Use the arrows at the bottom of the page to view the woodcuts. (Resizing your browser window also resizes the images.)

All thirty-nine woodcuts can be viewed as thumbnails here. There is also a video trailer for the book.

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Inspired by winning a chili cook-off at his home in northeast Iowa, David Esslemont presents his prize-winning recipe in thirty-nine woodcuts. Starting from scratch, he toasts ancho chiles, makes vegetable stock, grinds beef from farmer friends, adds homegrown garlic, tomato paste and much more . . . . The final touch is a topping of spicy sour cream garnished with julienned fresh fresno, habanero and jalapeno chiles.

The blocks are cut from plywood and maple. Tonal variations are acheived by overlays to the makeready, textured ink rollers, ink blends and pochoir. Mutiple color images are printed using a variety of techniques: masking areas of the "key" block, re-using blocks "unmasked", with/without overlays, reprinting from rotated blocks, the use of several small rollers, additional blocks (print runs), direct inking through stencils with either rollers, stencil brushes, or à la poupée.

Edition details

Hand-printed from the original woodblocks on Zerkall mould-made papeer 15 x 11 inches (380 x 280 mm) in editions of 300 copies.

Unmounted, individual signed prints from $60 to $200

Shipping and handling extra.

Published in February 2013.