Handmade Books Research Articles

Kaip medžiaga medžiagą mėgdžiojo: istorinio dekoratyvinio popieriaus tyrinėjimai

Crossing the boundaries of any one discipline, the article provides an overview of research into historical decorated paper conducted by the author over the last several years. Examples of this seemingly very specific, ephemeral material, considered as an imitation of other materials, applied in bindings of printed books and manuscripts during the 18th and 19th centuries, are presented as anonymous artifacts of the past, strikingly characterised by their own materiality and thus involving also the researcher’s senses. Besides a historical overview of the main techniques of paper decoration in Europe, the place of this applied decorative element in the three-dimensional structure of the handmade book is also explored. The second part of the paper addresses the relevant problem of ornament as a plastic discourse, which has so far received less attention in semiotic research. Through a closer analysis of a several samples of decorated paper, questions about the semantic structure of the ornament and its effects are raised. Finally, when placed in the context of certain habits, needs and interests of eighteenth-century European society, decorated paper and its ornamental language emerge as a multilayered object with a culturally defined meaning.

Recreating Shibori Patterns for Designing Handmade Books

Recreating Shibori Patterns for Designing Handmade Books

Review: Giuliano da Sangallo and the Ruins of Rome

Review: <i>Giuliano da Sangallo and the Ruins of Rome</i>

Sergei Sigei and Aleksei Kruchenykh: Visual Poetry in the Russian Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde

One of the characteristic features of the Russian Avant-garde is the close connection between painting and poetry. Futurist poets (Vladimir Maiakovskii, Aleksei Kruchenykh) were educated as artists, their books were illustrated by the famous painters of their time (Mikhail Larionov, Nataliia Goncharova). Some of the Futurists designed their own books and did all kinds of typographical experiments. One of the most productive writers, designers, editors and publishers of such books was Aleksei Kruchenykh (1886–1968), who only recently has been given honour where it is due. One of his admirers is the Neo-avant-garde poet-artist Sergei Sigei (1947–2014), who was the first to publish some of Kruchenykh’s hitherto unpublished works and in many respects repeated, changed, and further developed his forerunner’s experiments with typographical signs and book production. Some of Sigei’s unique handmade books are dedicated to Kruchenykh. Sigei, the leader of the group of the ‘transfurists’ (Ry Nikonova, Boris Konstriktor, A. Nik, Vladimir Erl’) may be considered the main representative of the Russian Neo-avant-garde.

Reflections on Anthrobombing: Experiments in Performing, Publishing and Becoming with (Other) Publics

Abstract This article is based on a two-year collaborative research program on public anthropology in Greece focused on narrative experimentation with stand-up comedy and alternative publishing with handmade books, or cartoneras. Viewing in anthropology a powerful tool to dismantle prevalent commonsense about nationalism, gender norms and capitalist progress, we “bombed” time-spaces in which academic discourse is not usually present. The embodied experience of performing and publishing in an “anthropological way” outside of spaces of academic communication led to insights about the potential of humor, multimodal forms and performance for anthropology, new questions about “who anthropology is for” and “what makes knowledge anthropological”, and an emergent concern for becoming-with, rather than just bombing, publics.

Meeting grounds

This article considers issues raised while working at the intersection of anthropology and visual art in Everglades National Park and during the months that followed. Based on a May 2019 residency as an AIRIE (Artist in Residence in Everglades) fellow, the material expression of my efforts consists of volumes of visual fieldnotes and what I call anthro-artists’ books. For this article I take an intimate route, one that foregrounds the experience of being in a place and attempting work at disciplinary intersections. Set against a backdrop of theoretical issues in both anthropology and art as well as overarching social, cultural, ecological, and political concerns of the region, the resulting journals and handmade books are meant to create an emotional, emplaced, and bodily experience for the people who engage with them.

