Anthropodermic Bibliopegy

A record of progress regarding the BFA show of Charlsa Hensley.

[ledfireflies]

powerful disney women of colour

[gerudho]

also: all of my disney faves

[uwmspeccoll]

A #PageFrights Fine Press Friday!

Spoooooooooooooooooooooky … . it’s the Limited Editions Club printing of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery & Imagination, with 16 original copperplate aquatints printed in an edition of 1500 copies in 1941. The aquatints were drawn on the plates by Austrian-American artist William Sharp, and the prints pulled Charles Furth in New York. The text was printed in Monotype Cochin at the Garamond Press in Baltimore on white rag paper made by the Worthy Paper Company of West Springfield, Massachusetts. The binding by the Russell-Rutter Company is black buckram stamped in white enamel.

The entire edition is signed by the artist, William Sharp, who was born in Austria as Leon Schleifer, but changed his name after he and his wife fled Nazi Germany for the U.S. in 1934. He is most well known as a regular contributor of humorous and satirical illustrations for numerous publishers and magazines, including the The New York Times Magazine, Life, Colliers, Coronet, and The New York Post. His ominous aquatints for this publication are mirrored  by the intensity of the readers pictured several times on the cover, title page, and colophon, and even by swirling marbling on the top, bottom, and fore edges of the book.

[archatlas]

A Moveable Beast

In the words of the artist Helge Skodvin:

What happens when a natural history collection—some of which hasn’t been moved in nearly 150 years—gets packed up and sent across town? The results are weird, wild and strangely beautiful.

Images and text via + via

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

Typographic expressions by the notorious Detroit letterpress printer Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. from Max’s personal collection.

View our other posts on Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.

[frickfineartslibrary]

A Humument

By: Lauren Murphy

While a small instructional session on artist’s books was being conducted in the room beside me I began to eavesdrop. Inspired by the questions of the eager students I quickly started rounding up further reading for them. Volumes on book binding, paper cutting, surface treatment, and strange uses of pages flooded my desk. To my dismay, by the time I had collected all of the volumes these students might enjoy, they had already left. Class was over. I still shared the collection with my boss to pass along to the class. She recommended one more book to add to the pile. It’s not instructional, but it is fascinating. The book is called “A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel” created by Tom Phillips.

Phillips found a 10 cent book called “A Human Document” by a man named W.H. Mallock. It turns out that Mallock was kind of a nasty guy, full of hatred and general discriminations. But after Phillips had found the book he had committed to using it for a long term art project, and perhaps Mallock being an unpleasant subject made altering to book for his own uses easier. Each page had magnificent detailed art. The colors, styles, imagery, everything changes from page to page, only letting shine through choice words that form a winding poem that can be read through as you flip each page. Each feeling and notion that he has during this process screams out to me, Mallocks few words left for the viewer are enhanced and transformed by the artwork around them and the careful selection of language and placement.

I seem to recall a few old books sitting on my shelves at home, waiting to be noticed or thrown out. Perhaps I will follow in Phillips footsteps and find my own Mallock to work both with and against.

[uwmspeccoll]

Here are some more pages from Tom Phillips’s A Humument @frickfineartslibrary to compliment our own Staff Pick from last month showcasing our copy. Just can’t get enough of A Humument.

[uispeccoll]

Miniature Monday!

Chained Alchemical Library by Pat Sweet from Bo Press Miniature Books.  Riverside (Calif.) : 2012?  From the Charlotte Smith Miniatures Collection.  In the catalog: N7433.4.S885 C43 2012 Stop by and see!

Bo Press Miniature’s website.

See all of our Miniature Mondays or see all of our posts with GIFs.

[uispeccoll]

A favorite from #twoyearsago

[yimmyayo]

[anthropo-biblio]

This is what I've been up to lately.

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[anthropo-biblio]

My newest piece “Three Invasions, One Invader” was chosen for inclusion in the exhibition “Firmly Rooted” at the MS Rezny Gallery in Lexington, KY! If you’re in the area, drop on by. It’s located at 903 Manchester Street near Speigle Heights.

[anthropo-biblio]

Today’s monoprint experiments~

[anthropo-biblio]

It's a monotype-the-garden kind of day.

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

Today we present American papermaker and papermaking scholar Dard Hunter’s last published work from his Mountain House Press in Chillicothe, Ohio, Papermaking by Hand in America, completed in late 1950. It is truly Hunter’s magnum opus, with over 300 pages and nearly 200 specimens, illustrations, and facsimiles, documenting the earliest paper mills in America from 1690 to 1811 before the advent of the first papermaking machines in the U.S. 

Hunter is arguably America’s most significant hand-papermaker, but he was also a fine type designer and caster, with several of his books personally handprinted not only with his own handmade paper, but also his own type or type designed by his son Dard Hunter, Jr. The typeface used here was designed and cast by Dard, Jr. beginning in 1937, but the entire font was first used in this 1950 publication. The design is quite distinctive – a kind of “old face” appropriate to the subject matter – as are the large, red calligraphic initials and the specially-made ornaments used generously throughout the work and forming the decorative patterns on the book’s cloth covers. The edition is limited to 210 copies, and our copy is signed with great flair by Dard Hunter,

View more posts from our Typography Tuesday series.

[anthropo-biblio]

Today's work.

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@_@

[uwmspeccoll]

Spotlight: National Library Week

Selections from our copy of Using Your Library. 32 Posters for Classroom and Library. Danville, N.Y.: F. A. Owen Publishing Company, 1965.

Be a Library Champ!!

[uwmspeccoll]

National Library Week 2016

It’s National Library Week and an excellent opportunity to reblog our post on selections from the poster set Using Your Library, 1965, which remains our most popular post to date.

According to the American Library Association there are nearly 120,000 in the United States.  3,793 are academic libraries, over 9,000 are public libraries, and a whopping 98,460 are in public and private schools. 

As a thought exercise, try to imagine your world without any libraries at all. Okay, now you have an even more compelling reason to celebrate!

Be a Library Champ!

[anthropo-biblio]

I'm back! First post-grad print.