.

An eclectic alphabet illustrated with woodcuts by Michael Dal Cerro. The theme of the work centers around the environment and those things endangered or extinct. The small world seems to be showing alphabetically how the world becomes smaller as we see the connections between earth and man. M is for Man cutting down trees while M in Many becomes many trees being cut down.
$300 (Last 2 copies)