Artifex

While studying at Yale University, Leonard Baskin acquired a great enthusiasm for the art of letterpress printing. His college maintained an old-fashioned printing shop, where he learned how to set and ink type by hand, and to work an antique Chandler <&> Price treadle press. He also spent many long hours exploring the vast collections of the Sterling Memorial Library. There, he happened across a line from Paradise Lost: “and Black Gehenna call’d, the type of hell.” The young artist seized upon the name Gehenna, Hebrew for Hell, for the private press he was beginning to imagine. Gehenna was in many ways a natural choice, as so many of the colloquial terms for printing made reference to devils, hell and “the black art.” He produced his first imprint at Yale, and continued to design and illustrate books for his Gehenna Press throughout his life.

William Blake

Baskin developed a great fondness for the art and poetry of William Blake during his college years at Yale. The young artist was particularly drawn to Blake's expansive creativity, which encompassed both poetry and art. His interest in Blake endured for many years; in 1956, the Gehenna Press published Blake and the Youthful Ancients, an ode to Blake and his circle. Here, Baskin represents (from top to bottom) Blake and two of his colleagues: George Richmond engraving the Shepherd, George Richmond in his engraving costume, Blake (after his visionary self-portrait), and Blake (after a drawing by John Linnell). This example is an unbound proof sheet.

Wilfred Owen

One of Gehenna Press's first efforts to publish a fine press edition was Thirteen Poems by Wilfred Owen. Owen (1893-1918) was a gifted poet and soldier whose life was tragically cut short by machine gun fire, just days before the Armistice for World War I was signed in Paris. Ben Shahn, a friend of Baskin’s, agreed to illustrate the volume with fifteen drawings, which were reproduced via photo-lithography for this letterpress edition. The title page image, however, was reproduced in a far more laborious manner: Baskin carved the wood engraving himself.

Castle Street Dogs

In 1951, Baskin took a position teaching art at the Worcester Art Museum School in Worcester, Massachusetts. The Baskin home was on Castle Street, also populated by a number of scraggly dogs whose character appealed to the artist. The flea-ridden dogs inspired Baskin to create ten wood engravings, which the Gehenna Press printed in Castle Street Dogs in two editions. This is a special artist's proof sheet, on which all ten images have been printed.

Wood Engraving

In the early 1950s, Baskin taught himself the difficult art of wood engraving, which requires much skill and precise effort. The wood engraver carves into the end grain of very hard wood, usually made of boxwood, to produce blocks with very fine, delicate lines. This engraving block was used to print the pair of dogs in the upper right corner of the Castle Street Dogs sheet.