Introduction
Following is the first in a series of articles featuring persons prominent in the world of books and book arts in Sacramento and Northern California. This article is co-authored by Carol Gilbert-Wagner and Robin Morris, and begins as they strolled through downtown Sacramento discussing the state of the world of books, book artists, and booksellers.
Interview with Richard Press
Walking along 9th Street in downtown Sacramento recently, we paused at an unusual edifice that seemed out of place--looking older than the oldest buildings in town, older than the Crocker House or Sutter's Fort...a Shakespearean facsimile, dropped like Dorothy's house in this unlikely spot with trucks and cars whizzing past. A Tudor house with wooden beams across, leaded glass entry, and there, in the sidewalk at our very feet...
There in the pavement, a lovely mosaic tile, an image in color of a medieval figure, a sort of Robin Hood, carrying a stack of books, toppling off wildly as he strides along...A single word was set in the design, in large thin type..."BOOKS". We craned our necks to view the facade of the modest but arcane storefront...empty now, it looks as though some 
new business has hung nice lamps within...perhaps a restaurant, or a clothing concern will go in. On the beam above the door, deeply sunk in the wood, which appeared as if a good deep sandblasting had failed to remove it, was the name of the long-closed bookshop...Levinson's Books.
Robin had to return to the car for the video camera he carries, to take careful shots of the front, the empty interior, and the beautiful paving stone signs. We sighed as we continued on toward the farmer's market, to realize this scene was not unusual; that all over the country the same thing had happened--more convenient modes of book buying, and much distraction a la pop culture, television, video games etc. had meant the death of independent booksellers far and wide...the closing of the old family bookshop that so often means the retirement without replacement of that wonderful resource, the Bookman, a sort of librarian without portfolio, a rebel archivist, a reader run amuck, someone who lives to discuss the next book with the next customer…or is perhaps fired by the desire to buy, sell, collect, read and handle these objects…books. The Bookmen! Are they all going away?
“Indeed,” I said, “an endangered species”—but no, not all gone yet!” So saying, our apples and spinach safely stashed, we drove a few blocks to visit Richard L. Press at his Fine and Scholarly Books on the Arts, at 1727½ I Street above what is now Michaelangelo’s restaurant and next to Barton Gallery. We walked between gallery and restaurant down a narrow alley and climbed a flight of wooden steps to enter a second floor space crowded to the rafters with fine books. A modest man with neat gray hair and spectacles, mild-seeming, and with a slow friendly smile emerged from a back room with an armload of books, holding them as a mother cradles a baby.
Richard is known to me from a long acquaintance but it was my friend’s first trip to this hallowed temple of books. I watched as he scanned the space, emitting a low and sonorous, “Wow!”
Richard had time for us, as he usually does for anyone interested in books. This was once Victoria Rivers’ art studio, but in 1982, Richard, who had started business three years before on N Street, moved into the second floor flat, and has been an important ingredient in Sacramento’s cultural milieu ever since.
Before becoming a dealer, he spent 25 years at libraries as an administrator with a fondness for rare books and special collections. This long experience helps explain his incredible depth of knowledge in his areas of interest.
I asked him as we settled into chairs, books towering above us, if he worried about closure due to the burgeoning online book trade, not to mention the huge chains and discounters everywhere today.
He had some convincing reasons for his continued existence in business. One, he said—there is no guarantee you will get exactly what you had hoped to receive online; poor and misleading descriptions abound on eBay etc., and the plethora of scammers and ignorant traders makes for an unsafe and nervous-making environment for the buyer. Levinson’s, he recalled, had been known for years as the city’s oldest bookshop, and moved to the suburbs before closing a decade ago…they were less able, perhaps, to withstand the revolution in bookselling as they carried new books only. Richard says that specialization, within several areas, is a key to survival in the modern climate.
My buddy held forth for a moment about his own love of books, and his feeling of being surrounded with fascinating objects full of wonder.
“The book is the single greatest invention in the history of the world,” said Richard, folding his hands behind his head and beaming at us knowingly. He held up a finger and repeated what I know to be one of his favorite expressions…”I’ll show you something that will knock your socks off!” And rising quickly he began to search for a certain sacred tome amongst the thousands that protrude from every possible space in his pleasantly musty aerie. Needless to say, the book produced, and several following, more than fulfilled his gleeful promise. We looked about for our socks, and indeed they had been knocked into a distant corner.
I wanted further clarification on two terms tossed about today regarding artists and books. “What,” I asked, “is the difference between an “artist’s book” and a “livre d’artiste”? Richard helped us to understand that the artist’s book is a more general term, which may mean an art object in the form of a book, often the product of a student of the book arts, whereas a livre d’artiste is usually a limited edition of a book produced by a team of professionals, also usually dedicated to an artist or to an artist’s ouvre. He has quite recently published such a book, which is a poem of tribute to Hendrik Nicholas Werkman by Willem Sandberg, two of Press’s typographic heroes, that had formerly been published only in a scholarly journal, and which Press had dreamed of in its own format, more expressively following what he imagined the style Sandberg might have enjoyed, given the opportunity, and taking accents from the source that Werkman represented to him and to Sandberg. He showed us a copy of the lovely homage which he is selling in a limited edition of 100, done by Star Thistle Press of Sacramento. (Click here for more about the Werkman book. )
My friend is a maven for engravings and prints—Richard needed only to hear this to send him into a back room, and a moment later he returned with a lovely English translation of an old Spanish book, extra-illustrated with 172 engravings on the art of kissing! We oohed and aahed and nearly kissed as we were brought under the spell of the magic book. I noticed a book on Fred Dalkey nearby and began to leaf through it, enjoying the drawings of nudes and Sacramento scenes, and realized that within this store was enough material to cause me to read forever! Alas, we had only a little time that day.
Thousands of books fill most of the space in the shop, almost all of them art-related.
Fortunately, the happily-named Mr. Press is on the job most days, taking orders and making them the old fashioned way, by telephone and letter, greeting customers and in his resting moments, reading the New York Review of Books, The Book Collector, and the new Yorker, when he is not deep in some wonderful book just arrived, dreaming up another book of his own, or plumbing the mind of a visiting collector. There is a comfy couch in his shop, and I, for one, imagine happily sinking into a corner of it with a few well-chosen volumes and trying not to take one home with me; but when I do not escape without some blessed rectangles under my arm, I am more than satisfied. There is a wealth of ideas and art lying in wait for me there, and the friendly scholar at his desk, fathoming my desires so well that I am looking for some much tighter socks and tying my shoes double to escape the temptation that lurks therein, created and maintained by one of the best, and (we sincerely hope) not one of the last of the Bookmen.
Contact:
Fine and Scholarly Books on the Arts
Richard L. Press, Proprietor
1727 ½ I Street, Sacramento, California 95816
Telephone: 916-447-3413
Photographs by Rachel Stonecipher and Robin Morris.