Contrary to the early sixties when private presses in the Netherlands were few and far between, the next decades experienced a boom in the number of presses. This was, of course, boosted by the fact that commercial printers changed en masse from letterpress printing in lead to planographic offset printing, so that presses, lettering material and other printing equipment were put on the market at relatively cheap prices. As from 1975 makers and lovers of bibliophile printing have met in the ‘Stichting Drukwerk in de Marge’. When the foundation presented itself to the outside world at its tenth anniversary (Drukkers in de Marge. Den Haag, 1985), it included as many as 61 private printers.

The foundation organises various events, like markets, ‘Newsletters’, an annual Bulletin, and, its most appealing feature, joint printing projects. It started in 1982 with a spectacular project, Drukken, a slip-case with 25 small books on aspects of printing. It was followed in 1984 by Bladwijzer, with 32 contributors, and by Een doos die eenmaal open nooit meer dicht in 1985, an anthology of poems, produced by 53 printers. As yet the last project in the series is Bladspiegeling. Unlike the earlier projects this has no overall theme, but allowed the 26 participating printers free rein qua form as well as contents. Together the projects present a graphic illustration of the artistic and technical achievements of the present generation of private printers.

Naturally ‘bindings’ were an important aspect in these projects. They were designed by David Simaleavich's prestigious Phoenix bindery, and were made in widely different forms, from an imaginative ‘travelling library’, a pseudo bookend of dark plexiglass, or an ingeniously constructed Solander box, to the monumental black leather box shown on the opposite page, which has been given a slip-case of reflecting plexiglass which does indeed reflect in Dutch the title Bladspiegeling.