New York Public Library’s newest branch will be housed in a condo-hotel

When it opens in 2015 it will be one of the largest branches of the New York Public Library system. It will  occupy the bottom 3 floors of a "ritzy new condo-hotel" being developed by the Baccarat crystal company and its parent company, Starwood Capital Group, along with Tribeca Associates.Among its features is a 100+ seat auditorium, a children's reading room, a technology hub, and a family seating area."The airy, vibrant structure" is being designed by Enrique Norten’s TEN Arquitectos.Public Library President Tony Marx says the new library will "not only beautiful, but designed with flexibility to maximize public space, and serve all...

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Kirsty Mitchell’s ‘Wonderland’

'Wonderland' began in 2009 as a series of works dedicated to the memory of her mother, an English teacher "who spent over thirty years inspiring generations of children."  While grieving the  loss of her mom Mitchell took to "creating an unexplained storybook without words, dedicated to her, that would echo the fragments of the fairytales she read to me constantly as a child." Now four years later the storybook is nearing completion and it is filled with 75 stunning works. Once Upon a TimeThe StorytellerAn Ocean of Tales Until The Shores Of HomeA Twist In The Tale A Forgotten Tale Wow! Wow! Wow!...

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Really Small Cookbooks

Handbook of Practical Cookery, Matilda Lees Dods (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1906). 2 1/4 x 1 7/8″  In 2007 The Grolier Club held an exhibition titled Miniature Books: 4,000 Years of Tiny Treasures. Featured among the tiny treasures where a handful of miniature books related to food and drink.  Here are a few examples from the show with some additions.  Miniature Hanukkah cookbook (with a recipe for latkes). via Thoughts from the Cork (Salisbury, Connecticut: Lime Rock Press, 1981). The cork is 1 5/8 x 1″ The Little Cookie Book, Ruth Adomeit (Woodstock, Vermont: The Lilliputter Press, 1960). 2 3/8 x 1...

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Paper and The Pleasure of Pattern

Claudia Cohen is one of the better bookbinders around. She has done work for the likes of the Houghton Library, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, Pennyroyal Press, Heavenly Monkey Press and the Whitney Museum among others. She is currently in the midst of a stunning multi-book collaboration with noted author Barbara Hodgson.Cohen also collects paper. Really cool decorated paper from all across the globe. Cohen then uses them to create covers, endsheets and box linings for her bindings and boxes.For the month of May, the Paper Hammer Gallery in Seattle has transformed itself in a...

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