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 Cover Design in Renaisance England

Thanks to Sam Ellenport for inviting us all to the following talk.

 

Sam Ellenport will give a talk at the Mass. Center for Renaissance Studies at U/Mass Amherst on October 26 at 4pm.   The topic will be “Book Cover Design during the Renaissance in England.

“Design reflected the wealth of the community of purchasers, mirrored the shrinking size of books, and remained bi-laterally symmetrical during this time.”

 

All are welcome.

 

http://www.umass.edu/renaissance/index.htm

April Lectures and Events

We would like to pass on information about some New England area lectures and events of interest to our readers…

April 1 (Fri) 4:30 PM
A Romp Through Five Centuries
Amherst, MA

Sam Ellenport will be giving a talk entitled A Romp Through Five Centuries of Bookbinding Design on Friday, April 1 at 4:30.  It will be given at the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College, sponsored by The Friends of the Robert Frost Library; it is free and open to all.

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Final Watts Program events:

The Watts Program in the History and Culture of the Book at the John Carter Brown Library is presenting two public events in the month of April.  These will be the final events of the year for the Watts Program.  Please come and bring a friend.

April 4 (Mon) 5:30 PM   Moveable Books and Book Collecting 

Margaret B. Stillwell Prize Evening with Suzanne Karr Schmidt (Brown ’01) the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Art Institute of Chicago who will give a talk on moveable books in the Renaissance with comparisons to books today. The Stillwell Prize evening is co-sponsored with the John Russell Bartlett Society. It is a prize awarded by the Bartlett Society to RI undergraduates for their book collections.  Ms. Karr Schmidt won the prize in 2001.  Open to all. Venue: John Carter Brown Library. 

April 27 (Wed) 6:00 PM Watts Pecha Kucha

The Book in My LIfe – An eclectic evening of very-short talks by professionals and students to close the Watts Program series on Transformations of the Book.

A wide variety of practitioners and students reveal their thoughts on “The Book in My Life” in a series of Pecha Kucha-style presentations. 20 slides, 20 seconds per slide – the clock is ticking. Expect tales of literature, shelving and entertaining reflections on the eccentricities of paper and ink. Ideal for anyone who’s ever liked a book a little more than they really should have. Moderated by Andrew Losowsky, Watts Program Provocateur-in-Residence.  Open to All. Venue: John Carter Brown Library.

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April 28 (Thur) 6:00 PM
NBSS Bookbinding at 25
North Bennet Street School

Bookbinding Department Head, Jeffrey Altepeter, will give a short presentation about the bookbinding program at NBSS and invites attendees to bring a book or two along.  Jeff and his students will offer informal evaluations and offer suggestions about potential repairs or conservation treatments where appropriate… or just enjoy hearing about why it is a favorite book in your collection.

This event is open to the public but reservations and a $10 fee is requested.  Registration for this and many other workshops is available at www.nbss.edu or by contacting the director of continuing education, Megan Kenealy, at 617-227-0155 or mkenealy@nbss.edu.

Focus on Book Arts Conference

Several GBW members are presenters at the FOBA Conference in Oregon in June.  Sam Ellenport of Harcourt Bindery, a past New England Chapter chair, will present on the topic of traditional leather binding and gold tooling.  Also on the list we see Karen Hanmer, a juror for our current bookbinding exhibition; and Andrew Huot, our GBW president.  Apologies if we are missing any other New England Chapter members in our quick glance at the list of presenters.

The press release…

The tenth bienniel Focus on Book Arts Conference will be held June 22-26, 2011 in Forest Grove, Oregon. This conference offers four days of classes in the book arts – bookbinding, printing, printmaking, paper decoration, artists books, and journals – at all skill levels from beginner to advanced. You can pick and choose your classes, coming for only a day or the whole conference. The conference will again be held on the beautiful campus of Pacific University, located in Forest Grove, Oregon, about 25 miles west of Portland, Oregon. We hope you can join us in this celebration of the book arts.

Along with 29 classes the conference offers the following events which are also open to the public: The Artists’ Shop featuring hand bound books, cards, paper crafts, and other handmade book arts items; The Market where you will find vendors specializing in tools and supplies for the book arts as well as hand made book arts related items; an evening lecture entitled “Marketing 101 for Book Artists” by Laura Russell, owner of 23 Sandy Gallery; and the Faculty-Staff Show at the Library, Pacific University, Forest Grove, OR.  If you would like to participate in the Artists’ Shop or the Market you will find contact information and application forms on our web page, www.focusonbookarts.org.

The course catalog is now available either in a printed form or on our web page. It’s filled with class descriptions, financial information and a registration form. All this information can also be found on our web page along with a downloadable registration form, and a PDF version of the printed catalog.
www.focusonbookarts.org
If you would like a printed version of the catalog contact us at:
FOBA • 1928 21st Ave. • Forest Grove, OR 97116 • 503-357-7263

Linked-Spine Bindings

A Bookbinding Anomaly:
Linked-Spine Bindings
An Illustrated Lecture by Sam Ellenport

March 18th  6:00 pm  at the Schlesinger Library
Radcliffe/Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Sam Ellenport of the Harcourt Bindery will present “A Bookbinding Anomaly: Linked-Spine Bindings.”  This illustrated talk will explore a little known aspect of bookbinding decoration, used on sets of books.  The binder makes use of the entire rectangle comprised of all the spines as a canvas on which to produce an overall design, whether representational or abstract.  This talk is free and open to the public.
 
Sam Ellenport, a past Chair of the New England Chapter of GBW, has been binding since 1970 and is a student of binding history.

Bookbinding: A Romp through 600 years of History

Salem Athenaeum
337 Essex Street
Salem, MA

February 24, 2009.  7PM.

New England Chapter member Sam Ellenport of the Harcourt Bindery will give a talk at the Salem Athenaeum on February 24, 2009 at 7PM.  The lecture will be illustrated by good slides and, Sam promises, “There is some meat to the story as well.”  The event is free and open to the public.