In 1960, Tiber Press published a set of four volumes of artists books: The Poems by John Ashbery with prints by Joan Mitchell, Permanently by Kenneth Koch with prints by Alfred Leslie, Odes by Frank O'Hara with prints by Michael Goldberg, and Salute by James Schuyler with prints by Grace Hartigan.
Each Volume contains 5 silkscreen prints; 1 on the cover, 1 on the title page and 3 interspersed throughout the book. The edition is limited to two hundred copies numbered 1 to 200, signed by the poets and painters, plus twenty-five reserved copies numbered I to XXV. Each book consists of forty pages, jacketed in molded acetate, and all four volumes are boxed together.
Page size: 17 1/2 in. x 14 1/16 in.
Printers: Plates, Tiber Press, New York; text, Brüder Hartmann, West Berlin.
Collection: The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Richard Miller
The following is quoted from the original 1960 Tiber Press publicity materials:
"We are pleased to bring together the production of four poets and four painters who lived in New York City where they knew one another well for a number of years and followed one another's work with involved interest. Tiber Press left the choice of partners in this project to the individuals themselves, and, in collaborating, the poet and painter were acknowledging an awareness of some real relationship between their work."
"These are two of four volumes devoted to poems by American poets and screenprints by their painter friends. Serigraph, or screenprint, a method of making a stable stencil, allowed the artist to paint an image with gum on silk, which could be lifted, leaving openings through which paint or ink could pass onto paper. Boch Hartigan and Michell used it to convey their own versions of Abstract Expressionism."
"The artists came to the studio of Tiber Press, painted and drew directly on the silk screens, and created their prints specifically for these volumes. Each artist made three full-paged illustrations as well as the cover and title page, using four to ten screens for each page."
"The poems were hand set in Walbaum-Antigua by Brüder Hartmann in West Berlin and printed by them on handmade, all rag paper. The flat sheets were brought to New York where the prints were silk screened at Tiber Press."