This weekend I finished Books: A Memoir, by Larry McMurtry. The book was recommended to me last year by a rare book librarian in my California Rare Book School class at Berkeley. To have lived a long life surrounded by books and to have the thrill of getting in new stock and the pleasure of browsing through it - I can't imagine a more rewarding day of work.
Last week while on a trip to Los Angeles, I went to San Marino to visit the Huntington Library. The library is part of a larger estate with art museums and gardens, but because I only had half a day to visit, I spent every minute in the library that I had been reading about for several years.
Professor Megan Benton, in her book Beauty and the Book: Fine Editions and Cultural Distinction in America, examines the role of the book in the early decades of the Twentieth Century. The book included a history of fine printing in America during this time period. However, I was mainly reading it to find out more about … Continue reading Beauty and the Book
This was a project to do basic book repair on a cloth book. This book was selected from a somewhat random pile of cloth-backed books in need of repair that my teacher, Juliayn Coleman, brought in to our class a few months ago. The first step was to take full stock of the condition of … Continue reading Cloth Book Repair Project
This weekend I am heading out to Berkeley to attend my first CODEX Book Fair & Symposium. I had the privilege of taking a California Rare Books Course with Master Printer, Peter Koch this past August, where I first learned about this event and have been anticipating it ever since. Peter is one of the … Continue reading Codex 2017
I was reading Nicholas Basbanes' A Gentle Madness this weekend when one quote struck a chord. Given the tumultuous political scene the past few months and given the uncertainty of the next few years, this quote from a book collector living through the Great Depression gave me a little hope. Basbanes was quoting Paul Jordan-Smith, … Continue reading No Perfect Time
Since childhood, many of my scholarly pursuits have at their core been about finding creative ways to get closer to books. I have had some remarkable experiences in the world of bound paper and ink, and the adventures are just beginning.
Of Paper and Ink 