Letterfingers

Michell Romo decided to celebrate her 25th birthday by creating one art project a month for a year. Each month she features a different conceptual theme and each will be available in a limited edition of 25 copies. The end result will be 25 handmade books and an art show. One theme was Fonts and Typography

via Neatorama

Type Measure

Do you know your P's and Q's?

Do you have trouble remembering how many cups equal a pint?
How many pints equal a quart?
How many quarts equal a gallon?

Well worry no more - through the power of typography your measuring skills can now be perfected.

I think I'm going to print this one out and put it on the fridge.

Thanks to swissmiss for the lead

The Enduring and Evolving Codex

Is the end of the book near? Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer boldy claims in his talk with the Washington Post that "In the next 10 years, the whole world of media, communications and advertising are going to be turned upside down" and there will be "no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network." Though talking particularly about newspapers and magazines there are many who would include the future of the book in his assessment. While I agree that newspapers in there current state are doomed, magazines less so, the book will continue its reign as a premier mode of content delivery. Yes, there is a good possibility that most book content will be available digitally in the next 10 years but this will simply be a complement to the printed book not a replacement.

Before we continue with the funeral arrangements Joyce at Bibliophile Bullpen reminds us that printed book is most enduring media element in the history of mankind.

Here is how it stacks up:

CD-ROMs are estimated to last from 30 to 200 years.
CD-Rs, before they are recorded, have an estimated shelf life of five to ten years.
CD-Rs, after recording, estimated 70 to 200 years.
CD-RWs are expected to last at least 30 years.
Photo CDs have an expected life of over 100 years.
Magnetic tape has a life of 30 to 100 years
Hard drives expected to last 114 to 170 years
A vinyl record has a life span of 100 years
Solid state drives last about 145 Years

while The Archimedes Palimpsest, written on parchment in the codex form, has survived since the second half of the tenth century!

For a comprehensive look at how the codex is evolving in today's world there is the newly published 500 Handmade Books : Inspiring Interpretations of a Timeless Form from Lark Books.


500 Handmade Books is a visual journey through the world of contemporary book arts. The only requirement is for each piece to "function like a book." The books were chosen by Steve Miller who studied under legendary book artist and teacher Walter Hamady and teaches in the book arts program at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. The book is a stunning testament to the book form and to the artists who continue to find in the book a means to communicate.

Book Details:
500 Handmade Books: Inspiring Interpretations of a Timeless Form. New York: Lark Books, 2008. First Edition. 8" X 8". 419pp. Pictorial french-fold wraps. Illustrated in color. $24.95

Book available here

The Legacy of Tom Phillips' HUMUMENT

In 1970, artist Tom Phillips published the first edition of his now-classic altered book Humument with London's Tetrad Press. "A Treated Victorian Novel," Phillips himself has described the project as combining "medieval illumination, experimental poetry and non-linear narrative with the procedures of modern art." As seen in this gallery of images from the first edition or this slideshow of the fourth (Phillips continues to expand and revise the project), the results can be breathtaking. The book's first trade edition in 1980 established it as a cult fave and it remains in-print to this day. Indeed, it is probably the most famous altered book ever produced.

I was reminded of Phillips recently when I stumbled over several projects that clearly owe a debt to his work. Austin Kleon is a cartoonist, designer and writer whose Newspaper Blackout Poems are not nearly as visually arresting as Phillips' work. But Kleon shares a knack with Phillips for producing uniquely moving texts by paring away the surrounding verbiage.

Altered Books, meanwhile, is the project of numerous artists, each working on a particular book: "Cut the bindings off of books found at a used book store. Find poems in the pages by the process of obliteration. Put pages in the mail and send them all around the world. Lather, rinse, repeat." The finished pages are posted regularly to the site and many are quite striking.

Finally, the work of Will Ashford most clearly reflects Phillips' influence. Using predominantly the works of Emerson, Ashford's Recycled Words approaches the subtlety and sophistication of Humument, but with a quieter and more restrained tone:

'The Writing's On The Wall' : Art Meets Language

SHIRIN NESHAT -Rebellious Silence (1994)
Black and white RC print and ink, 27.9 x 35.6 cm.
Courtesy Gladstone Gallery, New York.

The current issue of ArtAsiaPacific features an in depth look at artists who employ text in their work.

Articles include:

-A great piece on contemporary calligraphy in China, "Square Words, Round Paradigms" by Eric Wear.

-A look at Yoko Ono's embrace of online communities (Ono averages 200 new 'friends' on MySpace a day) by HG Masters.

-Gregory Galligan's looks at Islamic text-based art in his piece, "Architecture in Script: From Without Boundaries to Archive Fever," and includes Shirin Neshat whose iconic work appears above.

