Essay by Juan Pascoe
Book design by Juan Pascoe
Digitally printed with letterpress slipcover by Bradley Hutchinson
Co-published with Martín Pescador Press (Tacámbaro, Mexico)
Edition of 80
6″ x 9″
36 pages, richly illustrated with photos and artworks
$65
About the book
Juan Pascoe of Taller Martín Pescador wrote this eulogy for his neighbor and friend, Joyce Campbell, on her death in 2004. Joyce Campbell and her longtime partner, Dr. Leo Eloesser, lived nearby in the hills of Tacámbaro, Mexico. This is the story of the couple’s life in Mexico from the early 1950s until Eloesser’s death in 1976, and Joyce’s life until her death almost 30 years later. The two led complete lives in the San Francisco Bay Area but spent at least half of each year in Tacámbaro where they lived quietly, making music and forging friendships; and there Eloesser ran an informal clinic for community members.
Leo Eloesser is remembered for the important work he did as a surgeon in the first part of the 20th century and, in light of the fascination with the Mexican artist icon, for being Frida Kahlo’s doctor, which began during her stays, along with her husband, Diego Rivera, in San Francisco. Their choices—where they lived, how they spent their time, who they knew—reflect their tastes, but also the times they lived in. Their friendships were recorded in paintings, letters, and photographs. Eloesser’s portrait painted by Kahlo in 1931 hangs in the lobby of the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, along with a painting, “La Tortillera,” by Rivera.
Moving Parts Press undertook this project in gratitude to Dr. Leo Eloesser, who developed a unique surgical procedure in the wake of WWI, known as the Eloesser Flap Thoracostomy Window, that helped save the life of the publisher’s husband almost one hundred years later in 2017.
Details from the colophon
This text was first published in Spanish, in “Tacamba,” the now defunct Tacámbaro, Michoacán newspaper, on 29 May 2004. On the same date, a version of the text in English was set digitally and printed from a laser printer, in an edition of 30 copies, to be given away to Joyce’s friends in the Bay Area. A revised version of the Spanish text appeared in a catalogue published by the Biblioteca Andrés Henestrosa in Oaxaca, Cartas de Frida Kahlo al Dr. Leo Eloesser, in October of 2004. Both texts, in newly revised versions, and not strict translations, appeared in Querido Doctorcito, correspondencia entre Frida Kahlo y Leo Eloesser, Conaculta, Mexico, 2007.
Now, 80 copies of the eulogy, rewritten again, and set in the Espinosa Nova type, have been printed digitally, according to the InDesign composition undertaken by the author. 50 copies are for Moving Parts Press of Mendocino, California; 20 are for Taller Martín Pescador of Tacámbaro, Mexico; and 10 are for the printer, Bradley Hutchinson of Austin, Texas.
The photographs which accompany the text were left with the author by Joyce Campbell, in a jumbled box of family snapshots which she did not consider important enough to be sent to the libraries that hold the Eloesser archives. As such, they appear here as mementos, and not works of worth. Joyce Campbell also left him the letters of Frida Kahlo to Dr. Leo Eloesser. She said: “The libraries are going crazy over them; considering everything else I am donating, I find it distasteful. Go ahead and make your book. Wish I were able to leave you some money.” —Juan Pascoe
Other books produced by Juan Pascoe and Bradley Hutchinson
The Inner Tympan: The Collected Verse and Prose of Harry Duncan, with two photographs (and a third on the cover). Compiled and designed, with an introduction by Juan Pascoe. 2005. 6 x 9 inches. 337 pages. 50 copies printed.
Harry Duncan: Printer in Iowa, 1956-1972. An Illustrated bibliography compiled and commented by Juan Pascoe at the Taller Martín Pescador, Mmxvi. 153 photographs, 8.5 x 11 inches. 232 pages. 10 copies printed.
Juan Pascoe. Cornelio Adrián César, impresor flamenco en México, 1597-1633. Volume 1. Mmvii. 596 illustrations. 8.5 x 12 inches. 410 pages. 50 copies printed.
Juan Pascoe, A Printer’s Apprentice, 2017. 6.5 x 9.5 inches. 203 pages. 50 copies printed.
Juan Pascoe, An Early Mexican Typographic Ornament. 2019. 6 x 9 inches. (With a cover printed typographically by Bradley Hutchinson.) 38 illustrations. 39 pages. 50 copies printed.
Artur Lundkvist, Kvinnor och Fåglar / Mujeres y Pájaros, traducción al español de Homero Aridjis. 12 illustrations by Francisco Toledo. 2020. 6 x 9 inches. (With a typographic cover printed by Juan Pascoe.) 24 pp. 50 copies printed.