CODE(X) + 1 Monographs
Complete Collection (6) $150

CODE (X) + 1 Monographs are available for $25 each or $150 for all six including a letterpress printed slipcase.
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Announcing the publication of the CODE (X) + 1 monograph series devoted to the subject of book and print culture under the editorial direction of the Codex Publications Advisory Board. This first series was generously supported by a grant from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

CODE (X) + 1 monographs celebrate the culture of the book.

CODE(X) + 1 Monographs $25

Why There Are Pages and Why They Must Turn by Robert Bringhurst

“In cultures possessing fluent scripts, paper, and printing, books have acquired a stable material form. Those quiet, reliable, portable, legible objects are the benchmark incarnation of the book for most of us now, yet we know that, to be real, a book must be more than a physical object. What makes the tangible form of a book rewarding is that it stands for an intangible reality alive in the heart and mind.”

CODE(X) + 1 Monographs $25

ART : definition five (and other writings) by Peter Rutledge Koch

“The great collections at the Museum of Modern Art and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco are filled with what are loosely referred to as “artist’s books” but a great many of the books are more or less ordinary books with art in them. The books of Vollard and Kahnweiler are containers of art. Erase the pages and what remains is an entirely ordinary but blank book. Contemporary art with its more comprehensive and sophisticated approach to physical and formal properties requires the book itself (full and present in all its particularness) to measure up. This change in perspective has matured greatly in the last thirty years.”

CODE(X) + 1 Monographs $25

each new book by Alan Loney

“There is no doubt that fine press books propose a value for their material existence per se. This value could be seen as a replacement/rejection of the ‘spiritual’ value of the ‘sacred’ object. This is not merely the slip of my prejudices showing (tho I do not deny it is that) but also the whole undergarment in contrast to the invisible threads by which the ‘sacred’ has bound communities together over against other communities. The chosen book is the chosen community, even in the avant garde. The question remains – how do I value the book without rendering it ‘sacred’ – even if the sacred is read simply as ‘a thing apart’”

CODE(X) + 1 Monographs $25

Visionaries & Fanatics: Type Design & the Private Press by Russell Maret

Within the community of typographic printers the problem of identity is generally assumed to be a problem suffered by book artists, by those other people working outside of the well-defined sanctum of the Fine Press. This comfortable view overlooks a division within the letterpress community that is too often blurred and as a result is the source of my greater concern:
Does the private press have a future?

CODE(X) + 1 Monographs $25

acide brut manifesto by Didier Mutel

"Didier Mutel is a synaesthetic printer focused on the bite-of acid on metal, of the metal plate on paper, of the printed words on the mind. He knows that all senses must be involved in the creation, reception, and survival of the crafts of engraving and printing in the new mellenium."
-- Timothy Young from the introduction

CODE(X) + 1 Monographs $25

<usus>, Typography, and artists' books by Ulrike Stoltz & Uta Schneider

<usus> does not design type, we design with type, and the medium we prefer is the book. Contents and the text are already there, the book designer has to work with these components in a way that the reader/viewer is able to gain easy access to the subject matter.