Religious and cultural space of Chasovennye Old Believers in illustrations to their new-printed books

Literacy is a basic element of Old Belief culture. Alongside with early printed books being retained and reproduced, script books and manuscripts have always been an integral part of the movement. To a large extent, the tradition was maintained by the Chasovennye (“chapel goers”, a non-priestly faction among Old Believers), who strictly adhered to the rule of never publishing their literature in “external” printing houses. In Yenisei Siberia, where they owned no printing housess, skete scriptoria were used as workshops for manuscripts to be hand-copied, illustrated and bound, thus producing handmade books. However, the ongoing process of creating the literature they required and the growing social demand for it provided the impetus for the developing soglasie (accord) to reconsider a number of doctrinal attitudes and principles and to start producing their own books, first hand-written and then printed in semi-uncial script (poluustav), in printing houses located in cities. These new-printed books were the phenomenon of the contemporary culture of the Chasovennye Old Believers in Krasnoyarsk region, Tuva and other regions of the country and in the world.&#x0D; Along with the textual content of the books, of great interest is the tradition of illustrating them, inseparably linking the tradition of in designing Old Believers’ printed books and manuscripts, to the innovative approach manifested in the apparent influence imposed by Russian and foreign (predominantly American) art with which contemporary skete indigenes are well acquainted. The evident traces of such influence are indicative of the general character of the group’s contemporary culture evolving. &#x0D; Of particular interest are the ways of portraying characters, objects, and loci of religious and cultural space of this relatively closed group. If considered from a comprehensive perspective, they represent visual self-reflection of their church. Their interaction with the text, on the one hand, allows implementing the doctrine, and on the other hand, manifests the logic of contemporary development of skete art. Thus it becomes possible to trace the development of both the artist’s mindset and that of the addressee of the artist’s works, that is members of the of Chasovennye accord.

Hilma af Klint and the Need for Historical Revision

Hilma af Klint and the Need for Historical Revision

A different perspective on the brain

Five contemporary artists, who collaborated with scientists to explore current biological research, showcased their works as part of the Brilliant Brains exhibition at the Cambridge Science Festival (Cambridge, UK), whose theme was “making sense of the brain”. Intended originally for a neutral gallery environment, the selection and display were rethought for an alternative space—where bookshelves and furniture evoked an old-fashioned library—late in the curatorial process. This was an appropriate setting for the ingenious thought-provoking works resulting from the five artist–scientist pairings, three of which engaged directly with human consciousness and are reviewed here. “I started to see the brain as a representation of an inner space; vastly complex and uncharted as a field of exploration”, says artist Sarah Harley. Her exhibited works result from collaboration with Srivas Chennu (University of Cambridge, UK), whose research into alterations in brain activity in minimally conscious states has shown how EEG can be used to characterise brain networks, measure cognition, and detect awareness in patients in vegetative states. Harley's use of textiles in conjunction with printmaking adds a domestic familiarity and intimacy to her cloud-shaped etchings and monoprints of brains. Various 3D mixed-media works are displayed on crocheted doilies, whose scalloped forms and intricately linked threads evoke the brain's gross anatomy and its myriad interconnected neurons. The search for your spark, a lidded glass jar filled with water, represents the sense of separation and unreachability of patients in vegetative states. White threads, some tipped with gold leaf, float above a white porcelain head submerged at the bottom of the jar. The entangled threads and their gold tips refer respectively to cerebral neurons and neural transmission. “Floating flecks of gold leaf refer to the urge to shake a person to wake them or bring them into a conscious state”, Harley explains. “I am particularly interested in the complex dynamics between body and mind, perception, and knowledge”, says artist Charlotte Morrison. Her exhibited works were inspired by her collaboration with Madeline Lancaster (Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK), who grows in vitro 3D tissues called cerebral organoids (so-called mini-brains). Generated from human pluripotent stem cells, they are used in studying the stages of human brain development microscopically. Morrison's artwork Making Brains shadows Lancaster's methodology in two stages. First, she creates 3D disks by building up layers of glue and ink on Perspex. Then, using a rectangular light-impermeable template with four circular openings, she positions her “glue brains” on sheets of light-sensitive paper. By exposing the Perspex disks to light, she captures their inner structures as cyanotype prints. Works created by Sally Stenton in collaboration with neuroscientist Marty Fiati (Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK) connect both with our perception of places and of the movement between them. The Forensic Corridor, displayed horizontally across three shelves of adjacent bookcases, presents her “walk from art to science and back again”. Strapping a smartphone to her belt, she recorded a video of her return journey between the Cambridge School of Art and the Faculty of Science and Technology building at Anglia Ruskin University. Using two facing projectors, flickering footage of her outbound walk was projected from left to right on the left-hand shelf, and her return footage was projected from right to left on the right-hand one. The intermediary shelf was filled with an eclectic selection of appropriately titled books, chosen by the artist and the scientist, including The Mind at Night, Fleeting Memories, Neurophysiology of Vision, and Memory, Aging and The Brain. Art theory titles were also borrowed from the Ruskin Gallery. Displayed in this library setting, the artist's walk suggests that the “two cultures” of art and science famously described by C P Snow are easily bridged, at least in this university town. Trying to read your thoughts, Harley's tiny handmade book provides the final word in this intriguing exhibition. It was made by stitching blank white embossed pages between endpapers and covers, printed with etched fragments of grey doilies, and embroidering “your beautiful brain”' in red thread on its front cover. When fanned open, the contours embossed onto its pages evoke convoluted folds in sections of cerebral cortex, while their blank whiteness hints at what is still unknown about the brain and its function. It's a mute but eloquent comment on the adjacent bookshelves, crammed with research findings and scholarly conjecture on human consciousness, mind, and matter. Brilliant Brains: seeing science through art CB2 Restaurant Café, Cambridge, UK, March 12–18, 2018, during the Cambridge Science Festival Brilliant Brains: seeing science through art CB2 Restaurant Café, Cambridge, UK, March 12–18, 2018, during the Cambridge Science Festival

