Chip Coakley started to print in Lancaster (England) about 1980. He and his family moved to Oxford in 1991, to a house in the part of town called Jericho. The press was installed in a back-garden studio, and took the name of its new location. (Our logo, from a wood-engraving by Nancy Ruth Jackson, shows a woman weeping among the ruins of Jericho. The horn alludes to the story in Joshua chapter 6.) In 1993 the Coakleys moved to the United States, but they kept up a summer migration to Oxford for part of each summer, and Chip continued to print during that annual window of time. This arrangement came to an end in 2007, and the equipment and type of the Jericho Press are presently in storage. Chip and Sarah expect to move to Cambridge in the summer of 2008, and, God willing, the press will be active once more.
Printing equipment consists of a Vandercook model 4 proofing press and an Arab treadle platen. There is also a collection of exotic and oriental types, most of which Chip salvaged from academic printers who were getting out of letterpress printing in the 1980s.
Some of the items listed below make use of exotic types, especially Syriac. (These types are the subject of an article in John Randle's annual Matrix, no.10 (1990), pp.181-91.) Others are just projects that seemed useful and appealing.
W.A. Wigram: A fragment of autobiography, edited by J. F. Coakley. 9 pp. with a line illustration. Lancaster, 1985.
out of print
Saint Ephrem: A Hymn on the Eucharist (Hymns on Faith, no. 10), edited and translated by Sebastian Brock. Types: Oxford large Estrangela Syriac, and Monotype Garamond. Lancaster, 1987.
out of print
James T. Coakley, Army Days 1942-1945, Lancaster 1987. Reminiscences of the printer's father (1909-1986), 23 pp., paper. Types: Monotype Garamond. ISBN 0 9511627 1 3.
price on application
Synopsis of the oriental and some other non-Latin types in use at the Press of J. F. Coakley. Broadside, Lancaster, 1990.
out of print
The Church's bridal feast: A Syriac homily for Epiphany. Syriac text edited and translated by Sebastian Brock. 14 pp., 1992. Types: Cambridge small estrangela (designed after the handwriting of F. C. Burkitt) and Monotype Garamond. ISBN 0 9511627 2 1.
out of print
An amulet for the binding of guns, spears, swords, daggers and all implements of war. Syriac text edited and translated by Erica C. D. Hunter, 13 cm., 9 pp., with one hand-coloured illustration reproduced from the manuscript in the John Rylands Library, Manchester.
opposite p. 3: MS John Rylands Library MS Syriac 52, fol. 41v.
Paper, 1992. 200 copies on Zerkall paper. Types: Drugulin's Nestorian Syriac, and Monotype Garamond.
$15 or £9
Preces privatae by Lancelot Andrewes : the introductions to each day’s prayers in Greek edited with an English translation by David Scott, 23 pp., with a wood-engraved frontispiece by Jane Lydbury.
Cased, 1993. 150 copies on Zerkall paper. Types: Robert Proctor’s famous ‘Otter’ Greek type (on which see Matrix 13 (1993), 179-89), and Monotype Octavian. ISBN 0 9511627 4 8.
out of print
A book of family graces, with an appendix of scholarly graces, edited by the printer & as used by his family. 21 pp. landscape. Types: Monotype Joanna, plus Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac; also with some music. Cased, 1994. 100 copies on Zerkall paper. ISBN 0 9511627 5 6.
out of print
Veritas imprimata : the typography of the Harvard arms, by J. F. Coakley. 29 pp., with 63 illustrations of the Harvard arms, cased, 1995. 240 copies on Zerkall paper. Types: Monotype Joanna. Some of the Harvard arms shown are original designs by Bruce Rogers. The blocks used in printing the arms belonged to the Harvard University Press. For the story of their rediscovery see an article in Harvard Magazine, March-April 1996, 64-65. ISBN 0 9511627 6 4.
$60 or £36
Captain Kidd and two others, verses from A book of Americans by Stephen Vincent Benét illustrated with wood-engravings by Nancy Ruth Jackson, 10 pp., paper, 1997. 150 copies on Zerkall paper. Types: Monotype Octavian and Albertus. ISBN 0 9511627 8 0.
$25 or £15
The Epistle of secrets, translated from the Latin by Rodney G. Dennis and edited by J. F. Coakley. Types: Monotype Joanna, with Hebrew words in Stam and Monotype Mayer, the latter having its first showing here. iii + 44 pp., cased, 1998. 150 copies on Zerkall paper, of which 90 are for sale. ISBN 0 9511627 9 9.
The Epistle of Secrets is one of the earliest texts of Christian kabbalah, and the first to be printed, in 1487 or 8. We have it only in a Latin translation - or perhaps it is an original composition - by Paulus de Heredia, a Jewish Christian convert and supposed teacher of Pico della Mirandola. In spite of its importance, the Epistle has never been reprinted, and this is its first translation into any modern language.
$60 or £36.
An ancient colophon : a memoir by William Cureton, edited by J. F. Coakley. i + 13 pp., cased, 1999. Types: Walbaum, with Syriac words in serto and estrangela types. 75 copies.