Also in this issue is Eliza Gluckman's profile of Sharmini Pereira and her publishing imprint, Raking Leaves, which focuses exclusively on artists using the printed book as the medium.

It is refreshing to see how widespread the use of language, and the book for that matter, is in contemporary art. These new avenues of textual consumption expand the boundaries of reading and offer us fresh ways to make sense of the world.

Related: previous Book Patrol post : "The Book Gods of Contemporary Chinese Art"

Bookplate For the TV Lover

God bless my
television set.

Most fabulous
of toys.

But pity me-
if I forget
Bibliophilic
joys.

Bookplate of Dorothy Wheelock

found in a third printing of Brighton by Osbert Sitwell and Margaret Barton published in London by Faber and Faber, 1938.

Tables of Contents

from Content, by Rem Koolhaas

The gang at Design Observer have started a Flickr set showcasing the Table of Contents page. The set is meant as a visual archive of TOC and as an accompaniment to their 2007 book The Next Page: Thirty Tables of Contents which was published to coincide with AIGA's Biennial National Design Conference in Denver, the theme of which was "Next."

"Often overlooked by serious bibliophiles, the humble TOC is our portal into a world of knowledge. In the realm of the printed word, it heralds what comes next, a verbal proscenium with its own peculiar prose and typographic conventions."

One is encouraged to scan and upload contents pages from your own library and add them to the group's photo pool.

Book Hybrid

"The Future of Books" by Kyle Bean

Thanks to if:book for the lead

Blood on Paper : Books in the Hand of Artists

"At a time when the notion of the book is challenged by the advent of the screen and computer, this exhibition aims to show the extraordinary ways in which the book has been treated by leading artists of today and the recent past. Blood on Paper will focus on new and contemporary work, and on books where the artist has been the driving force in conception and design." --from the Introduction to the exhibit.

Most notable artists of the 20th and 21st century have used the book form as a vehicle. No matter what their primary artistic leaning (painting, sculpture, drawing, installation) is the conceptual framework of the book has drawn each into its grasp.

Anselm Kiefer The Secret Life of Plants

Many of the heavyweights of Modern Art are included in the show and the power of the book object shines through in works ranging from the grandeur of Anselm Kiefer's 'Secret Life of Plants' to the minimalist work of Edward Ruscha and Sol Lewitt to the remains of conceptual artist Cai Guo Qiang's piece 'Danger Book: Suicide Fireworks'

Cai Guo Qiang 'Danger Book: Suicide Fireworks'

The exhibit runs through June 28th at the Victoria & Albert Museum and is a must see for those planning to be or living in and around London.

The V&A's worthy online feature on Artists' Books.
Senior curator Dr. Rowan Watson's essay on the exhibit (pdf).
Michael Glovers piece in the London Times, "Blood on Paper: art goes under covers."

Selection of previous Book Patrol posts on Books and Artists :

'The Book Gods of Contemporary Chinese Art'
'Books to Be Desired : Penelope Umbrico's Private Residence'
'The Book That Didn't Get Built'
'Contemporary Artists Tackle Their Favorite Books'

Printers Ornaments

Since the dawn of printing with moveable type printers have used various design elements to embellish the printed page.

Design elements of the ornaments include typographic fleurons, dingbats, headpieces, tailpieces, scrolls, trophies, lunettes, calligraphic and heraldic devices, cupids and wreathes.

BibliOdyssey has a tremendous post on this long-standing relationship of word and image and often overlooked aspect of book illustration. He has also put together a Flickr set with over 80 examples of the craft.

'The Hairy Times' of Diane Jacobs

The Hairy Times. Handmade paper from the New York Times & Los Angeles Times, human hair, letterpress text, 2005

For her Hairy Times installation Diane Jacobs chooses "hair to explore the contradictions and controversies inherent in our current political climate." The installation ranges from the two items featured here to pieces featuring an oil drum, bubble gum machine and coffee grinder.

The Hairy Times which was created from shredded New York Times and Los Angeles Times papers, "manifests the media's failure to ask the hard questions and hold the government accountable. The ramifications of this neglect and deceit are made evident in our apathetic and disenfranchised populace."

For her piece Family Values, Jacobs takes an older copy of the Bible and "boldly drills the pride symbol for gays and lesbians through the text block" transforming the book by "exposing elements of discrimination and magnifying the irony of religious might resulting in violence and destruction."

Family Values. Old bible, 12" x 10" x 3 3/4", 2005

Diane Jacobs work is saturated with the healthy resistance to the status quo that is necessary to produce compelling art and sustain our democracy.

