A rabbit-obsessed narrator makes an owl increasingly irate by refusing to play by the rules of a conventional alphabet book. Every entry is about bunnies, from "delightful, dynamic, daredevil rabbits" to "xylophone rabbits and rabbits on drums!" Readers will pore over scenes of bunnies at the circus, in a tiny town, at the museum, even in a motorcycle gang.
Weirder than Fiction (2021) is a hand-painted carousel pop-up book inspired by the Caxton Club publication Chicago by the Book - specifically, entry 43, which describes the sci-fi/fantasy pulp magazine Weird Tales. This one-of-a-kind artist book opens into a diorama of two Chicago two-flat apartments across the street from one another; the apartments are visible to each other through the real stained glass windows embedded in their walls.
The apartments' occupants are the book's two protagonists, devotees of Weird Tales who have grown suspicious of each other. One of them, a young man, has been reading the May 1932 issue, which includes the short story “The Brotherhood of Blood” by Hugh Cave. He has noticed that his neighbor across the way seems pale and sickly, operates only at night, and yowls like some supernatural creature; could she be a descendant of the cursed vampire family from “The Brotherhood of Blood,” doomed to become a batlike creature of horror on the midnight of her twenty-eighth year?
Meanwhile, across the street, the young woman has become paranoid as well; having read the February 1928 issue of Weird Tales, she is tormented by the idea that her neighbor is a deranged cultist just like those described in H.P. Lovecraft's “The Call of Cthulhu.” She hears him chanting late at night, worshiping a strange idol, and she dares not leave her house lest she be attacked by his fellow cultists.
With the benefit of seeing the whole story, the reader can find a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything: the woman is gaunt and nocturnal because she is afraid to go out and buy groceries (that's why her cat yowls so piteously.) The man chants so sleeplessly because he is reciting the Lord's Prayer; he has covered his apartment in crucifixes to ward off vampire attacks. And the ghoulish silhouettes visible through both windows? The man's strange tentacles and bizarre idol are nothing but a potted plant and Virgin Mary statuette. The woman's coffin and bat are a wardrobe and vase full of umbrellas.
Every paper detail in the book is hand-painted with acrylics except for the apartments' wallpaper, which is vintage stamped paper. Every miniature issue of Weird Tales references a real issue of the magazine, including the two waiting to be read in the protagonists' mailboxes outside. The stained glass windows allude to the Weird Tales stories being highlighted; a green-tentacled mass over aligned stars and undulating waves on one side, and a fanged open mouth on the other. The book's title is hand-lettered onto the cover in an iconic Weird Tales typeface. Closed, the book measures approx. 7" x 9". Photographs by Shelby Everette.
Actaeon (2021) is a linoleum-cut artist book in an edition of 50 regular copies and 20 special copies. Its small page spreads measure 12.25” x 18", and it contains two large foldout spreads which measure 12.25 x 36”. It is bound in drum-leaf style, and its case is wrapped in a hand-colored linoleum print.
This book is an illustrated retelling of the Greek myth of Actaeon, a skilled hunter who, on a hunt with his pack of dogs, stumbles upon the goddess Artemis and her retinue bathing in the forest. Artemis, enraged that Actaeon has seen her bathing, transforms him into a stag; he is quickly dispatched by his own hunting dogs.
In this version, Actaeon does not turn into a stag, but rather receives the treatment given to so many slasher film starlets: he becomes both victim of torment and erotic pinup. As Actaeon runs through the forest, his clothes are ripped from him until he is stripped naked before the gaze of the reader, seemingly enlightened by his rapturous suffering. This is an ancient tale of a man punished for violating the privacy and dignity of a woman, resurrected and subverted for a modern-day society in which such infractions are still going unpunished.
The special edition is a deluxe version of the book. It comes housed in a custom screen-printed slipcase featuring Artemis drawing an arrow on one side and a braying stag on the other. When the book is pulled from its slipcase, the dogs on its cover rush toward the stag. Additionally, the endsheets of the special edition are hand-stamped patterns of Actaeon and his hunting dogs in the style of antique hunting trophies. But most importantly, all “pinup-style” pages of the special edition are hand colored with sparse but vibrant watercolor elements.
Ephemerus is the 2017 artist’s book edition from the Marjorie S. Coffey Library Endowment Residency at the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida. The book was designed by H.M. Batsel during the semester-long residency in the fall of 2017. The book is inspired by Batsel’s research and study of occult and magical texts from the Harold and Mary Jean Hanson Rare Book Collection in the Special and Area Studies Collections Department.
When the apprentice of a learned magician falls ill, the magician must push to (and beyond) the boundaries of his power to prevent the apprentice's soul from slipping into an inescapable sinkhole, the Devil's Millhopper. A dark fairytale about the limitations of human ability and the inherent impermanence of human life, Ephemerus is an edition of 45 hand-bound, signed copies with three moving pages and two double-size fold-out pages.
