AbeBooks continues to amaze me. They act like a company with a borderline personality, courting the traditional bookselling community at every turn while doing all they can to push these same booksellers away.AbeBooks has recently announced that they are adding a new search feature to their Rare Book Room."We have added a feature to the Rare Book Room search that automatically pre-selects the price range to show only books priced at $10.00 and over."Now their same loose definition of 'bookseller' is being applied to 'rare'.Remember this is the company that still claims that "Rare and antiquarian booksellers make up the...
The Peace Symbol Turns Fifty
It was fifty years ago today that Gerald Holtom designed the logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It signaled the beginning of the British peace movement and the beginning of it's reign as the global symbol for Peace. It is arguably the healthiest logo ever created and one of the few A-list logos not of corporate origin.To commemorate the anniversary Barry Miles has written Peace: Fifty Years of Protest.It is about "the story of the creation of the original symbol and of how it has been used over the past five decades by peace activists around the world." It...
The Record Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is America's crown jewel of printed material. It is one of our country's greatest assets. Now the opportunity exists for our country to acquire a recorded library of similar magnitude.69 year old Paul Mawhinney has amassed one of the greatest, if not the greatest, collection of recorded music. His collection includes 3 million record albums and 300,000 CD's many of which are rare and out-of-print and it includes all varieties of American music from classical to hip-hop.Highlights include:-An unreleased, untitled Rolling Stones album of early singles. Originally recorded in mono, the songs were remastered in stereo...
Classic Modernist Library in Developer’s Crosshairs
Atlanta's landmark Buckhead Library is in trouble. The library was built in 1989 by the noted architectural firm Scogin, Elam and Bray and won many design awards including the 1993 National American Institute of Architects Award for Excellence. It is now in danger of being razed.David M. Hamilton's op-ed piece in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Axing library would send artless message, is a stark reminder of the constant struggle that faces the art community in a capitalistic society.He says:"The very notion that a developer seemingly committed to public art would advocate for the demolition of what is arguably one of...
The Book Carvings of Kylie Stillman
Common Oak, 2007From the trees come the paper and on the paper comes the printed words and from the binding of paper comes the book. Australian artist Kylie Stillman brings us full circle with her incredible book carvings. In Stillman's world the trees come from paper and the birds that once lived in those trees are back nesting between words.Pictorella Finch, 2003In her 2007 installation Little Room Stillman creates a profound environment reuniting the trees and the birds with the paper that originated in their habitatLee Kottner says of Stillman "her carvings remind me of the elaborate fore-edge paintings in...