ABC of Bugs and Plants in a Northern Garden (2012)
Judy Fairclough Sgantas and Claire Van Vliet
Clamshell box, softcover, open spine, paper-tab-sewn binding. Box: H188 x W192 x D65 mm. Book: H167 x W171 x D35 mm. 27 f&gs, 1 folded pastedown at end. Edition of 120, of which this is #45. Acquired from Vamp & Tramp, 15 September 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artists’ permission.
Auparavant : Roman: Collection Voir Comme On Pense (1991)
Roland Sabatier
Jacketed softcover, exposed sewn & glued spine. H144 x W105 x D30 mm. 184 pages.Edition of 300. Acquired from Didier Lecointre et D. Drouet, 16 November 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Sabatier’s work follows in the tradition of the Lettrists — Isidore Isou, Maurice Lemaître and Gabriel Pomerand — whose works Johanna Drucker addresses in the chapter “The Book as Verbal Exploration” of The Century of Artists’ Books (2004). Although much shorter (10 pages), Lemaître’s Roman Hypergraphique (1950) is the direct precursor to the lengthier Auparavant. Drucker’s comments on Lemaître’s booklet apply easily to Sabatier’s tome:
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The Red Headed League: A Furlough Project (2012)
Michael Day and Lesley Guy, curators
Pamphlet, saddle-stitched, staples. 100gsm recycled stock, with abaca insert. H210 x W146 16 pages. An edition of 300, of which this is #253. Acquired from Furlough, 24 April 2024.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
The title of this artists’ pamphlet might entice Sherlock Holmes fans, who may avoid disappointment if they are sticklers enough to miss the hyphenated parting of the League’s hair. More likely, the title’s amusingly appropriate typography, the nod of the format and price toward the “democratic multiple”, and especially the quirky introduction will entice the collector of artists’ books. They will not be disappointed, but they will need their pipes and deerstalker hats.
Continue readingFirst, there was Tianshu or The Book from the Sky (1986-2012).
From a Visit to “Art for the People”, Xu Bing (Centro del Carme, Valencia, Spain, 2019)
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The Fall (1976)
Michelle Stuart
Saddlestitched with staples in landscape format, glossy paper. H x W mm. 28 pages. Acquired from Specific Object, 15 March 2024.
Photos of the work: Books On Books Collection.
The Fall is one of the earliest publications of Printed Matter, founded in 1976 by a group of individuals working in the arts (among them artist Sol LeWitt and critic Lucy Lippard).
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Why should an obscure poem like Stéphane Mallarmé’s groundbreaking Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira le Hasard: Poème (1897) have become the cornerstone of an art-industrial complex of literary, critical and artistic responses ranging from essays, books, edited collections, countless editions, and appropriations in the form of fine press livres d’artiste, book art and sculptures, films and theater, ballets and fado, musical compositions, digital programs and installations, and even pavement art?
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ABCing: Seeing the Alphabet Differently
Colleen (Ellis) Comerford (2010)
Board book, illustrated paper-on-board cover. H160 x W160 mm. 66 pages. Acquired from Powell’s Bookstore, 29 June 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.
A is for Axolotl: An Unusual Animal ABC (2022)
Catherine Macorol
Casebound laminated cover with dustjacket. H230 x W290 mm. 32 pages. Acquired from Saint Bookstore, 28 May 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Unfortunately climate change makes possible a sub-collection of abecedaries on the subject of endangered animals. Since Dick King-Smith and Quentin Blake’s Alphabeasts in 1990, there have been more than a dozen. Catherine Macorol’s is the most recent within the Books On Books Collection.
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Inscription: The Journal of Material Text, Issue 4 on Touch
Simon Morris, Gill Partington and Adam Smyth (eds.)
Cased perfect bound paperback, printed paper cover. 313 x 313 mm. 120 pages. ISSN: 2634-7210. Acquired from Information as Material, 29 November 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Different readers will come to different conclusions on whether Inscription #4 dedicated to the subject of touch evokes the level of tactility in Melville’s famous Chapter 94 “A Squeeze of the Hand”. But all can agree that they share a certain seminality. Like Herman Melville with his preliminaries to Moby Dick, the editors of Inscription lead their fourth issue with definitions and choice quotations on the subject of “touch”, as much a Leviathan subject as that of Melville’s novel. Where Melville merged scholarly apparatus with narrative fiction to create a novel literary work, Simon Morris, Gill Partington and Adam Smyth have merged photography, poetry, augmented reality and audio with academic and critical essays to create a novel form of scholarship.
Continue readingNow here’s a rare thing — a journal issue that requires a video to show the reader h0w to open it.
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