TEN ESSAYS ABOUT BOOKMAKING BY C. MIKAL ONESS⠀•⠀WITH FILM PHOTOGRAPHS

I’m often asked who I consider the finest working printer. Easy: Chad Oness. Since the late 80s, Chad has printed a few dozen editions, all using hand-set types, a manual press, and dampened papers. But the excellence in Chad’s printing can’t be summed up in its craft features. There is something ineffable about it — some wizardry which I am hungry to learn. So, after years of correspondence, I invited myself to Chad’s homestead in Minnesota to see “the master at work”.

The master, it turned out, was more interested in sailing than printing. I met him at a dock on the Mississippi. He drove up in an old Corolla (200,000 miles on the odometer) and put me on a sailboat straight away. Within minutes, I had a rope in each hand and a rudder doing the cha-cha between my thighs. Bald eagles hunted and Chad started talking, but over six hours on the water he said nothing about printing. After docking, we went to his homestead where I expected to find a sublime workshop, a vast laboratory with pristine instruments and a Pantone rainbow of inks. Instead, it was a small pantry room off the kitchen, with a few stray ink cans and flea market tools. I expected his press to be a shining rig, a Rolls Royce of the printed word. Instead, it was worn and rather small, no different than a dozen such proofing presses I’ve encountered at community printing spaces. What I expected to find was a wizard. What I found instead was a gentle giant — the adoptive father of a dozen abandoned sailboats, caring for his green beans, dogs, and squash patch. When we finally got to printing, it became clear that Chad cares passionately about his work. There’s no trick to it, no special tool or approach. The trick is that he cares. When he saw something to improve, he took the time to improve it. What was another hour, another day, another week of work, compared to the lifetimes that this work would last?

I stayed for a weekend, snapping photos on my Canon A-1 camera. I received a masterclass in fine presswork, and in living a fine life. With this edition, I hope to share this masterclass with you.

Chad originally wrote the first essay in this collection in response to my question, “Why make books by hand?” I asked him to keep going because, as you will find, these essays go far beyond the confines of bookmaking, speaking to something more essential. We all have a craft or two. Each of us has interests. Our society calls them “hobbies,” a trick of vocabulary to obfuscate what’s really important. Chad reminds us to build our lives around important things, around that blossom of fire.

The book includes ten essays: A Private Matter, Guillotine for Sale, Cut Away, The Way of the Book, Self Insufficiency, Step Aside Marie Kondo, The Living and The Dead, ‘Around Hand-Bookmaking’, Pictures, and And Then Went Down to the Ship. They cover a variety of topics but all through the window of bookmaking and its related crafts. It has been printed manually on dampened papers — Johannot and Zerkall — which are no longer being made. It represents a few “firsts” for No Reply: It is our first edition to include photography; It is our first edition to include a patterned paper; It is our first edition to be sewn in a way that makes the book completely layflat. Furthermore, this is the first of what I hope will become on ongoing series of books by bookmakers I admire.