The Project

The Printer in Residence projects at University of Otago are collaborative projects. A project may be with a designer and printer working with area writers, or an illustrator working with a printer. There’s all kinds of combinations but it’s almost never a solo endeavor. The goal is to produce an edition that shows off the printing facilities in the library and to foster book-making both within the University environment and to the wider arts community. Copies of the edition are sold—often to collectors and institutions, but the copies are available for sale to everyone—with the proceeds going to the next year’s project.

I tend to work alone in my personal work—producing the writing and imagery myself as well as the printing and binding. So this will definitely be a learning experience for me to collaborate so fully on such a large project. Fortunately I have friendly and very skilled people to collaborate with!

I wanted to work on something that had to do with the landscape—since that’s what most Americans think of when they think of New Zealand. I also thought it would be good to work with a New Zealand writer working on new material, rather than with previously published material. After discussing a few ideas with Donald Kerr, we decided on a project that fit the bill perfectly. The text comes from Rhian Gallagher, a poet who has been working on a series of poems about the Southern Alps—New Zealand’s highest mountain range—and in particular Fred Du Faur, the first woman to reach the summit of Mt Cook. Lynn Taylor is a local printmaker, will be creating imagery for the book.

Together we will design the book, I will set the type and in a group effort, we will print the edition. Binding the edition will be done here with the University Bindery.fredadufaurpeak

Here’s an article on Te Ara about Freda Du Faur: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3d17/du-faur-emmeline-freda

Here’s the Wikipedia article about Freda Du Faur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freda_Du_Faur

The Back Story and How All This Came About

I first heard about University of Otago’s Printer in Residence Program in 2013 when I started working at Dartmouth College as the Book Arts Special Instructor—which is the manager of the Book Arts Workshop in Baker Library. Howard Amos, the University Librarian at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand had just visited during a Matariki Network event hosted at Dartmouth. The Matariki Network of Universities (MNU) is an international group of leading, like-minded universities, each amongst the most historic in its own country. (That last sentence comes straight from the MNU website, which you can see here: http://matarikinetwork.org/). Howard Amos saw our Book Arts Workshop at Dartmouth and talked about it with Donald Kerr, Special Collections Librarian and Otakou Press coordinator at University of Otago. Together they came up with an idea, and planted the seed to have one of our printers from Dartmouth visit, as the Printer in Residence in New Zealand. I filed that idea away in my head right away—thinking, “wouldn’t that be amazing!”

Nothing came of the idea until in 2014, when David Seaman, Associate Librarian for Information Management and Morgan Swan, Special Collections Education & Outreach Librarian—both from Dartmouth—went to the University of Otago, for another Matariki event. The seed that was planted earlier grew over dinner between Donald, Howard, David, and Morgan. At least this is the story as I know it. All I really know is, when David came back to New Hampshire he asked me if I wanted to go to New Zealand. “Yes, please,” I said.

And now after a bit of strategizing, anticipating and fretting (mostly on my part) I’m about to fly out to Dunedin for six weeks and a fantastic project with amazing people! I’m very thankful to the Matariki Network of Universities and University of Otago for funding this project and trip. Of course I’m super thankful to the Dartmouth College Library for making it possible for me to do this at all!

If you want to know more about book arts and printing at Dartmouth and University of Otago check out these websites:

www.dartmouth.edu/library/book-arts/

http://www.otago.ac.nz/library/printer_in_residence/overview.html