As Caroline Levine reminds us in her powerful book Provoking Democracy: Why We Need the Arts:

"In the most repressive moments for democratic states..., when free speech was threatened and calls to unanimity and a common culture seemed to triumph over marginal and minority voices, art continued to stand for a crucial and long standing democratic value: the importance of minority voices and the benefits of pluralism."

Alphabet Book Party at the Internet Archive

The folks who make up the Collections Team at the Internet Archive have put together a nice survey of 100 years of Alphabet Books.

12 books are featured beginning with The Royal Alphabet (1808) and ending with Oliver Herford's A Peter Pan Alphabet (1907). For over 200 years the alphabet book has been used as an educational tool but as you can see in this survey the form has become much more adult friendly over the years.

The Alphabet Book at Wikipedia

Book Art Gets a Room of Its Own

The exhibition is titled Sitting Room and is curated by Tom Sowden and Lucy May Schofield.

The goal of the exhibit is to let the artists books "become the tactile and interactive objects that they are usually conceived as being. Take them out of glass cases, out of libraries and away from the artist’s book fairs, resituating them in an environment that was conducive to reading and engaging with the books."

They attempt to re-create a "sitting room from a time when books were read rather than TV being watched...A space to relax, ignore work and absorb the books"

The inaugural exhibition in 2006 included work by 70 book artists. The 2007 show had 120 pieces.

Lucy May Schofield currently has a solo show titled Reflect Forward. The show was inspired by her research into the hidden archives at the V&A Museum of Childhood. She became fascinated by the "fabricated reality found in the dolls house."

Tom Sowden is an accomplished artist who is heavily inspired by the book works of Ed Ruscha. He is currently working on multiple Ruscha projects including one called "Follow-Ed", an exhibit curated by Sowden featuring artists who have been influenced by the artists' books of Ruscha.

Sitting Room hits Northern California in March where it will share the stage with a juried exhibit called "Sit Down and Read" at the K Gallery in Alameda.

The Book Carvings of Kylie Stillman

Common Oak, 2007

From 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, 2003

In her 2007 installation Little Room Stillman creates a profound environment reuniting the trees and the birds with the paper that originated in their habitat


Lee Kottner says of Stillman "her carvings remind me of the elaborate fore-edge paintings in their distortion of the book. In this case, instead of fanning the book to create a canvas, she disregards the boundaries of the book, like covers, to make a sculptural surface."

"Her images are of the natural world—birds and trees—as though reminding us where her materials come from and how artificial they are. In that sense, you could look at the tree carvings as tombstones. The piece above looks almost ghostly when you think of it that way."

More images here at Kylie Stillman's website.

Books and History in the Work of Nicola Dale

Time creates history and time changes history. From existing texts visual artist Nicola Dale painstakingly carves a new history, both for the texts themselves and for the those of us lucky enough to consume them.

A Secret Heliotropism, 2006. Hand cut found book; full color, 320 pages

Using a Walter Benjamin quote from his ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ as a starting point Dale took a copy of “The People’s Century” and a very small pair of scissors and transformed the 320 page history book from a mass produced object to a unique piece of book art. Over the course of a year, each page was hand cut into a leaf pattern so that "the leaves (pun intended) stretch out from the book towards a source of natural sunlight, as though the book itself were growing and changing in the same way history does."

"The leaves I had created were a reminder of the book’s historical origins: trees turned to paper and symbolically back again. The work also has its own secret mechanism, as I created a pattern which allows the pages to be folded down flat and put back into their cover to transform once more into an ordinary looking book."

Telling the Truth About History, But Not About the Past, 2007
altered hardback book, book jacket measures 16cm x 21.5cm

Dale deals with time a little differently in this amazing work:

The Book That Reads Itself, 2007

10cm x 28cm x 15cm

"Once upon a time there will only be the book which reads itself.."

Here it is not so much history but the future that concerns Dale. Will time and technology continue its onslaught on the physical book? As readership continues it decline will books need to ultimately engage themselves to fulfill their mission?

"The artist's books I make (part of a wider artistic practice) deal with the themes of originality, authorship and repetition not because I think everything has already been said, but because there is always something to add to the conversation, by way of a little rearrangement to the order of things."

This is good stuff!

Dale at Axisweb
Piece in issue 5 of STATIC the web resource of the London Consortium
Dale at Artists Books Online
short Q&A with Dale at artselector

Sabuda pops up at the Wall Street Journal

Paper engineer and pop-up book king Robert Sabuda is featured in a 4+ minute video on The Wall Street Journal's Digital Network.

Sabuda chats with Robert Hughes about his new Christmas book "Winter in White" and his new larger work "The Chronicles of Narnia."



