The Untenanted Room /Perceval and Holy Fools continued

To continue from yesterday - all these books , plus the Rhyme of the Reddleman's Daughter, (see image a couple of posts back), were about ecology and the planet really, with words by James Simpson - we are working on perhaps finding a way of including readings from them on our sites...- which have been occupying our thoughts for twenty years or so.....we will post links if we succeed...
and these ideas became much more explicit in my cartoneras and in The Ship of Fools particularly - looking at fires and flooding , now swiftly overtaken by pestilence!, hence Fool is Sick  now in the making...

You will notice that when the books are big I can cut the texts that James writes in wood too... always very therapeutic, a sort of slow book making and statement that these words, like all poetry, are worth taking time over.....

I am using the small playing cards to sort out ideas on a small scale while I begin to plan the practicalities of scale and size and format for a larger book - always extremely important for mood and atmosphere, and needing planning for which way the grain will go on the wood, what size is both economical for wood and paper and also for how it is read, how closely it is held in the hand or whether more distanced and didactic....
I used to work on 8x4 foot sheets of plywood which left everything wide open, I could put the paper on top  in any position and by hand burnishing not have to worry about the measurements until the last minute, but after becoming allergic to the glue (and formaldehyde) in packaging plywood I have to use Asian plywood explicitly designed for cutting - and it does come in rather boring (and small) A sizes....
I think the next book will probably mirror Ship of Fools and be a companion volume maybe...
I really must finish binding these tomorrow to clear the decks, and because at the weekend this blog will be advertised to Fine Press Book Association members on the virtual exhibition replacing the book fair we were supposed to be having last weekend....
this will also clear the press so I can print the small cuts I have done so far and see what I have - and alter accordingly....
Here are the cuts I finished over the last two days - the splinter is out so to speak....

The Magician has turned, after much internal debate, into a tree with hands which mimic the traditional gestures of a magician, now you see it now you don't, and there is rabbit but no hat; (I trust I have befuddled Google's algorithms again by asking for photos of dead rabbits hanging from trees to work from - I love keeping it on its toes, it can't quite get my number - tho it has started recommending me the book I wrote myself so it is not as clever as it thinks....)( you'd think it would notice my name?)
The Hermit - the seeker after truth maybe - and The Falconer ( Mercurial) have joined the tree people - for the time being anyway - and the Fool is tumbling out of The Tower and the tree.
I may cut some of these again and reverse the images, I have done a lot of excessive soul searching as to which way they should be facing, and in fact whether or not 'facing' is left to right or right to left and not straight ahead....and what if I am Chinese.... in which case time for the graveyard walk again....
and some therapeutic bookbinding tomorrow maybe....