200 Year Perpetual Calendar

Recently the Beast Pieces blog had a post about a 200 year perpetual calendar they printed letterpress. How does a 200 year perpetual calendar work?, I wondered. Unfortunately, the instructions at the bottom are in German, as is the information on the design firm’s website. But then I found this spreadsheet that shows there really are only 14 unique yearly calendars between 1900 and 2099, and then goes on to map each of those 200 years to one of the 14 unique calendars. This begins to help me understand how the German calendar works. Then I found a 10,000 year perpetual calendar with a nifty chart that lets you generate any calendar, without a computer. They both come from calendarhome.com, devoted to all things calendar.

200 Year Perpetual Calendar

New Mexico Skies

Spread from Sanctus SonorensisIn California, at least where I lived, the temperature and weather today was, with high probability, the same as yesterday. Not so here in New Mexico. We seem to have all 4 seasons in one week: Sunday, the high was about 45. Monday up to the low 60s. Today, the prediction is 70, Wednesday 61 again, Thursday 52 with a chance of snow showers in the evening… It is quite beautiful here, especially the sky. The picture for this post is a spread from Phil Zimmermann’s new book Sanctus Sonorensis. Like me, Phil is new to the southwest — he’s lived in upstate New York for many years and moved to Arizona in 2008. On his blog he says

I had the idea for the book, and did some little sketches for it, during my sabbatical in 2003-2004. I was in a year-long residency at the Border Art Residency in La Union, New Mexico. I was taking a lot of photos of the incredible skies in New Mexico and Arizona while there, and they made their way into a lot of the work that I made during my year there.

You can read more about the book here and see more spreads of that beautiful sky here. There’s also lots more on Phil’s blog.

A Story of Character

Ten Years of Tipoteca ItalianaThe Tipoteca Italiana is a private museum devoted to letterpress printing in Italy. To celebrate their 10th anniversary, they produced a picture book called A story of character. Ten Years of Tipoteca Italiana that is now available in English. Print has a review of the book showing lots of book spreads — with photographs of printing equipment, type, and printers — and also talks a bit about the museum. Information about obtaining a copy of the book is here.

Paper Weavings

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve made a few paper weavings. I’ve been looking at what others have done on Flickr and somehow stumbled on Ehren Reed’s website. She says she “relies upon books, maps and other found materials as I blend together traditional craft, contemporary media and remnants of consumer culture.” That’s one of her pieces below. You can see more of her weavings with maps here. She also does altered books — using lots of sewing, threads, and more weaving.

avatars, proximities 17 by Ehren Elizabeth Reed