Tuesday, May 28, 2013

New York Times pays tribute to Kim Merker, Letterpress Master

Kim Merker was a great artist, and a good friend to my family. He published work by my father, Robert Dana, as well as many other great poets of the late 20th century. The New York Times did a nice job of paying tribute.

:For four decades, using presses he operated with his own inky hands, Mr. Merker was a designer, typesetter and printer of some of the most beautiful books made in America in the late 20th century. Almost all were vessels for poems that he found promising, interesting or indisputably excellent — and about which he was usually right: some of the young poets he published went on to achieve renown. 

Within the artisanal movement called fine press printing, which celebrates bookmaking as it was practiced before mass production, Mr. Merker had few peers. "