book arts

November’s Handmade: Crafternoon will be all about paper and books! And really, is there anything better? If you’d like to try your hand at some basic book making (both sewn bindings and not), origami, or other paper-based creations, please come along! Our special guest will be artist and maker Mike Perry, who will share his creative expertise on this fun afternoon. We’ll have lots of supplies on hand to share so that you can make your own handmade book!

Here are the details:

Date and time:
Saturday, November 14th, from 2:00 to 4:00pm

Location:
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
42nd Street and Fifth Avenue
Margaret Liebman Berger Forum (Room #227, located in the northeast corner of the second floor)

Remember—it’s FREE, and there’s no advance registration required.
Question? Please leave it as a comment! Maura and I look forward to seeing you on the 14th!

Update (11/11/09): It turns out that we'll have one special guest on this afternoon--the amazing artist and maker Mike Perry. Grace Bonney cannot join us, but she promises to come out for another crafternoon in the future!

This past Saturday I taught The Craft of the Book and, as usual, I had a great time meeting attendees and learning what brings them to the Library. My classes always include a little spread of books from the Library’s collection to give people a peek at what we offer. And below, as requested by a few of the students, I have listed the books shown that day (with links to the Catalog records for each). Thanks for coming!

Paper cutting by Annye Allison

Catalog 25; type faces, border designs, typecast ornaments, brass rule, superior specialties, machines and materials, cabinet equipment by Barnhart Brothers & Spindler

The world of the book by Des Cowley and Clare Williamson

An abridged specimen of printing types made at Bruce's New-York type-foundry by George Bruce’s Son & Co.

Papermaking for printmakers by Elspeth Lamb

Artists' books : a critical anthology and sourcebook, edited by Joan Lyons

Making books by hand : a step-by-step guide by Mary McCarthy and Philip Manna

Made with FontFont : type for independent minds, edited by Jan Middendorp and Erik Spiekermann

Exploring typography by Tova Rabinowitz

Book typography by Ari Rafaeli

Paper silhouettes by Mildred Swannell

Wood type by William H. Page & Co.

It might be summer, but at the Library class is in session--craft of the book class, that is. If you would like to learn more about hand-press era bookmaking, come to the Library Saturday afternoon for an illustrated talk on the craftsmanship of paper making, printing, and bookbinding. And I'll have some books from the collection to share too. It's a free class, and you don't need to register. And attendees get to take home a handy guide to the subject (pictured above, atop a great wood type specimen book that I'll have to share too!). This guide doubles as a model for a quick and easy bookmaking structure that you can make at home anytime!

Saturday, July 25th, 2:00 to 3:00pm (classroom will open at 1:45pm)
New York Public Library
Celeste Bartos Education Center
First Floor, South Court Classrooms
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street

One last note: I'll teach this class once more this summer (at 2:00pm on August 22nd), so you can come then if you are interested but can't make it this weekend.

Did these little fellows see their shadows, I wonder?

Happy Groundhog Day to you! This image is just one of more than 150 more lithographed images of four-legged beasts that appeared in Audubon's Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America in the 1840s. The Library has made the art from this work available for easy browsing in the NYPL Digital Gallery, so go and check out the other animal portraits. (I'm partial to the prairie dogs myself.)

Lithography was developed in Germany in 1798 by Aloys Senefelder, and this manual printing method uses a flat stone surface, water, and greasy medium to create the image. To learn more about lithography, read Bamber Gascoigne's invaluable reference How to Identify Prints. This friendly guide can help you to sort your engravings from your etchings, and your woodcuts from your wood engravings. And you'll learn about the variety of means of making printed illustrations by hand. Gascoigne cannot teach you about the weather, however; you'll have to count on a groundhog for that.

(This Japanese embroidery pattern is up for grabs at the NYPL Digital Gallery.)

