Oddilly the Goat

Kingston : A.C.T. : Holmes-Wadlington, 1988. Quarto (335 x 240 mm), hand bound by Helen Wadlington in stencilled papered boards, bound in concertina form using the Japanese ‘butterfly’ binding technique, eleven original linocuts hand coloured by the artist, text printed letterpress with initials rubricated by hand, a fine copy. Limited to 50 copies, this is copy 18. The first collaboration between artist and binder.

A fine contemporary Australian artist’s book

‘Calligraphy by Gemma Black. Printed one sheet at a time by Lloyd McPherson, using a Vicobold press. Canberra bookbinder Helen Wadlington had initially intended that Oddilly be printed at the Croft Press, and printer Jim Walker ‘had blocks of the illustrations and the calligraphy made but he stored them wrapped in newspaper, which damaged the blocks so badly that the printed result satisfied neither printer nor binder’ (Andrew Schuller, ‘A History of the Croft Press’, The La Trobe Journal, No. 95, March 2015, p. 29)’ – Trove