Special Collections and the Iowa Bibliophiles will be hosting a reception and open house extravaganza the evening of Wednesday March 8, 2017 celebrating the arrival of the traveling exhibition Open*Set while providing an opportunity for in-depth investigation of our newest acquisitions.
Explore the Open*Set exhibition from the American Academy of Bookbinding, in the Special Collections gallery space while recent acquisitions from Special Collections are set up for browsing in our Reading Room. Bookbinder, printer, and Open*Set judgeDavid Esslemontwill speak about the exhibition at6:15pm.
Acquisitions and Collections Management Librarian Margaret Gamm will provide an in-depth recap of rare book acquisitions over the past three years at 7:00pm. Learn how the University acquires material through purchase and donation, and discover which areas have been most heavily developed, all the way from Medieval manuscripts to modern artists’ books. Come for a bit or stay for all. The festivities all take place in the Special Collections Reading Room on the 3rd floor of the Main Library from 5:30PM~7:45PM. Refreshments will be served
The University of Iowa Libraries’ Special Collections is pleased to announce the imminent arrival of Open*Set an exhibition in the third floor gallery space in Special Collections March 8-April 19th, 2017.
The OPEN • SET competition is a NEW triennial competition that formed in response to the burgeoning interest and palpable momentum in finely crafted design book bindings in the United States. Sponsored by the American Academy of Bookbinding, www.bookbindingacademy.org.
All are welcome for a reception in honor of this exhibition March 8, 2017 in the Special Collections Reading Room from 5:30pm. Artist, designer, printer, bookbinder and publisher and Open*Set judge David Esslemont will speak about the exhibition at 6:15pm. Light refreshments will be served.
Don Glaister
Mark Esser
Patricia Owen
EXHIBITION LOCATIONS AND DATES 2017
DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY – January 5 to 28
SAN FRANCISCO CENTER FOR THE BOOK – February 1 to March 4
UNIVERSITY OF IOWA – March 8 to April 19
AH HAA SCHOOL FOR THE ARTS, TELLURIDE – April 24 to May 20
NORTH BENNETT STREET SCHOOL, BOSTON – June 8 to July 19
AUSTIN PUBLIC LIBRARY – July 26 to August 26
SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY – September 8 to October 28
MARRIOT LIBRARY, SALT LAKE CITY – November 10 to January 19
OPEN SET JURORS
CATHY ADELMAN
Cathy Adelman began her bookbinding career by accident – a happy accident – at North Carolina’s Penland School of Craft in 1999. In 2003, she graduated from the American Academy of Bookbinding, having spent five years studying with Tini Miura. During that time she also began a 10-year pilgrimage to the internationally known Centro del Bel Libro in Ascona, Switzerland, to study with Edwin Heim and other international master binders.
Originally from northern Maine, Adelman is now a studio binder in southern California. Her work is exhibited both domestically and internationally
by ARA (France, Canada, Belgium and Switzerland), Designer Bookbinders, Society of Bookbinders, Estonian Association of Designer Bookbinders, Guild of BookWorkers, and Hand Bookbinders of California. She has received several awards from The Society of Bookbinders: ‘Highly Commended’ (2001); ‘Harmatan Leather Award’ for forwarding (2003); and ‘First Prize Case Binding’ (2007). She also received recognition from the Estonian Association of Designer Bookbinders (2005) and the Chicago Public Library (2006).
Cathy teaches at the Penland School of Craft as well as privately. She is a Trustee at the Penland School of Craft in Penland, North Carolina, and the Center for Craft Creativity and Design in Asheville, North Carolina.
DAVID ESSLEMONT
David Esslemont hails from Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and studied fine art (painting) at the Central School of Art in London. He began printing, binding and publishing in 1978 and from 1985 to 1997, was Controller (artistic and managing director, and printer) of Gwasg Gregynog, the University of Wales’ private press.
