McGrath Lecture on Book Arts

Please join us for the annual McGrath Lecture on Book Arts by publisher, book artist, and printer Robin Price. In her illustrated talk, “Surrendering to the Book,” Robin will discuss her personal approach to creating and publishing artist books, as she combines collaboration, chance, and craft.

Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 4:00 pm.
Neilson Library Browsing Room
Smith College–Northampton MA

A reception will follow in the third floor Book Arts Gallery.

A small selection of Robin Price’s work is on display outside the Mortimer Rare Book Room.

The McGrath lecture honors the memory of Harold P. McGrath, master printer, mentor, and friend to many book arts practitioners in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.

For more information: http://www.smith.edu/libraries/info/news/robin-price

A Gallery Talk: Beyond Words at the ISG

A Gallery Talk: Beyond Words at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

The Beyond Words Exhibit Gallery Talk will be given by Valentine Talland, Senior Objects Conservator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. For more information about the Beyond Words Exhibit, click here.

Where:

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

25 Evans Way
Boston, MA 02115

For directions to the museum, please visit:
http://www.gardnermuseum.org/visit/directions
Please plan to arrive at the museum on your own in time for the tour.

When:
Nov. 10, 2016
6:00 pm

Cost:

$20.00

Admission to the museum is included in the fee.

Limited to 15 registrants.

To register for the event, please follow this link:

https://gbw.formstack.com/forms/beyondwordsgallerytalk

“Vessel” is now open

Vessel, the Guild of Book Workers traveling exhibit, has dropped anchor in New England for its final stop at North Bennet Street School and is now open.

Visit the exhibit in the Windgate Gallery at the school any time during regular school hours,

Monday through Friday from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm until August 31

 North Bennet Street School is located at 150 North Street in Boston’s North End. Validated parking is available at the “Parcel 7” garage, 136 Blackstone St. The closest T stop is Haymarket on the Orange or Green Lines.

Join us for the opening reception in the Windgate Gallery at the school on Thursday, July 21 at 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm. In addition to the 50 works on display, three local exhibitors, Erik Demaine, Graham Patten and Colin Urbina, will be present to speak about their piece. Talks will take place around 7:00.

A catalog of the exhibit is available at the national Guild website.

Lecture on Traditional Ethiopian Bookbinding

Traditional Ethiopian Bookbindinng (or “What’s the difference between Coptic and Ethiopian bookbinding anyways?”)
By Bill Hanscom

Wednesday, November 18th at 6:00pm
Harvard University
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Schlesinger Library
3 James Street Cambridge, MA
(enter library from west side of Radcliffe Yard off Brattle Street)

Bookbinding in Ethiopia is arguably one of the oldest continuously-practiced material traditions in the world. Despite its steady decline during the last century, little has changed in the production of an Ethiopian bound manuscript for more than a millennium. Please join us on November 18th to hear Bill Hanscom talk about his research into these bindings. He will describe processes involved in the creation of a traditional Ethiopian manuscript from parchment manufacture through binding, decoration, and storage.

Bill Hanscom is a special collections conservation technician for Harvard Library at the Weissman Preservation Center in Cambridge, MA; coordinator and adjunct instructor for the Book Arts BFA program at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA; and an independent workshop insttructor. He is a 2008 graduate of the Book Arts/Printmaking MFA program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. His essay on traditional Ethiopian book satchels will be included in Volume 3 of theSuave Mechanicals: Essays on the History of Bookbinding series to be published by The Legacy Press in 2016, followed by a larger essay on Ethiopian bookbinding practices and techniques in Volume 4 of the same series.

Stuart Bennett Lecture on Bookbinding in the British Isles

An illustrated talk sponsored by The New England Chapter of The Guild of Book Workers and The Ticknor Society

Historical Bookbinding in the British Isles
1660-1800
By Stuart Bennett

Thursday, October 22nd at 6:30pm
North Bennet Street School

 

Stuart Bennett will bring his illustrated lecture on historical English bookbindings to the North Bennet Street School October 22, 2015. Bennett’s 2004 publication, *Trade Bookbinding in the British Isles 1660-1800*, examined booksellers’ and bookbinders’ records as well as thousands of historical bindings to offer a new analysis of how books came to be bound in early modern Britain. One reviewer called the study “a tool for the discerning book connoisseur [which] fills a long-standing gap in the bookbinding literature that, in retrospect, is as self-evident as a missing front tooth.”

