mmm.... coffee.....

honk if you love the truth & please stop watching tv while you're driving

i upgraded my flickr account because i keep taking all these photos of things (especially books at work) and not getting around to showing them here because, well, for one, they're not things that i've made & two, i feel like i need to have something clever to say when i post.  it won't be taking the place of this journal because it will mostly contain different photos - like photos of pamphlets advertising Hires Root Beer.  but it will also have some repeats like this wonderful little edward gorey book:

yes, that is indeed a tiny edward gorey signature!  how fabulous is that?  edward gorey's books have definitely had a huge influence on me, i blame him for my insistance on drawing everything itty bitty & buying .005 micron pens.  i used to draw everything with thin little rapidograph pens & have been thinking about returning to that again... 

at work right now i'm surveying the small books section of the Harris Collection of American poetry & plays.  to be a small book you have to be under 3" tall, but anything else goes!  these are leather books, cloth books, pamphlets, accordians, scrolls, matchbooks, poetry, music, psalms, primers...

i heard someone say the mind keeps wandering

this massive thing was found sitting in a puddle...

it was housed in an equally extravangant wood box covered in purple leather & lined with gold satin which took all the damage & protected the item quite well.  it weighs upwards of 100lbs & i can't quite figure out why!  sure, the velvet cover has enameled metal bosses & a giant cross in the middle, but whatever the cover is made out of seems to weigh an extraordinary amout... inside it is a four-flap containing chromo-lithograph plates of the mosaics in the Basilica San Marco, Venice.

it's breathtaking & i hope we send out the box to be repaired.

why do you need my wife?

one small part of my job at the library is disaster recovery.  luckily the only type of disaster i've had to deal with is water damage caused by the HVAC system leaking, but sadly that can be often in such an old building.  commonly i find things that were once wet & now just stained, but today 1N sprung a leak & some of the archives absorbed it. 



[more photos on flickr]

in case you didn't notice, i bought a new camera this weekend.  i went for another canon because i liked mine so very much: powershot SD630 digital elph with 6 mega pixels.  i could have gotten one slightly cheaper, but it wasn't as beautiful & i think $40 isn't too much to pay for good design.  i was wise & opted for the extra warranty that covers the mysterious "impact damage" that deprived me of my previous camera.

now we have some catching up to do!

i tried to laugh about it, hiding the tears in my eyes

this is what my afternoons have been filled with at work; a collection of early printed works dating back to the beginning of the 16th century.  i've been handling prayer books, bibles, testaments, commentaries on such things & the occasional play or poem.  unfortunately i can't read greek, latin or german, but my interest in them is more the book as an object rather than the content.

pictured above is the suede-bound "Locorum Communium Christianae Religionis" from 1609  that had been languishing for many years inside an acidic enclosure.  no matter how many times i unwrap a book & find it in such a state, i am still startled!  although it looks like mold, it's actually covered in bloom (or spue) which, as i understand it, is the oils in the leather exuding back out & crystalizing.  this may be really boring to you, but i am such a dork about books & past conservation treatments.  i learned pretty quickly from working in libraries that over the years many awful things have been done to book when people thought they were saving them, it's only 50 years later that the damage is visible.

there's no 'i' in team, there's a 'me' though, if you jumble it all up

what better way to cheer up than with piles?  a new pile of artists' books wanting boxes, a pile of miniature maps getting four-flaps, a pile of covers awaiting corner rounding, a pile of manuscripts that will be phase boxed and another pile of miniature maps already in their new enclosures.

(i should've moved the trash can before taking those photos, but when i tried re-shooting them it just wasn't the same)  i'm working on items from the Ward Library collection this week: i was re-housing those little travel maps from the 1800's & i went into the stacks to see if there were more.  figured i might as well spruce up the whole bunch & enjoy a little feeling of accomplishment, but when i went a-looking i found, besides more maps, mold!  surprised?  you shouldn't be.  there isn't much i can do for the items since they'd already dried, all stained & wrinkled, but i can give them fancy new wrappers & toss out the old acidic ones!

my biggest problem is I've been cursed with the ability to do the math

a morning ritual, when there is time for it.  i managed to make time this morning & still arrive at work when i'm supposed to, but then i remembered spilling the contents of my messenger bag on the floor of my bedroom last night...  (someone wasn't very careful when they scooped everything back in at 8:15am) i did manage to grab my wallet, but my swipe card was missing.  sigh.  there i am, 8:30 in the god damn morning, outside the library, unable to get in.

so much for being on time for a change.  i am even dressed well in this sweet sweater that i scored at H&M, but no amount of nice clothing is going to make me a morning person.  at least it wasn't raining.
i am flustered today - i am feeling tired & cranky & a little bit sad (i might blame it on PMS, but you may not.)  i thought my sister & jo & daveeed & his girlfriend were going to Shelter Island this weekend, but they went last weekend.  man.  i wasn't doing much of anything last weekend, i could've gone!  i didn't realize how much i wanted to go until now, shelter island is a place of mixed emotions.  it is a place i need to return to, i haven't been back since we packed up the house after my freshman year of college.  i was supposed to go there this summer with the ex, we had planned to go away together (but that was before i found out about the cheating & that they were living together)

map of Long Island circa 1889
uh, anyway, back to reminiscing about Shelter Island!  i might've mentioned it before because spring in Rhode Island always reminds me of it.  we had a house out there all through my childhood, we'd spend the weekends there in the spring & fall, rent it out during the summer.  it's a wonderful place of crickets, bike rides, swimming, exploring, playing kick-it, making puzzles, buying flipflops & waterguns at the dollar store, walking around the Heights & the bridal path, ferry rides, breakfast at the Chequit...  many of my memories are smells: honesuckle all around the property edge, a lilac bush the size of a tree, the andromeda bush swarming with bees, a damp basement with a pingpong table, attic of old toys & dead wasps, and my dad's Hudson in the musty garage...

