Month: July 2008

Moleskines

Moleskine with wood type collageOver the past year I’ve noticed that students in my letterpress classes invariably show up with the same small pocket-sized black notebooks. Some have been elaborately decorated on the covers. “Moleskine makes them,” one of my students told me. I noticed lots of people on Etsy selling them with artwork on the covers — usually Gocco printed. Moleskine encourages people to share the artwork in and on their products — the website has a section on an art show of work using Moleskines.
I bought one and they are really handy. Well made, they fit in my purse, have 64 pages (with the last 16 sheets perforated and detachable!) and the inside of the back cover has a bonus pocket for notes or clippings. I also tried printing a wood type collage on the cover (see photo above — I have them for sale on my website here.
But some of the best covers have been laser engraved (probably using the same sort of machine I used to cut out my recent pop-up book — the laser cutter can also engrave on glass and acrylic and thick paper). Below are two covers done by Modofly. They are bigger than the small pocket ones I’ve got. For more covers, see this flicker pool or this Etsy search.
moleskin-modofly.jpg moleskin-modofly2.jpg

Paper Shopping in San Francisco

flaxpaper.jpgOne of my favorite afternoon activities is shopping for paper. San Francisco has a wealth of shops to choose from:

Arch (which is conveniently near the San Francisco Center for the Book) is a great source for paper as well as binding supplies. And it’s fun to browse their paper products such as cards and coasters. 99 Missouri Street, 415.433.2724.

Whenever I walk into the huge paper room at Flax, I think I’ve died and gone to heaven. From fine art printmaking paper to Japanese chiyogami to decorative wrapping paper to handmade paper with flower inclusions, they seem to have any kind of paper you’d ever want. Like Arch, they also have finished paper products to browse, as well as lots of ribbon. 1699 Market Street, 415.552.2355

In the Cow Hollow district, there’s Kozo Arts, with an extensive selection of Japanese and handmade papers. They also have book cloth and they specialize in custom boxes, photo albums, guest books and journals. (Be sure to walk down Union Street, and check out the other shops too.) 1969A Union Street, 415.351.2114

Paper Source has 2 locations in SF, on popular shopping streets: 2061 Chestnut St, 415.614.1585 and 1925 Fillmore St, 415.409.7710

For all things origami, try The Paper Tree in Japantown. 743 Buchanan Mall, 415.921.7100

If you visit Chinatown be sure to look for Joss paper. It’s an Asian paper traditionally used in burnt offerings at funerals and generally decorated with vivid gold and silver foil as well as saffron colored printing. It’s used by many collage and book artists. You can get it in most variety stores in Chinatown.

Spring 2008 Ampersand

2008 Spring PCBA AmpersandThe Spring 2008 issue of Ampersand (the book arts journal I edit) is just out. In this issue, Charles Brownson, a retired librarian who often comments on the book arts list, contributes an article about what information to include in artists’ book colophons and Sarah Feingold, the lawyer for Etsy, helps demystifies copyright permission, in particular can you use the illustrations from an old book in your own artwork.
If I had to pick a favorite article in this issue, I guess it would have to be Theresa Whitehall’s Broadsides: Interactive Literature, a layman’s history of broadsides. She talks about a well-known local (San Francisco) printer, Jane Grabhorn, who was quite eccentric and practiced “her own brand of typography which was irreverent, humorous and cranky, by all accounts. For a while she promoted the idea that hyphens at the ends of lines were ludicrous. A word that needed to be split should simply break and begin again on the next line.”
You can see a list of all the articles in this issue here as well as order a copy.

Books on Books: The Book as Art

The Book As ArtMy Mom lives outside Washington DC, and two years ago one of my visits coincided with an exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) called The Book as Art: 20 Years of Artists’ Books From NMWA. It was a large and very well displayed show with a great deal of variety — from sculptural works to altered books to the more traditional looking offset and letterpress printed variety. We went to the museum toward the start of my visit, and the show provided conversation fodder for the rest of the week.
Trying to explain “artist’s book” to most people is difficult, and I’m always happy to have a good visual explanation to go along with my words. So when a friend sent me a copy of the very elegant catalog from the exhibition (available from Amazon here), I was really excited! The large color photographs are lovely, and each one has a short artist’s statement. On many occassions I’ve paged through the catalog, sometimes for inspiration and at others just for some eye candy.
The variety of structures — scrolls, pop-ups, accordions, and boxes — is probably what keeps me coming back to this book. On the left is a photo of one of the works from the show, Katherine Glover’s Green Salad. In her statement, she says the book uses a “triple Turkish map-fold structure (which) both conceals and reveals a poem nestled in the lettuce leaves.” (Instructions for folding a turkish mapfold are here.) And you can see some of the other books from the show on Amazon.

Tools: Rulers

ruler6×12.jpg I make a lot of models — all cut by hand — before I commit to making an edition of anything. One of the tools I couldn’t do without is my plastic quilting ruler. It’s 6″ wide, 12″ long, and lets me cut 2 edges at once. Since it’s clear plastic, I can see through to what I’m cutting underneath. That and the printed grid are really helpful when trying to center something on a page. The only drawback is that over time I’ve dug into the plastic with my X-acto knife, and the edge of the ruler isn’t as crisp as a metal ruler of the same age might be. Quilting rulers come in all sorts of sizes: 4″x 8″, 6″x 6″… I have another one that is 6″x 24″ — it can be a bit unwieldy but it comes in so handy when I need to quickly cut up a large parent sheet of paper.
bookwizard.JPGThis week I bought a new ruler — The Book Wizard Tool. It’s an 8-1/2″ x 11″ clear plastic ruler with an 1/8″ grid (I bought it because it’s letter paper size). But it also has pre-drilled holes for marking stab bindings, pre-cut slits for marking diagonals and scores, and a booklet with instructions for making several types of Japanese stab bound books and an accordion book. I’ve used it already and I think it’ll make a good addition to my studio.