Straight Pins, Gauze, and Linotypes: The Cuban Post-Soviet Artists’ Book

Matanzas’s Ediciones Vigía and Holguin’s Ediciones Cuadernos Papiro construct an arc from the revolutionary 1960s and its investment in collective and communal goods, to the increasingly privatized 1990s and 2000s through their materials and procedures, as well as through their engagement with the figure of the archive. I contend that the books printed by Ediciones Vigía and Ediciones Cuadernos Papiro are both artists’ books – that is, books that are art unto themselves – and books as ‘archives’. Here, I understand the ‘book’ as ‘archive’ in a similar fashion as art historian Hal Foster interprets ‘archival art’: that is, art, in this case book art, that ‘draws on informal archives but produces them as well’ in an effort ‘to make historical information, often lost or displaced, physically present’. The hand-made books of Ediciones Vigía and Ediciones Cuadernos Papiro project a new figure of the reader and occupy social spaces that are radically different from their predecessors. Where Cuban institutional archives have left incomplete territories of the Revolutionary-era and pre-Revolutionary book, the 1990s and 2000s ‘archival book’ incarnated in Ediciones Vigía and Cuadernos Papiro has come to occupy these voids in a compensatory fashion as an ‘archival’ product.

Twelve Thoughts for Aspiring Do-It-Yourself Publishers

WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 33 Chapbook: A handmade book of up to about forty pages, typically saddle-stitched (stapled at its spine). Chapbooks date back to the sixteenth century, as printed books first became affordable in Europe. 1 – All publishing is do-it-yourself publishing . Some publishers just do it better than others. 2 – Instructions for making a simple chapbook : print content on paper, fold paper in half, bind papers together. Adjust variables as desired. Repeat. 3 – Resources for the DIY publisher often hide in unexpected places. Search out copiers , printers, paper that can be repurposed. One friend pays a church to use its copier. Another borrows her stapler from a school library. InDesign is great, but some of my favorite chapbooks were produced with refurbished typewriters. 4 – Instructions for making a better chapbook : make every decision with intentionality . Consider your headings, your margins. Rub the paper over your cheek, practice turning pages. Experiment. Decide if a sans serif font better showcases your content. DIY publishing should liberate you to do more—to be in absolute control of book production—rather than limit you to do less. 5 – Simple elegance is better than halfachieved complexity. Details make the difference . Bind your chapbooks with local string. Recycle unusual paper to make endsheets. Invent a name for your publishing house. The Internet is overflowing with resources for the DIY publisher—use it for ideas, instructions, conversation, and promotion. 6 – Typographical errors are proof of human handiwork. Even the Bible has them. You can do better. 7 – The contemporary book is not confined by ink and paper. Still, the book as object will endure for its value as a physical object. The physical book remains an important legitimizer for the writer, their private (invisible) work made public, and a practical necessity in areas where access to technology is limited. 8 – The value of the physical book comes from its physicality, from the evocation of its time and origin. The chapbook should be a work of art. Limit and number your edition. Sign them. 9 – Ninety percent of books were more beautiful as trees. Make beautiful books. Plant a tree. 10 – Whitman sold his own books from his estate in New Jersey. Joyce’s friends at the Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Co. published chapbooks of his poetry. The Russian Futurists published their work on surplus wallpaper to save money. 11 – There is no innovation without translations . The world’s library deserves Gertrude Stein in Amharic, George Orwell in Kirundi, Adonis in Burmese, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in Isthmus Zapotec. 