i hope to someday have someone special of my own to take a trip to Shelter Island with.  someone mature & emotionally capable of planning a little weekend away so i could share my memories with them.  it's not the exactly same thing, but, hey, i bet Art would go with me! 

i been Norman Mailered, Maxwell Taylored

we had an open-house event for departing seniors at the john hay library this week.  they were invited to come in & see some incredible items in the collection, they were even allowed to handle a few things!  very popular was, of course, the three books bound in human skin.  the lighting is really terrible & most items were under glass so my photos are quite awful, but below is the book of Vesalius anatomy drawings & Dance of Death, a tiny medieval morality play, both bound in human flesh.  aside from telling people about the practice of using human skin for bookbinding, i also turned pages of one volume of Audubon's double elephant folio of the birds of america.  i can answer quite a few questions about that now, too...

there was also the manuscript for 1984 where Orwell wrote "big brother is watching you" (above), the first folio of shakespeare, a handwritten Lovecraft manuscript, Nuremberg bible, early needlepoint of Brown University (above), quite a few interesting aritist's books, a sweet little edition of In Praise of Omar by John Hay:

and this incredible Kammavaca written in burmese script in the pali language, it's made of laquered palm leaves with bejeweled wood covers & wrapped in cloth.  i had never seen anything like this before and, being a visual person, it completely overshadowed everything else in the room for me.  a student came by who could read it & put it in the right direction & order for us, but i believe it is still upside down in my photos.  i could just stare at this for hours:

and in my leaves - now shed & gone - the linnet lodged

i knew there was still a bookbinder here somewhere!  it's the first thing i list on my business card, but i don't often make books any more - my days are filled with boxmaking & my nights with sewing.  i have been doing a little teaching lately & was also inspired by my machine quilting to make this.  it's a little present for the person who is patiently waiting for me to decide when the orange & green quilt in finished.

the cover is drawn in pencil, scanned, then printed onto the bookcloth with an archival ink printer.  the cloth is iris from talas & the sewing is done with dmc cotton pearl embroidery thread, i don't remember what the paper is - i found it in my stash.  the binding is based on the traditional sewn-to-spine photo album technique, but with a bizaare variation that exists only in my brain.  you can see some of the insane sewing peeking between the signatures in the 2nd photo 2nd row.  i am quite enamored of it & will definitely be making more in this style.  huh, that's rare, i usually don't feel like i want to duplicate my books, mostly i just like the one by itself & leave it at that!  so that is what i channeled this week's energy into.  i stayed up wicked late last night sewing that (twice) because, as teresa said, sometimes when you get an idea you have no choice but to do it! 
  i might be alone in this, but i'm very excited about the possibility of being snowed in all weekend.  of course my landlord will be out of town so we'll have to shovel the drive!  it's been such a non-winter this year and  i appreciate the lower heat bills, but i do love the snow.  it's the 7 degrees days & frozen pipes i can do without.

coin-operated boy

i enjoyed myself way too much at work today!  this is what happens when i'm left alone, i think of exciting ways to challenge myself.  yes.  i know.  i've said it before: i'm a huge bookbinding dork.  they gave me this tiny little artist's book with a little scroll & asked me to make some sort of box thing that was large enough to not get lost on the shelf.  yeah, i couldn't done a simple & ugly foam insert in a phase box, but what fun would that be?  instead i made a clamshell box...

and built a box in it!  i made walls around the book & then cut a roof to fit .  it's hard to describe...  the picture on the right is of the uncovered tray so any of you bookbinders out there can try to figure it out for yourself.  it was wicked fun to do, and didn't take me much longer than just making a regular clamshell.  well, except for the wrong cut i made & then wasted time trying to decide how to hide it.

i haven't said it in a while so here it is again: I Love My Job!

p.s. the little book is Four Views of Kealakekua Bay by Peter & Donna Thomas, Santa Cruz:1998

when she was good she was very very good

  have i mentioned how much i love my new job?  this is a stack of the simple phase boxes i have been making.  when that board shear arrives (yes, when, not if, i'm optimistic) i will be making much fancier clamshell boxes.  the photo to the right is of some moldy books from the Lownes Science Collection.  it has fun things like Husbandry (recipes for mead!) and Midwifery (gross flayed cadaver illustrations)  delicious. 
  i'm going away for a few days to where i hear they have such things as "Daylight" and "Warmth" and get to joke about Nor'easters.  yeah, hah hah, it's a regular ol' nor'easter.  no, wait, it actually is.  so to entertain all you knitters while i'm gone here is a sweet little book i made a tuxedo case for...