FlugBlattBuch Nr. 4
Brüder Grimm, Läuschen und Flöhchen
For the fourth FlugBlattBuch, I chose the fairy tale Läuschen und Flöhchen (Little Louse and Little Flea) from the Brothers Grimm collection. I combined this fairy tale of escalation with zinc plate illustrations of tanks, airplanes and warships from the Warsaw Pact and NATO. As the action gradually comes to a head in the fairy tale, with everyone drowning in the end, I printed the weapons plates as the background, layered on top of each other more and more densely so that by the end the text is barely legible. I increased the number of weapons from one page to the next, using a simple technique: For the first press run, with just a few weapons, I printed all of the sheets that were needed for the entire book. In the next press run, using different weapons plates, I printed all of the sheets again except the ones needed for the first double spread. Before the next press run, I then set aside the sheets for the second double spread, etc. I repeated these steps until finally the last sheet had been printed and was covered with a dense pattern of weapons.
22 pages, uncoated paper, hand-set, letterpress printed, paper over board, 15.5 x 23.5 cm,
110 numberd and signed copies. Lahnstein 1985