Werkplaats Typografie presents a catalog of Works from the Collection of Holly van Houten. Spanning multiple decades and personally selected from around the world, the collection includes over a thousand items that memorialize the life of this candidly private, bohemian connoisseur. Carefully examined by our specialists, a curated selection of rarities, antiquities, oddities, and works of art is available in this catalog, which accompanied an exclusive auction held during Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair in May 2025 in Los Angeles, Van Houten’s beloved city.

Project led by Hannes Drißner, Lisa Lagova, Nuno Beijinho. Designed by Hannes Drißner, Lisa Lagova, Nuno Beijinho. Objects photographed by Augustinas Milkus and Jordi de Vetten.

Jokes is a crash course in psychic disintegration for the genocide generation. Ever wondered what a spoonbill thinks of peremptory norms? Or what a hippo can do with an egg-slice? What’s the secret of the success of men like David Papazian and Johnnie Moore, who get to run the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, while poetry-reading demographics, from the higher and intermediate managerial and professional occupations down to the footwells of unskilled manual self-erasure, lie around standing up for themselves and fornicating with the void? An Author’s a Joke, to all manner of Folk, wherever he pops up his Head, his Head, wherever he pops up his Head, according to Fielding. But why? The 27 jokes of Jokes unfold over the course of a duration-block, in an exclusive interior, under new management, in the capable trotters, paws, hooves, claws, tentacles, jaws, beaks, and blowholes of a fabulous parliament of beasts, some drunk, some dead, some leery, some high, some tender, in the tradition of Boccaccio or Isaiah. They are all funny.

Pure Fiction is a reader that examines how fiction-based writing and narrative building functions in contemporary artistic context. Edited by Lisa Lagova and Manon Fraser with contributions by Susan Finlay, Manon Lutanie, Kristina Stallvik, Jonathan Blaschke, Nadia de Vries, Lisa Lagova, Ivan Cheng, Fadi Houmani, Nour Ben Said, Chris Kraus and Manon Fraser. Edited by Lisa Lagova and Manon Fraser. Designed by Lisa Lagova.

Bladspiegel is a periodical poly-semi-facsimile. Each issue reproduces four books chosen by four invited artists and designers. Issue No.001 brings together selections by Jonathan Blaschke, Matas Buckus, Tato Greve, Valentina Stahnke. Assembled by Sanie Irsay. Edition of 50.

Selected images from the 1949 Les Jeux de la poupée (The Game of the Doll) a landmark collaborative work by Hans Bellmer and poet Paul Éluard. Features the hand-coloured photographs of Bellmer’s mutated, jointed female dolls arranged in unsettling, dreamlike poses that blur the line between desire, control, and dismemberment. The images, both tender and disturbing, exemplify Bellmer’s obsession with the fragmented female form and reflect his resistance to the fascist ideal of bodily perfection. The photographs are a key surrealist exploration of eroticism, identity, and the unconscious. Les Jeux de la poupée remains one of Bellmer’s most significant and works.

Hans Bellmer (1902–1975) was a German artist best known for his provocative life-sized dolls and surrealist photography. Bellmer began constructing articulated female dolls in the 1930s, photographing them in unsettling, dreamlike scenes that explored themes of eroticism, control, and fragmentation. His work was condemned by the Nazi regime as “degenerate,” prompting his move to France in 1938, where he became associated with the Surrealists. After the war, Bellmer abandoned doll-making and focused on erotic drawings and prints. He lived in Paris with his partner Unica Zürn until her suicide in 1970, and continued working until his death in 1975.

Robert Ashton, born in Melbourne in 1950, is an Australian photographer known for his distinctive documentary style that emerged in the 1970s. After studying photography at Prahran College (1969–71), he became immersed in a creative community that included Carol Jerrems, Paul Cox, and cousin Rennie Ellis, with whom he shared a studio and worked at Brummels Gallery. His 1974 book Into the Hollow Mountains, documented everyday scenes in Fitzroy with striking intimacy. It was recently republished in an expanded edition. He has exhibited widely and is known for using hand-built large format cameras and traditional printing methods such as photogravure and the Collodion process to produce his work.