Beer will Help Your Shake The Recollections of a Ninety-two Year Old Papermaker

Oxford, UK: The Alembic Press; Santa Cruz, CA: Peter and Donna Thomas, 1990.
Small 4to. 7 3/4 x 6 1/4 inches. [vi], 9-25, [3] pp. Half-title, title-page printed in blue and black inks, initials in blue, 2 linocut illustrations of papermaking by Donna Thomas, section dividers in blue; text clean, unmarked. Folded blue paper covers, printed paper front cover title label, manuscript vellum straps from a vellum indenture; binding square and tight. SIGNED on the colophon by Harry Glanville and Peter Thomas. LH823-017. Fine.
FIRST EDITION, LIMITED to 114 copies, this is copy number 22 of the 100 regular copies. "This book has been jointly produced by (truncated) the Alembic Press of Oxford, England and Peter & Donna Thomas of Santa Cruz, California." Colophon. "In 1988 I went to England to meet Cyril Finn, a retired hand papermaker who had worked at the vat his whole life, to learn the motions of the 'papermaker's shake.' After the interview, I asked if there were any other old papermakers around. He replied, 'If you want to meet a really old papermaker you should go up to Wookey Hole and meet Harry Glanville, the man who trained me.' I found Harry, who was the 92, in a rest home in Wells. Harry could not answer my questions, but he could tell a good story, which I tape recorded and, on returning home, transcribed. I made plans to return to England in 1990 to have another interview with Cyril. When I told Claire Bolton of the Alembic Press about the plan she invited me to come visit, proposing we might do some sort of collaborative book project while we were there. After some discussion, we decided to print Harry's transcribed interview on Wookey Hole handmade paper. Claire hosted Donna and I, and our two daughters, for about a week, and in that time, we got the pages printed. We had recently been introduced to the concept of making 'non-adhesive bindings' and decided that that style of binding would be appropriate for this book. About this time, English law had changed and lawyers no longer needed to retain centuries-old parchment indenture documents, so there were lots of them on the market. Claire had just bought several dozen, and inspired by their raw beauty, we used them for the bindings of the special copies and also for the straps of the regular copy bindings. We split the edition with Claire, each taking 57 copies." Thomas, pp. 342-243.
WITH: THOMAS, Peter (b. 1951). 2-Page Typed Letter Signed. Santa Cruz, CA: Peter and Donna Thomas, 1991. Single sheet of Peter Thomas handmade paper. 11 1/8 x 8 3/4 inches. Written with a word processor on a computer, printed with a dot-matrix printer on Peter Thomas's handmade paper; folded with a dog-eared corner, some light toning to the outer margins of the paper. SIGNED by Peter Thomas and with a short note about the paper. KJH1123-241. Very Good.
This copy of Beer Will Help Your Shake is accompanied by a 2-page typed letter, SIGNED AND INSCRIBED from Peter Thomas to Mel Kavin. The letter shares Peter Thomas's experiences traveling in the United Kingdom and northern Europe with his family in 1990. Peter tells Mel Kavin that at almost every location he visited to share paper making and book arts experiences with the locals, it seemed like everyone knew Mel Kavin personally and had fond memories of Mel and his wife Phylis. Peter Thomas also discusses the making of Beer Will Help Your Shake, which was designed and executed with Claire Bolton at the Alembic Press. The inscription reads, "P. S.: This paper is made from moldy old Russian hemp & abaca which had tiny seeds so was no good for printing… Thus it became stationary. PT."
REFERENCE: Peter and Donna Thomas, Peter and Donna Thomas: Bibliography, D2. (Inventory #: LH823-017)