Guest Blog by Richard Minsky, book artist and FB&C book art columnist Field Report from CODEX Monday, Feb. 7, 7:20 a.m.

The CODEX book fair and symposium kicked off last night with a VIP reception at the UC Berkeley Student Center Ballroom. One hundred and thirty-eight exhibitors from around the world have tables filled with book art, fine press books, and livres d'art.

Peter Koch (seen here at left), the entrepreneur who created and directs the CODEX Foundation, is himself an artist and publisher of fine editions. He is showing recent works, and I was particularly taken by The Lost Journals of Sacajawea by Debra Magpie Earling, illustrated by Peter with photographs. Debra is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation.

Marshall Weber of the Booklyn Artists Alliance had a plethora of books by artists they represent. When you stop at his table, ask to see the needlework Composition books of Candace Hicks (pictured here at right). It's always a treat to see artist, papermaker, printer, and publisher Robbin Ami Silverberg of Dobbin Books. Very few people can make a book from conception to growing the plants for special paper fibers, creating text and images, printing and binding, and Robbin's work is exemplary.

In addition to several recent books Russell Maret has on display, he has been designing his own type faces for his press and is showing sample pages from his forthcoming book, Specimens (two of which are seen above). He is currently president of the Fine Press Book Association. According to Russell, CODEX is the most important exhibition for book sales, and is an order of magnitude above the rest.

The Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts has copies of JAB, the Journal of Artists' Books, and when you stop by there be sure to talk to the founder & editor-in-chief, Brad Freeman, who has been publishing it for sixteen years.

Maddy Rosenberg has a table (pictured above) with works by the artists who show at Central Booking, her gallery in Brooklyn that features contemporary book artists.

There are many more to talk about, but now I have to go because the CODEX Symposium is about to begin...

To meet more of the artists exhibiting at CODEX, read last week's preview of the fair.

Heritage will hold its Signature Illustration Art Auction in Beverly Hills on Friday, February 11-12 (two sessions). The lovely Garth Williams illustrations from Little House on the Prairie and Stuart Little may be the main event for some collectors, but on the other side of the spectrum, the pulp art work of Norman Saunders (such as the oil on canvas seen here, "Ten Detective Aces," from a May 1941 pulp cover) is sure to draw some attention. The estimate is $8,000-$12,000. "Among his most notable creations are his many lurid painted covers for the pulp and men's magazines, his dramatic painted comic book and paperback covers, and his infamous trading card scenes for Topps," said Heritage illustration art specialist Todd Hignite, in the winter 2011 issue of Heritage magazine.

In FB&C's summer issue, we noted a trend in children's illustration, mainly among museums, which may be driving the increased auction interest. At the time, both curators and collectors told us that children's book illustration is growing in prominence, fueled by popular appeal, nostalgia among Baby Boomers, and the "relatively recent recognition of illustration as valuable art."

To wit, at Bonhams' Fine Books & Manuscripts auction on Feb. 13, a rare signed Beatrix Potter illustration will be on the block for an estimated $12,000-$18,000. Also at that sale -- a signed, original mixed media on cardstock cover design by Dr. Seuss, for the book, You're Only Old Once! (est. $20,000-$30,000). 

In less than one week's time, the antiquarian book world will converge upon San Francisco for the 44th California International Antiquarian Book Fair. More than 200 members of the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers will be on hand with some amazing books, maps, posters, photographs, etc., some of which are previewed below. I'll be there too! So stay tuned for more book fair coverage, once the fair opens on Feb. 11.

Kaaterskill Books of Easy Jewett, NY, issued a list of items it's bringing to the fair, a wide variety that includes George Washington's Farewell Address from 1796 in its original blue-gray wrapper ($1,750) to a second edition of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Pictures of the Gone World with holograph poem ($500), to several Mexican, Central American, and South American imprints.

One of the many intriguing books offered by Leo Cadogan Rare Books is a 1649 duodecimo from Cologne: Thaumaturgi physici prodromus, id set problematum physicorum liber singularis... (seen here at right). Author Gaspar Ens collected "problems" related to the physical world, such as how to apprehend people who pretend to have been possessed by the devil and how to cure sheep.

