My daughter is an accomplished graphic designer. She is also a highly creative book artist. And in 2006, when her mother took on Big Business with a lawyer friend and a doctor friend to save a tiny strip of river beach, and after we had WON the case, she made keepsakes to remind us of what we had been fighting for.
So much talk lately on being published and not being published.
There’s actually another sort of book: the artist’s book . A book that is conceived by an artist, formatted and bound by that artist. It may have a graphic interior, text, or it may be blank, a rendition of the old-style journal. It will often be made of the most glorious paper and sometimes will be manipulated and folded to create a different style of book: a concertina book, a pamphlet book, an octavo, a ‘fat’ book, so many different sorts. It may have a box specially created to contain the book. And then there are the bindings: a traditional single-case binding, a Japanese side-binding, a Coptic binding and hundreds of other decorative styles.
I have a penchant for artist’s books. I like that there is a creative imagination behind so much of the piece. I like the feel of it in my hand, I like the smell of the paper and the faint squeak from a binding as the book is opened. I LOVE the covers that many artists design for their books.
To illustrate my point, here is a selection of artist’s books from Salt Studio. Salt Studio has a special place in my heart because the artist concerned designed the covers for The Stumpwork Robe and The Last Stitch.
The Masked Ball rapidly approaches and I thought that you may like to know a little about the friendship that is the foundation of the ball.
I am mesmered and this is the blog I set up in late November of last year, ostensibly to talk writing, my books and the dream of publication. When The Stumpwork Robe was published in Dec of 2008, I had contacted Bo Press to buy a tiny book called The Silk Road for a friend of mine who had just turned 60. I talked briefly via email to the artist because in a previous life I had created artists’ books including a couple of miniatures of my own. As we communicated initially, I told her that I had just been published in the UK, whereupon she immediately bought my book and reviewed it on Amazon. This was Pat Sweet.
The world of Eirie
Wonderful prizes for the Masked Ball on May 1st . . . each of the competitions on the night will have a beautiful prize:
