Press on Scroll Road ~ Ohio
( Robert Baris)

Bob Baris: "Down a winding gravel lane, on a small hillside farm in Appalachia, lies the Press on Scroll Road. We raise sheep here, keep a large market garden, and hope to make a book a year. ...

"Our books, I suppose, reflect our interests in good writing, intelligent authors, books, farming. But categories are always difficult. Perhaps their best description and the one we prefer is eclectic. ...

"We try to live and farm here in ways that are at once simple, quiet and elegant. Our books, we hope, also reflect these qualities."

Fernand Point
The Formidable Monsieur Point:
An Essay by M. Joseph Wechsberg concerning the Renowned Restaurateur Fernand Point & His Restaurant De La Pyramide Cleveland: Press on Scroll Road, 2021. Edition of 50.

11" x 7.50", 20 pages. Designed and composed by Bob Baris in Cloister Lightface type. Printed on handmade paper from the Morgan Conservancy in an iron handpress. Bound by Priscilla Spitler in full-cloth covered boards with paper title on spine. Numbered.

The essay "A Reporter in France: The Finest Butter and Lots of Time" was printed in the New Yorker magazine in their September 3, 1949 issue. The essay was written by Joseph Wechsberg, a writer, journalist, musician , and gourmet. At the end of World War II and rationing, Wechsberg traveled to Vienne to dine at the Restaurant de la Pyramide. His friends had persuaded him that this was the finest restaurant in France. He says "Whenever I think back to that lunch I feel contentedly well fed; the memory of it alone seems almost enough to sustain life."
$250

Culinary Herbs
Essay by Richard Olney
Introduction by Frank Stitt
Book design by Press on Scroll Road
Cleveland: Press on Scroll Road, 2019. Edition of 50.

11.125” x 7.75”, 26 pages. Designed & composed in Cloister Lightface types. Printed in an iron handpress. Paper from Morgan Conservatory. Frontispiece engraving by Abigail Rorer. Bound by Priscilla Spitler in cloth covered boards with paper title on spine. Numbered.

Colophon: "This essay on culinary herbs was taken from 'Simple French Food' by Richard Olney & published by Grub Street, London. … And a special thanks to Frank Stitt, often called the Grandfather of Southern Cuisine, for providing his warm & inspired Introduction to Culinary Herbs. His restaurant, Highlands Bar and Grill in Birmingham, Alabama was recognized as the Outstanding Restaurant in the Nation in 2018 by the James Beard Foundation."

Frank Stitt, introduction: "Not everyone knows about the man, Richard Olney, painter and artist from Iowa who traveled to France in the 1950s on the ocean liner, The Queen Mary, and became one of the most revered food & wine writers of his adopted home during the 1960s and 1970s. His amazing intellectual curiosity and fundamental grounding in aesthetics allowed him to pursue all matters of pleasure from being ta table, one of his favorite expressions. His essays, reviews, and books propelled him to the summit of the Parisian culinary world. …

"In 'Simple French Food,' a favorite tome from my mentor & beloved writer of food and wine, Richard Olney displays his immensely perceptive, insightful, and masterful knowledge most delicately, playfully, & practically in his chapter on 'Herbs.' He has inspired my life and my home garden, and I can recall his Provencal hillside kitchen garden with 'borders of winter savory' and sections full of the wild rocket or arugula to most Americans and how we would venture out before almost every lunch & dinner to gather a few herbs, flowers, and lettuces to enrich our dining table ..."

In his essay Oley lists herbs alphabetically with short descriptions and suggestions for use. He begins with Basil and ends with Thyme (three kinds).

Excerpt: “Celery (Apium graveolens). French: Celeri. Umbellifer.

“Biennial. The small dark-green garden celery looks like a large version of common parsley and is easily grown from seed. Slightly bitter, with a more concentrated flavor than cultivated branch celery, it is commonly grown in French gardens for use in bouquets garnis & is a more interesting herb for bouquets but may be replaced by branch celery.”
$250

Poems from Cathay
By Ezra Pound
Cleveland Heights, Ohio: Press on Scroll Road, 2016. Edition of 50.

7.75 x 5.75"; 22 pages. Printed from handset Cloister Lightface type on Twinrocker paper in an iron handpress. Wood engravings by Richard Wagener. Bound in marbled paper over boards. Bindings by Priscilla Spitler. Numbered.

Ezra Pound's translations of poems by the 8th-century Chinese poet Rihaku first appeared in the Elkin Mathew's 1915 London edition of Cathay from which they are reprinted.
$200

Harvests
By Janet Lembke
Carrollton, Ohio: Press on Scroll Road, 2010. Edition of 54.

8.25 x 12.5"; 52 pages. Printed from handset Cloister Lightface on Frankfort Cream paper in an iron handpress. Includes an illustration by Joe Nutt, the author's brother.

Prospectus: "Janet Lembke writes, gardens, and keeps cats in Staunton, Virginia. Her eighteen books include poetry, literary translations, and collections of essays on the natural world. In 2005, she received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to translate Virgil's Georgics, a poem on farming. She is a certified Virginia Master Gardener."

This paean to gardening begins with this: "Plant a garden and you reap an array of surprises." And the last paragraph with this: "The garden brings not only flowers, fruits, and vegetables but also great joy. But the work put into it is not – can never be – sufficient recompense for its gifts. I shall pay the dryad's price for my harvest…."

The calming sense of our greater cycles and truths is the experience of Harvests.
(SOLD/Out of Print)

The Jumblies
By Edward Lear
[Shaker Heights, Ohio]: Wind & Harlot, 1991. Edition of 74.

2 15/16 x 2 3/16"; 28 pages. Miniature book. Six full color illustrations by Bonnie Baris. Marbled end papers. Bound in green paper covered boards with printed paper title label on spine. Numbered.

Edward Lear (1812 - 1888) — English artist, illustrator, and poet. This version with illustrations by Bonnie Baris.
(SOLD)

Three Essays
By David Kline
Carrollton, Ohio: Press on Scroll Road, 2006. Edition of 60.

6.5 x 10.5"; 44 pages. Printed from handset Cloister Lightface type on Twinrocker papers with an Ostrander-Seymour iron handpress. Two engravings by Abigail Rorer. Bound in cloth-covered boards by Priscilla Spitler.

Three essays – "Community," "Sharing Work with Children," and "The Value of Love" – reprinted here from Scratching the Woodchuck: "Nature on an Amish Farm by David Kline (University of Georgia Press)."

Robert Baris: "David Kline is an old order Amish farmer in Ohio. He has had two books of essays published: Great Possessions and Scratching the Woodchuck."
(SOLD/Out of Print)

Twenty-Four Old Regulars
By Maurice Manning
Carrollton, Ohio: Press on Scroll Road, 2008. Edition of 48.

6 x 9"; 44 pages. Letterpress printed from handset DeRoos types on Rives paper. Wood engravings by Gaylord Schanilec. Bound in cloth covered boards by Campbell-Logan. Paper title label on spine.

Twenty-four 8-line poems in a mountain dialect:

They's gone, my grannies, ever one
a mountain woman pore as God
and gone up yonder with him whar
they aint nobody pity pore.
but never oncet bent down nor broke.
I'd give my eye to lay my face
against a powdered cheek oncet more.

Press on Scroll Road: "Maurice Manning's first book of poems, Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions, was selected in 2000 as the year's winner of the Yale Younger Poets competition and was published in 2001. This was followed by A Companion for Owls, published in 2004, and Bucolics in 2007. ... When not teaching at Indiana University and Warren Wilson College, you'll find the author on his farm near Springfield, Kentucky."
(SOLD)