Mr Leopold Poldy Bloom
Launch of ‘The Works of Master Poldy’ Book and Exhibition.
On the 6th of June an exhibition of “The Works of Master Poldy” will open at the Crypt in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. The exhibit will include spreads from the book along with the book itself and type & tools used in its creation.
Update: 26.05.2013.
USING TYPE TO REVEAL BLOOM AND HIS WORLD
Just a few more days to go in the printing of “The Works of Master Poldy” at The Distillers Press in Dublin! Jamie has been working 12-hour days to get all the final sheets ready for the bookbinder on time. That deadline is fast approaching: Thursday, May 30 is the day.
For the past week Jamie has been printing the pages that contain the collected quotes and thoughts of Leopold Bloom. The words are set in relatively small metal monotype and printed in one color ink, in sharp contrast to the multi-hued large wood type pages that we’ve been showing you the past several weeks.
What we want the design and organization of “Master Poldy” to give the reader is both a new portrait of Bloom and a new relationship with the printed world. Our canvas for this portrait is the largest available in a printed book: the spread, the two facing pages that your eyes take in all at once. Our medium is pure typography: letters liberated from the uniformity imposed by mass production and by ebook efficiency.
Each of the 12 page spreads presents a different view of Bloom in his world. He appears on one side as a poem-like stream alone, his voice rendered in quiet human-scale type. Collecting these words was an act of careful, slow scavenging through 13 of the 18 chapters in ‘Ulysses.’ Joyce gives us very few of his hero’s spoken words, but there are shards of thoughts, strings of observations, and reflections of Bloom from various narrative mirrors. All of these diverse fragments are strung together in free-flowing association to form a new representation of Bloom.
On the facing page is the big blaring world, a passage from ‘Ulysses’ not necessarily of Bloom but evocative of what is streaming through him on the facing page. Jamie’s masterful typographic designs on these pages abandon the conventions of reading and challenge the reader to see the words anew.
“The Works of Master Poldy” is a tribute to the liberating vision of ‘Ulysses,’ the heroic aliveness of Leopold Bloom, and the beauty of print culture.
— Steve Cole, Baltimore
April 2013: My wife has just given me my birthday present.
“The Works of Master Poldy.” The Wit & Wisdom of Leopold Bloom The first collection of quotes from the hero of James Joyce’s ULYSSES, in a limited edition letterpress book designed & printed in Dublin, Ireland. Leather bound deluxe version of the book that will be ready for launch on June 6th in Dublin.Thanks Dolores. xxx. Click here. 17/04/2013: The Guardian wrote about the book today.
This will be the first book released under the new imprint, The Salvage Press, by Dublin based designer Jamie Murphy. Following on from the successful ‘Ulysses Strands’ project, the book will be a new Joycean collaboration with Steve Cole from Baltimore, Maryland.
The Works of Master Poldy will be based on the musings of Leopold Bloom, James Joyce’s seminal hero in ‘Ulysses’. The idea for this Joycean undertaking has come from no greater an authority on Leopold Bloom than his own wife, the erotic and unfaithful Molly Bloom. Mrs. Bloom, in her bed at the end of that eventful day in 1904, muses admiringly about her spouse: “I declare somebody ought to put him in the budget if I only could remember the one half of the things and write a book out of it the works of Master Poldy yes.”
You can help make this book a reality by following this link. http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-wit-wisdom-of-leopold-bloom?c=activity
About the book.
The book will be printed by hand from wooden and metal types. Experimental typographic treatments will act as illustrations. It will be printed on Zerkall mould made paper and will be hand bound by Tom Duffy at his workshop in Dublin’s Five Lamps. The book will measure 38 x 22 cm and will be available in two variants.
The standard edition will be quarter bound in cloth and board and housed in a protective slip case. Edition of 100.
The deluxe version will be quarter bound in leather and board and along with a portfolio of loose prints will be housed in a protective slip case. Edition of 20. Mine is #16.