New York City's Museum of Arts and Design has long been interested in ways that traditional crafts turn up in contemporary artists' and designers' work. The museum's current exhibition "Pricked: Extreme Embroidery" gathers the work of artists who employ traditional hand-made embroidery methods to create provocative, humorous, and unexpected works of art.

At 6:30pm on January 31st, needlework will meet narrative in a reading and book arts presentation, co-sponsored by the Center for Book Arts. Artists Jen Bervin (whose works we have at NYPL), Andrea Dezso, and Tamar Stone (we have Stone's works at the Library too) will discuss how they use language and embroidery in their art.

If you take a shine to "Pricked: Extreme Embroidery," you might also want to investigate the catalog from an earlier related exhibition: "Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting."

(The private act of reading in the very public space of Bryant Park in the 1930s, a heyday for private presses. From the NYPL Digital Gallery.)

In 1929, Giovanni Mardersteig, the head of the Italian private press Officina Bodoni, offered this explanation of his press's ideals: "A book consists of five elements: the text, the type, the ink, the paper, and the binding. To create a unity from these five elements in such a way that the result is not a passing product of fashion, but assumes the validity of permanent value--that is our desire." Private presses--those small publishing houses that devoted loving attention to type, design, illustration, and (usually*) adherence to handpress production--blossomed on both sides of the Atlantic in the early twentieth century. Often, as Geoffrey Glaister explains in his Encyclopedia of the Book, the bibliophiles and typophiles who ran private presses published limited editions of books which were then distributed to subscribers or to members of an associated club.

Just such a club here in New York City was the Limited Editions Club, founded by George Macy in 1929 and credited (in Grove Art Online, an excellent resource available at the Library) as one of the most influential private presses to promote the creation of finely illustrated books. Macy recruited the period's greatest artists, designers, and illustrators--including Bruce Rogers and Thomas Hart Benton--to contribute to the Club's luxurious editions of classic literary texts.

For students of the craft of printing and illustration, NYPL's collection of Limited Editions Club publications is a treasure trove (a search for Limited Editions Club in Catnyp brings up over two hundred titles). And to get the big picture concerning the scope of the Limited Editions Club's printing efforts, you can also look at a bibliographical catalogue of the Club's publications, entitled Great and Good Books.

*As Glaister reports, some presses did not limit themselves to small handpress runs and instead sought to deliver finely designed and produced volumes to the masses. One such press was Nonesuch Press, established in England 1923. Nonesuch aimed "to adapt mechanical methods to the production of finely made books which were to be sold at modest cost through normal trade channels." And indeed, Nonesuch had tremendous success with The Week-End Book, a lovely volume in decorated cloth covered boards, endpapers printed with whimsical (and useful) gameboards, and jaunty illustrations throughout.

(The paper-based art created at Dieu Donné would have surprised the old paper makers of Ephrata, Pennsylvania. Image from the NYPL Digital Gallery.)

It's the time of year for paper crafts–snowflakes, paper chains, and more. You might be making your own paper arts at home–I’m thinking of making a handful of the elegant paper decorations like those described on Design*Sponge a couple of weeks ago. But if your interest in the paper arts extends beyond the paper chain variety, I would recommend checking out an exhibit at Dieu Donné, the amazing paper arts workspace here in New York.

Now through January 5, 2008, Dieu Donné presents a retrospective exhibition of what will surely be challenging and inspiring work in handmade paper. The art was produced in collaboration through their Workspace Program for emerging artists over the last six years. The exhibition is curated by Patti Phillips, who will host a special panel discussion on artist workspaces at 6:30pm on December 21st.

If you’d like to explore more handmade paper art of this kind, you’ll find works at the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Library by searching for Dieu Donné Papermill in Catnyp. You can also examine an assemblage by Jean Shin, who has participated in the Workspace Program. Shin, whose work is part of the Dieu Donné exhibition above, will also be part of the panel. You’ll never look at paper the same way again!

