Tub Lit: Kickstarter project offers waterproof books June 15, 2015 – Posted in: book design, Books and Technology, Content, Paper, Video

The latest crowdsourced gem for the book crowd comes to us from Bibliobath. Thanks to Wing Weng and Jasper Jansen, a Dutch-Chinese couple based in Amsterdam, we finally have the waterproof book! They have 4 titles ready to go; a selection of short stories by Mark Twain, one of the selected poetry by W. B. Yeats, an edition of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and a special Kickstarter-only edition of the Chinese classic The Art of War.…

Plant this Book June 1, 2015 – Posted in: book arts, Books and Technology, Paper, Video

In 1968 Richard Brautigan published Please Plant This Book a collection of eight seed packets, each bearing an original poem related to its contents. Now almost 50 years later the Argentine publisher Pequeño Editor has unveiled a book that you can actually plant! The project is called Tree Book Tree and is designed to teach kids a little about the origin of paper books and sustainability. For its first release it took the popular children’s…

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…

A Tectonic Pop-Up Book September 15, 2014 – Posted in: book arts, book design, Content, Paper, Video

The supercontinent Pangaea that connected South America and Africa broke apart 200 million years ago. What a better way to convey the moving and shaking of the earth within a physical object than within the confines of a movable book. In ‘The Pangaea Pop-up’ Lesson at TED-Ed, animator Biljana Labovic explains how she and her team of animators created a pop-up book to visualize Pangaea — and how you can make your own. [youtube]http://youtu.be/RZR_b753ZJ0[/youtube]…

Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs March 21, 2014 – Posted in: Art, book arts, Exhibits, Paper

It was the last chapter of an amazing run. When he was no longer able to paint due to declining health Henri Matisse came up with a new way to express himself; Paper Cut Outs. He turned in his paintbrush for a pair of scissors and would carve and cut painted paper into an amazing array of work. …