Cancelled Projects -- Mesa Series 2 No. 1 1949, 1950

Unpublished signatures for Mesa, series II, number I, Winter MCMXLIX, set and printed by Harry Duncan and Paul Wightman Williams in 1950. Only one signature was printed, in an unknown number of copies. According to the handwritten version of the Flamer inventory, this may have been the first use by the Cummington Press of Romanee type from the Netherlands. Printed on Rives woven paper, watermarked "RIVES" in open capitals. Mesa editor Herbert Steiner asked Duncan and Williams to come to New York, but they didn't have sufficient funds, and so Steiner cancelled the job and instead contracted with a New York printer, the Wells College Press. The Cummington Press sheets were then destroyed. The Mary L. Richmond Collection contains two copies of the signature, featuring six unbound leaves of the title page through page 12, including Paraboles by Paul Valery (pages 5-10) and the beginning of Il Coro Avvenire by Venceslao Ivanov (pages 11-12, ending mid-sentence).