You can download a list of items Pickering & Chatto will be exhibiting. The one that caught my eye is a first edition of Eleanor Fenn's The Female Guardian (1784) --Moral lessons for girls written by Mrs. Teachwell from her own experiences as a private school teacher. (£2,500). A selection of Suffragette material deserves notice, as does the scarce first edition of Mary Wollstonecraft's Thoughts on the Education of Daughters from 1787 (£5,500). I'm detecting a theme here.

Prominent on Bruce McKittrick's comprehensive list are Art & Architecture titles, with titles such as Gautier's L'Art de dessiner, Paris, 1697 ($2,200) and Le Muet's Maniere de bien bastir, Paris, 1647 ($4,800); Incunabula, such as the only known copy of Aesopus moralisatus, c. 1482 ($85,000); and Bibliography, such as an uncut Fournier's Dictionnaire portatif de bibliographie, Paris, 1805 ($750).

See you at the fair! 

 

From Pasadena, booksellers and buyers (particularly those interested in books arts, fine press, and artist's books) will make their way north to Berkeley, on the University of CA campus, where the third biennial CODEX International Book Fair and Symposium opens on Feb. 6 (and runs through Feb. 9). Book artist and FB&C Book Art columnist Richard Minsky will post his impressions during and after the fair on this blog. Until then, here's a preview of five amazing books to see there.

Alice Austin Artists Books of Philadelphia, PA, will be there with Nolli (seen above), an exploration of the textural layers of Rome, by Alice Austin and Jon Snyder, was inspired by the Giambattista Nolli map of Rome, 1748. Alice told me via email, "The book was folded from one sheet of paper which was printed offset lithography in six colors, which required six runs through the Heidelberg Kors press, at the Borowsky Center for Publication Arts, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA."

Alicia Bailey of Abecedarian Gallery in Denver, CO, has a beautiful book of love potions and spells, just in time for Valentine's Day. As seen above, Theia Mania (madness of the gods, or the Greek term for 'love at first sight') is a collaborative work including 4 books and an audio CD housed in an aluminum box. Over 25 individuals participated in its production, which was executed by Alicia Bailey at Ravenpress. Another piece from Abecedarian is Fibre Libri, by Bridgit Elmer of Flatbed Splendor. Alicia tells us, "It is an artist's book that tells the story of a group of people, learning about free software while learning to make paper."

Book artist Maria Pisano will introduce two new books from Memory Press, Viva Voce and Breathe. In an edition of 20, Viva Voce is a response to landays taken from Songs of Love and War: Afghan Women's Poetry, collected by Sayd Bahadine Marjouh, who was subsequently assassinated. Pisano will also feature Breathe (seen above), a response to The Flower Soul, a poem by Imogen Brashear Oakley. A limited edition artist's book, designed, printed--intaglio and relief--and bound by the artist, on Rives BFK and vellum. The text is handset and jointly printed on a Vandercook with Alan Runfeldt.

Anagram Press will showcase Chandler O'Leary's newest artist book, Local Conditions: One Hundred Views of Mt. Rainier (seen above). Local Conditions is an interactive artist book, capturing the changing faces of Mt. Rainier. The book contains 120 image flats and a viewing box; by combining and layering the flats, the reader can create literally millions of scenes. Illustrated and compiled from data collected by O'Leary, on location, over the course of two years. Letterpress printed, hand-watercolored, housed in a set of drawers with nested stab-bound book and Japanese-style outer wrapper. Edition of 26 books.

Sarah Horowitz of Wiesedruck Press will be featuring her recently completed work, Archeologies of Loss, a limited edition book of poems by Sarah Lantz and chine colle, botanical etchings by Sarah Horowitz, with a remembrance by Eleanor Wilner. She'll also be showing a new broadside of William Blake's poem "Ah! Sun-flower" with a small sunflower etching.

For a complete list of exhibitors, click here. Enjoy!

Pasadena is where it all begins this weekend, commencing a string of three major book fairs in California over the next ten days (next is Codex, and then the CA book fair in San Francisco). I'll offer some preview highlights of them over the next few days, and our correspondents "on the ground" will chime in with post-fair recollections when they can.

The 12th annual Pasadena International Antiquarian Book, Print, Photo, and Paper Fair will be the first stop for many booksellers and buyers.

