Email: jnglgrdn@earthlink.net
Tel: 415-456-4884
Fax: 415-457-6653
I began Jungle Garden Press in Berkeley, California, in 1974. The press is named for my backyard, overgrown with wild roses, errant onions, and a tangle of tulip vines.
From the beginning I have printed books using a Chandler & Price and a Vandercook letterpress. The books are bound by hand by me or professional bookbinders. Early on I was almost exclusively interested in printing poetry by contemporary authors, but in the past few years, I have printed short prose and have collaborated with visual artists. I also write, print, and bind my own books, some in small editions, and some one of a kind.
In recent years the influence of artists’ books has strengthened the book arts. The combination of the spontaneity of artists’ concepts of books and the crafts of fine printing and binding have led to lively books that are at home in an art museum as well as a library.
My intention in printing and bookmaking is to elucidate a text by the shape, binding, design, typography, and drawings of books, to make the experience of reading beautiful to the touch and the eyes as well as the mind, and to make the text understandable to the reader in the way I interpret it.
Marie C. Dern
Read Marie’s biography
