jac has a nice post on Book Art Object about how she interpreted the fairy tale in her book “Rapunzel.” She says “I wanted to use the concertina format to play with the idea of stories having different interpretations and readers bringing their own viewpoint to the narrative. How you fold the book influences alters the visible image and these can be read in different ways.” See the entire post here.
Happy Pi day!
The word-of-the-day from word spy is pi-ku: “A haiku on the theme of the mathematical constant pi.” Upon further investigation, I found a refinement: “Instead of the traditional 5-7-5 syllable 3-line format of a haiku, a pi-ku consists of 3 lines with 3-1-4 syllables.” Here’s an example from the comments on this page
A number
So
Infinitely
SuzyShoppe featured my PI book the other day. And she included these great pie pictures from a periodic table
The recipe and pictures of how to make the pie at here as well.
After Codex last month, I stayed in California to go to the Antiquarian Book Fair with 2 friends. One of them collects book plates. I didn’t know much about them—the one to the left is one my friend particularly liked, but the artwork can be quite varied. There are a lot more here. Here’s what one gallery says about book plates:
Known more generally as book plates, ex libris are prints, drawings or watercolors designed by artists to be inserted into the front of books to display ownership. Originally a mark of prestige and status in society, book plates emerged in the fifteenth century and usually bore the owner’s family coat of arms. An interest in ex libris collecting and societies began in the 19th century, by which time it was increasingly common for merchants, scholars and other professionals to commission these works from prominent artists. The compositions were created based on the person’s interests, career and accomplishments and often would include a play on his/her name. Fine book plates continue to be made today by contemporary artists both by commission and as a direct response to the book plate as an art form. Many take their inspiration from various historical ex libris motifs such as Greek myth, momento mori and Don Quixote and incorporate them into their own unique style others imagine their own themes more in line with the Modernist movements such as Symbolism and Abstract Expressionism.
One of my pleasures at Codex last week was the table next to mine—Mission Gallery—print sellers in San Juan Bautista, California. One of their artists, Mikio Watanabe, is a Japanese man living in France, who designs and prints quite beautiful mezzotints. The gallery was at Codex because Wantanabe has made a book of his prints that include several haiku. The haiku were written in English (by Sheila Sondik), then translated into Japanese by Watanabe’s wife. The English and Japanese haikus are printed letterpress along with the mezzotints. Watanabe and his wife attended the book fair where he sat at the table and worked on a mezzotint plate for a demonstration later in the week. It was fascinating to watch. Here’s a page out of the book, you can see more here.
The table next to mine at Codex was Horse and Buggy Press, from Durham, North Carolina. Dave designed and printed a lovely book of sonnets by Kathryn Stripling Byer called “Southern Fictions.” The sonnets reflect on the racial conflict in Southwest Georgia when Byer was growing up during the Jim Crow era. Dave hand-made some of the paper, including the cover and front piece (below) out of confederate flags. He has a nice blog post about making the paper and printing the book here.
