Henceforth, once monthly on Meta-Talon, we celebrate Throwback Thursday by highlighting the classic and the kitsch in nostalgic bursts of bibliophilia. Today we take the opportunity to bask in the joviality of a selection of Talonbooks catalogues from the 1970s.

For the inaugural installment of Throwback Thursday, we travel back in time – and back to Talon’s warehouse, where we find a stack of old catalogues …

Let us proceed in chronological order.

1970

First, the cover and a few standout spreads from what we believe is the 1970 catalogue. Notably in this year, Talon first published the book The Ecstasy of Rita Joe in 1970.

(Right-click or Control-click on any of these images to see them enlarged.)

1974 & 1975

In 1975 Talonbooks published The Evelyn Roth Recycling Book, and Evelyn Roth herself graces the cover of the catalogue, wearing an outfit crocheted from CBC videotape. Yes, you read that correctly. The “car cosy” is also crocheted videotape.

Here is a page from this catalogue – minimal design at its finest:

Another catalogue from the same year (but a different season, we guess) seems to be a screen-printed pattern of tiny green-gold palm trees on thick rust-red paper. Unfortunately it is not possible to share the very satisfying-to-the-touch texture of this catalogue in this online gallery, but take my word for it: it is nice paper.

1976 & 1977

This year Talon employed Gerald Giampa of Cobblestone Press to make this attractive letterpress catalogue cover (also printed on satisfyingly thick, textured paper).

Now we begin to see the addition of cover images to the interior spreads:

1980

Below, finally, is the absolutely rad 1980’s catalogue cover. ’Twas the end of an era … and clearly the beginning of another one.

To finish off the gallery, a page from the 1980 catalogue, showing a jolly-looking Michel Tremblay and a few of his works: