Pulcinella in Hades
A New Fine Press Book
From Eastside Editions
by Art Hazelwood
Pulcinella in Hades is a new limited edition book created at Eastside Editions
by Art Hazelwood. It is an accordion fold book… eight
feet of continuous four plate color etchings, vertically descending into
Hades. It’s a comedy. The protagonist, who appears
in every image, is Pulcinella of the commedia dell’arte.
Why an underworld journey should be treated as a comedy can perhaps best
be explained by the tremendous amount of literature to back up the view
that Hell is indeed a merry place. Comic journeys to Hell and Hades are
long standing
traditions, and quotes relating to this tradition appear in the margins
of this book.
The central image is bordered by handwritten
texts from Plato to Bertolt Brecht, from William Blake to Wilfred Owen
as well as many other writers who had a vision of the underworld. The quotes
were written out in what amounts to a 21st century handwriting sample by
seventeen different people – artists, filmmakers, professors, doctors,
etc. These texts were then converted into letterpress plates and printed
on the margins of the prints by Jonathan Clark of Artichoke Press, Mountain
View, California.
Pulcinella in Hades is made up of eight connected etchings. Each etching
is 12” x 9” and consists of four plates. The etching techniques
used aresugar lift and spit bite aquatints with engraving. David Avery
printed the images with help from Art Hazelwood on Hahnemuhle Copperplate
paper at the press in Sonoma.
The images and the text are bound together
in a book form with Japanese silk covers and an embossed cover image. The
book has a dual function. It has a removable spine so that it can not only
be paged through like a traditional book but it can also be folded out
and suspended as a scroll from a cord attached to the book. Klaus-Ullrich
S.
Rötzscher bound the books at Pettingell Book Bindery, Berkeley, California.
The edition of Pulcinella in Hades is limited to twenty books.
This is the third book by Art Hazelwood to be published by Eastside Editions.
Art’s work is in many collections including the Library of Congress,
The New York Public Library, Stanford Special Collections and Achenbach
Collection in San Francisco.
The price for this book is $3,000.
Please contact us.
Eastside Editions
715 Bryant Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
415 538-9400
studio@eastsideeditions.com