Print Establishment
Toasts Legends

Two legendary figures from the world of print, both of whom worked closely in Northampton and died within months of each other last year, were honored last month by the Society of Printers at a dinner meeting on Beacon Hill in Boston.

Artist Leonard Baskin, creator of the Gehenna Press in Northampton and his long-time pressman, Harold McGrath of Florence, were remembered with fondness and admiration by a gathering of some 70 people at the Club of Odd Volumes, a federal townhouse in swank Louisburg Square.

Those on hand for the evening, said David Bourbeau, of the Thistle Bindery in the Arts and Industry building on Pine Street in Florence, represesented "the ruling class of print," drawn largely from Boston's literary and publishing establishment.

In an interview, Bourbeau described the club where the event was held as "the ultimate Boston crumpled," the interior of the building "casually cared for, not fussy, but with elegant little touches all over the place."

Bourbeau was among a small group from the book arts community in this area to attend the dinner meeting and lecture. Others making the pilgrimmage to Boston were Daniel Kelleher of the Wild Carrot Letter Press in Hadley, who Bourbeau describes as "the elder statesman of printing in the valley"; Art Larsen of Horton Tank Graphics in Hadley; Carol Blinn of the Warwick Press in Easthampton; and Barry Moser, the artist from Hatfield, who read from a monograph he had written about Baskin's artistic legacy.

The evening of tribute was organized by Bruce Chandler, who operates a fine press in Boston, but spent his early years as a printer in the 1970s living in Williamsburg and working with Baskin and McGrath at the Gehenna Press on Clark Avenue. He spoke about that formative experience and how working with Baskin and McGrath influenced his own work and life, according to Bourbeau.

Another speaker was Lance Hidy, a book designer from Cambridge, who also lived in this area at one point in the late 1960s and who, along with David Godine, the celebrated Boston publisher, did an apprenticeship with Baskin. Hidy also had studied with Baskin at Yale.

According to Bourbeau, Moser, besides reading from his mongraph "made a very emotional speech about Harold and how he thinks of him every day."

Says Bourbeau, who knew both men well, "Harold was down home, he was a neighbor." McGrath would have felt very uncomfortable, for example, attending a dinner at the Club of Odd Volumes on Beacon Hill.

Based on his own recollection of both Baskin and McGrath, Bourbeau said that Gehenna Press achieved its fabled reputation because of the "symbiotic relationship of Baskin and McGrath; it was one of those wonderfully happy marriages."

Their's was a "friendship that depended on the press, the world of printing, " he continued.

According to Bourbeau, Leonard Baskin was neither a pressman nor a mechanic, "he was a man of letters, erudite, a man of high aesthetic values - with an incredibily long view of historical printing references."

Harold McGrath, on the other hand, "was the mechanic, a sensitive mechanic, a consummate craftsman. He did not conceive of projects, he did what Leonard had on the bench. He was fortunate to be at the right place at the right time."

What made their relationship so unusual, so mutually creative, so distinctive, Bourbeau speculates, is that "Baskin would not have looked for the printing refinements unless Harold led him to the possibilities.''

Noting that while two of the three speakers at the dinner no longer live or work in this area, Bourbeau observed that they still "maintain a strong relationship to the valley through the book arts."

Showing a visitor a series of finely-crafted and printed illustrated volumes he had bound for Baskin, Bourbeau declared with enormous feeling and sense of debt: "The entire book arts community here owes its existence to Leonard Baskin. It would not have existed if it weren't for Leonard."

As for McGrath, he said: "Harold would have continued to print baseball tickets, wedding invitations and business forms, but he rose to the level. Leonard gave him the opportunity and Harold went beyond the opportunity."