Item Details
Ashes to Ashes: A Homecoming Celebration for the Unburied.
Connecticut River Valley: SAW Press, 2018. Limited Edition. Hardcover. On April 30, 2016, Whitaker held a funeral service for the nearly 4000 African Americans murdered by lynching between 1882-1981 and denied their last rites. Recorded here is the order of service and the eulogy together with separate obituaries and engraved portraits of six individuals. "Ashes to ashes is the inaugural enterprise of SAW Press, published in 2018. Shirley Ann Whitaker created the copperplate portraits. She wrote the eulogies for a 2016 service at the historic St. John's Congregational Church in Springfield, Massachusetts. These six testimonials of documented lynchings were dramatized to represent thousands of souls that were lost to lynching in the United States of America.
Michael Kuch assisted with the book project and its design and printed the etchings at the Double Elephant Press in Northampton, Massachusetts. The type is Bell, which was cast by Michael and Winifred Bixler in Skaneateles, New York. Art Larson printed the letterpress in Hadley Masachusetts. The gray paper was made by Katie MacGregor in Whiting, Maine. Mark Tomlinson has bound the edition of fifty in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Copies one through seven have covers with a leather painting by artist Winfred Rembert, a lynching survivor." [Colophon]
Shirley Ann Whitaker created the images. Michael Kuch assisted with the design of the broadside & printed the intaglio edition. The letterpress is by Art Larson. Katie MacGregor made the paper. The polymer plate is by Boxcar Press. Mark Tuchman laid out the Bell digital type. The list of names was compiled by Amy Bailey, Stewart Tolnay & E.M. Beck." [Broadside colophon] Broadside consists of a list of names of victims of lynching and housed in gray paper sleeve, with text: "As long as you speak my name I will live forever." A powerful testimonial created a student of Leonard Baskin and renowned community activist, doctor, and artist. Fine in Fine Archival Box. Tight, bright, and unmarred; box tight and unmarred. Gray paper board, silver gilt lettering; gray cloth archival box with printed paper spine label. 8vo. np. Illus. (color and b/w plates). Laid in portfolio with printed broadside. Numbered, limited edition, this being 25 of 50. Signed by the artist. Item #10348
Price: $3,750.00