Book of Dreams : Pair Turn Out Finely Crafted Volumes in Idyllic Rural Setting

At the end of a dusty, mile-long road to nowhere, James and Carolyn Robertson walk across a field to their barn each morning and generate their harvest by hand.

Their “produce” can probably be found at the corner bookstore.

The Robertsons, who left urban pressures behind 14 years ago for the solitude of rural Mendocino County, are living out their dreams with tiny but highly regarded Yolla Bolly Press.

“People are fascinated by the fact that two grown-ups would be out in the woods making books by hand by 19th-Century methods,” Jim Robertson said.

The wonderment is natural for any visitor making the 175-mile trek from San Francisco to Round Valley, a remote farming plateau tucked amid the mountains of California’s Coast Range.

Thirty miles from the nearest town of any size and almost an hour from a major highway, Yolla Bolly Press sits next to pastureland in a spot better suited for a sheep barn than a printing barn.

The Robertsons call it their book farm.

“I had a dream long ago about a print shop in a garden, and Carolyn had a dream about a cabin in the woods,” Robertson, 53, said. “We care deeply about books and are devoting our lives to them.”

The press was christened with an Indian name meaning “high snowy peak,” for the 8,000-foot mountains of the nearby Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness. Its logo is an Indian design commemorating the tree frog, which frequents the Robertsons’ 40 acres along with mountains lions, bears and the deer that nap daily in the shade of their guest cabin.

The choice of a distinctive name was meant to catch the attention of bookworms and the publishing community. It has.

Only about two dozen book printers in the United States use the letterpress printing method--pressing raised-surface type onto paper--instead of the less costly, more modern offset method. Experts say Yolla Bolly, which also produces trade books for commercial publishers, compares favorably with any maker of finely printed books.

“They’re absolutely among the country’s top producers of fine, limited-edition books--books that are a combination of craft, art and literature,” said Sandra Kirshenbaum, editor of Fine Print, a San Francisco quarterly magazine.

Robertson got an early start in the profession. Fascinated by print shops as a boy growing up in Alameda on San Francisco Bay, he received a tiny hand-operated press and a case of type from his father one birthday. By the seventh grade, he was running a neighborhood newspaper called “The Pearl Street Gazette”--circulation 15 or 20.

He went on to run a graphic-design business for about 15 years before returning to publishing.

Carolyn Robertson, 46, grew up a book lover in Salt Lake City. With a background in English literature and business management, she applied for work in Robertson’s San Francisco office one day in 1968 and got the job and more.

They founded Yolla Bolly five years later, before moving to Covelo in 1974 in the interest of peace, quiet and affordability. Today, Carolyn Robertson handles the business side, her husband is responsible for the printing and they share editing and design responsibilities.

“We live on the edge” in a “wild and wonderful place,” is how Carolyn Robertson describes their remote, idyllic setup.

Yolla Bolly runs on equipment valued at a mere $25,000--four letterpresses dating back 75 years, two hand-operated proofing presses and one small offset press.

But the two or three fine books produced each year command premium prices from collectors.

The most recent was “My First Summer in the Sierra,” commemorating the 150th anniversary of naturalist John Muir’s birthday last April. The press published 110 limited-edition volumes for $785 each, and 25 special-edition volumes for $1,150.

Months of preparation includes choosing the artist and preparing the art, buying high-quality paper from mills in Italy and choosing California latigo saddle leather or perhaps Amish horse denim for the binding.

The price restricts the audience for the limited-edition books by Muir, Joaquin Miller, Robinson Jeffers and others. But the care that goes into making them ensures they are likely to be kept for a long time.

Robertson sees books as icons that represent what is valued in a culture.

“You can make a thing--a book or a house or a camera--in such a way that it commands respect,” he said.

“I hate to think that the only people who care about the way things are made are a couple of oddball craftsmen out in the woods. The culture needs the attitude of making things with purpose, attention to detail and a certain kind of love.”

Because the printing of fine books can be a risky business, Yolla Bolly also acts as an independent producer for four or five commercial books a year.

It does the design and preparation work and ships the books off to major publishers such as Sierra Club Books and Houghton Mifflin Co.; best-selling Yolla Bolly Books include “Mountain Light,” “The View From the Oak” and “Stranger in the Forest.”

The Robertsons hope to continue their mix of artistic and commercial work as long as book lovers keep buying.

“We consider ourselves very lucky to live in a place like this, do the things we care about and make a living,” Robertson said.