Grave to Cradle (2021) is a handmade artist book in an edition of 35. When closed, it measures 4 1/4 x 5 5/8"; when the three covers are opened to display the wingspan of the moth screen-printed on the cover, it measures 5 5/8 x 12 7/8". Grave to Cradle was begun as part of an In Cahoots residency in Petaluma, CA, in October 2019. It was later completed and bound in Chicago, IL in February 2021.
The book's text and illustrations are linoleum prints; its text reads: "When the bagworms came to Liberty Cemetery, they were naked. Soon, they built their cocoons from what they found at the graves. When the bagworms came, it was as if the dead were coming back to life." Inspired by real-life bagworms, insects that construct different cocoons based on the materials available in their environments, and an actual cemetery in Petaluma, CA, Grave to Cradle is a short magical realism story about insects that synthesize not only physical objects found on graves (flowers, ribbons, cacti) but also the memories and emotions of the deceased into dense, crowded cocoons. The lives of a murderer, a young girl, and a married couple are woven into cradles that give new life to the bagworm moths that emerge from them.
Out of the Dark/Into the Water is an edition of 125 hand-printed and hand-bound artist books about the life and work of Oliver Robert Batsel, an American collector of exotic artifacts and art objects from around the world. Batsel spent his life gathering clothing, documents, jewelry, photographs, and other ephemera related to the Empyreal Trading Company (E.T.C.), a small mercantile enterprise which operated from the 17th through the 19th centuries.
In 2004, after decades of amassing the most complete E.T.C. collection in the world, Batsel lost his life when Hurricane Ivan leveled his beachside Florida home. The house, the collection, and Batsel himself were swept out to sea. Now, over a decade later, Batsel's granddaughter, Hannah, has begun to excavate the sand lot where the house once stood, recovering pieces of Batsel's story and restoring the artifacts to which he dedicated his life.
Out of the Dark/Into the Water is a dos-a-dos book, a historical binding in which two text blocks share a back cover. One half describes Hannah Batsel's memories of and relationship with her often-absent but endlessly fascinating grandfather. The other half takes a closer look at the collection itself and the progress that has been made towards restoring it. The book combines screen, offset, and letterpress printing techniques, and includes 14 original reduction linoleum prints.
Maneater is a set of four artist books, produced in a limited edition of 50 hand-print and hand-bound copies. The set consists of four stories whose physical and narrative structure nest within one another like Russian nesting dolls. The books can be read separately, but when taken together, reveal a legacy of greed and colonialism across generations.
Every time a new character’s name is spoken, a new book begins that follows that character’s life story. The first book’s protagonist is a wealthy shut-in who becomes obsessed with an exotic deity; the three enclosed books reveal this retired businessman’s colonialist past and the history of the deity’s native land. With every book, the narrative as a whole moves backwards chronologically in time. The visual style echoes that of 19th century children's mass-market hardcover adventure books, whose bright and captivating illustrations belied the troubling imperialist messages conveyed within.
Magnets embedded in the spine of each book hold them in place for display or easy reading as a set.
Heavy is the Head is a small foldout letterpress printed book depicting four members of a royal family and four of their servants. By lifting hidden flaps in the book’s design, viewers must discover how each servant plans to assassinate a different royal (the wardrobe keeper slips a snake into the queen’s stole, the cellar master poisons the king’s wine, etc.)
My smallest book yet, Overhead was designed, carved, printed, and bound on a series of commercial airline flights over a 24-hour period as part of Air Air Residency on May 4th, 2018. The 2”x3” book depicts a young boy drawing an angel and then meeting one that differs dramatically from his drawing. The book is an edition of three with two APs.
Overhead was created in its entirety on economy class commercial airline flights. Here, wet prints are hung to dry on the backs of seats.
Oliver Robert Batsel (1919—2004) was an American collector of artifacts and ephemera related to the Empyreal Trading Company, an English mercantile enterprise active from the 17th through the 19th centuries. Over Batsel’s nearly seven decades of collecting, he amassed thousands of books, garments, documents, jewelry, and other objects. These materials constituted the most extensive Empyreal Trading Company collection in the world – and together, they represented a history of opulence, conquest, plunder, and adventure.
In September of 2004, Hurricane Ivan leveled the beachside Florida home in which Batsel kept his extensive collection, taking his life and sweeping the majority of his possessions out to sea. While some materials were recovered and placed in storage directly after the storm, many fragments of the house and its contents have rested under mere inches of sand for more than a decade. Over the past few years, the collection has been exhumed, restored, and exhibited by Batsel’s granddaughter, Hannah Batsel.
Oliver Robert Batsel has become a figure inseparable from the history he so obsessively archived. Now, for the first time, Batsel’s personal effects and correspondence join the artifacts he treasured to illuminate the legacy of both the Empyreal Trading Company and of Batsel himself.
Pieces from the Batsel collection in a 2016 exhibition.
