Peter Koch career narrative
See also a PDF of Peter Koch's vita

For the past thirty-two years I have cultivated a cross-media dialogue between art, philosophy and literature. I have conducted my business as a fine-art printer as a means of creating and transmitting my own ideas about language and form —both by creating my own work and by designing and directing collaborative publishing projects with others. In pursuit of my art, I am deeply committed to the crafts of typography, papermaking, printing, bookbinding and the design of books and I support these crafts as intensely as I can. A duality of commitment defines my art. I firmly stand on the side of the argument that there is no art without craft. Art without craft denies the di~cult beauty of a thing well made, the elegant simplicity of an idea. Through craft and the precision of design, I seek to bring the rich civilization of the printed book with me to the forge of meaning.

In 1974, at age 30,following university studies in the liberal arts and after a brief career at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories in scientific data analysis and computer operations, I returned to my native Missoula and established Black Stone Press, the first fine letterpress printing/publishing business and independent literary journal in Montana. From 1974 to 1978 I edited and published Montana Gothic, a journal devoted to maverick poets and artists from Montana, Paris, London, New York, San Francisco and expatriate communities in Nepal, Mexico and Tangier. In Missoula, I began an intensive study of the book as artifact and as an artistic medium, concentrating on learning the superannuated technologies that in previous centuries had produced the finest books. At the same time that I studied the history of printing, I edited, designed, printed and published small limited editions of poetry and graphic arts, six issues of Montana Gothic, and poetry broadsides under my Black Stone Press imprint.

In 1978 I moved to San Francisco where I continued independent studies in the history of the book and began a several-year apprenticeship in book design and a life-long friendship with Adrian Wilson and his wife Joyce at their Press in Tuscany Alley. Adrian was one of the most beloved and respected book designers, book historians and fine printers in America, and in his studio I met and mingled with the greater world of print historians and typographers, including such European giants as John Dreyfus, Fernand Baudin and Hermann Zapf.

In the late 70’s I began experimenting with a 19th-century handpress to produce fine art relief prints. My early explorations led directly to the conclusion that the sculptural aspects of language transmission were of primary consideration. These experiments led to a more detailed investigation of the properties of paper, experimental book structures and printing techniques. Working at the interface between art and language, I coined the term “typographic printmaking” to describe my work to artists who were unfamiliar with using letterforms as both image and text.

Between 1978 and the present I have worked continuously as an independent designer / printer to the bibliophiles and learned institutions in the San Francisco area. My clients range from such great research libraries as Stanford University Libraries and The Bancroft Library at the University of California,Berkeley to bibliophiles and private collector/publishers. Combining the business of typographic design and fine printing with the study of historical models, I was able to gain an insider’s knowledge of the book as both a cultural icon and an art form.

In 1986 I began the project to design and print, in Greek, the fragments of the pre-Socratic philosopher Herakleitos, with Guy Davenport’s English translation. The experimental form of this book was inspired by an imagined visit to the Library at Alexandria where I handled a copy of Herakleitos’ lost book, On Nature, and by recent studies in early coptic book structures conducted by research scientists in book conservation and archeology. My intention was to create an exemplary book, a book that crossed over from a text transmission machine to a reflection of the iconic nature of the book as object.

In 1987, seeking an ideal typographic form for the presentation of a poem, I edited, designed, printed and published Point Lobos a portfolio of 15 poems by Robinson Jeffers and 15 photographs by Wolf von dem Bussche. Point Lobos was acclaimed, exhibited, and collected by many of America’s finest libraries and special collections of books, prints and photographs, including the New York Public Library (selected for their show 80 from the 80’s), Princeton University, The Bancroft Library, Stanford University, UCLA, etc.

1988 – 89: as Director of the Book Arts Program at the New College of California in San Francisco, I created the first experimental press within the college.

1989 – 92: as Master Printer at The Press in Tuscany Alley (the studio of the late Adrian Wilson) in San Francisco’s North Beach area, I created a teaching press associated with the departments of art and creative writing at San Francisco State University. This pioneering program was an experiment in bringing graduate students from creative disciplines into a printing and publishing environment to generate collaborations in the form of experimental books.

I published Herakleitos in 1990 and a few months later started designing and working on the Defictions of Diogenes, a close collaboration with art critic and philosopher Thomas McEvilley and sculptor Stephan Braun. The Diogenes project was my first “text transmission object” and was inspired by lead defixiones or curse tablets found in African and Asian Greek colonies. The text, composed of anecdotes derived from 1st century ad sources, describes the life and antics of Diogenes the arch-cynic. The experimental form of the Defictions was partially derived from archeological evidence, Greek epigraphy of the period and an imagined object retrieved from the dump of an ancient Greek settlement on the Black Sea.

In 1991 I was appointed to teach the history of printing and the arts of the book at the The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, an endowed lectureship currently in the Department of History where I conduct a seminar entitled “The Hand Printed Book in its Historical Context.” This seminar, unique in the United States, is devoted to understanding how books were made from the 15th until the middle of the 19th century. A portion of the class is devoted to hand setting and printing a manuscript selected from the Bancroft’s collections in precisely the same way it would have been done in the early 19th century.

