This interactive conference session, which was facilitated by Timothy Barrett, professor and director of the University of Iowa Center for the Book, focused on reconsidering the definitions of watermark and paper. After brief presentations by Cathleen A. Baker, paper historian and proprietor of the Legacy Press, Lisa Miles, graduate of the University of Iowa and Fulbright scholar, about examples that might serve to challenge the traditional definitions of watermark and paper, attendees engaged in a wide-ranging discussion about the nature of paper. Baker presented the examples of papyrus, pith paper, and tapa. Miles shared examples of daluang bark paper made in Indonesia, and amate bark paper made in Mexico. [Read more]
Friday, October 26. “Defining Collaborative Authorship in Book Arts,” Katharine DeLamater ✧ “Papermaking as a Socially Engaged Art Practice,” Drew Cameron ✧ “Survey of Modern Korean Print and Papermaking,” Steph Rue and Lars Kim
This session focused on identity within artistic practice and succeeded in delivering presentations that gave way to further thinking of ownership and appropriation. The placement of identity within arts/crafts works can be misconstrued based on the level of appropriation taken by artists/artisans relative to the participants of said work. Who gets the credit? Why does one person get the acknowledgement, but the ‘laborers’ none? [Read more]
Left: Mark is an Open Educational Resource card game centered on early modern printers’ marks. Logo by Amy Chen, founder of Human(ities) Game Lab. Right: A mobius strip from Emily Martin’s artist’s book what Desdemona Never Says, Naughty Dog Press, 2014.
Friday, October 26. “Teaching Materials: Book Arts, Card Games, & the Social Life of Early Modern Texts,” Margaret Sheppard ✧ “Youth Voices and Printing at the Phoenix Indian School,” E. Haven Hawley ✧ “Presence, Intimacy, and Rag Paper in 19th-Century America,” Jonathan Senchyne
Ms. Sheppard discussed the premise of books as inherently social objects and the promise of “doing rather than thinking” to better understand the social lives of book materials. She discussed empirical bibliographies (“the very act of turning the page can prompt reflection”), artist books (“performance rendered in print”) and card games (“adaptability, portability, collaboration”) as modalities for learning about the past as well as discussing our own “material moment” in the digital age. She showed examples such as openthresholds.org where tactility lies in the digital interface itself, opening new, oblique perspectives and modes of navigation. Her work around an open source educational resource—the card game MARK—prompted much interest and many questions. [Read more]
Katherine DeLamater, left, assists Ruth Lingen in couching a pigmented black sheet of paper onto Leonardo Drew plates filled with ‘magnum’ bits.
Friday, October 26. “Papermaking & Printmaking Collaborations”
Ruth Lingen introduced the audience to her decade-long work at Pace Paper—a satellite of Pace Editions and Pace Gallery in Brooklyn, New York—by showing examples of her collaborations with artists. To the amazement of the audience Lingen explained some of the paper and print requirements that constantly push the boundaries of artistic matrices. Shepard Fairey (perhaps best known for his Hope poster created for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign), the pop-artist Donald Baechler, painted pulp monoprints by Daniel Heidkamp, Leonardo Drew (sculptural prints on an enormous scale), Li Songsong’s dimensional work were discussed and explained during this lively plenary session. [Read more]
I will accompany my wife on a trip to Italy this February. We will spend time in Florence, Venice, Vicenza, and do some hiking in the Valley of the Paper Mills on Lake Garda where paper for the Venetian printers was historically made. [Read more]
I am a professor of English and scholar of 20th-Century drama, and am currently writing on Tristan Tzara’s typographical “Dance” interpellated into his play The Gas Heart (1923). In reading Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media (1964), I’ve found a potentially useful quotation attributed to Beatrice Warde, which McLuhan cites only as having come from a work called ALPHABET. The quotation—famous and often re-quoted, citing McLuhan, begins: “Do you wonder that I was late for the theatre that night when I tell you I saw two club-footed Egyptian A’s … walking off arm-in-arm with the unmistakable swagger of a music hall comedy team?” I believe Warde’s insights can shed light on Tzara’s work. [Read more]
Katherine Ruffin demonstrates printing on an iron hand press in conjunction with the Protest in Print exhibition at the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, November 7, 2017.
Saturday, October 27. “Why the Whole Book Matters: Making Books the Hard Way in 21st Century America,” Katherine Ruffin ✧ “Chasing the Ideal Book,” Carolee Campbell
The standing-room-only crowd of over fifty attendees learned about the bookmaking practices, personal histories, and artistic philosophies of two book artists: Katherine McCanless Ruffin who shares her passion of print and paper with her students at Wellesley College and Carolee Campbell who realizes her vision of the ideal book through thoughtful concept and high craft. [Read more]
Left, Tim Fay demonstrates the Linotype. Right, a brass Linotype mat. (Isabella Myers)
Friday, October 26 Hosted by Route 3 Press proprietor Tim Fay
Tim Fay welcomed us into his shop in Anamosa, IA where he prints the Wapsipinicon Almanac. He’s been producing this 160-page, letterpress-printed publication featuring essays, fiction, and reviews since 1988. Before we arrived, Fay was working on the 25th and final volume of the Almanac (published bi-annually in the 1990s). While he plans to continue printing under the Route 3 name, as he’s done since 1977, from here on he’ll focus on smaller projects. [Read more]
Student in type design in écal (Swiss), i’m looking for Hermann Zapf ‘s archives: especially high quality drawing/printing specimens/proofs of Melior typeface. Waiting forward to hear from you, Arnaud
