Lecons de Livre pour Calyban or Prosper's Parisian Printing Parade. Bon mots, bagatelles, & tableaux de l'imprimerie. Also a sometime type specimen & leaf book. As Told to an American. Pochoir by Jef Aerosol

St-Zotique, Quebec [Canton, NY]: Cat's Head Press [Caliban Press], 2008. One of 114 copies, all on various papers including Rives and Arches, vintage Barcham Green handmade, St-Armand handmade from Montreal, Quebec, Kochi from Japan and handmade lokta from Nepal, each signed by the author / printer. Mark McMurray has created his own look at printing history in Paris, with a dark back story of immigrant life in the "City of Light." Page size: 8-1/4 x 12 inches; 48pp. Bound: flexible quarter dark grey vellum binding by Velma Bolyard from Pergamena Parchment, Montgomery, NY and St-Armand handmade grey papers, label printed "Lessons" in lavender on white paper inserted into front cover, publisher's slipcase. Issued with a separate sheet of "Lecons Notes" which explain some of the images and text. From Melissa Schulenberg's portrait of Nancy Cunard (original relief print) to figures from the 1493 "Liber chronicarum" to woodcuts to found images, this tour of Paris delights. The text consists of fourteen lessons in English and French concerning the Arts of the Book and sundry other old and new topics. Collected from found and fabricated texts by the two main semi-fictional characters, Cal & Prosper, who are visiting Paris to learn the art of printing. This, then, is also a type specimen and a leaf book. It recalls printers past and present who have produced books in Paris. It is printed in several colors on cylinder and hand presses from foundry, monotype, photopolymer & wood types set by hand, machine composition, and computer. The primary face is Garamond. Additional faces include Fournier, Caslon, Nicholas Cochin and others. Monotype composition by Michael Bixler; photopolymer plates by Boxcar Press. The original signed pochoir by Jef Aerosol of Samuel Beckett is a stunner. The small "gold" man (cut-out paper doll) in the Treizieme Lecon "Who's that?" is collaged on a page of Arab text opposite a map of the Quartier Latin with text in French and English guessing at his identity - or commenting on it. "Ubu reincarne?