12 – Publishing in the twenty-first century does not belong to New York or London. It doesn’t belong to the West. Publishing in the twenty-first century belongs to those who will reinvent it. Los Angeles Thoughts for Aspiring Do-It-Yourself Publishers by David Shook In countries like Ethiopia without literary publishing houses, the writer’s opportunity to engage with a wider audience is often dependent on her own production and distribution of books. After conversing with a writer friend in Bujumbura about the importance of do-it-yourself publishing, I compiled a few thoughts on the subject based on my own experience, both from publishing chapbooks and from running the not-for-profit publishing house Phoneme Media. David Shook is a poet, filmmaker, and translator in Los Angeles. His debut collection, Our Obsidian Tongues, long-listed for the 2013 Dylan Thomas Prize, is available from Eyewear Publishing. Find him online at davidshook.net. 12 ...

Twelve Thoughts for Aspiring Do-It-Yourself Publishers

WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 33 Chapbook: A handmade book of up to about forty pages, typically saddle-stitched (stapled at its spine). Chapbooks date back to the sixteenth century, as printed books first became affordable in Europe. 1 – All publishing is do-it-yourself publishing . Some publishers just do it better than others. 2 – Instructions for making a simple chapbook : print content on paper, fold paper in half, bind papers together. Adjust variables as desired. Repeat. 3 – Resources for the DIY publisher often hide in unexpected places. Search out copiers , printers, paper that can be repurposed. One friend pays a church to use its copier. Another borrows her stapler from a school library. InDesign is great, but some of my favorite chapbooks were produced with refurbished typewriters. 4 – Instructions for making a better chapbook : make every decision with intentionality . Consider your headings, your margins. Rub the paper over your cheek, practice turning pages. Experiment. Decide if a sans serif font better showcases your content. DIY publishing should liberate you to do more—to be in absolute control of book production—rather than limit you to do less. 5 – Simple elegance is better than halfachieved complexity. Details make the difference . Bind your chapbooks with local string. Recycle unusual paper to make endsheets. Invent a name for your publishing house. The Internet is overflowing with resources for the DIY publisher—use it for ideas, instructions, conversation, and promotion. 6 – Typographical errors are proof of human handiwork. Even the Bible has them. You can do better. 7 – The contemporary book is not confined by ink and paper. Still, the book as object will endure for its value as a physical object. The physical book remains an important legitimizer for the writer, their private (invisible) work made public, and a practical necessity in areas where access to technology is limited. 8 – The value of the physical book comes from its physicality, from the evocation of its time and origin. The chapbook should be a work of art. Limit and number your edition. Sign them. 9 – Ninety percent of books were more beautiful as trees. Make beautiful books. Plant a tree. 10 – Whitman sold his own books from his estate in New Jersey. Joyce’s friends at the Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Co. published chapbooks of his poetry. The Russian Futurists published their work on surplus wallpaper to save money. 11 – There is no innovation without translations . The world’s library deserves Gertrude Stein in Amharic, George Orwell in Kirundi, Adonis in Burmese, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in Isthmus Zapotec. 12 – Publishing in the twenty-first century does not belong to New York or London. It doesn’t belong to the West. Publishing in the twenty-first century belongs to those who will reinvent it. Los Angeles Thoughts for Aspiring Do-It-Yourself Publishers by David Shook In countries like Ethiopia without literary publishing houses, the writer’s opportunity to engage with a wider audience is often dependent on her own production and distribution of books. After conversing with a writer friend in Bujumbura about the importance of do-it-yourself publishing, I compiled a few thoughts on the subject based on my own experience, both from publishing chapbooks and from running the not-for-profit publishing house Phoneme Media. David Shook is a poet, filmmaker, and translator in Los Angeles. His debut collection, Our Obsidian Tongues, long-listed for the 2013 Dylan Thomas Prize, is available from Eyewear Publishing. Find him online at davidshook.net. 12 ...

