Booksby Press

Sadly, we will be ignoring Lilliput Press and Lilliputian Press, each with three entries to come to the silently significant Lilliputter Press.

Lilliputter was the press name for Frank Teagle's miniature book production who, along with Ruth Adomeit and Achille J. St. Onge spurred the miniature book Renaissance in the second half of the 20th century, giving rise to this series of posts.

In 1960 Archie St. Onge and Ruth Adomeit approached Frank Teagle, a childhood friend of Ruth's, about publishing a periodical about miniature books. This collaboration resulted in eight issues of The Miniature Book Collector beginningin 1960, which encouraged six giants of the miniature book world to begin publishing in miniature. Even before this, in 1952, Frank and Ruth were working on publishing a miniature cookie book that wasn't published till Christmas of 1960, an eight year delay. Along with the Miniature Book Collector, Frank was responsible for 6 miniature books listed in Bradbury and the reprint of the important 1920s miniature book periodical, "The Newsletter of the LXIVMOS" in bound form. The Newsletter included two miniature publications as well as 21 issues printed by different publishers in different formats. I also have a few unique items produced by or related to the Lilliputter Press that I'd like to highlight.

The first one is a letter to Ruth from Frank printed in miniature format discussing different potential miniature books projects including the Little Cookie Book. It measures 2½"×1⅝" and contains four pages printed on eight leaves. As far as I know, this is the only copy of this letter extant as I couldn't find a copy in the Adomeit papers at the Lilly Library.

My copy of "The Little Cookie Book" is in its original snap case with paper straw spacers. This book is significant because I casually looked for a copy of it for twenty years after Ruth told me she sold all 2,000 copies, save the one she kept for herself (more on that copy later). I finally found mine at a book fair in Akron in 2009, and have been seriously collecting miniature books ever since.

The next special item is a miniature gingerbread cookie that Ruth gifted to her friend Hilda Neiman in 1976. It was gifted to me several years ago by another friend that bought part of Hilda's collection. At the 2019 Conclave in Bloomington I had the opportunity to see Ruth's copy of "The Little Cookie Book." The covers were faded and the pages dog-eared with bits of chocolate and dough smeared on every page. I am convinced that my gingerbread cookie from 1976 was baked using the recipe in that exact copy of "The Little Cookie Book"! How cool is that?

The final special item I'd like to draw your attention to is the oddball "The Lilliputter Cybernetic Edition of The Book of Numbers." This appears to be a joke Frank made for miniature book great Bob Massmann (who wrote the indexes for both The Miniature Book Collector and The Newsletter of the LXIVMOS) in 1984. It consists of a printed cardstock cover and a single signature of pages randomly cut from newsprint. The whole affair measures 2-3/16"×1-7/8" and is held together with two staples. I picked this up at my first Conclave in 2104.

Next time we'll take a look at Lime Rock Press.

I am slowly preparing for my miniature book workshop at the end of February at The Morgan Conservatory. While I think this will be a higher level workshop, I'm prepared to teach it as a beginning bookbinding class. Because I want to give participants enough to go home and make their own books, I am using everyday items to replace expensive professional equipment.

Here then is the beautiful bindery at the Morgan that the workshop will be conducted in as well as some of the things I'll be using for it. A couple of $1 clamps and some bookboard instead of a $140 finishing press and a piece of cardboard angle from a furniture store works well as a punching cradle. I'm currently practicing with my poor man's tools so I know exactly how they will work in the classroom.

We currently have three or four people signed up but the workshop will only run if we have five or more, so if you're interested be sure to bop on over the the Morgan Conservatory website and sign up today! (Link in comments)