Bennett’s lectures on this subject at universities and libraries in California, Edinburgh, Indiana, Pennsylvania, South Carolin​a​, and Virginia’s *Rare Book School* have been widely acclaimed, and for his talk at the North Bennet Street School he has added new information and additional illustrations of these beautiful bindings.

InsideOUT Contemporary Bindings Exhibit

InsideOUT Contemporary Bindings of Private Press Books
September 11-December 13, 2014
Edison and Newman Room, Houghton Library
Please join us for an exhibition reception on Tuesday, November 4 from 5:30-7:00 p.m.at Houghton Library in the Edison and Newman Room. Remarks at 6:00 p.m.

Fifty-nine binders and nine private presses from North America, Canada and Britain have collaborated to form an exhibition which demonstrates the relationship of the binding design to the printed book. Because many of the binders have chosen the same title to work on, it also highlights the differing approaches to the same text. Samples of the texts and illustrations are shown alongside the bindings. The relationship between private presses and bookbinders is longstanding and it is hoped that this extra element to the show will provide the viewer with a more rounded appreciation of the work on display. The curator is Lester Capon, Fellow of Designer Bookbinders, the organization that sponsored the exhibition for which these bindings were created.

An illustrated catalog can be obtained from the Designer Bookbinders Online Shop: http://www.designerbookbinders.org.uk/online_shop/index.html

For details, please contact Hope Mayo at 617-495-2444 or mayo@fas.harvard.edu.

The Marbler’s Apprentice

Chemically Altered: Historic Paper Marbling
Garrett and Gretchen Dixon from The Marbler’s Apprentice
North Bennet Street School, Boston
Monday May 14, 2012 at 6:00 pm

The New England Chapter of the Guild of Book Workers will sponsor a presentation by Gretchen and Garrett Dixon from The Marbler’s Apprentice.  This is another installment in our lecture series hosted by North Bennet Street School.

The Dixons specialize in historic marbling, particularly 18 century and early-mid 19th century papers.  They utilize the water color pigments and techniques that were in use from the introduction of paper marbling in Europe in the 16th century through the 19th century.

During this special event we invite you to bring your one or two of your own examples of historic marbled papers– we all have  interesting papers in or on bindings that are either typical or unusual.  The Dixons will devote some time to examine and discuss the papers you bring and hopefully we will all learn from the sharing.

In addition, Garrett says he will “discuss the history, patterns, and fabrication techniques for the group of what I refer to as chemically-altered patterns of marbled paper:  Stormont, Shell, Broken, Romantic, Schroetel, Tiger eye.  These patterns all involve the use of chemical additives to the watercolor paint in order to achieve their effect.  These patterns were popular from the end of the 18th century through the 19th century.  We will show examples of the patterns, both original and our reproductions, and discuss some of the difficulties encountered in trying to decipher the old recipes.”

There will be a wide selection of papers on hand to peruse, and samples available for purchase.

This presentation is free and open to the public.  Directions available at nbss.edu.

Kathy Walkup at Smith College

Barbara Blumenthal kindly passes along this invitation:

McGrath Lecture by Kathy Walkup
Monday, March 26, 2012 at 4 pm
Mortimer Rare Book Room, Neilson Library
Smith College, Northampton MA

Kathy Walkup will present a lecture about women printers, past and present, entitled “Your Hands will always be covered with ink! Nuns, widows, mavericks & other passionate printers.” Sponsored by the Mortimer Rare Book Room and the Book Studies Concentration at Smith College, the annual McGrath Lecture in Book Arts honors the memory of local printing legend Harold P. McGrath. A reception will follow.

Ms. Walkup is the director of the Graduate Book Art Program at Mills College in Oakland, CA. Her teaching and writing focus on nineteenth-and twentieth-century women printers and the history and practice of typography.

For more information: Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College (585-2906 or mrbr@smith.edu)

Members in action and in the news

Barbara Adams Hebard sent along the following press release of likely interest:

Announcement of upcoming O’Neill Library exhibit and related events at the Burns Library

“Precious Poems in Precious Packaging: Irish Poems Printed and Bound by the Traffic Street Press” exhibit will be on display March 1- April 30, 2012 on Level Three in the Thomas P. O’Neill Library at Boston College. The Traffic Street Press Irish Poetry series, a collaborative project with Dr. Thomas Dillon Redshaw of the Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, includes selections of poetry by well-known Irish poets. The books were printed and bound by Paulette Myers-Rich at The Traffic Street Press.