Фрагментация жизни: проза Павла Улитина и смена парадигмы автобиографического письма 1950-1970-х годов

This paper is focused on the works of the lesser known Russian avant-guard writer Pavel Ulitin (1918-1986) – perhaps the most radical author of Russian prose of the second half of the 20 th century. Ulitin’s hand-made books could be described as collages of photographs, records of Moscow intellectuals’ conversations, autobiographical reflections, and prose poetry; moreover, he included passages in English, German, and French in his texts and used different pseudonyms. His ‘style of hidden plot’ can be found in the experiments of German Dadaism and ‘cut-up technique’ elaborated by William S. Burroughs and Bryon Gysin in the late 50s in Paris. However, Ulitin invented his aesthetic method several years before Burroughs and Gysin, and strived to represent the experience of the Gulag and the failure of utopian projects of the 20 th century. He considered any consistent historical and biographical narrative as a form of oblivion of unique personal existence. Thus he seems to be one of the early postmodernists in the European literatures and a predecessor of the experiments of autobiographical writing.

Teaching Artists and the Craft of Handmade Books

ABSTRACTThe craft of handmade books examined as the site of collaborations around art and literacy.

Art against Dictatorship: Making and Exporting Arpilleras under Pinochet

During the last two decades, cultural studies as well as gender studies have focused on the artistic production of civil society during authoritarian regimes in Latin America. From murals to street performances and handmade books sold in the streets, the work of artists has brought a deep awareness of creativity in censored societies. The arpilleras are undoubtedly one of the most striking art forms to emerge during the Pinochet regime.Jacqueline Adams has written an important contribution to literature concerning the arpilleras of Chile. Her work and her tone are strictly sociological. She provides detailed accounts of the way the arpilleras were made and then exported, narrating their place in the world of the seller and the buyer. Adams also includes oral testimony from the women who made the arpilleras as well as these women's first instructors. Her contribution in this book resides in the clear documentation of the arpillera as a historical product, one with particular significance for human rights from an artistic perspective.However, Adams's writing fails to demonstrate several of the emotional elements so present in the worlds of the women who make the arpilleras. We experience these women as makers of the art and yet never delve into their individual lives or the significance of grief to this particular art form. The voice of the sociologist prevails in this book, and one is left to wonder and speculate upon this art form's relationship to memory as well as the relationship between the arpilleras' producers and receivers.Another important element missing from this book is the aesthetic nature of the arpillera. Adams mentions that they are rather uniform, that they are the same size and often depict a sky. The description of the arpillera makes the art form almost synonymous with uniformity. As a researcher and author of two book-length studies on the arpillera, however, I disagree on this point. I believe that despite some repeated patterns, each arpillera is uniquely individual, strongly developing an aesthetic that begins with a sense of creative vibrancy.It is also unfortunate that the book has not one single image in color. Of course, this is not an art book but a sociological documentation of the movement. Nevertheless, the essence of the arpilleras remains their poignant artistic vision, in which the strong elements of color and composition are essential to the work itself.While the book lacks an aesthetic definition of this art form, failing to address its humanity and the therapeutic aspect of its creation, Adams's study is a significant sociological analysis of the arpilleras. Students and scholars interested in Latin American history and gender studies will find this book particularly useful and interesting. Adams contributes to the study of art against the Pinochet dictatorship, making this book an additional asset to the extensive field of research on arpilleras.

