200 Years of Blooks at the Center for Book Arts

Center for Book Arts

The Care and Feeding of Books book repair kit, American, 1947.

Back in 2016 Mindell Dubansky curated a marvellous exhibition at the Grolier Club about things that looked like books but were not, objects she christened 'blooks'. If you missed it, then your luck is in because running now at the Center for Book Arts in New York City is a new show dedicated to these unique items.

As well as a delightful display for bibliophiles, The Best Kept Secret: 200 Years of Blooks which runs through May 10 aims to encourage artists to use the traditional book format as a springboard to, in Dubansky's words, "explore the form’s rich potential for subversion, concealment, and narrative layering".

Dubansky is the head of the Sherman Fairchild Center for Book Conservation, at the Watson Library, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and is passionate about the subject, having collected 'blooks' for more than 30 years.

"Why, apart from its contents, is the physical book such a compelling and beloved object?" she says. "My obsessive interest in books and in objects made in emulation of them began years ago with this question, and led to a comprehensive study of objects made in book form, from the humblest item to rare works of art. I refer to these objects by the convenient term blooks, a contraction of “book-look”. The goal of my studies and collecting endeavors is to determine the scope of the subject through the examination of thematic trends, makers and manufacturers, and object histories; to contextualize blooks within the realms of book history, material culture, and the arts; and to introduce the most interesting blook structures to artists and makers."