Goings on in The Book Arts Workshop!!

There have been a lot of things
going on recently in the Book Arts Workshop.

Artist Angela Lorenz visited the Book Arts
Workshop and presented her work to Esme
Thompson's Collage class.

In the fall, we went on an automnal letterpress excursion to two fabulous 
shops in Vermont-Heather Hale's and Kelly McMahon's. 
Heather showed us how her Heidelberg press works.

Kate Emlen's Drawing 1 Class came in to combine some
letterpress printing with their drawings.

This student is pretty happy with the poster she just made.

She was even happier with
 this version!

Lots of red in this holiday card.

Alex Halasz's History of the Book class has been working in the studios producing a group book with the theme of word play.

We had a holiday card-printing extravaganza that resulted in more happy printers!

Some amazing ornaments found in our shop.

Here is one of the student's type set for the Word Play book. Can you see the shape her type forms?

Two pages of the class book on the press ready to print.

Another page spread from the History of the Book Word Play class book.

A student quickly printing with our "new" Golding
Official Platen Press.

Posters from Hatch Show Print and Yee-Haw Industries on display for the Book Arts
Talk with Snacks about Sarah Smith's time at these two venerable letterpress
shops in Tennessee.

Kresge Physical Sciences Library hosted a
Geeky Valentine workshop in the
Book Arts Workshop.

Preparations for a Winter Carnival
poster-printing extravaganza.

The first proof pulled off the

Winter Carnival Poster on the

Washington Hand Press outside 

the Book Arts Workshop.

                                    A finished poster printed by a happy Carnivaler.

Written by Sarah M. Smith

Welcome Sara!

The library has a history of interaction with students from the Center for Cartoon Studies, which is not surprising since it is located just over the Connecticut River in White River Junction, Vermont. Every year a new group of talented and creative students arrive to attend classes. Currently we have a graduate from this program working full time in our department and the Library has hired a number of graduates over the years.

Two years ago we hosted a small workshop for one of the Cartoon Studies classes and taught some basic bookbinding techniques. More recently we hosted a class here teaching wrappers. In this class one of the students took a shining to the conservation lab and what we do here, and in an effort to fulfill her independent study requirements contacted me to see if she could come here to lean about conservation and book structure. So long story short, Sara Sarmiento, a second year student started September 13th,(good luck for us!), and will come one day a week till her term ends in December. We are fortunate to be able to offer these learning opportunities for students and we are happy that Sara took the initiative to seek us out. Welcome Sara.

Written by Deborah Howe.

Amos Kennedy Came to Town and Left an Impression

Amos Kennedy was on campus from January 28th to February 1st, dovetailing with the Martin Luther King, Jr. activities. His visit was sponsored by the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity, Friends of the Dartmouth College Library, Preservation Services, and the Dartmouth College Library Book Arts Workshop.



Amos intersected with campus events in many areas. He visited Michael Chaney's class on Dave the Potter, where he viewed student work and discussed his own work and ideas (photo above). On Tuesday night he had dinner with ten students arranged by the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity, and Wednesday night he was at a viewing of Proceed and Be Bold, a documentary about Amos by Laura Zinger (also available in the Jones Media Center). He was also interviewed on "Word of Mouth with Virginia Prescot on New Hampshire Public Radio (listen here).

The workshops were a drop-in style, and over the course of the workshops we estimated 200 visitors. Five posters were produced based on quotes that were submitted by members of the Dartmouth community.
Written by Deborah Howe.

History of the (Big) Book

In my role as a Book Arts Instructor, opportunities arise to work with students on book projects for their academic work. This past fall semester students in Professor Alexandra Halasz’s History of the Book class participated in a hands-on letterpress and binding exercise in class, and then had the option of producing a hands-on book project in lieu of a final term paper. Of the 17 students enrolled, 10 students chose this option, with three pairs of students choosing collaborative work.

The bookwork produced included a range of structures and content, including a flip book that plays with a homograph, a set of variations of a binding structure, a three-dimensional piano with a Möbius strip musical box exploring a canon cancrizans, an illustrated, digitally produced drum-leaf binding with a new tale about a Dr. Seuss character, letterpress-printed scrolls interpreting the mezuzah, a pocket-sized letterpress-printed book with a poem, and an enormous codex with hand-written text.

Students employed a variety of facilities and workshops on campus: the 3-D printer at the engineering school, the woodshop and jewelry studios in the Hopkins Center, as well as the Jones Media Center, the Book Arts Workshops, and the Preservation Services conservation lab here in the Library. Each of these projects had their complexities, and students called on the expertise of instructors and technicians as needed. These photographs illustrate some of the steps Cally took to make her big codex book. She, along with other students, worked in our lab in Preservation Services, where her proximity to all of us allowed for instruction and advice as needed.

Callista Womick '13 sews the light green endsheet onto her textblock of newsprint folios 

Gluing up the spine

Rounding the spine

Preparing to cover the plywood boards with white bonded leather, assisted by Book Arts Instructor Elizabeth Rideout 

Done! Home to dry the book under weight

Finished book displayed open

It is always a pleasure to see the end product of student work, but particularly rewarding to see the process in action and to help students make their ideas tangible. Here’s hoping these students, and others from this class, return to the workshops as their time and interests allow.
Written by Stephanie Wolff.

Conservation Students

Each year Preservation Services hires students to help further the work of our department. Student workers across campus provide a valuable service to the library and college in the work they do. Here in Preservation we hire both end processing students who prepare our general collections for the shelves, and conservation students who do treatments on both new materials and items we already own. In my years in the conservation lab we have had a great group of student workers - some remain with us for all their terms on campus and others for a shorter period of time. Some have gone off into the world after graduation with plans for specific careers in a variety of fields, while others have the idea of exploring possibilities for work or a job they couldn't yet imagine.

This spring another of our student workers, Sanja Miklin, headed off into the larger world of possibilities, after she graduated in June.

In the fall of 2011, Sanja joined us in the conservation lab and worked for two terms, plus some interim periods as well. In the previous years Sanja attended a number of Book Arts Program workshops, and she displayed an enthusiasm and aptitude for working with the tools and techniques of bookbinding. Eventually she applied for work and was hired to join our team.

During her short time here Sanja worked at a variety of tasks including rebacking books (repairing books by attaching new spines). However, she was instrumental (no pun intended) in our completion of a large music score rehousing project. This long-term project consisted mostly of pamphlets needing new sewing. Despite the repetitive nature of the repairs to this group of material, Sanja came to the work each day ready to do the work needed and sought to employ methods of batch processing to efficiently move the material out of the lab. As we wrapped up this long project, it seemed somehow fitting that both Sanja's graduation and the end of this long project happened in the same month.

Last week, Sanja stopped back into the lab to complete one final bookbinding project before leaving for home. She brought in her thesis to bind; something she had spoken of doing earlier in the year during those slow months of research and writing. She needed very little help from us, just the space and tools. Since she was binding one book, she made a second smaller blank book at the same time; batch processing in action! What a wonderful thing for her to have a bound copy of her thesis, the tangible accomplishment of her long hard work in book form. And how nice to see the skills we taught her put into practice for housing her own writing. As it is with all our students, we hope she will continue to find use and value for the skills she learned here in Preservation, whether for her own projects or in her work for others.

Written by Stephanie Wolff.