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Posts Tagged ‘mark twain’

  1. Swell Things No. 10

    November 30, 2013 by Erin Fletcher

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    1. My husband is an animator for the Planetarium at the Museum of Science in Boston. At a recent event called Cosmic Loops, the planetarium became the stage for musician Ian Case. As a treat from the regular space imagery, the animators got to play around with ethereal visuals to compliment the live music. 
    2. Korean artist Do Ho Suh just created his most impressive large-scale installation to date entitled Home Within Home Within Home Within Home Within Home. The installation centers around the artist’s previous residences on a 1:1 scale. Each home is built within the next out of blue silk evoking a blueprint. His childhood home, a traditional Korean structure is suspended inside his first residency in the United States, a modern apartment in Rhode Island. 
    3. Behold the amazing woven optical illusions and other works of Samantha Bittman!
    4. Auto-aerobics is a wonderfully convincing 3d-illustrated series from artist Chris Labrooy. By experimenting with stretching, space and interaction, Chris is creating some fascinating and perplexing imagery.
    5. Just lovely, lovely fiber art from the talented Emily Eibel. Don’t glaze over the illustrations, they are equally spectacular! 

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    6. After 5,000 hours of work over 3 years, Polish concert pianist Slawomir Zubrzycki has created his own version of the viola organista. The initial inspiration came from Leonardo Da Vinci’s 15th century notebooks containing page after page of various inventions. The instrument is quite striking in appearance and plays magnificently. You can check out the debut performance here. 
    7. Julee Yoo is quite a talented illustrator combining iconography from Victorian, Korean and Japanese culture with bright bold color palettes. 
    8. Mark Twain’s little-known book Advice to Little Girls was written in 1865 with wonderful illustrations by Vladimir Radunsky. In this short story he encourages little girls to think independently as opposed to following rules and social cues. 
    9. Have fun with the quirky work of illustrator/ceramicist extra-ordinaire Amy Louise Worrall. 
    10. Richard Balzer has been collecting vintage moveable imagery for the past 40 years. And during the past 5 years, he’s been curating a virtual gallery of his collection; turning 19th century vovelles into 21st century GIFs.

     

  2. Bookbinder of the Month: Jan Sobota

    December 9, 2012 by Erin Fletcher

    Over the course of 10 years, Jan Sobota participated in four Helen Warren DeGolyer Triennial Competitions. Every three years the Bridwell Library on Southern Methodist University’s campus chooses a book from their collection to be rebound by an individual binder. Each participant offers a proposal binding for the chosen title in addition to an example of their work. The winner of the Helen Warren DeGolyer Award receives a commission to bind the selected book according to their design proposal.  Two other prizes are awarded for excellence in fine binding and design. 

    The first time Sobota entered this competition was in 2003, creating a proposal for Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. His design was given the Judge’s Distinction of Interpretation award:

    An example of his work submitted for the 2003 competition:

    This binding of Les Chansons de Bilitis by Pierre Loüys is translated from Greek and includes illustrations by G. Barbier engraved on wood by François Schmied. This edition was printed in Paris in 1922. A triple cover board binding structure bound in brown Harmatan goatskin for the top layer, gold leather for the middle and dark blue goatskin for the doublures with blue suede leather flyleaves. The same gold leather was used to create wrapped headbands, the top edge was gilt. 

    For the Fourth Helen Warren DeGolyer Exhibition in 2006, Sobota presented his proposal for Jorge Luis Borges’ Ficciones:

    Sobota proposed a triple cover board binding structure, to be covered in dark blue paper made of leather-maché, light blue French box calf (title in relief outlined in gold tooling) and batik suede pigskin. A brass plate on the spine engraved with the author’s name along with a brass clasp along the foredge engraved with the author’s portrait. The middle board would be covered with gold leather and doublures of batik suede pigskin. The flyleaves would be light blue paper of leather-maché. Double core leather-tooled headbands and silver multi-metallic gilt top edge.

    “The design depicts the ‘fictitious’ soul of the text and the illustrations, which the author also suggests in the title of the book”. The 1987 edition of Ficciones includes illustrations by Gabriela Aberastury, Julio Pagnao, Mirta Ripoll, Raúl Russo and Alicia Scavino.

    An example of Sobota’s work included in the 2006 submission was a binding of Jules Verne’s Le Tour Du Monde En Quatre-Vingts Jours:

    John Grave’s Goodbye to a River: A Narrative was chosen for the Fifth Helen Warren DeGolyer Competition in 2009. Here is Sobota’s proposal submission: 

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  • My name is Erin Fletcher, owner and bookbinder of Herringbone Bindery in Boston. Flash of the Hand is a space where I share my process and inspirations.
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