Although this headdress is one of the most dramatic pieces in the collection, its origins and intended purpose remain unknown. While we can speculate that it may have originally served some ritualistic function, Batsel’s notes on the piece tell us only its time period (“C. 1780s”) and those materials that he believed may have composed the object: “Kudu horn, wood, mud daub (?) [sic], unidentified.” Batsel’s assertion that the piece was once used in an Imperial Russian Ballet performance is almost certainly unfounded. While it may have been worn in a promotional photograph for the Ballet in the late 19th century, no dancer’s neck could have supported the weight of the headdress for any extended period.
Unfortunately, very few parts of the headdress are original. The horns and skull piece, while damaged by the storm, were intact and recoverable; the woven cloth ropes have been replaced with facsimiles based on samples of the original textiles. The headdress base has been reconstructed modelled after a surviving fragment of the “mud daub” texture, now located under the left set of horns.
Over the years, Oliver Robert Batsel handed many clothing items down to his son, Kurt. Two of these items, originally purchased and worn in the 1930s through the early 1950s, appear in some of the few extant photographs of Batsel as a young man. In his early days as a collector, Batsel posed for a photograph with his Ford Model A wearing both the eight-panel cap and the suit jacket exhibited here. The cap – or one very similar to it – also appears in an earlier photograph of Batsel at work selling cigars as a teenager.
Under the care of Batsel’s son, these garments evaded not only the ravages of Hurricane Ivan, but also the wear and tear of everyday use. Today, they appear much as Batsel might have worn them nearly eight decades ago.
This tintype, taken in the early 1890s, remains the only known photograph of Peregrine Lander (left), known best as Empyreal Trading Company figurehead Carbuncle Pip. An explorer, naturalist, and anthropologist by trade, Pip gained a cult following after appearing in at least 23 short stories in The Boy’s Own Magazine, a serial newspaper for British youth. In his stories, Carbuncle Pip is a swashbuckling adventurer, captain of the Empyrean, skilled hunter, and discoverer of both obscure artifacts and uncontacted peoples.
In reality, Peregrine Lander’s accomplishments are poorly recorded. The heavy promotion of his nickname, which honors his discovery of a massive red gem (or “carbuncle”), suggests that the Company was more concerned with projecting an image of wealth and luxury than it was with Lander’s actual exploits.
In 1895, Carbuncle Pip perished in a shipwreck when a sudden storm drove the Empyrean into a rocky reef off the coast of Senegal. Cargo from that doomed voyage washed up on shores around the world, and much of it ended up in Batsel’s collection. Pip’s famous red carbuncle, which the Company encouraged him to wear as a part of his public persona, has never been recovered.
[LEFT] Thaumatrope Spinning Toys
1890s (facsimiles 2016)
These paper toys were included in certain copies of The Boy’s Own Magazine to promote the Carbuncle Pip stories. When held by the strings and spun, the image of explorer Carbuncle Pip appears to push through leaves in a dense jungle. While Batsel did have an original thaumatrope in his collection, it did not survive the storm; these facsimiles were produced using scans of the original toy provided by the Museu Marítim in Barcelona.
[RIGHT] Ribbon Rosette
1890s
Produced as a promotional item by The Boy’s Own Magazine, in which the Carbuncle Pip stories were published, this wearable pin bears the Empyreal Trading Company motto: ad terminum terrae, or “to the ends of the earth.” While the center is original, this pin’s ribbons have been replaced after storm damage.
The Empyreal Trading Company sponsored only a single chartered ship, the Empyrean, but its reputation for securing strange and exotic curios for its wealthy clientele – at whatever the cost – distinguished it from its much larger competitors. One of those clients, either a shareholder of the Company or simply a well-connected patron, commissioned this fur collar in the late 1700s.
The Empyrean brought the white pelt used in the collar’s construction from the Arrowan islands to England, where it was sewn into this one-of-a-kind garment. The Empyreal Trading Company had an almost exclusive trade relationship with the native Arrowansi, whose low-volume and inconsistent markets were not lucrative enough to catch the attention of larger companies. Embroidery depicting a fantastical stag creature adorns the right side of the piece; on the left is the Company’s distinctive crest.
Hurricane Ivan irrevocably damaged the collar’s original lace and nearly disintegrated its embroidery. In 2014, the piece underwent extensive repairs; it has been restored to its present-day condition largely through reference photographs and written descriptions of the pre-damage garment.
Batsel sent postcards and letters for every special occasion. Many of these contain references to his collection, like the one at left: "I'm bringing back a souvenir for you from up north - and one for me, too!"
In his teens, Oliver Robert Batsel spent his summers selling cigars in southern Florida.
By the time he reached his early twenties, Batsel had already built a home in northern Florida and purchased a car of his own.
A rare photograph of Oliver Robert Batsel (with wife, Carole, left) behind the Florida home in which he kept his collection.
![[LEFT] Thaumatrope Spinning Toys 1890s (facsimiles 2016) These paper toys were included in certain copies of The Boy’s Own Magazine to promote the Carbuncle Pip stories. When held by the strings and spun, the image of explorer Carbuncle Pi](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5508bfd1e4b096de5cea766b/1487889584012-KFGLWHLWCWTQ31QHTNPL/ETCmemorabilia.jpg)
