Editions...
Lettre Sauvage is a family run letterpress printing and design studio specializing in small, hand-made editions of literature and art.
Lettre Sauvage editions are currently part of the following collections: Getty Research Institute, UCLA Library Department of Special Collections, Electio Editions, The Library of Michigan, and the Mutanabbi Street Starts Here — Broadside Suite. The press also creates broadsides for Red Hen Press.
Community Studio
Lettre Sauvage studio offers personalized lessons in the craft of letterpress printing for individuals and groups of up to four. Use of the press is available to experienced printers.
Printing Lesson
By appointment
Learn to operate the press. Basics of typesetting, inking, preparing paper and making the press ready to print will be covered.
Taught by Fiona Spring
$35 per hour per person
$50 per hour for a group of 2-4 working on the same project.
Studio Rental
By appointment
After one or two lessons, students may wish to work on a solo project. Lettre Sauvage staff will be available to help with services like ordering and cutting paper and advising on printing and design issues. There is also a small library in the studio of books about books, printing, design and poetry.
Equipment includes:
Vandercook SP15
Pilot table-top press
Chandler and Price 10x15
Challenge 23" paper cutter
$20 the first hour, $10 each additional hour
Lettre Sauvage - Santa Paula, CA - (805) 794-0167 - sales@lettresauvage.com - legal & site info
Unless clearly stated otherwise, all content (C) & (P) 2008 Lettre Sauvage, any duplication, republication, or alteration, is strictly forbidden without permission from the specific content's originator/s. (In other words don't steal our designs, ideas, texts, or images without asking and being granted permission. Legal systems are mainly there to protect those who can afford them, so think about what you can afford, and then just make us an offer.) Lettre Sauvage, it's agents, employees, and creators make no guarantee regarding the fitness or suitability of this site to any particular purpose whether intententional or unintentional. Lettre Sauvage will not honor any claim or demand for compensation related to the veracity, currency, or stability, of the information offered on this site. Lettre Sauvage, it's agents, employees, and creators reserve the right to alter or deface or otherwise completely mess up any content or information stored on this site, at our discretion. By using this site you agree to abide by the contracts made availble on this initial body of text (body.htm) and thereby release any and all claims for compensation or damages related to the use, abuse, accuracy, or suitability of this site or any of it's content for any purpose, regardless of whether any percieved injury or damage is the direct or indirect result of any negligence, action, or inaction on the part of Lettre Sauvage, it's agents, employees, and creators. Lettre Sauvage does not store, retrieve, or make available any user data on this site. All data related to purchases and shopping initialized from this site are sent to secured servers at PayPal for verification storage and processing, Lettre Sauvage does not verify, store, process, or make available any payment or credit related information. Any and all email, or contact information, or texts provided by users through links or forms directly on lettresauvage.com become publishable property of Lettre Sauvage it's creators, maintainers, or agents. (In other words if you say something incredibly mean, or funny, or even totally nice to us... we can publish it, we do have presses and some knowledge about website creation, and we do read our email so this should be pretty obvious.)
This website was cobbled together using notepad, javascript, & CSS. All items printed and photographed by Lettre Sauvage (most likely within a 2 block radius of our home studio.) The revolution begins at home, start something.
| The Even More contains selections from Yma Ray Leggett’s writings she dictated to her parents between the ages of three and seven. Called a &ldqo;surrealist farce” by the VC Reporter, it offers a short story, poems, tips and imaginative games, all with that special “sauvage” perspective of authentic youthfulness. The back cover promises that you will finally be able to catch an owl if you buy this book. It would certainly be worth the purchase just to say you had attempted to attain that ability. |
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| Limited edition of 80; designed and printed at Lettre Sauvage and signed by the author. 5”x4” | |
The poem “HR Diagram” by Zayne Turner was selected by Stephen Dunn for the broadside award. This ingenious poem plays with the idea of charting the relationships between stars. Printed on recycled French Paper from digital artwork and typography in bold indigo and brass inks. |
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| Limited edition of 25; designed and printed at Lettre Sauvage and signed and numbered by the author. 10”x13” |
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| The Surly Bonds of Earth, by Grace Curtis is the winner of the second Lettre Sauvage Poetry Contest. “In Grace Curtis' The Surly Bonds of Earth, we feel in the presence of a voice richly capable of blending image and statement as it explores its various concerns. Behind that voice is an intelligence we learn to trust, and a sense of narrative tact (most evident in ‘Weeding’) as she thinks her way down the page. The ‘outer seriousness, inner humor’ quality that Frost championed is hers as well. Many pleasures here, many tones. ” - Stephen Dunn 15 poems hand letterpressed on Mohawk Superfine paper, including a center tri-fold. The cover features a photo half-tone on Rives BFK gray. |
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| Limited edition of 125; designed and printed at Lettre Sauvage, and signed and numbered by the author. | |
| Windfall, a book of poems by Erin Bertram, is the winner of the first Lettre Sauvage Poetry Contest. "Spring-blown & ecstatic, the avid speech of Erin Bertram's poems awakens spirit to its core..." -Mark Irwin, contest judge 12 poems letterpressed and hand-sewn together on Crane’s Lettra #32 cotton paper. The cover art, printed on Stonehenge paper, is an original three-color woodblock print by John Charles Shippey. |
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| Limited edition of 102; designed and printed at Lettre Sauvage. 2010. | |
The poem "As in Nowhere, No-One" by Kim Andrews was selected by Mark Irwin for the broadside award. From the Poem: "...Leap over the railing, into deep waters, reverse vertigo. / Swim towards the bottom. Away from the air." For the design of this broadside, hand-cut pieces of polymer were applied to a clean linoleum block and printed in multiple, overlapping colors. |
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| Limited edition of 75; designed and printed at Lettre Sauvage and signed by the author. 2010. 10" x 13" |
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| A limited edition broadside featuring the 4th Choral Ode from Euripides' Hippolytos (1268-1281), translated by Anne Carson. Hippolytos was published as a part of Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides (NYRB Classics, 2006). It was also the inaugural play directed by Stephen Sachs at the reopened Getty Villa in September 2006.