Julia Miller. Books Will Speak Plain: A Handbook for Identifying and Describing Historical Bindings. Ann Arbor, Mich.: The Legacy Press, 2010. xv, 510p. ISBN 978-0-9797974-3-9. $80.00

Part of what makes Books Will Speak Plain unique in the field of bookbinding history is that it approaches the topic from a conservation standpoint rather than a curatorial one. Julia Miller has worked in the field of book conservation for more than 30 years, including ten at the University of Michigan Library, and her experience as a conservator is evident in this work.Miller offers a history of the handmade book and its distinguishing characteristics, but her stated objective is ultimately preservation of, and access to, these items in library collections. In the introduction, she states that the purpose . . .

The book objects: writing and performance

It does not take many steps for book to transform from predicate to subject, or for object to change from noun to verb. In this article I discuss the book as concept and as object, drawing on the history of the book, and contemporary discourse and practice, to suggest how books engage us as members of society and as individual practitioners. The article draws on Deleuze and Guattari's reconceptualization of the book as plateau, and as assemblages of strata, working rhizomatically rather than programmatically. It draws too on Foucault's reclamation of the book as experience and experiment rather than knowledge-object to suggest ways of encountering the self and the world in the act of writing. Perhaps not surprisingly, I reject the death of the book scenario, and instead offer an expanded notion of the book as that which can lend itself to performative actualizations, to the magic of the fetish object, and to the work of thought itself: the book as cognitive event; the book as ideas machine. To exemplify these notions, I discuss some recent moves in Australia to explore handmade books that operate not only as art objects, but as research products too, and also suggest how digital books offer alternatives to the conventional performances of identity, for writers and readers.

A List of Books About a Parent in Prison

Brisson, Pat. Mama Loves Me From Away. Laurie Caple, illustrator. Honesdale, PA: Boyds Mills Press, 2004. 32 pp., $15.95. Ages 7 years and up. Sugar misses her mother and the stories her mother would share with her. She misses her mother so much that it makes her grandmother’s stories less compelling. Sugar shares her mother’s birthday and makes her a card to take when she and her grandmother make their weekly trip to visit. Sugar is surprised when her mother presents her a handmade book of seven stories with illustrations, one for each day. She tells Sugar to read every night at 8 and she will think of Sugar then so that they can to be ‘‘together.’’

Practicing For Print: The Hale Children's Manuscript Libraries

As a home amusement and a form of literary apprenticeship, two generations of children in the same elite Boston family created their own lending libraries of hand-made books. The institutional procedures the Hale children invented for their libraries, and the contents of the books they illustrated and wrote, offer astute commentary on adult literary practices, and provide a rare vantage onto children's own attitudes towards books and reading. The Hale libraries give evidence not only of how books socialize child readers, but also of the many ways in which print culture can be modified and re-imagined by children's play.

Articulate Activism: Artists' Books Take Issues

We are familiar with the informative nature of books, as well as the beauty of many handmade books. We may be less familiar with artists' books, which are different from those that are only beautifully bound or those that are collections of an artist's work. Artists' books are themselves artworks.