Richard Murdoch, Liz (Parish) Beasley ’79 and Lyn Tribble ’80 printing in Anne Yeats Cuala Press Studio, Dublin,Ireland

Michael Thomas ’79 who also printed with Richard Murdoch in Dublin

In November, 2024, our former colleague, Stephanie Bennett, left me a Winston Salem Twin City Sentinel article (entitled: WFU’s Rare Book Librarian Prints Books at Irish Press).

There were three Wake Forest student names on it. For me, this ignited a personal project: find out about these three Wake Forest students who went to Ireland with Richard Murdoch, and what they did there. Stephanie left email addresses with me, and I wrote a message to the three students. A month went by, and I got a reply from Liz Beasley. After a few conversations by email, I was able to set up a zoom interview with Liz, and we talked about her experiences with fellow WFU students and Richard Murdoch..

The people: Richard Murdoch, former Rare Books Curator at ZSR Library, and Wake Forest students: Liz Beasley ‘79, Michael Thomas ‘79 and Lyn Tribble ‘80.

The following is a portion of the transcript from my zoom call with Liz Beasley (LB):

CF: I guess the first question is, how did you find out about going to Dublin with Richard Murdoch? …and who recruited you, or was there a flyer or something like that?

LB: I don’t think I remember a flyer. The way that I ended up going was that I was working at the Rare Books room my last two years at Wake Forest. They needed a typist because the Rare Books Room had recently gotten a collection of books from someone and they all had to be cataloged. So, I was basically typing the card catalog cards for two years. And in the midst of that, Richard also somehow got me interested in bookbinding. So I took a course. This was one January in my senior year, I didn’t do the January term as it was then. Instead, I took a bookbinding course back in my home in Maryland. When I came back, Richard had me do what they called basically folders to put pamphlets in to protect them. So he had me doing some work. And so it was through my work at the Rare Books Room that I found about him going back to Cuala Press. So that’s how I ended up doing it. I don’t know about Lyn (Tribble ’80) and Michael (Thomas ’79).

I was interested partly because this was 1978-1979, and Irish music was becoming very big. The secretary in the Rare Books Room, I think her name is Bobbie, was very interested in Irish music. And so I was interested in Irish music, and so there was this, Oh, wow, let’s go Ireland.

CF: I guess I had met Richard Murdoch a couple of times. He was the archivist at Reynolda House when I started at ZSR Library.

LB:I think the article that you sent referred to him having been at Cuala Press before, I think a year or two before that. I think it was a couple of years prior to when we went. He was there, for I think a summer but stayed longer, I think. So as I understand it, the administration said, sure you can go again, but take some students.

Richard Murdoch and Lynn Tribble printing on the Albion Press

CF: I think what Richard had told me was that you guys were printing on a press that Anne Yeats (the daughter of the poet, William Butler Yeats) had. “Ann would make us tea, and then we would print.” Richard told me “we had lunch in Anne’s kitchen.” So, is that true?

Lunch in Anne Yeats kitchen

LB: That is quite true, why don’t I describe the setup. Okay. We arrived there at the beginning of July in 1979, and you mentioning the Dolmen Press reminds me that Richard did take us to the Dolmen Press. We met Liam Miller. I don’t remember too much about it except that I remember watching typesetters, you know, Line-o-Type setters, and he was basically showing us around. We also went to a place where they were making the blocks, since we were going to be printing a book of book plates by Jack Yeats, there was at least one of them that needed to be made into a block. They were putting the metal into acid and so forth and then affixing it to the block. So he was giving us a kind of an overview of things in Ireland and also how some of the work we would be doing would be done because of the two books we printed, Letters from AE to James Stephens was typeset, I think at Dolmen Press because we received it in galleys of linotype. The other book was book plates by Jack Yeats and that had just had a one and a half page introduction and that we set by hand at the press. We had big old type cases with Caslon type.

The press was located in Anne Yeats’ studio. She was an artist in her own right, and she lived In a bungalow in the town of Dalkey. She had a beautiful back garden. There was a building in her backyard. And one whole wall was glass that looked out on the garden. So that had been her painting studio. But then it became Cuala Press. The Cuala Press was located in Yeats’ back garden.

