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Bonnie Thompson Norman, The Windowpane Press
Seattle, Washington
Dunya Mikhail, I Was in a Hurry
Letterpress broadside printed in five colors, with bronze gilding added by hand. Photoengraved image created from an original drawing by Jill Alden Littlewood.
This poem, originally written in Arabic, was printed for a series of broadsides entitled Mutanabbi Street Starts Here. This series honored and commemorated the
street of booksellers in Baghdad which was bombed during the Iraq War. Once begun, the series has been continued by more poets and printers throughout the country.
Proceeds from the sale of the broadsides are donated to Doctors Without Borders. 11 x 15 inches, 28 x 38 centimeters. Created 2007.
For Bonnie Thompson Norman, books are a passion as well as a profession. She has been proprietor of The Windowpane Press, a letterpress printing and book
arts studio, for nearly thirty years. She works full time as a hand bookbinder in a large commercial bindery. Additionally, she often can be found
teaching classes in printing and bookmaking to high school students and adults. Her studio has many things found in a traditional print shop and bindery,
such as a 1926 Chandler & Price and two Vandercook presses, hundreds of cases of type, a guillotine paper cutter, a Jacques board shear, and, not least,
a wonderful library. Participants learn how to set type one letter at a time and hand feed pages into a press, or they learn the craft of binding a book by hand,
or creating artists’ books. These opportunities and pleasures, not diminished or replaced by the convenience and miracle of the computer age, celebrate
the venerable crafts of letterpress printing and book making in a manner accessible and relevant today. Website at
www.thewindowpanepress.com
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