Highlights:

Pop-up books are unique in that they are still completely hand-made. No matter where a pop-up book is manufactured, Sabuta's are made in Thailand and China, it can only be assembled by hand.

Sabuda, along with his partner and fellow paper engineer Matthew Reinhardt, work with a team of 5 paper engineers.

Sabuda says that hardest part of creating pop-up books is not the pop-up part but the creating of a pop-up that can withstand the repeated opening and closing. The closing is the key.

Small projects like "Winter in White can take up to 4 months to complete while books like "The Chronicles of Narnia" can take up to a year to produce.

Next up - Peter Pan


Interview with Sabuta and Reinhardt in the Guardian May 2006

'The Cedar Branch Chronicle' by Jocelyn Curry

Seattle: 2007. One-of-a-kind. Sculpture, mixed media; Yellow cedar, watercolor and laser images on paper. Designed specifically for its location at Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers. // For 'The Cedar Branch Chronicle', Curry collected one natural artifact and one man-made artifact during her daily walk. Without any self-imposed rules other than scale, upon returning, a watercolor 'journal-entry' composition was created from these found objects on a uniform 3-1/2 x 7" card. The thirty-one daily paintings are suspended from a dramatic 17-foot long cedar branch found on the shores of Puget Sound near the artist's home. The finished installation is essentially an alternative book-form, the paintings/pages free to be touched, and turned by the viewer, allowing for a rather kinetic experience of the author/artist's 'illustrated diary' of her daily ritual over the course of July, 2007



An artist book, The 31 Journal Pages of the Cedar Branch Chronicle: A Book of Days by Jocelyn Curry, was published in an edition of 31 copies to accompany the exhibition.

'The Cedar Branch Chronicle' is a tremendous piece and one that clearly exudes Curry's deep sense of place. The combination of the man-made found object with the natural artifact is tastefully and elegantly presented. By pairing the found with the natural Curry skillfully transforms the negative weight of the human litter that populates our natural world into a digestible form. Magically, it somehow becomes something we can live with.

It's sure nice having this hanging around the shop.

Other work from the exhibit can be seen here.

Be sure to click on top and side image to enlarge.

Binding the Booker Prize

Binding: Lester Capon for 'Animal's People' by Indra Sinha (Simon & Schuster),

Designer Bookbinders was founded over 50 years ago to promote the craft of fine bookbinding.

Since 1991 their members have been creating beautiful unique bindings for the 6 shortlisted novels for Booker Prize.

Here's how it works:

"The binder...has only four to five weeks to read, design and bind their book (with a container). The books must be ready in time for the night of the final prize announcement, when each bound novel is presented to its author at the famous 'Booker dinner'."

Wouldn't it be great if we had something similar for our National Book Award?

Here are this years bindings which are on display at the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum through January 2008:

Binding: Rachel Ward-Sale for 'Darkmans' by Nicola Barker (Fourth Estate)

Binding: Faith Shannon for 'The Gathering' by Anne Enright (Jonathan Cape),

Binding : Stephen Conway for 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' by Mohsin Hamid (Hamish Hamilton)

Binding: Christopher Shaw for 'Mister Pip' by Lloyd Jones (John Murray)

Binding: Peter Jones for 'On Chesil Beach' by Ian McEwan (Jonathan Cape)

Changing Covers

In 1894, The Inland Printer, under the direction of Will Bradley, became the first American magazine to change its cover with every issue.

Gallery of covers at Magazineart.org

Thanks to Design Observer for the lead

Review: The Little Red Fish by Tae-Eun Yoo

"JeJe's grandfather was a librarian at an old library in the middle of the forest" is how Tae-Eun Yoo's stunning debut begins. From here Yoo takes us on a magnificent illustrated journey with JeJe as he explores the library with his little red fish at his side. Soon JeJe falls asleep and when he wakes he finds that his comrade has disappeared into the biblio-ether of the library. To find his fish JeJe must dive head first into a book, entering a magical new world in pursuit of his little friend.

The soft elegance of the sepia-toned illustrations carry us along, comfortably, while the occasional brilliant flash of red reminds us of the importance of the journey and the unlimited possibilities that await us in the world of books.

The book is beautifully designed by Lily Malcom, the art director at Dial Books for Young Readers, and is a real testament to the added power good design brings to the life of a book.

Book Patrol puts it on the: Second Shelf

The details:




Yoo, Ta-Eun. The Little Red Fish. New York: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2007. 9.25 x 6.25. [40pp.]. Illustrated endpapers. Bound in red cloth with illustration inset on front board. Designed by Lily Malcom. $15.99