Anne Carson is a poet, essayist, and translator, as well as a professor of classics and comparative literature at the University of Michigan. She remarks in her preface to the book, “There is in Euripides some kind of learning that is always at the boiling point. It breaks experiences open and they waste themselves, run through your fingers. Phrases don't catch them, theories don't hold them, they have no use. It is a theater of sacrifice in the true sense. Violence occurs; through violence we are intimate with some characters on stage in an exorbitant way for a brief time; that's all it is.” |
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| Limited edition of 150. The dimensions are 7” x 10”. Using an antique letterpress, the broadsides were printed from copper plates on Twinrocker handmade papers in two colors, Cripple Creek and Sagebrush. They were then scorched with smoldering tea leaves and a butane torch. | |
| An original broadside by Stephen Dunn. Dunn won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for Different Hours, and is Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at Richard Stockton College in New Jersey. “In The Open Field” was published in The Insistence of Beauty by Norton in 2004. On the collection, The Literary Review remarks, “Dunn's poems reveal a mind alive within its own inner-circlings, the transforming power of loss, the fictions that lead to the core of our truths, the possibility and reality of loving another again.” | |
| Limited edition of 176. The dimensions are 7" x 13". Using an antique letterpress, it was printed from copper dies and a linoleum block onto Ingres printmaking papers. Each broadside varies slightly.
All broadsides were printed by Lettre Sauvage in March 2007. Each is signed and numbered by Dunn. |
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| Excerpts from “Get High” Edward K. Kaplan's translation of “Enivrez-Vous” by Charles Baudelaire. Hand-set type and stenciled lettering designed by Leggett.
Sewn triptych structure slips into a black paper jacket. |
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| Printed in an edition of 50 on Rives heavyweight paper at UCSB print studio under the Lost Pollen imprint. | |
| A limited edition folio featuring the four-part poem, Coqui, Coqui, by Benjamin Jackson. Jackson received his M.F.A. from Warren Wilson College and has been published in the New England Review.
The folio contains four individual sheets and a folded cover. Titles are: I. The Art of Loving II. Toco Polo III. Dreaming of Echo IV. Mimesis |
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| Limited edition of 50. The dimensions are 10" x 10". Using an antique letterpress, it was printed from magnesium plates on Stonehenge art papers. The cover was painted with watercolor. Each folio is signed and numbered by the poet. Printed by Lettre Sauvage in October 2005. | |
| Long Portrait is a chapbook gathering 10 poems previously published in literary journals. Mark Irwin is the author of six full-length collections of poetry: Tall If (2008), Bright Hunger (2004), White City (2000), Quick, Now, Always (1996), Against the Meanwhile (1989), and The Halo of Desire (1987). For his poetry he has received four Pushcart Prizes and has held fellowships from the Fulbright, Lilly, NEA, and Wurlitzer foundations. He teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles and Colorado. | |
| A limited edition of 80 chapbooks printed from hand-set 12 point Bembo Book typeface & 12 point Univers for the titles. The text paper is Crane’s Lettra pearl white. The cover is Stonehenge gray. 2007. | |
| Mark Irwin won a Pushcart prize for “When I Died,.” Mark Irwin is the author of six full-length collections of poetry: Tall If (2008), Bright Hunger (2004), White City (2000), Quick, Now, Always (1996), Against the Meanwhile (1989), and The Halo of Desire (1987). For his poetry he has received four Pushcart Prizes and has held fellowships from the Fulbright, Lilly, NEA, and Wurlitzer foundations. He teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles and Colorado. | Sold Out |
| Limited to an edition of 70. Printed on Stonehenge fawn paper from hand-set 12 & 30 point Bembo Book typefaces. Signed and numbered by Irwin. | |
| Chapbook featuring poems by Desiree Morales, Fiona Spring, Jackson Wheeler, Sophia Kid and John Charles Shippey and concrete poems by Cameron Leggett. The vivid cover printed in three colors including absence of color, was rendered using shredded pieces of waste polymer. Interior images include antique printing blocks and an abstract monoprint. | |
| The entire book was printed on cotton paper from hand-set type on the Vandercook SP-15. Numbered edition of 85. | |
| Genevieve Yue, author of Negative Sky: “In March 2006, I found a collection of old photographs in a novelty store in Taos, New Mexico. Very few of the pictures came with any identification, and it was evident that many had been torn out of albums and scrapbooks. I selected eight images and wrote pieces accompanying each. They were, to me, like ghosts: I knew little about where they came from, but was immediately struck, even haunted, by the expressions and postures that had been frozen in the photographs. I wanted Negative Sky, in writing and in print, to convey this sense of both intimacy and distance.” |
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| The book Negative Sky is a limited edition of 80. The old, faded snapshots were scanned and "translated" digitally in a mimesis of the poet's own claiming and distorting of the images. The resulting photopolymer plates were printed on the Chandler & Price platen press. The poems were printed from magnesium plates on the Pilot tabletop press to achieve the uneven quality that makes some of the words seem out of focus. A chipboard cover and rice paper spine finish off this collection of 8 poems and 8 snapshots. Lettre Sauvage 2006-2008. | |