During March, in honor of Women’s History Month, the John J. Burns Library will host two related events.  Anna Shepard and Heather Stevik, North Bennet Street School bookbinding students, will present a slideshow about their hand paper-making internship at Cave Paper, and will show examples of their work in the Irish Room at the John J. Burns

Library on March 6 at 4:00 pm.  The second event, on March 16 at 11:00 am, will feature Fionnuala Gerrity, a graduate of the North Bennet Street School Bookbinding Program, who will give a presentation about her artist books, as well as her conservation internship at the Burns Library; the talk will also take place in the Irish Room. The exhibit and events are free of charge and open to the public. Space for the events is limited; please RSVP one week prior to them. Directions to the Chestnut Hill Campus can be found at this link:

http://www.bc.edu/a-z/maps.html

Curators:

Kathleen Williams, Irish Studies Librarian, and Barbara Adams Hebard, Conservator

John J. Burns Library website:

http://www.bc.edu//libraries/collections/burns.html

Traffic Street Press website: http://paulettemyers-rich.visualserver.com/

Cave Paper website: http://cavepaper.com/

North Bennet Street School website: http://nbss.edu

Other member news…

Sam Ellenport and Harcourt Bindery were featured in an article in the Monitor.

Check it out here:

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/0222/In-an-age-of-Kindles-Harcourt-Bindery-sticks-to-tried-and-true-book-methods

Book studies events and exhibitions at Smith College

Book studies events & exhibitions, spring 2012

at Smith College, Northampton, MA

Thursday, March 1, 2012, 4:30 p.m.| Campus Center Carroll Room

Dorothy Wickenden: Nothing Daunted

Author and executive editor of The New Yorker, Dorothy Wickenden will discuss her book Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West. The two “society girls” are 1909 Smith alums, Dorothy Woodruff (Wickenden’s grandmother) and Rosamond Underwood. Several years ago, Wickenden came across a collection of letters that Woodruff had written home to Auburn, New York, from the small community of Elkhead, Colorado, where the two Smith friends had gone to teach in 1916. The letters became fodder for an article in The New Yorker in 2009 and then became the backbone of Nothing Daunted. Sponsored by the Friends of the Libraries and the Smith College Archives

Monday, March 12, 2012, 4:30 p.m. | Neilson Library Browsing Room

Robert Darnton: Books, Libraries, and the Digital Future

Robert Darnton is Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and University Librarian at Harvard. Darnton was a pioneer in the study of the history of the book, and today writes and speaks about e-publishing. He is the driving force behind the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) project and was a founder of the Gutenberg-e program, sponsored by the Mellon Foundation. From 1968 to 1997, Darnton served on the European History faculty at Princeton. He has written extensively on the literary world of Enlightenment France. Among his honors are a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award and election to the French Legion of Honor. Sponsored by the President’s Office

Monday March 26, 2012, 4:00 p.m. | Neilson Library Browsing Room

Kathy Walkup: Your hands will always be covered with ink! Nuns, widows, mavericks & other passionate printers  

Kathy Walkup directs the Graduate Book Art Program at Mills College in California. Her teaching and writing focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century women printers and the history and practice of typography. This is the annual McGrath Lecture in Book Arts, which honors the memory of local printing legend Harold P. McGrath. A reception will follow. Sponsored by the Mortimer Rare Book Room

Wednesday, April 4, 2012, 4:30 p.m. | Neilson Library Browsing Room

 

Michael Suarez: The Future for Books in the Digital Age

 

Michael Suarez, S.J., is Director of the Rare Book School, Professor of English, University Professor and Honorary Curator of Special Collections, all at the University of Virginia. Suarez is known to be a most engaging speaker, “a world renowned scholar, a dynamic and demanding teacher and an inventive and passionately engaged citizen,” says a colleague at UVA. He is a leading scholar of the history of the book and eighteenth century literature. Sponsored by the Friends of the Libraries

EXHIBITIONS

Charles Dickens at 200

Book Arts Gallery, Neilson Library, Level 3. January 15-April 15, 2012

Celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of the beloved Victorian novelist, this exhibition features a variety of his works from the Mortimer Rare Book Room.  

Paste Papers of the Pioneer Valley

Mortimer Rare Book Room, Neilson Library, Level 3. January 15-May 30, 2012

An exhibition of decorative papers, the handiwork of some of the Valley’s premier book artists. Paste papers made by 19 book workers are featured in this exhibition and the fall 2011 publication: Paste Papers of the Pioneer Valley. With an essay by David Bourbeau (Kat Ran Press & Catawba Press).

For more information about both exhibitions click here.