In 1994 I printed and published my Ur-text volumes one and three in collaboration with historical restoration and experimental bookbinders. The binding of Ur-text (volume one) suggests an icon, a sacred book covered in vellum that might be carried by a noblewoman on her way to worship. Typographically it is pre-renaissance in allusion and at the same time, a concrete poem. Volume three is constructed as an icon of modernity, an exemplum of pure typography and an exercise in pure book architecture. A unique full-metal binding was designed for this volume in collaboration with Daniel Kelm.

In 1994 I was invited by the New York Public Library and The San Francisco Public Library to direct a mid-career retrospective exhibition of my work and to design the catalogue of the exhibition.

One year later, in January, 1995, Peter Koch Printer: Cowboy Surrealists, Maverick Poets and pre-Socratic Philosophers, opened in the New York and San Francisco Public Libraries. In May of the same year, a similar exhibition opened as a smaller “current work” exhibit at the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Illustrated catalogues were published for all three exhibitions.

Since 1978 I have designed and printed collaborations with artists and writers, including W.S. Merwin, Denise Levertov, Margaret Atwood, Robert Duncan, Jess Collins, Thom Gunn, Robert Creeley, Manuel Neri, Joseph Goldyne, Guy Davenport, Ismail Kadare, Eleanor Antin, John Yau, Barry Gifford, Kara Walker, Robert Bringhurst, and Toni Morrison.

In 1998, after nine years of study, design, and deliberation I printed Zebra Noise with a flatted seventh, my collaboration with the artist and author Richard Wagener. Zebra Noise, a tour de force of printing and wood engraving arts, was included in the exhibition Artists’ Books in the Modern Era 1870-2000, The Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor.

In 1999 I began experimenting with the newest digital scanning and print technologies to produce an exhibition composed of images derived from antique printing plates (portraits of historic pioneers and anonymous businessmen) and moveable types titled Hard Words. This work extends my explorations in typographic printmaking to include advances in digital reproduction. The exhibit opened at Gallery 16 in San Francisco in the Spring of 2000 and later that year opened along with a retrospective of my work at the University of Montana Art Museum Gallery. Hard Words is currently travelling a group of five museums and galleries in Montana and Nevada.

In June 2001 I created and organized a symposium entitled The Hand & the Computer in an Early Twenty-first Century Book at The San Francisco Public Library. Presenters included Robert Bringhurst, Dan Carr, Christopher Stinehour and myself. We each presented papers that now form the basis of the book Carving the Elements, The making of Parmenides published in 2004 by Editions KOCH.

In the fall of 2001 I designed a 1600 sq. foot exhibition model of an artist book studio creating an idealized version of my own studio in the museum setting to accompany the exhibit Artists’ Books in the Modern Era 1870-2000, The Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

The Fragments of Parmenides, my most ambitious project to date, was completed in the fall of 2003. Nine years earlier I had proposed to the Canadian poet, linguist, and essayist Robert Bringhurst that he translate the fragments of Parmenides for a new bilingual edition. I commissioned two new typefaces based on archaic Greek epigraphy, both designed especially for this book. One of these was cut in steel punches and cast in lead type for text (the first such type produced in over 75 years). The other is a digital text and display type, used in the companion volumes. I commissioned wood engravings from the artist Richard Wagener to accompany the texts and began planning the book about the book with essays by the translator, printer/publisher, type designers, the artist and the book binders, edited by Robert Bringhurst.

In 2002 I was commissioned by the Holter Museum in Helena, Montana, to create an exhibition based on my own reflections on the legacy of the Lewis and Clark expedition. The exhibition, Nature Mort, opened in March 2004 and is currently traveling in Museums throught the Northwest including the Yellowstone Art Museum and The Missoula Art Museum. The exhibition prints consist of ten large-scale digitally reconfigured prints derived from handwritten entries selected from the original journals of Lewis and Clark in the collections of the American Philosophical Society and the Missouri Historical Society, photographic images of un-natural disasters along the trail of the expedition including scenes of 19th-century mining, smelting, buffalo slaughters, Indian captivity, logging, etc., and a two sylable poem to accompany each image. In 2005 I published a portfolio edition of the exhibition which is enhanced with additional texts and in the format of a livre d'artist.

In 2007 we published an artist’s edition of WATERMARK by Joseph Brodsky that is illustrated with 14 photogravures from photographs by Robert Morgan, an American painter and friend of Brodsky who has lived in Venice for over 30 years. In Early September, 2006, we imported a letterpress (on loan from the Tipoteca Italiana Fondazione, a printing museum in Cornuda [near Treviso]) and floated it down the Grand Canal and installed it at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica Venezia (in the siestiere of Cannaregio) where Peter was Artist-in-Residence for the Fall of 2006. This is a truly international collaboration.... paper handmade especially for this edition by Twinrocker Papermill in Indiana, photogravure plates made by Unai San Martin and printed at Magnolia Editions in California, typesetting at the Oliviere Typefoundry in Milan and printered letterpress in Venice. After the printing of the text was completed, the sheets were shipped back to Koch’s Berkeley studio for binding. The publication party was in Venice in March 2007 at the ATENEO VENETO.

I am the Founding Director of the CODEX Foundation, a not-for-profit foundation devoted to the preservation and promotion of the fine arts of the book. For our debut event we held a symposium entitled: The Fate of the Art: The Hand Made Book in the 21st Century, and an international fine press and artist book fair at UC Berkeley in February of 2007. Over 120 exhibitors came from 11 countries and over 700 people attended both events.

Currently we are planning a second CODEX Book Fair and Symposium to be held in February of 2009.