Book Hunter's Holiday will be there, with some handmade history: an intriguing photo album filled with 150 images from the Soviet Union in 1932 composed by a far-right German nationalist ($3,500) and a 54-page scrapbook of the Battle of Manila Bay from 1898 created by the navigator of the flagship U.S.S. Olympia, with official, signed documents tipped in ($1,000).

Athena Rare Books has a generous selection of philosophy titles, priced from $65 to the mid-five figures. They are also offering a range of titles, both in Pasadena and next week in San Francisco, that include Mary Woolstonecraft's The Vindication of the Rights of Women ($18,000) and Bill Wilson's Alcoholics Anonymous, first edition, in first dj, inscribed by the author ($50,000).

Likely to please buyers at the Thorn Books booth are several sets of nineteenth-century Valentine's Day Cards. They also have several first editions, such as a near fine first edition of Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms ($300) and some children's titles, such as an early edition of Mother Goose illustrated by Kate Greenaway ($100), among the variety on offer.

The fair runs February 5-6, 2011 at the Pasadena Center ??Exhibit Hall A, ??300 E. Green Street, ??Pasadena, CA. Hours: Saturday 10am - 6pm??, Sunday 11am-4pm. For a full list of dealers, click here.
 

Elena Mauli Shapiro's 13, rue Thérèse (Reagan Arthur, 2011) is a beautifully-designed meta-narrative about an American academic in Paris who "discovers" in his office file cabinet a box containing a small archive of family photos, letters, and personal artifacts from the early decades of the 20th century. As he works his way through the box he finds himself becoming more and more intertwined with the original owners of the items within, and also developing a strange connection with his secretary (whom, we learn very quickly, had in fact planted the box for him to find).

While the threads of the story itself didn't happen to be all that interesting to me, I found Stratton's process of delving into the box and discovering its various component pieces very intriguing, and the way Shapiro has integrated illustrations and typographical decorations into the text is nicely done indeed.

Worth a read just for the design, honestly.

Today an interesting exhibit opens at the Ransom Center in Austin. Culture UnBound: Collecting in the Twenty-First Century presents archives of writers or artists acquired in the past decade. So the focus is "modern archives," for example those of Julian Barnes, Jayne Anne Phillips, Don DeLillo, Tim O'Brien, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and Norman Mailer. These twentieth-century letters, photographs, notebooks, and journals (such as those of David Mamet seen here) will be on exhibit through July 31.

David Foster Wallace is another highlight of the show. The Ransom Center acquired his archives in 2009 and just opened it to researchers this past fall. Which is good news for the many researchers who have been eager to study Wallace's writings. As Molly Schwartzburg, curator of British and American literature at the Ransom Center, said back in September, "It is quickly becoming apparent that this is an opportunity for the Ransom Center to welcome a new generation of scholars into our reading room, just as the Wallace papers themselves mark a new generation of writers to be acquired by the Center."

This trend was recently picked up by Jennifer Howard in The Chronicle of Higher Education. She wrote:

Those paying attention will notice that younger scholars, including graduate students and postdocs, loom unusually large in all this activity: organizing conferences, contributing papers, coediting collections. That trend has made itself evident at the David Foster Wallace archive at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, too.

As the archive's curator, Molly Schwartzburg is on the front lines of scholarly interest in Wallace. She oversees an abundance of newly available material to tempt scholars: manuscript drafts, correspondence with editors, annotated books from Wallace's library. After The Pale King is published this spring, the center will receive materials related to that novel as well.

Since the Wallace archive opened in September 2010, Schwartzburg and her colleagues have been flooded with queries from researchers. "There's extremely high interest in the collection, especially from younger scholars," she says. "Wallace was born 10 years later than any other writer whose archive we house. That really is notable, and it's reflected in the demographic of researchers we're hearing from." Many are graduate students, the curator says. "Younger scholars early in their career are doing a lot of work on Wallace."

Adding to this chorus is Columbia University Press, which just released Wallace's
Fate, Time, and Language: An Essay on Free Will, a critique of Richard Taylor that Wallace wrote as an undergraduate at Amherst. His unfinished novel, The Pale King, will be published this spring by Little, Brown & Co., which will certainly feed the new scholarship.