The lovely image above, of insects in different life stages, came from the hand of Maria Sibylla Merian, an early German naturalist who exemplifies the diy approach to observation, documentation, and dissemination of new knowledge in 17th- and 18th-century Europe. Individuals at this time sought to document the worlds that were slipping away as quickly as they were being “discovered,” and the talented Maria Sibylla Merian was one of these self-taught scholars.

The daughter of one printer and eventual wife of another, Maria grew up surrounded by the stimulating world of scholarship, and all her life worked to satisfy her own intellectual curiosities concerning the metamorphosis of butterflies and moths. The methods that she used–keeping caterpillars in boxes, feeding and watching each change, and documenting her observations in word and images–resulted in studies that were unique in the early field of natural history. Her illustrations of both plants and insect life were reproduced in fine engravings in the books that she wrote and printed. And as an older lady, she even traveled to Surinam in search of undiscovered species that she could collect, study, and write about.

I recommend Kim Todd’s new biography of Maria Sibylla Merian for its arresting portrayal of this independent, scientifically curious, and artistically talented woman who is primarily known today only through the books that she produced. You can also read more about her in Natalie Zemon Davis’s Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives.

If you are interested in seeing more of her work, look at the three engravings by Maria that are in the NYPL Digital Gallery. Additionally, NYPL has numerous editions of her books, including a new edition of the watercolor artworks by Maria that are held in St. Petersburg (in the Art and Architecture Collection of the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Library). Even if you aren’t into creepy and flighty bugs, Maria’s story remains compelling and her work well worth a closer look.

Book arts-loving New Yorkers, mark your calendars, because the Editions/Artists’ Book Fair is coming to town. The Fair is open to the public Nov. 2nd-4th, at The Tunnel (261 Eleventh Avenue, near 27th St.). Admission is free, and hours are: Friday and Saturday from 11am to 7pm, and Sunday from 11am to 4pm.

There will be dozens of artists’ books here, and a range of materials, structures, and methods to check out. And if you find an an artist there and want to learn more about him or her, come into NYPL. For instance, if you take a liking to the work of artist Ryan McGinness, you can come in and look at NYPL’s copy of Installationview by McGinness as well. Enjoy!

(Promotional Poster image from NYPL Digital Gallery.)

New York Public Library has collected artists’ books for many years, and now a search in Catnyp brings up records for no fewer than 2,727 items classified under the subject heading “artists’ books.” In addition to coming into the library to see selections from our collection, you could also head over to the New York Art Book Fair this weekend, at 548 West 22nd Street between 10th and 11th Avenues in New York City. There will be artists’ books, examples of hand press printing, and all sorts of other art publications. It’s all presented by Printed Matter, an excellent NYC-based resource for artists’ publications.

And when you are ready to get started thinking about making your own book, you might use the handbook Creating Artists’ Books by Sarah Bodman, at the Art and Architecture Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library.

(Printer at right from NYPL Digital Gallery)

Although a huge commercial book production industry exists today, there remain many devotees of the traditionally-made book. The creation of books by hand is an art practiced by highly skilled individuals adept at setting type, executing design, printing pages, and binding; often their printed works incorporate novel book structures as well. NYPL has an exemplary collection of such lovingly produced books from small or private presses ranging from Adagio Press to Zephyrus Image. Additionally, NYPL holds a great number of guides, histories, and bibliographies of private presses in the United States, England, Australia, Canada, and more for further reference. (The links provided here are to just the tip of this particular iceberg.)

If you live in New York City and want to get a behind the scenes peek at traditional book making combined with creative re-thinking of the book as an art form, go to the The Center for Book Arts on Sept. 15th, from 2:00 to 5:00 pm, for its Fall Open House. This is an excellent opportunity to take in a book arts exhibition as well as to see the tools and supplies needed to make paper, set type, print, and bind books. Think of the institution as an open book! The Center is well-known for its classes as well, so the crafty and curious among you can learn book arts there.