Tag: Book arts
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Suminagashi Workshop
We had a Saturdays at Todd suminagashi workshop today and it was a great success. We had a full class of participants who made a variety of marbled papers. Here of some photo highlights:
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Suminagashi
Suminagashi is a style of marbling from Japan and may be the earliest marbling technique. It involves floating ink on water in a tray and manipulating the ink to form patterns, before transferring the image to a sheet of paper. We will be hosting a suminagashi workshop at a Saturdays at Todd this month and…
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Happy Holidays!
To celebrate the holidays, we are highlighting a Christmas greeting made by Bruce Rogers in 1923 out of letterpress printer’s ornaments that is housed in the Department’s Teaching and Historical collection. As an homage, I made two holiday cards using printers ornaments, although they are digital greetings and were not printed.
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‘Twas the Night before Christmas
To celebrate the upcoming Christmas holiday, we are highlighting a small publication of A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement C. Moore, first published in 1837. The poem is better known by its first line, “‘Twas the bight before Christmas.” This version was published in 1921 and was designed by Bruce Rogers for the Atlantic…
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Get your zines!
One last post about MALA 6000. In addition to researching books in the Historical Collections, the students also made their own books in the form of zines, which are shown here. The assignment was to use an existing text and lay it out and illustrate it. The student used a simple format, with all the…
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The Baltimore Bibliophiles by Linda G. Hall, MALA 6000 Student
The images below are from a keepsake book printed for members of the Baltimore Bibliophiles in May of 1960. The coverboards are decorated with handmade marbled papers, made in England by Douglas Cockerell, the best known twentieth-century marbler. The pattern looks like the skin of a snake or a bird’s wing feathers. Marbling is a…
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The Danish Aesop by Sandra Flavin, MALA 6000 student
The Danish Aesop is a book of fables written by Aesop, a Greek fabulist. It is not known if Aesop actually existed, although the writings of Aristotle and Phaedrus say he was born around 620 BCE in Phrygia. Aesop’s fables have been translated into many languages, and in The Danish Aesop, the fables are re-told by R. Broby-Johansen, a Danish historian,…
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Bruce Rogers’s Utopia
This time, we are continuing our exploration of the work of the book designer, Bruce Rogers. In 1934, Rogers designed and published a translation of Thomas More’s Utopia for the Limited Editions Club of New York. For that, he printed 1500 signed and numbered copies. The next year, the book was accurately reproduced and issued…
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Bruce Rogers: An ornamental printer
This week, the book we’ve chosen is a celebration of the renowned book designer and typographer, Bruce Rogers (1870-1957). Rogers worked for publishing houses, such as Riverside Press and Mount Vernon Press, and is best known for his Centaur Type. This book by Frederick Warde was published in 1925 and offers an overview of Rogers…
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Course offering for spring 2023: Art History
An art history course next semester that will have an emphasis on book arts, printing, and letterpress is Northern Renaissance Art (ART 3860). Northern Renaissance Art looks at art in Germany, France, the Low Countries, and England from 1400-1600. This period in Europe saw the development of letterpress, intaglio, and relief printing, and was also…
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Course offerings for spring 2023: Book Arts and Letterpress
We have a number of book arts classes on offer for next semester. Kathleen O’Connell will be offering classes on Letterpress (ART 3770) and Book Arts (ART 3550 and ART 4110). ART 3770 Print Media: Letterpress (Tuesday and Thursday at 11:25 AM-2:25 PM) ART 3770 Print Media: Letterpress is taught by Kathleen O’Connell and is…
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Celebrating the Scroll
The “Book of the Week” for this week is in a different format. The codex is what we usually think of when we think of a book today; but books bound together on one edge, with pages that can be turned, were only invented about 2000 years ago. Before that, a book may have been…
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Book of the Week
This week, in honor of the Jewish High Holidays, and the beginning of the year 5783, the book we have chosen is Ben Shahn’s The Alphabet of Creation. Here, Shahn retells and illustrates a legend from the Sefer Ha-Zohar, a mystical text written in medieval Spain, that relates how each letter of the Hebrew alphabet…
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A Successful Marbling Workshop
We had a fun and productive Saturdays at Todd Marbling Workshop, with some great results. I hope we will have another workshop in the spring semester.
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Marbled papers in the MTSU Art and Design Historical and Teaching Collection.
Below are images of marbled papers from our historical collections. Examples range from the early eighteenth century to the mid twentieth century. Web sites with more information on identifying historical marble patterns: https://content.lib.washington.edu/dpweb/index.html https://content.lib.washington.edu/dpweb/patterns.html http://www.payhembury.com/Payhembury_Marbled_Papers/Patterns.html#grid https://marbleart.us/Examples.htm http://bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2010/11/marbled-paper-designs.html
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On the Third Floor of Todd Hall
The Department of Art and Design galleries on the second floor of Todd Hall get a lot of visitors. But we also have artworks on view on the third floor, which houses our Book Arts, Letterpress, and Printmaking studios. Examples of student works are on the walls and there are small exhibitions in cases across…
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Book and Print Arts Classes: ART 3770 Print Media: Letterpress (fall 2022)
ART 3770 Print Media: Letterpress is taught by Kathleen O’Connell and is an introduction to typesetting and printing. Students explore this media with a focus on craft and materials. During the course, students learn to operate a cylinder press; print using a broad range of printing techniques (historical to contemporary); identify the elements of typesetting; and…
MTSU Book and Printing Arts and History 