Book Collecting – Page 4 – Green Chair Press Blog

Book Collecting: Conch

My poem-books A Word on Statistics and PI came out of a year-long class I took at the San Francisco Center for the Book in 2001-2002 with Emily McVarish and Steve Woodall. My idea was to incorporate my love of numbers into an artist’s book and I spent a fair amount of time looking at how other artists used math and number systems in their work.
One day Steve very excitedly handed me a box of 4 books called “Book of Growth” by Susan Happersett. Each one was a riff on the correlation between plant growth and the Fibonacci Sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,…). The books use a visual language of grids composed of marks increasing (and sometimes decreasing) in Fibonacci progression (1 line, 2 lines, 3 lines, 5 lines) that represent the growth and decay patterns of sunflowers (bloemen), conch shells, leaves and twigs. While all the books use a similar abstract representation of the sequence, each one has different colors and paper and textures. I was just starting to buy artist’s books, and wasn’t sure what I was doing yet, so I got just one of them — Conch (that’s it above). The brittle pink-tinted handmade cover paper reminds me of shells. The books were letterpress printed and hand-bound at Purgatory Pie Press. You can buy the set through Vamp & Tramp (scroll down to the bottom of the page) or singly through Purgatory Pie.
To get a better idea of the marks, here’s a detail from Happersett’s 2005 drawing “Split Tree”. It shows a progression from 3 to 5 to 8 to 13 to 21 marks per grid box.

Detail of Susan Happersett’s ‘Split Tree’ 2005

Book Collecting: it has been many moons

In October 2007 on a errand at the San Francisco Center for the Book, I ran into my friend Katherine Emery letterpress printing a broadside of haiku by Suzanne Friedman. Some of the haiku look traditional

autumn’s breath—
nothing but green raspberries
on the vines

and some don’t

dandelion puff the wind makes my wish

I contacted Suzanne about getting a copy of the broadside to hang in my print shop. Happily for me she sent it along with her much more substantial book of haiku and very short poems about the moon. They are arranged seasonally and some use names from the moon in other cultures. It’s letterpress printed with a few linocut illustrations. The book is long and slender, and fits very nicely in the hand for reading. Below are two more, these from the book:

hay moon—
what meaning do you have
in this city?

frost moon the doe leaves its breath

Book Collecting: Math Curse

What’s an artist’s book? Does it have to be handmade? A small edition? Wikipedia has this (rather convoluted) quote from Stephen Bury (Artists’ Books: The Book As a Work of Art, 1963-1995)

“Artists’ books are books or book-like objects over the final appearance of which an artist has had a high degree of control; where the book is intended as a work of art in itself.”

I’d argue that many children’s books are artist’s books. Especially Math Curse, by writer Jon Scieszka and illustrator Lane Smith, with their inventive type treatments and illustrations (you can see more pages from the book here). Two more that I have in my collection are The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales also by Scieszka and Smith and The Incredible Book-Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers.

Adhesives: War and Paste

“Making paste is a lot like making polenta — superstitions about always stirring in the same direction included.

Of course you have to stir twice as long & as hard to make the paste.

Who knew it was so hard to make paper stick together.”

That’s a quote from Mary Tasillo‘s zine “War and Paste.” I bought a copy at Pyramid Atlantic back in November. She works in a paper conservation lab and is the official pastemaker. Mary gives several paste recipes and ruminates on paper conservation including “Mending Paper 101” where she explains how to fix tears. And I thought I had issues with glue — at least I can buy mine pre-made in a bottle!
Mary also edits the Book Arts Classified website which summerizes all sorts of book arts news, including calls for entries, exhibitions, new bookworks and periodicals…

Book Collecting: Another Letterpress Chapbook

Earlier this month, I wrote about my fledgling artist’s book collection. This post is about my latest addition: a letterpress chapbook, printed by SF-based printer Megan Adie, with a story called “The Pool Cleaner’s Rite of Spring in Phoenix, Arizona” by Scott Buros.
I bought it originally to add to several other letterpress printed chapbooks I acquired this year, because Megan did the printing at the San Francisco Center for the Book and because she printed blue behind the text of all the pages. What I was pleased to discover, as I read Buros’ bittersweet story of loss and swimming pools, is that the shade of blue varies with the mood and content of the text.
Click on the photo below to see a larger picture and read some of the story. The chapbook is for sale through Megan’s Etsy shop.
In the upcoming months, I’ll be writing more about my collection. Turns out I’ve written about a few things already, click here to see the posts.

The Pool Cleaner’s Rite of Spring in Phoenix, Arizona

On Collecting

Kewpie Crown Top perfume bottle In 1999 my mother-in-law gave me several old perfume bottles, mostly figurines. All from the early 20th century, they are wonderful to look at. As I found out more about them, I got hooked and added to the collection. In a few years I had a shelf-full and decided that was enough. That’s one of mine to the right — a crowntop kewpie doll perfume bottle from the 1930s. Sadly last month she got knocked off her shelf and broke. My husband glued her back together but should I replace her?
Then the other day I saw this obituary in the NY Times. It’s about a book collector and says in part:

Helmut N. Friedlaender, a book-loving lawyer and financial adviser whose quietly assembled collection of early printed books and illuminated manuscripts caused a stir in bibliophilic circles when it went to auction, died on Tuesday in Yarmouth, Me. He was 95 and lived in Manhattan… At a two-day sale in April 2001, Christie’s auctioned off most of Mr. Friedlaender’s important collection, which he had assembled over the previous 30 years…. Once the collection was dispersed, he started on a new one, said Felix Oyens, a friend… This time around, Mr. Friedlaender went after Baedeker travel books, nowhere nearly as rare or expensive as even the least of his early books…. Mr. Oyens offered a theory about this curious detour: “I think the Baedekers simply gave him an excuse to walk into a bookshop.”

All the collectors I know keep on collecting, sometimes replacing one collectable with another when they are done with one habit, just like Mr. Friedlaender. I never gave much thought to why I decided to stop collecting perfume bottles — but I have kept collecting. I replaced bottles with my small and still growing collection of artist’s books.
But what to do with my kewpie doll? My collection is modest, with nice but not stellar examples. On the “do it” side of the argument: My bottles make me happy and sit in a prominent place in my office. They are so much easier to display than books — what’s interesting about them is all up front (most of my bottles are empty, so the scent that should be hidden under the stopper isn’t). On the “don’t do it” side: She’ll be pricey (for me) and hard to replace. And how much is my collection just a pleasure to look at, or a more serious endeavor? I’ve already taken a look at my bottles to re-evaluate what I have, in a way I haven’t looked at them in quite some time.
The article about Mr. Friedlaender got me to look at my artist’s book collection with a new eye too, and before I replace my kewpie, the current habit needs tending. Another book as my Christmas present to myself would be just the thing!