Gold Deer Press

I founded Gold Deer Press, a private press and publishing imprint, in the summer of 2009 with the aim to utilize the unique characteristics of fine letterpress printing in contemporary artistic projects. My goal is not the preservation of an old and beautiful printmaking method but rather its renewal in 21st century context.  Thus the published works are and will be mostly experimental both conceptually and in their material presentation.

I believe that the concept, content and context of an artistic work can not be separated from each other and their relationship must manifest itself in the work’s materiality and physical presence. My first letterpress book, “The Sensory Delights of Text” is about my relationship to manuscripts, the hand written text whose materiality, the physicality of their creation and their pictorial beauty we often neglect. Letterpress printing with its ability to show exquisitely fine details and its ability to produce an infinite variety of impressions was the only possible process that allowed me to communicate my own experience with my collection of manuscripts to anyone who holds the book in their hands.

“Poems”,
my first book published under my new publishing imprint Gold Deer Press, is a chapbook of my poems, hand set and printed letterpress on fine paper, which investigates the relationship between multiples and unique works. The body of the book is sewn into an abstract drawing, unique and original for each book. The text block is smaller than the drawing, thus the reader is constantly reminded of its presence which suggests that it is not an illustration but an integral part of the book. Intentionally choosing an edition size quite large,125, making this book also allowed me to examine how as an artist I can maintain a continuous state of motivation, imagination and inspiration for an extended period of time to create 125 unique drawings that relates to each other and the poems in mood and spirit but they are distinctly different and not just mere variations of a basic theme with minor differences.

My next book, “A Family Story” is a limited edition photobook with text printed letterpress to be completed in 2010. The book is based on found photographs, beautiful Kodachrome slides from around 1960 that I found in an old plastic bag in 2005. After extensive research and reading hundreds of pages of Holocaust era restitution documents I had the opportunity to find the family depicted in the pictures and learn their personal stories first hand. The book is an oral story and its materiality and construction intends to give the experience to the readers as if they were sitting next to the storyteller listening to his lively speaking voice.

Some of my future projects in development are concerned with the visualization of text-based sound composition for the human voice. 

Gabriella Solti