Peter Rutledge Koch.
Berkeley: Editions Koch & Stanford University Libraries, 2017

“Letterpress was once a useful craft, like carpentry or thatching. This did not prevent determined and talented people from raising it to an art and enriching the lives of humans for centuries after. In the present world, the vital craft of letterpress has surrendered nearly all its practical functions – but art still runs uphill, as it always has. So letterpress printers continue to sort themselves, inescapably, into the artists and the others. It’s in the nature of the craft.
    Peter Koch is an artist among printers. He knows the tradition, all the way back. He also knows it as far forward as anyone can. As a master practitioner of an ancient art, he has joined forces repeatedly with those who are chipping away at the technological frontier, and with others who persevere in the most demanding manual crafts. He engages, as great printers always have, in collaborations with master papermakers, printmakers, wood engravers, punchcutters, binders, and others who make the book what it is: a rich and varied but private and portable theater that nourishes and unifies the body and the mind.”
    — Robert Bringhurst

Peter Koch Printer: Embodied Language and the Form of the Book: A Descriptive Bibliography [1974–2016]
With critical essays by: Mark Dimunation and Timothy D. Murray, and an interview with Peter Rutledge Koch by Roberto G. Trujillo. Bibliography by Nina M. Schneider.

Hard Words: Memory and Death in the Wild West
Hard Words documents Koch’s “Western Suite,” which consists of three portfolio editions, two books, and two installation/exhibitions dedicated to themes of exploration and the subsequent destruction of the American West. The two volumes, Liber Ignis and The Lost Journals of Sacajewea, are fully illustrated in facsimile. Two exhibition portfolios, Hard Words and Nature Morte, are also presented in their entirety. The editions and commentaries are accompanied by a lengthy critical essay by novelist and scholar Aaron Parrett.

Against Design: an Interview with Peter Rutledge Koch
Introduction: Russell Maret. Interview by: Monique Comacchio and Camden Richards. Against Design focuses on the typographic design and letter­press printing that has issued from the Koch studios for more than four decades. Graphic designers and educators Monique Comacchio and Camden Richards interview Koch about his printing practice and thoughts on typography and design. The result is an exploration of ideas related to material literacy and the art of printing as a philosophical practice. Against Design is generously illustrated with examples of Koch’s bibliophilic, typographic, and cowboy surrealist ephemera.

Book; 496 pp.    9 x 12 inches    350 copies.       $225.00