Letters to the Great Dead.
Granary Books, 2025. Item #3926
13 x 11 in. portfolio in oat cloth-covered boards with red inner papers, housing 11 digital color prints, comprising a facsimile of a project published by Openings Press in 1985.
The original Letters to the Great Dead was produced as a limited edition in two portfolios, with 13 “large” and 11 “small” prints, respectively. The texts were by Jonathan Williams, and prints (letterpress, etching, silkscreen, lithography) by John Furnival. These works were collaboratively created in homage to a range of composers, writers, poets, artists, and even a chef. Begun in 1984 by Furnival’s Openings Press, the project was offered on a subscription basis with the intention to produce 25 large and 25 small prints over the course of several years. A press release dated January 4, 1985 indicated that “the aim is to complete the entire work within five years, by which time the artist and the poet will be even more internationally unknown than ever, your investment will [b]e worth 3 cents on the dollar, and you will have retired to a monastery to read Lorine [Niedecker] and Stevie [Smith] and other unworldly folk.”
The intended list of artistic tributes was expansive, and Furnival and Williams envisioned including Catullus, Stevie Smith, Charles Mingus, Charles Olson, Odilon Redon, Edward Lear, Edith Sitwell, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Fernand Point, Lorine Niedecker, Stéphane Mallarmé, Anton Bruckner, Roland Kirk, Samuel Palmer, Ronald Firbank, Gertrude Stein, Sappho, Basho, Francis Poulenc, Percy Grainger, Frederick Delius, the Tradescants, Basil Bunting, Gustav Mahler, Jacques Tati, Mae West, Oscar Wilde, Gabriel Fauré, Kenneth Rexroth, Charles Ives, Thelonious Monk, Antonio Gaudi, Frank Bridge, Beatrix Potter, William Carlos Williams, W.C. Fields, Stanley Spencer, Norman Douglas, and others.
Ultimately, 13 large and 11 small prints were completed by the time of Jonathan Williams’s death in 2008, each numbered and signed by poet and artist. The large portfolio, which were primarily visual works, includes homages to Fernand Point, Atkinson Grimshaw / James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Frederick Delius and Percy Grainger, Erik Satie, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, Stevie Smith, Basil Bunting, Charles Olson, Ronald Firbank, Edward Lear, Federico Mompou, and dsh (Dom Sylvester Houédard).
The small portfolio consisted of primarily verbal works, and includes Stéphane Mallarmé, Fernand Point, Basho and Sappho, Stevie Smith, Joel Oppenheimer, Catullus, Francis Poulenc, Percy Grainger, Lorine Niedecker, Odilon Redon, and Ford Maddox Ford / A.E. Coppard.
Our edition reproduces the 11 small prints, reduced to a size of 13 x 11 inches from their original 16 x 13 inches. The enclosure is inspired by the original portfolio. Our portfolio is accompanied by essays by Williams and Furnival, describing their poetic practices and in particular, their work on Letters to the Great Dead. The following essays have been lightly standardized and typeset in Baskerville by M.C. Kinniburgh, while preserving British spellings and punctuation: Jonathan Williams. “The Lord Fern-Evil.” Modern Painters, no. 78. Summer 1992; John Furnival. “Openings.” Baseline, no. 18. 1994, edited by Mike Daines. The ornament separating the essays is adapted from John Furnival’s John Furnival as the Minotaur [“Eleven Easy Pieces”] by Openings Press, 1980.
The artworks and essays are reproduced with the generous permission of the Jonathan Williams Estate and John Furnival Estate. Photographs used for the facsimile were kindly provided by the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo.
Printed by Jason Walz at Uncommonbindery, with portfolios by Judith Ivry.
This is from an edition of 23 copies. As new.
Photographs are courtesy and copyright Uncommonbindery.
Price: $2,000.00