Boston: Anne & David Bromer, 1981. [21] pp. approx. 2 x 2 5/8". LIMITED EDITION of 150 copies, thirty-five of which are deluxe. Apart from the deluxe bindings printed by the Thistle Bindery which have a black inlaid morocco binding with box, this is a unique deluxe A/P edition in a custom Roland Meuter binding with pink leather, marbled aluminum covers and gilt top edge gauffered. Colored illustrations, signed by the illustrator on the colophon, housed in a wooden box with pink leather accents, in fine condition. (Bradbury, Bromer 7)

When Linnea Gentry moved her successful Amaranth Press from San Francisco to Santa Fe in 1980, she brought an exceptional sense of quality and a reputation as one of the Bay area’s most talented book artists. Gentry started her career as a designer at the EP Dutton firm in New York. In San Francisco she camped on the doorstep of the much-lauded Grabhorn Press, until she was taken on as a typesetting apprentice. She later launched her Amaranth Press where she turned out fine letterpress work for a discriminating clientele. In the mid-1970s she helped found and became production manager of Fine Print, an international journal of the book arts.

Her introduction to New Mexico came during childhood visits to her aunt, Helen Gentry, a renowned book designer and publisher who lived part-time in Santa Fe during the 1930s and 1940s and settled there after 1965. Colored by the elder Gentry’s circle of artist friends, the visits made a deep impression and influenced the Amaranth’s brief stay in Santa Fe before Gentry closed the press in 1983. (privatepress.org)

The binder, Roland Meuter, maintains an atelier in Ascona, Switzerland, where he continues to produce imaginatively designed bindings that attract considerable attention.