The Wood Frog
A small broadside with a quote by Thoreau on the wood frog:

Can you ever be sure that you have heard the first wood frog in the township croak? Ah, how weatherwise must he be!...He pitches and tunes his voice to chord with the rustling leaves which the March wind has dried. Long before the frost is quite out, he feels the influence of the spring rains and the warmer days. His is the very voice of the weather.

Printed in Perpetua with Goudy Open titling on Zerkall in three colors. Designed, engraved & printed by Abigail Rorer. Relief engraving, letterpress, three colors. Size: 6 x 11. Edition: 80 Price: $50

The Fox
This broadside is an excerpt from Henry David Thoreau’s Journal dated Saturday, January 30, 1841, printed in gray and black with two engravings and an engraved initial. The type is Perpetua with Goudy Open titling on either Fabriano Rosapina Bianco or Rives Heavyweight White. The text begins:

Suddenly, looking down the river, I saw a fox some sixty rods off, making across the hills on my left. As the snow lay five inches deep, he made slow progress, but was no impediment to me. So, yielding to the instinct of the chase, I tossed my head aloft and bounded away. . . .

When I think of Aspasia I think of hills, standing very clear but distant against a cold blue sky; there is snow upon them which no sun has ever melted and no man has ever trodden. But the sun too is in her hair, in the red and gold of her skin, in the bow of her lips and in the glow of her mind.

We remembered also that moose were silently watching us…

Designed, engraved and printed by Abigail Rorer. Engraving with letterpress. 3.5 x 5.75. Edition: 75 copies, the first 40 with the Thoreau quote. Sold out.

Surely joy is the condition of life. Think of the fry that leap in ponds, the myriads of insects ushered into being of a summer’s evening, the incessant note of the hyla with which the woods ring in spring, the nonchalance of the butterfly carrying accident and change painted in a thousand hues upon his wings, or the brook minnow stemming stoutly the current, the lustre of whose scales worn bright by the attrition, is reflected upon the bank.

Designed, printed and engraved by Abigail Rorer. Engraving & letterpress. 10 x 13. Edition: 50. Sold out.

Bufo the First
Celebrating the reign of Bufo the First, this broadside takes for its text an excerpt from Henry David Thoreau’s May 1, 1857 journal entry with an engraving and engraved signature. Set in Baskerville on Rives BFK, the text begins:

First notice the ring of the toad, as I am crossing the Common in front of the meeting-house. There is a cool and breezy south wind, and the ring of the first toad leaks into the general stream of sound, unnoticed by most. . . .

It chanced the other day that I scented a white water lily, and a season I had waited for had arrived. It is the emblem of purity. It bursts up so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the scent, as if to show us what purity and sweetness reside in, and can be extracted from, the slime and muck of earth. I think I have plucked the first one that has opened for a mile. What confirmation of our hopes is in the fragrance of this flower! I shall not so soon despair of the world for it […]. It suggests what kind of laws have prevailed longest and widest, and still prevail, and that the time may come when man’s deeds will smell as sweet.

Walden
Created to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Walden; or Life in the Woods by Henry D. Thoreau, this broadside has a hand-colored engraving of the view of Walden Pond from Thoreau’s cabin site. The text is taken from the chapter ‘The Ponds” from Walden and begins:

Of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. . . .

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