At least as of Tuesday, September 17, 2024, this hasn’t been written very carefully.
The photo above was taken at the end of our first day of Coptic stitching. The photo below was 2 days later.
We are Jill Cypher and Ray Nichols, and we operate Lead Graffiti, a letterpress lab and bookmaking studio in Newark, Delaware. We constantly seek connections between our creative letterpress and bookwork and how our work is conceptually conceived. In recent years, we’ve been moving more into bookwork, but it is often hard to find a way to make the book’s content and physical form both join together and oppose each other simultaneously. We love typography and like to play with bending the normal rules of both readability and understandability.
Early this past summer, the nearby Delaware College of Art & Design shuttered its doors. Over the past decade or so, we have donated hundreds of books related to design, typography, art, and creative problem-solving for the use of its students. Meegs Johnson, the final librarian at DCAD, offered to open the library and let us take any books we wanted, and we selected about 30.
Just before leaving DCAD with our new shelf of books, Meegs mentioned an unusual book she had in her office that she thought we, as bookmakers, would appreciate. She showed us an 8.5” x 5.5” book with a startlingly wide 30” spine sewn with a Coptic stitch. This physically massive object lay like an uncoiled snake in her window.
Astounded at the piece, we talked for a few minutes about its possible provenance and purpose, then collected our box of books and drove back to our studio. For the next couple of days, the book fermented in Ray’s head. What would be a good reason to use this book form as a point of departure for a new project? When we looked at the book initially, we hardly peeked at the inside. We knew most pages looked blank, like pages retrieved from the trash or recycling bin at a large office of some sort. The first several pages had text, but it was clearly not a single cohesive story.
That curious volume haunted Ray such that before the end of the week, we called Meegs back. We asked to see the book again and, if possible, borrow it for a few days to examine it more thoroughly and take photos. We had been so caught up in the physical mass of the book that we had not studied the contents or construction details. Instead of a temporary loan, Meegs was happy to find a new home for it.
We mentioned our excitement and curiosity about this book to our friend Casey Smith, a former DCAD faculty member. Casey said he had originally donated it to the DCAD library and knew about the book’s maker.
Ema Ishii Holdredge, one of Casey’s BFA students, made the book originally when he taught at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC. Ema made the book for her BFA degree show at the Corcoran in 2008. She went on to get an MFA at Cranbrook in 2010. Casey said Ema had given it to him because she was moving and didn’t have space for the 30-pound art object. We aren’t sure if the book had some alternative intention to just being what it is.
Generally, the book is blank, initially seeming to be assembled from random sheets of folded white copier paper. Looking closer, we noticed sheets of various color stock are tucked at intervals inside the signatures and bound. We liked the visual punctuation that the colors gave to the book's overall appearance.
With Lead Graffiti having been voted as the Favorite Newark, Delaware Artist of 2024 in a recent citizen poll, we have been looking for ways to prove that the recognition is deserved.
Now a new influence enters this story. The Newark Arts Alliance announced an exhibition of social cause work entitled “Visual Messages: Socially Engaged Art.”
Hmmm.
What if we borrow the idea of the gigantically spined coptic stitch book but fill it with some type of significant social commentary?
As committed Democrats who operate a letterpress studio, we have taken many opportunities to produce politically motivated broadsides and postcards. But we haven’t done so in our bookwork. As committed book artists, we are also part of Upper Chesapeake Book Arts, a group of artists who like to explore the nature and the making of various kinds of books.
So, how can we make a book that is visually and SOCIALLY ENGAGED? And make it about a relevant topic that has considerable volume? And produce it in 6 weeks?
Hmmm.
Trumps Lies.
Maybe name it “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
It turns out we can quote—not exactly an article, but a Washington Post listing of—30,000+ lies from then-President Donald Trump from January 20, 2017, to January 19, 2021. Our first issue was whether the list would supply a book with enough pages to fit our original intent. That turns out not to be a problem.
So here is our book. And we invited others to add to their bookmaking résumés to help us with the bookbinding process.
Special thanks to Ema Ishii Holdredge for her original killer stepping stone artist book. Thanks for the recording, fact checking and posting of the lies goes to the Washington Post. The conceptual connection for this book is by Ray Nichols & Jill Cypher. Many binding thanks go to Carol Maurer, Anne Hessel, Rebecca Johnson Melvin, ….
AND SO THE LIES BEGIN.