Verona: Plain Wrapper Press, 1977

8vo, pp. 12, unpaginated. Original olive stiff paper wrappers with foldover flaps, title in brown to front panel. Sewn binding. Uncut and unopened. A fine, unread, unopened copy.

First edition, one of 180 copies. 2pp. TLS FROM THE PRINTER RICHARD-GABRIEL RUMMONDS TO NOVELIST AND ART CRITIC FREDERIC TUTEN LAID IN, DISCUSSING THE RECENT MOVE OF THE PLAIN WRAPPER OPERATION TO VERONA, AND PLANS FOR THE PRINTING AND PUBLICATION OF BOOK.

One of the pre-eminent handpress printers of the twentieth century, the American Richard-Gabriel Rummonds founded his Plain Wrapper Press in the mid-1960s. A meeting with Verona-based Giovanni Mardersteig, master printer at the Officina Bodoni, convinced Rummonds to move his operation to Verona in 1971.

The letter accompanying the book is packed with information about the press in general, and this title in particular: 'Burgess wrote this poem one afternoon while visiting here in Verona. We have been very busy setting up a bindery in the small studio near the river.... We'll have one room for the presses and the other for a combination composing room and office. The studio is located on the ground floor, naturally, and all the windows face a small, but lovely garden. ... The Burgess/Tilson book [Will And Testament] is now being bound and we expect to start delivering the first copies next week. I really am very pleased with it...'.

In his memoir Fantasies And Hard Knocks: My Life As A Printer [Ex Ophidia Press, 2015], Rummonds writes that this title '...was printed in quarto on Fabriano Esportazione "GF" paper, on one side of the sheet only, in two colors. The black form was locked into one half of the bed and the red in the other. The two forms were inked separately and then printed together. Half the copies went to the Burgesses, and the other half to the P[lain] W[rapper] P[ress]. A Christmas Recipe was the last item to be printed at the via Duomo studio.'

The limitation to the book reads: 'Natale 1977. One hundred and eight copies of this Christmas recipe (written by Anthony Burgess and illustrated by Fulvio Testa) were printed for friends of the participants on a Washington hand press by Richard-Gabriel Rummonds & Alessandro Zanella at the Plain Wrapper Press in Verona, Italy. Buon appetito!'.

A lovely example, with an association to match.