The World’s First Mobile Library; A ‘Jacobean Kindle’ December 11, 2014 – Posted in: book arts, bookbinding, Content, mobile libraries, product design, Special Collections

The year was 1617. William Hakewill MP commissioned it to give as a gift to a friend. And it just might be the first mobile library. The Jacobean miniature travelling library consisted of 50 gold-tooled vellum-bound miniature books contained in a wooden case that resembled a large folio. Inside there were three shelves for the books. The inside cover was an illuminated table of contents. The subject matter covered history, poetry, theology and philosophy and included works by Cicero, Virgil,…

Isabel Barbuzza’s Bookworks November 7, 2014 – Posted in: book arts, bookbinding, Books and Art, Content, Installation, sculpture

Color Reading Color Reading detail Isabel Barbuzza was born and raised in Argentina and is currently an associate professor at the School of Art and Art History in the University of Iowa. Her interest lies “in the relationships between space, place, objects and materials in contemporary society and how through perception, thought and language we facilitate engaging with the physical world.” Her work runs the gamut from artists books to sculpture to installation. Enjoy! Disasters…

Exposed: The work of Jody Alexander October 6, 2014 – Posted in: book arts, bookbinding, Content, Installation, sculpture

from the installation – the lone arranger – a collaboration with laura laura Jody Alexander is an artist, bookbinder, librarian and teacher working out of Santa Cruz, California whose work celebrates “collecting, storytelling, and odd characters.” Working with fabric and found and discarded books Alexander binds them up and then combines them with found objects to create sculptural works and installations. from the sedimentals series detail from a sedimentals piece miss sook’s dropsy cure…

A New Fine Press Edition of “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman September 24, 2014 – Posted in: book arts, book design, bookbinding, Content, Paper

“A holy book of the nation, along with the Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence,” – poet laureate Robert Hass on Leaves of Grass To mark their one-hundredth publication the noted fine press publisher Arion Press has chosen the 1855 first edition of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman. Chosen in part as a tribute to the publisher’s predecessors Edwin and Robert Grabhorn, whose masterpiece was their 1930 edition of the Whitman poem. “I thought Arion Press might…

Book Design and the Native American Experience August 4, 2014 – Posted in: book arts, book design, bookbinding, Content, Exhibits

Indian Horrors by Henry Davenport Northrop. Unsigned cover design. Imperial, 1891 The latest work from the scholarly side of the venerable Richard Minsky is Trade Bindings with Native American Themes 1875-1933. Minsky gathers together 120 books designed by many of the leading illustrators and book designers of the day. From kids books to captivity narratives to fiction and “fiction purporting to be truth, including a white missionary writing under a pseudonym as an Indian Chief, and a multiracial black man,…