Anne Yeats garden

So in the press, it’s kind of divided in half. There was the front half, as you walked into it, was the fulfillment center for all the prints that Cuala Press did. They were printed in Dun Laoghaire, which is a town up the road. Anne Yeats had a cottage industry of women who would hand color them. So they were pitched as hand colored prints. So that was the front half. And there was a woman who worked there named Vera Fitzgerald, who was the fulfillment person. She was basically the clerk who did this work. And then in the back half of the building we had two Albion hand presses.
So, what we did was, we lived in Dalkey, kind of a half mile away. In the morning, we would walk down to Cuala Press and we’d go to work. The letterpress really does have the quality that other printing doesn’t. Richard made us appreciate that.

We were printing the two books: A Little Book of Bookplates Plates by Jack Yeats, and the other one is Letters from AE to James Stevens. So they were both Cuala Press books.

A Little Book of Bookplates by Jack Yeats

Letters from AE to James Stephens

Colophon attributing the printing

CF: Was that what they refer to as the Cuala Revival when, you know, it’s like it kind of came back again in the 80s or late 70s. It kind of started up again after being kind of dormant for awhile, is that right?

LB: I do know when I was there, the Press was primarily known not for the books, but for the prints. And I have them all over my house. They were sold to American tourists and sold in like the Kilkenny Design Shop, which is a major establishment here for Irish artisans. And so they were very big in the Kilkenny Design Shop. After Richard and the other two students had left and I stayed, we did a display, an exhibition at the Kilkenny Design Shop, where we printed special items and we had a tiny little Albion press which one could print little cards on.

Cuala Press Sales Catalogue 1979

CF: Did you guys have individual duties? It seemed like Richard had said something about dividing up the work, like you each had individual responsibilities.

LB: I saw that in the article that you sent. I do know that for the little book of book plates and the introduction with the handset type, I remember Michael did that and he seemed to be very good with studying the type. Far as I remember, the actual printing, as far as I remember, we just all pitched in and did it. We did have two presses that we had going so we could all do this work, at the same time. I’ll say we were supposed to be there for five weeks but we didn’t get all the printing done. We got all the printing done for the book plates, but not for the book of letters. And so that’s why I stayed on, to finish printing the book of letters. And then I hand sewed the bookplates book. Since the Book of Letters was hard bound, it was sent to a company called Museum Bookbinders. And I stayed working for Cuala for a year and I worked at Cuala part time and I worked at Museum Bookbinders part time. You see how it changed my life.

CF: Yes. I mean you stayed and then you ended up in Ireland, right?

LB: Yes. So, Anne Yeats, I would say she was very hospitable. I mean, she truly did have us into her house for lunch every day, you know, fed us cheese and bread and soup and yogurt. Very nice. Both she and Richard were somewhat shy people or somewhat quiet people, you know, Anne was an artist, like I say, in her own right and then also had this cottage industry with the prints and hand coloring the prints. So she did some of the work and she farmed it out also. I would say that Anne was very protective of the legacy of Cuala. She wanted to preserve its legacy and its respect and esteem.

CF: We have a Murdoch Memorial Fund in Richard’s name, and we use that in Special Collections & Archives to have people come and give talks or to make purchases. So, it’s nice that he has a memorial.

LB: I’m glad to hear that.

CF: And Richard is well remembered,

Richard Murdoch printing at Cuala and examining a printed sheet

LB: I will also say he was very kind when, you know, there were four of us and sometime in beginning or middle of August, you know, the three of them left. And Richard, I think, was somewhat concerned about just leaving me here. I had graduated, and I didn’t have anything else to do, and this was fine with me. I remember him giving me some advice, you know, as he was getting ready to leave, one of which was it said, you know, you’re here in Ireland. Sometimes you will love it, and sometimes you will hate it, because you are living in a foreign culture and so forth and so on. Yeah. But he was obviously concerned about leaving me.

CF: Your safety and well-being. That’s pretty nice.

LB: It all worked out good.

All images courtesy of Liz Beasley