Cureton's description of how he encountered the most famous of Syriac manuscripts (British Library Add. 12,150), the oldest dated manuscript in any language. The text is re-edited from Cureton's book The festal letters of Athanasius (1848) with some additional notes. This book was not inteded for sale but a few copies are available at
$30 or £18.
The Harvard B.A. degree diploma 1813-2000, by J. F. Coakley. 11 pp., large oblong format, cased, including six specimen diplomas. 50 copies, 2000. Types: Octavian, Ehrhardt, Dartmouth.
This book was printed by the Jericho Press for the Harvard College Library. Copies may be still available at $300 from the Librarian's office, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
The collects of the first English prayer book 1549 by Thomas Cranmer, edited by J. F. Coakley; with an introduction by Geoffrey Hill and a wood-engraved frontispiece by Jane Lydbury. 6 + 89 pp., cased, 2002. Types: Ehrhardt, in red and black.
This edition reproduces the text of the collects, in large type, from the Houghton Library copy of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. After each collect is the Latin original, if any, and a note about its transmission in the 1662 prayer book and in the current American Book of Common Prayer and English Common Worship.
Fifty copies were printed for subscribers.
out of print
O sacred head: a Passiontide hymn. Words and music, with an introduction by John W. Coakley, Thomas S. Hansen, Carl D.N. Klein, and the editor J. F. Coakley. 11 + 8 pp., quarto, cased, 2003. Paper: Zerkall mould-made. Types: Octavian with Ehrhardt, in purple and black. The title-page has this wood-engraving by Simon Brett.
The introduction discusses the famous hymn of Paul Gerhardt O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden; its thirteenth-century Latin original; the musical settings of the German hymn; and its English translations. There follow four different musical settings of the hymn, below which are the complete German text and the English translations of James W. Alexander and Robert Bridges. These pages are cut horizontally so that any of the musical settings may be paired with any of the versions.
Sixty numbered copies were printed, mostly for subscribers, but some are available at
$85 or £45.
Archimedes, On floating bodies I. 1-2. Greek text edited with an English translation by N. G. Wilson. 14 pp., quarto, cased (quarter red cloth and gray paper), 2004. Paper: Zerkall mould-made. Types: Proctor double-pica Greek and Monotype 18-point Ehrhardt, in red and black.
Greek text (Latin when the Greek is absent) and facing English translation of the opening of this treatise. The editor Nigel Wilson is one of a team of scholars working on a palimpsest manuscript rediscovered in 1998, and this is the first-fruit of their project of a new edition. Part of the Greek text had not been previously read, and therefore of this passage ours is a FIRST EDITION of Archimedes in Greek.
left-hand page showing the Proctor Greek type and a diagram
Archimedes joins the short list of books ever printed in Proctor's Greek type. We last used it in 1993 for Lancelot Andrewes, Preces Privatae, now out of print.
Fifty copies,
$75 or £40.
Elementale quadrilingue: a philological type-specimen (Zürich 1654) reproduced with a commentary by John Huehnergard, Geoffrey Roper, Alan D. Crown and the editor J. F. Coakley; 13 pp., in black and purple. Paper: Zerkall mould-made. Cased, 33 x 23 cm. 2005.
In 1654 the Zürich printer J. J. Bodmer published a broadside entitled Elementale quadrilingue, supposedly a guide to reading Samaritan, Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac, by the famous Johann Heinrich Hottinger; but really, not so much a work of philology as a specimen of types newly made by the punchcutter Balthasar Köblin who was then working for him. This type-specimen survives in a perhaps unique copy in Houghton Library, unrecorded until lately. Our edition includes a same-size facsimile, with commentary devoted to Hottinger and to the three new types (Arabic, Syriac, and Samaritan). The commentary is hand-set in Monotype Walbaum and various founders' types in the relevant languages from the Jericho Press collection.
One hundred copies,
$95 or £55
Robert Furber, Popular English historical rhymer. 8 pp. Cased. 2006.
Robert Furber (great grandfather of Sarah) was a schoolmaster in Whitchurch, Shropshire. He composed this set of verses for his pupils to learn the names and dates of English sovereigns. Its special merit is that the dates are made memorable by being part of the rhyme-scheme. It was printed as a small pamphlet entitled Popular English Historical Rhymer in 1874. Only one or two recorded copies survive.
Thirty copies, printed for the family.
not for sale
A book of family graces. Second edition, revised and enlarged. 21 pp. landscape. Types: Monotype Joanna, plus Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac; also with some music. Cased. 2006.
Family Graces in its first edition of 1994 has been the most popular of our books, and I wanted to keep it available. The format of this second edition is the same as the first. Almost all the graces (though re-set) are kept from the old edition. Several English graces have been added, along with two in Latin and a longer one in Hebrew. There are two new wood-engravings by Jane Lydbury.
Binding was delayed for a year, but this book is now available. Sixty copies,
$60 or £35
ORDERING INFORMATION
Copies of any of the publications in print can be ordered from the printer at his American address, 25 Langdon Avenue, Watertown, Mass. 02472, USA; or by e-mail at coakley@fas.harvard.edu. Trade terms on request.
This page is copyright © J. F. Coakley 2007. It was last updated on 3 September 2007.
