Oculi Fine Editions

Oculi Fine Editions is a transatlantic collaboration between Crooked Eye Press in the United States and Night Eye Books in the Netherlands. It is not a third press and not an imprint of either one. It is the name two presses give to the books they make together, and the mark those books carry.

The two presses belong to two collectors who found, over years of conversation about books owned, books chased and books they wished existed, that they value the same things in a fine edition: a text worth the labour, art commissioned for it rather than borrowed, materials chosen for the hand as much as the eye, and a small number of copies, finished slowly. At some point the conversation turned from "who will make this?" to "what if we made it ourselves?" — and Oculi was the answer. The name is the plural of oculus, the eye: a crooked eye and a night eye, looking at the same page from either side of the Atlantic.

Each press keeps its own list and its own name. Tim publishes under Crooked Eye Press; Maurice publishes under Night Eye Books and prints at Kraaiven Press in Tilburg. A book carries the Oculi mark when both presses have had a hand in it — in the choice of the text, the art direction, the typography, the printing or the binding. The mark is a statement about how the book was made, not about who sells it.

The first Oculi title is Claimed, Francis Stevens's novel of 1920, published by Crooked Eye Press with art direction by Night Eye Books and printing by Kraaiven Press. Jason Mowry has completed five illustrations and fifteen chapter-head illustrations for it. Details of the edition and its states will follow on the editions page as the book approaches the press.

Enquiries about Oculi titles can be sent to either press; those about Claimed reach both.