Ars Combinatoria is an exploration of the graphic possibilities of a single piece of wood type—a thirty pica Clarendon R—and a restricted set of operations—positive and negative auto-pressure printing with only one inked impression. This technique enables the top of the wood type to interact with the bottom and itself. With æsthetic and technical constraints there are eighteen prints, twelve of which are displayed here. The suite of prints comes in an elegant box with a small booklet—printed with laser printing, letterpress, and three-color offset lithography—explaining the process. An edition of 30.
There is also a small deluxe edition of four copies that is a complete record of the process. It comes with an additional box (with the bottom of the R printed on the spine) that includes all of intermediate prints that were used to prepare the block for the final prints.
