Book Review: The Book Art of Richard Minsky

The Book Art of Richard Minsky
Richard Minsky
George Braziller, Inc
2011

The Book Art of Richard Minsky, is an autobiographical overview of his life through a book-arts lens. He says that he decided to do this book following his exhibit at Yale in 2010 where they have a large collection of his work in the library's special collections department. Seeing a lifetime of his own work prompted him to put this book together. He explores his creative projects starting in 1957. He writes of his younger self, receiving a rotary printing press as a gift that year when he was only ten years old. That gift, and the legacy of his father's news service and his mother's activism, started him on a path of printing, activism, business savvy, and ultimately book art. He goes on to explore his responses to the major events of the times through his art, initially in the post-war era of the 1950s, then through the protests and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s, then the politics of the 1980s and 1990s, until the 9-11 attacks in 2001.

Minsky was hired to rebind an edition of "A History of Egyptian Mummies" in 1973 (the year I was born). Without any consultation with the book's owner, he used strips of muslin to wrap the book, rather than doing a traditional rebinding. His client loved it and it seems that interpretive bookbinding was born in his studio, that day. The following year, he established the Center for Book Arts in New York, the first center of its kind in the USA.

In this book, Minsky shows how his interests and passions expanded over the decades to include astrophysics, art, music, economics, technology, in addition to painting and bookbinding - studying all these subjects in various capacities - excelling as he went, and using all of it in his books at one time or another. His approach to art included techniques and materials not easily associated with books: rocks and sand, barbed wire, computer monitors, explosives, chains, fire, cars, and whatever else that he felt was demanded by the subject matter.

Clearly Richard Minsky has been paving a road for us. He continues to work as a bookbinder and book artist today, pushing the envelope whenever he can. There is no question that Minsky is a master and a pioneer in the world of bookarts. That he has taken the time to show us his work, compiled in this format with his background stories to expand the plot for us, is generous and rewarding for those of us working in book arts today.

Reviewed by Rhonda Miller, Sept 2014.

Book Review: Beautiful Bookbindings

Beautiful Bookbindings: A Thousand Years of the Bookbinder's Art
PJM Marks
The British Library and Oak Knoll Press, 2011

This is, as the title indicates, a collection of beautiful books from a very long tradition of bookbinding. The earliest book included is from the seventh century, and from there the collection continues along an ambitious timeline, finally reaching the early days of the twenty-first century in the last few pages.

The early books displayed in the first chapter, span about ten centuries so the result is a very brief snapshot of a very long period of history (exhibited over a mere 11 pages). The selections from this period are, indeed, beautiful and show primarily those books which fall into the Western tradition of bookbinding. There are some exceptions to this, with an example of a concertina from Korea (14th C) and an Indian pothi (15th C), like a palm-leaf structure.

The early books are my personal favourites, so I would prefer to see more in this chapter. The next five centuries each get their own chapter, starting with the Sixteenth Century and ending with the Twentieth Century. Each of these chapters has about 30 pages, thus permitting a better overall view of each period compared to the first chapter. Of course, there are far more books surviving from these recent centuries so it is understandable that they would be represented here in greater numbers.

Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder and it must have been very difficult to choose which bindings to include in this book; but, I think the selections are very well made and illustrate the various bookbinding traditions (albeit primarily Western traditions) very nicely. It would be even better to see more books from outside the Western tradition, but I do understand that any collection like this must have boundaries and cannot include everything. The collection is mostly codex format bindings in the English and German traditions with a sprinkle of Asian here and little American there. The collection focuses on the cover decorations used by bookbinders, not the actual binding structures. There is lots of tooling and painting and embroidering and inlaying. As it mentions in the text, the artists (i.e. the bookbinders) behind these amazing works of art, are mostly unknown and individual bookbinders were rarely credited.

The photographs in this book are flawless and there are many close-ups showing amazing details of painting and tooling and texture that can be very difficult to convey on smooth glossy paper. Wonderful detail is shown in a photo of a fabric-covered book (p. 53) where the weave of worn velvet can be seen, almost felt, beautifully intact on the face of the cover, slightly frayed in the hinge area by the spine - complete with a little stain here and there - and embellished with ornate clasps and painted metalwork.

Attention is also given to certain details such as clasps and fore-edge decoration. Various books with exceptional fore-edge decoration are examined in almost every chapter. This is a lovely detail to highlight in a book like this and it is fascinating to see it evolve over the centuries. Chapter 3 (Seventeenth Century), has several stunning examples of fore-edge clasps - another lovely detail on which to focus. Most of the examples are metal clasps, but there is also one example of an embroidered binding made for James II, which has fabric ties rather than metal clasps. As the collection moves forward in time, it is delightful to see how all these ornate bindings influence the trade bindings of the nineteenth century. There are several gorgeous examples of trade bindings in this book, mostly from London, showing the very pretty, colourful covers of the popular literature at the time.

I have enjoyed browsing and reading this book and admiring all the fabulous tomes presented therein. The selections in this collection are all beautiful, certainly, and I suspect that this is a good representation of the entire collection available at the British Library. The final chapter on Twentieth Century bindings showcases a few of the best design bindings of the past hundred years, all very traditional in spite of the experimentation that has been happening in the book arts in recent times; however, another hundred years (or so) must pass before someone can choose the bindings that best represent the current century.

Reviewed by Rhonda Miller, Feb 2013.