A44. Counting Toys
(Left) A43. Anonymous. Drop Dead. Santa Cruz, California: The Good Book Press, 1987.
49 x 24 mm (1 15/16” x 15/16”), 4 pages, not a limited edition.
Binding: Case-bound accordion; glued at spine. Full-bound in black sheepskin. Skull and crossbones stamped in silver on cover. Paper: Charcoal, handmade by Peter Thomas. Printing: Letterpress. Typography: Hand set Old Town and Century.
“A nameless friend, upon seeing our I Love You book [A33] said, ‘I need one that says #@*!@$.’ This was the closest we could put in print.”
(Middle) A42. Tanya Thomas. We Found a Carrot. Santa Cruz, California: The Good Book Press, 1987.
51 x 38 mm (2 x 1 ½”), 7 pages, 12 copies.
Binding: Blue and red marbled paper over boards. Title on label on cover. End sheets navy blue. Paper: White, handmade by Peter Thomas. Illustration: Hand-rendered reproductions of four illustrations by Tanya Thomas. Typography: Handwritten by Donna Thomas. Notes: Text dictated to Donna Thomas by Tanya Thomas.
(Right) A44. Donna Thomas. Counting Toys. Santa Cruz, California: The Good Book Press, 1987.
51 x 38 mm (2” x 1½”), 24 pages, 200 copies.
Binding: Case-bound accordion; glued at spine. Some copies bound in French marbled paper over boards. Title stamped in gold on cover. End sheets tan. Some copies full-bound in multi-colored, hand-woven Guatemalan cloth over boards. Title stamped in gold on leather label on cover. End sheets tan. Paper: White, commercial. Printing: Four-color offset. Typography: Reproduction of text handwritten by Donna Thomas. Illustration: Reproductions of eleven watercolor paintings by Donna Thomas.
“This is a counting book, pairing a number (1-10) with an illustration of a corresponding number of toys. Donna originally made this book in 1986 as a large one-of-a-kind [B1] for Tanya and Suzanne. We wanted to reproduce it as a miniature, and this was before color digital printing was commonplace, so we hired a commercial offset printer to photographically reduce the size and then print the pages for us. This is one of the two books we did not print ourselves, the other being A Brief History of the Ukulele [A95].”