February 2010 – Page 2 – Green Chair Press Blog

Kineographs

The Princeton Library blog has a nice post on the kineographs (flipbooks) in their collection. About the book to the left, they say “The Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company (better known as L&M) produced a brand of Turkish cigarettes under the name Fatima… In 1914, L&M released ten flipbooks under the theme of modern dance. ‘These moving picture booklets on the Dances of to-day … make it possible for all to know what the latest accepted dances are and how to dance them.'”
See more pictures of this and their other flipbooks here. They also have a link to the large collection at flipbook.info.

The Word Snag

The other day, I saw a mention of an artist’s book called “Mappings” by Mary Ann Sampson of the OEOCO Press (One-Eye Opera Company) and, intrigued by the title, set off to see if I could find pictures of it. While I didn’t find that book, I found some lovely broadsides. The one to the left is called “Obstacles & Impediments” and the illustration is of a “word snag” eating letters and words (see a larger version where you can read the poem here).

Journal Project

Journal I brought what I think of as a “craft box” with me to New Mexico — paper, small cutting mat, ruler, my tool rool up. My hope is that I’ll make collages in the evenings while we get the house ready during the day to move my shop. So far I’ve been overwhelmed with house projects, figuring out where to shop for groceries, and just generally getting my bearings.
Then last Friday I looked up the Santa Fe Book Arts Group on the web, and was happy to see that they had their monthly meeting the next day! They were starting a “journal project” that day — much like the 1000 Journals exhibit I wrote about here, except the journals would be rotated among the members rather than left for just anyone to write in. I didn’t have time to get to an art store before the meeting to buy a pre-made book, but remembered my “craft box” had several blank moleskines, including the one to the left, with a haiku from one of my calendars pasted on the front.
Off I went to the meeting. It was quite a large group — I counted over 60 people! Those participating in the journal project were divided into groups of 8 or so. Every 15 days I’m supposed to receive a journal in the mail. The journal owner might have specified a theme for the book (or not), and I am to fill in as many pages as I wish. After 15 days, I send the journal on to the next person on the list, and repeat with the next journal I receive in the mail. I’ve got my first journal already — and the theme is “spangled.” As we’re all just getting organized and some people didn’t have journals finished yet, I have until March 15th to finish my first entry.
This is just what I need to nudge me into making those collages!

Waiting to Print…

I mentioned in a previous post that I’m moving to Santa Fe, NM this winter. My shop is all packed up now, and I probably won’t be able to print or make any books for several more months while we get my new studio ready and get all our copious belongings moved east. So of course I’ve been seeing all sort of things that make me want to get out into my studio, if only my stuff were all set up. One source of inspriation from last week is the print below — one of Phil Gallo’s visual poems, printed partially on the deckle.

Oscars for Typefaces

In this blog post, Ellen Lupton wishes there was a “well-wrought typeface (that) could attract as much attention as a 90-minute film.” Then, using the “best of 2009” font lists on several blogs, she rolls out the red carpet and selects her picks for best actress (Liza Pro, sample at left), best actor, etc. of the font world. I wish she’d included an ampersand in all the examples — I quite like the one for Liza Pro — and most of the choices are headline faces, suitable for titles but not for poetry or book text. Maybe no one is designing those anymore…

Storytelling

This week I read Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. It’s a set of linked short stories, with the character of Olive Kitteridge, an older woman living in Maine, appearing, sometimes peripherally, in all of them. From the first chapter, I was struck by the stories the characters told themselves, about how they developed into their present selves and why. It was, for me, a sad book — Olive isn’t particularly nice or likable and the plots are usually about some sort of betrayal. But the writing is excellent and made me want to read on.
As I’ve thought vaguely about storytelling throughout the week, I was taken with Radha Pandey’s post on the Bookbinding Etsy Street Team about the Katha-Peti (or story chest) from India. It’s a large and colorful artist’s book! Here are a few pictures below, but do look here to see many more, and a fuller explanation.