Paul Elder & Company

The Japanese word tomoe (巴) refers to a comma-shaped symbol. There are hundreds of traditional Japanese tomoe designs. The most common variant is the three-tomoe design called mitsudomoe (三つ巴), which, according to Japanese tradition, creates the harmony of a perfect circle. Here are some examples of tomoe, taken from the book Japanese Design Motifs, by Fumie Adachi, Dover, 1972.

The tomoe has been a favorite symbol in Japanese heraldry for centuries. Today, the mitsudomoe has become popular with corporations and taiko drum troupes.

Elder first used the mitsudomoe design in 1900, which he anglicized as the word “tomoyé” (sometimes with the acute accent, sometimes without), and it became a logo of sorts for him. He used it in many books and magazines over the next two decades. When he hired John Henry Nash to run the new in-house printing shop in 1903, it was christened “The Tomoyé Press”.

Although it is unknown why Elder chose the tomoyé, he likely wanted to emphasize the connection between the Orient and his own book arts. Below are just a few of the many tomoyé marks Paul Elder used over his career.

There are no current plans for a new Paul Elder show.

You can view photographs of my 2023 Paul Elder exhibition at the Book Club of California here.

You can view photographs of my 2004 Paul Elder exhibition at the San Francisco Public Library here.

I started by publishing the Checklist for three reasons: it established a baseline of Elder’s output, it was a chunk of work that could be completed in a reasonable time frame, and I had an eager publisher. A formal bibliography, at least one that I would feel proud to call my own, is a work of far larger scope. The logistical problems are daunting:

• after 25 years of searching, there are still titles of which I have never seen a single copy
• many of Elder’s books were published in multiple bindings, and/or special marketing names, and/or matching slipcases
• Elder published a large amount of ephemera: calendars, greeting cards, postcards, mottoes, etc.
• a huge amount of material was surely destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire
• further material was no doubt lost during each bookstore move, and when the company was closed in 1968

And, of course, at the end of the road I would still need to find a publisher. In summary, a bibliography may still happen, but you’ll have to wait a while. In the meantime, this website must suffice.

updated 2025-02-19

Alas, the checklist is out of print and there are no immediate plans to print more. I have seen one or two come up for sale on auction sites such as Ebay and PBA Galleries.

But there’s good news! The entire checklist is now available on this very website and is always current, whereas the most recent printed checklist is now 20+ years out of date. Enjoy!

Updated 22 August 2025

I’ve been searching for Paul Elder titles since about 1995, and the checklist has been quite stable in recent years. In the past decade, there have been only two additions to the checklist: The Adventurous Bowman, a short booklet privately printed in 1915 during the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and The Antigone of Sophocles, which realized that I had mistakenly conflated with a companion volume.

I won’t be surprised if two or three hitherto unknown titles turn up in the coming years, but I will be surprised if it turns out to be more than that.