Sep 29, 2009
What’s the difference between a First Edition, a Fine Press Edition and an Artists’ Book? Joshua and Phyllis Heller work with me to help define the boundaries. The two of them established Joshua Heller Rare Books, Inc. in Washington DC, in 1985. The company specializes in “contemporary fine printing and beautifully illustrated books, the Private Press Movement, modern fine bindings, and books about books. [Their] much admired catalogues, illustrated in full color, are distributed to a national and international list of clients.”
Joshua has lectured widely in the United States and Canada on the art of the book. He helped organize the Art of the Contemporary Book Conference at Ohio State University in 1991, and has: contributed articles on the Private Press Movement to journals such as Fine Print and Imprint; and curated exhibitions of South African botanical artist Elise Bodley, both for the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the Audubon Society; he also proposed the first Washington Artists’ Book Fair – now a biennial event; and organized the first ever exhibition of fine modern bindings at the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington DC in 2003.
I met the Hellers at their home in Washington, D.C. recently.