In many respects, the times in which we live are a Golden Age for book collectors. Obscure tomes that once would have required diligent searches over a period of several years can now be found in just a few seconds with the click of one's mouse. Likewise, resources that once would have been beyond the pale of all but well-heeled collectors in major metropolitan areas are now within the ready grasp of just about anyone with a computer and an Internet connection.
Finding a really good bookbinder, for example, once required a major investment of time, if not money. One would traipse to bookbinding exhibitions to get some sense of current artists and trends; would traipse to binders' workshops to initiate contact with such binders and/or their representatives (unless one placed faith in one's ability to do this by mail); and so on. How much more easily are such matters dealt with today!
While there of course is no substitute for examining a bookbinder's work in person, the Internet is sufficiently awash in online exhibitions of such work that much of the traipsing of yore can now be done in one's pajamas in the wee hours of a Sunday morning. Just login...
One especially noteworthy online exhibition of contemporary bookbinding is the 100th Anniversary Exhibition of the Guild of Book Workers, which was held in 2006. As Besty Palmer Eldridge notes in her President's Remarks for this exhibition,
[a]lthough the Guild’s major focus has been on bookbinding, it appreciates and promotes all of the related book arts as well: hand papermaking and decorating, printing, calligraphy and illumination, and the conservation, preservation, and restoration of older book materials. Initially, the emphasis was on the traditional techniques and skills associated with fine binding. Design binding remains a strong interest in the membership and excellent examples appear in this current exhibition. More recently a strong interest has developed in artist’s books. This broader interpretation and definition of the book has attracted a whole new group of devotees. It too is well represented in this exhibition.
Below, three of our personal favorites from this exhibition....
Melinda Padgett's binding of Willa Cather's Death Comes to the Archbishop is suggestive of that book's concern with the imposition of Christianity over the Southwestern Pueblo Indian culture. Padgett uses motifs adapted from Acoma pottery designs, and a spine that resembles the spines traditionally found on Bibles, to help effect this suggestiveness.
Anna Embre's Byzantine bookbinding model is an attractive example of one of the many traditions that modern bookbinders draw upon for inspiration. Here Embre has used brown goat skin over cedar boards to realize her model, which she complemented with blind tooling, brass clasps and raised sewn endbands.
Roberta Lavadour's binding of Fat Chance may raise an eyebrow or two among traditionalists, but it speaks directly to its subject:
Found diet pamphlets sewn all along on handmade leather belts that run through the center of the boards, with painted text block edges and French double headbands. Covered in three-quarter leather (goat) with Fabriano Roma fore edge covers and found measuring tape. Belt closures have standard holes, as well as extra holes hand punched to accommodate the added girth of the book. Everything about the book is purposely overscaled. The resulting book speaks to the futility of the quick fix while allowing us to relate to the person who bought so many of these pamphlets, each one of which initially held great hope.
A great exhibition, whatever one's tastes in bookbinding....
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