FAIRTHORNE & SALT is a poem written by Justin Cox, an emerging poet based in Iowa City who was the 2017 Fellow at the International Institute of Modern Letters in Wellington, New Zealand. The poem was inspired by an experimental animation produced in 1939 by Robert Fairthorne and Brian Salt. And it in turn served as inspiration for a broadside created for Hand Papermaking at the University of Iowa Center for the Book by Radha Pandey, a papermaker and letterpress printer who studied Western and Asian Papermaking techniques with Timothy Barrett and teaches book arts in India and the United States. To create the broadside’s gorgeous and evocative look, Radha printed in white ink on her own handmade abaca paper and hand-brushed each with a sumi wash and applied a sea-salt resist.

Each of these 11 x 17-inch sheets is a unique treasure and our gift of thanks for the 2017 generous year-end donation campaign.