Artifex

“People like me, who care about printing,” Baskin once said, “constitute the tiniest lunatic fringe in the nation.” Baskin’s passion for creating fine press editions led him to print a number of hard-to-find and previously unpublished texts. Gehenna Tracts and Gehenna Essays in Art were two projects that highlighted little-known and new texts on subjects Baskin held dear.

Woolman

Gehenna Press printed Woolman's texts to commemorate the bicentennial of the author's death in 1772. Woolman (1720-1772) was a tailor, but is best remembered as an American Quaker leader. A passionate abolitionist, Woolman published his radical views in his own reformist journal. He convinced many members of Quaker communities to denounce slavery. This was the last of the three Gehenna Tracts, all of which published texts that rarely appear in print.

Flaubert

Gehenna Press published Flaubert’s letter of June 19, 1852, along with Baskin’s wood engraving, a portrait of the famous French Realist, covered in wrinkles and mustaches. Flaubert’s satiric letter was addressed to the photographer Maxime Du Camp, a friend who had been trying to lure him to Paris and fame. Flaubert firmly stated his preference to remain in Croisset (in Normandy): “You tell me it is only in Paris that one breathes the breath of life. In my opinion your Parisian ‘breath of life’ often has the odor of rotting teeth.” This text was printed as a keepsake, to be given to “friends and patrons of the press.”

Gehenna Essays in Art

Gehenna Essays on Art was a project Baskin planned as a substantial series of art historical texts written expressly for the Press in an accessible and somewhat casual style free of scholarly jargon. Only three of the projects were fully realized, and the two displayed here are rare examples of Gehenna Press imprints that contain photographic reproductions. In Four portrait busts by Francesco Laurana, photographs by Clarence Kennedy (late professor of photography at Smith College) have been carefully improved via lamination. Ruth Wedgwood Kennedy, wife of the photographer and a professor of Renaissance art history at Smith, wrote the sensitive, engaging text on the Renaissance sculptor, Laurana.

"...there is no end."

Leonard Baskin was commissioned to illustrate The Five Scrolls, a popular press edition of the Pentateuch. His watercolor depicts the biblical verse that inspired Baskin throughout his life: “…of the making of books there is no end.” Ecclesiastes 12:12. The Gehenna Press continues today, publishing designs and images the artist created prior to his death in 2000.