Booksellers Joshua and Phyllis Heller on Artist Books

What's the dif­fer­ence between a First Edi­tion, a Fine Press Edi­tion and an Artists' Book? Joshua and Phyl­lis Heller work with me to help define the bound­ar­ies. The two of them estab­lished Joshua Heller Rare Books, Inc. in Wash­ing­ton DC, in 1985. The com­pany spe­cial­izes in "con­tem­por­ary fine print­ing and beau­ti­fully illus­trated books, the Private Press Move­ment, mod­ern fine bind­ings, and books about books. [Their] much admired cata­logues, illus­trated in full color, are dis­trib­uted to a national and inter­na­tional list of cli­ents."

Joshua has lec­tured widely in the United States and Canada on the art of the book. He helped organ­ize the Art of the Con­tem­por­ary Book Con­fer­ence at Ohio State Uni­ver­sity in 1991, and has: con­trib­uted art­icles on the Private Press Move­ment to journ­als such as Fine Print and Imprint; and cur­ated exhib­i­tions of South African botan­ical artist Elise Bod­ley, both for the Smith­so­nian Museum of Nat­ural His­tory and the Audu­bon Soci­ety; he also pro­posed the first Wash­ing­ton Artists' Book Fair – now a bien­nial event; and organ­ized the first ever exhib­i­tion of fine mod­ern bind­ings at the Corcoran Museum of Art in Wash­ing­ton DC in 2003.

I met the Hellers at their home in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. recently.