Paper engineer Matt Shlian also makes large paper sculptures and his website has videos of some of his work in motion (including a few books).
Military Mapmaking Kit
Megan, a fellow letterpress printer and instructor, sent me a link about the intriguing “military map printing case” on the left, recently acquired at Princeton University (click on the photo to see an enlargement and the symbols on the brass stamps). The post didn’t offer many details:
This mapmaker’s printing case was designed to be used by a government sponsored cartographer when working in the field around the 1860s. The buckram-covered case holds 63 brass sorts with a selection of numbers and military symbols. There is an ink pad and twelve glass bottles of ink, some with the label of the Paris manufacturer Dagron & Compagnie.
So I poked around a bit, and found a shop specializing in antique maps in the UK selling pretty much the same case (for a mere £2200 or about $3200 US). There’s a bit more information there about how a mapmaker might have used the brass stamps:
We presume the brass printing blocks would have been set in a hand-held “form” and “stamped” onto pre-existing printed topographic maps so that military officials could more clearly trace and interpret manouevres and strategies.
Math Clocks
I’m just a sucker for weird symbols and numbers. The left clock has an explanation of each expression underneath it. “3” is represented by π (3.14…) and a blue dot on the outside of the circle where the numerical value would fall (just below the 3 position). The other expressions are the same way (for example “6” is Avogadro’s number, which is 6.0221415 × 10^23.) The right one isn’t as clever about the expressions and placement, but I think I like the symbols just as well!
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Giveaway: Winter Is…
Here in Northern California, February is always the coldest, wettest, most winter-y month. We certainly need all the rain we can get this year, as we’ll probably have water rationing by summer. To celebrate the last week of very wet stormy weather, I’m giving away a copy of my book Winter along with an instruction sheet for making the crown and blizzard binding (Winter uses the crown version of the binding). To enter the drawing, just put a comment on this post about what you like (or don’t like) about winter by Wednesday February 25. I’ll pick a random name and announce the winner on Thursday February 26.
In Cahoots Press
Macy Chadwick is a fellow letterpress printer and book artist here in the Bay Area. She calls her press “In Cahoots” and she’s recently put up a website with photos of her work. I first got to know Macy when she wrote about her playful long-distance collaborations with her friend Lisa Hasegawa for Ampersand. They work on joint books for one hour a week and mail the results back and forth. (You can read the article here and see photos of some of their books here.) Macy has a new book, and wouldn’t you know, it’s got a map theme! Called The Topography of Home, it’s letterpress printed and the pages have cutouts inserted with silk paper that’s been stenciled. The book is to the left with a detail below.
Jane Austin and Zombies, Oh My!
I’m not quite sure who would want to see this movie or read these books — but then again I’m not the audience for the “Twilight” books and I definitely haven’t seen enough “Buffy” reruns — what do you think?
From The New York Times (Dave Itzkoff):
For some viewers, the idea of another Jane Austen-inspired period drama is sufficiently monstrous, but a coming film project seeks to update the formula with actual monsters, Variety reported. The movie “Pride and Predator” … will juxtapose brooding aristocrats with a brutal alien that lands in 1800s-era Britain, attacking residents and leaving them with neither sense nor sensibility. The film, to be produced by Elton John’s Rocket Pictures, is the latest work to mix the hoary costume genre with elements of horror. A book called “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,” credited to Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith and published by Quirk Books, will combine the Austen novel with “all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem.” And a coming novel by Michael Thomas Ford called “Jane Bites Back” depicts the 19th-century author as a frustrated vampire, taking revenge on those who have made money from her work.