Books by Hand: Gerard Brender à Brandis, Wood Engraver and Bookwright
Many strands of my research and writing experience came together in the creation of this professional biography of my brother Gerard, the well-known Canadian wood engraver and creator of limited-edition handmade books. In 2008-9 I had written a long article about him titled Artist at Work: Gerard Brender à Brandis, Wood Engraver and Bookwright. However, that was not the “last word,” because Gerard was still hard at work creating more engravings and handmade books. By 2020 it was time for an update. As with Artist at Work, I was in a good position to write about Gerard’s work because, besides being his sister, I have collaborated with him on more than a dozen projects. This has given me a close insight into his thinking and his working practices.
I have no difficulty with combining the two roles of family member and biographer. I’ve done it several times. While researching and writing, it’s natural for me to look for patterns and find structures and ways of expression, all of which are objective processes. As I worked, I drew on my insights into Gerard’s work and into our shared experiences. Some examples of this can be found in what I wrote on this website about our collaboration on The Grand River, and its predecessor, A Pebble’s Journey.
By examining one artist’s unique career, Books by Hand also reflects on creativity in general. Creativity intrigues me because, although the results are all around us, the process is elusive. I reflected not only on Gerard’s art itself but also on the creativity that he showed in inventing the kind of life that would foster his art.
Books by Hand, besides being of interest to those who know and admire Gerard’s work, is also a resource for librarians, archivists, and serious collectors because it contains a chronological list of all the books and articles that contain Gerard’s work, both the handmade books and the commercially published ones, and all those works are mentioned in the text.
Addendum
Books by Hand was published in late 2021, when Gerard was still creative and productive (as indeed he still is in the summer of 2024). In 2022 he published a handmade limited-edition chapbook titled Gardening with a Spoon. It deals with several window-sill gardens which he grew specifically so that he could create the engravings and write the text that make up this little work. On his website he describes the physical book: “Apart from a small insert, the cover and two sheets (eight pages) are all paper which I made a few years ago. It is free of wood pulp and the cover contains fibre from iris plants that I grew in my garden plus a variety of other fibres. I have used nine of my end-grain wood engravings combined with my own text which I set by hand in ‘Libra’ typeface, printed with my 1865 Albion press and bound by me. It measures 6 1/4 " by 9 1/2" and is being issued in an edition of forty signed copies.” (https://www.gerardbrenderabrandis.ca)
A larger work, and one on which Gerand and I worked together, was Pen and Trowel (2023). As Gerard writes on his website, this book is “about gardening and writing, a creative and evocative combination. We focus on quotations from seven authors – including Vita Sackville-West and Timothy Findley – who write vividly about their gardens and their gardening visions and practices. The result is a weaving together of close observation, lively articulation, and soil under the fingernails.
“The Libra typeface and the black-and-white images were printed with the Albion Press onto rag paper. They are set off by colourful unique endpapers with a botanical theme and binding that combines wood veneer with fabric from curtains that belonged to one of our grandmothers in the Netherlands. …
“This book is issued in a numbered edition of thirty-five copies and is likely to be our last major collaboration to be published in a hardbound, handmade format.”
Besides these recent publications, I’m taking this opportunity to add information about several earlier ones. In Books by Hand, on pages 94-7, I deal with Gerard’s handmade book The Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon. At that time I had been able to examine only one copy – it was published in “about a dozen one-of-a-kind books” [Books by Hand, p. 96] – but since then I have examined that copy again and have also seen another, and that enables me to make additional notes:
In one copy, the inner pages are as described in Books by Hand; an additional detail is that the cover is of actual wood boards bearing a design created by wood-burning and stones.
The other copy that I examined is in a case covered with silk fabric and with an inlay of veneer. The case closes with four goat’s skin parchment loops, two on each side, through which – by way of fastening the case closed – is slid an iron rod with an ornamented loop at the top end. The rod was made specially by a Stratford blacksmith.
In both books the pages have borders designed in a style inspired by mediaeval manuscripts, with the designs hand-coloured with pencil and with accents in gold leaf. Gerard designed them in segments so that on any given page he could use several of them but arrange them differently. This is one of the ways in which each copy of the Canticle is different; moreover, the colouring and use of gold leaf also varies from one copy to another.
Gerard’s engravings also appeared in two works with text by Judith Maclean Miller. In 2001 she wrote “In the Shadow of the White Cabbage Moth,” which was published in The Antigonish Review (Winter 2001). It contains eight of Gerard’s engravings. It is an “experience of Lectio Divina,” and Judith Miller chose Gerard’s book Wood, Ink & Paper as the subject of her meditation.
The other work was Grandmother’s House (2002). Judith created it as “a tribute to my grandmother as well as to Gerard,” and it contained 33 of Gerard’s wood engravings, with Judith’s “lyric responses” to the images. It was printed at Pandora Press, Kitchener; no date is given in the publication but in an e-mail to me Judith gave the date as 2002. Only four copies of Grandmother’s House were printed. When I was writing Books by Hand I was unaware of its existence, but a copy came my way shortly after that.
Please note that Gardening with a Spoon, Pen and Trowel, and Grandmother’s House do not appear in the “Chronological List of Books and Articles” in Books by Hand.
For more information about Gerard’s work, please see his website: www.gerardbrenderabrandis.ca.
An interview that explores the writing of Books by Hand can be found here.
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Books by Hand is available from me using the contact form on this website. I handle orders from Canada and the U.S.A., and I accept cheques and e-transfer. The book can also be ordered from Fanfare Books, 92 Ontario St., Stratford, ON, Canada, telephone 519.273.1010, fanfare@cyg.net. Fanfare Books accepts e-transfer and credit cards and takes orders from beyond Canada and the U.S.A. The retail price is CAN$19.95 per copy. For details about my payment and shipping arrangements, please contact me.