He has won many awards, including the Felice Feliciano International Award for Book Design. He has judged both Designer Bookbinders UK competitions and book design and production surveys in Wales. In 2012, he won a chili cook-off and turned the recipe into a book: Chili: a recipe. This book won the Printmaking Today ‘Innovation in Printmaking Award’ at the Oxford Fine Press Book Fair (2013) and a ‘Best of Show’ Award in the Feast exhibition in Portland, OR. His books and fine bindings have recently been selected for exhibition in Marking Time (Guild of BookWorkers, 2009-11), Feast (23 Sandy Gallery, 2013) and InsideOUT (Designer Bookbinders UK, 2014-15).
Esslemont has lectured widely in the U.K. and U.S., and his work can be found in both private and public collections worldwide. His archive is held at the University of Iowa. He has been artist-in-residence with the Wordsworth Trust in Grasmere, England, and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) in Minneapolis. He now lives on a farm in northeast Iowa and continues to work as an artist, designer, printer, bookbinder and publisher.
ELEANORE RAMSEY
Eleanore Ramsey began her studies in design bookbinding with Barbara Hiller in San Francisco, CA in 1974. She began exhibiting work in 1978 and has been teaching fine bookbinding privately and accepting commissions since 1980.
Ramsey has presided over a number of presentations, courses and workshops at prestigious institutions, including Mills College, the University of California at Santa Cruz, Scripps College, the ‘Standards of Excellence’ Conference for the Guild of BookWorkers, the American Academy of Bookbinding in Telluride, CO, and the California Chapter of the Guild of BookWorkers in Los Angeles, CA.
Her design bindings have been exhibited widely. Notable awards include Hand-Bookbinding Today: An International Competition and Exhibition, Stanford University, 1992 (winner of the competition); the DeGolyer Triennial Competition sponsored by Bridwell Library at Southern Methodist University (awards received in 1997, 2003 and 2012 for ‘Design’ and ‘Excellence in Fine Binding’); the Oscar Lewis Award, given by the Book Club of California for outstanding contributions in the field of Book Arts (2004); and the San Francisco Center for the Book,in recognition as one of “Five Treasures” for extraordinary dedication and innovation in Book Arts (2009).
Ramsey continues to work and teach in her San Francisco studio.
If you tune in to the Big Ten Network for basketball games you might have noticed the LiveBIG segment featuring our social media team that plays during the breaks. The feature introduces the work that Special Collections staff have been doing in online communities on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and for the Special Collections YouTube channel.
On their blog, writers from BTN particularly highlighted the YouTube channel as something unique saying, “Even if old books and maps aren’t your thing, the Special Collections team’s work is really…likeable. Ironic and self-aware, the videos play like an alternate universe cast of New Girl discussing the trivia of Antiques Roadshow in an aesthetic similar to the basement bullpen scenes of Spotlight.” You can read the feature here: http://btn.com/2017/02/19/iowas-special-collections-embeds-its-archives-in-the-digital-space-btn-livebig/ and subscribe to the YouTube channel for updates on new content there: http://youtube.com/uispeccoll/subscribe.
If you did not catch it on TV, here is the original TV segment:
And a second feature they created on their Facebook page:
Prairie Pop: NPR’s Codrescu breaks down Dadaism’s ongoing influence [Little Village feature about Adrei Codrescu’s talk at UI Libraries on Saturday] http://littlevillagemag.com/prairie-pop-nprs-codrescu-breaks-down-dadaisms-ongoing-influence/
Special Collections YouTube channel was included as a case study in a recent article in Library Hi Tech by Heather Moorefield-Lang:
Heather Michele Moorefield-Lang , (2017),” Delivering the Message: Disseminating Information and Professional Development in the Field of Librarianship through Technology “, Library Hi Tech, Vol. 35 Iss 1 http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/LHT-04-2016-0039
On Saturday, February 18, Poet Andrei Codrescu (author of the Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess, editor of Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Life & Letters, and the 2017 collection of new poems, The Art of Forgetting) will present a talk Andrei Codrescu’s Posthuman Dada Guide, and will sign books. Shambaugh Auditorium, UI Main Library, 7pm. Registration is requested.
On Thursday, March 2, the 2017 Brownell Lecture on the History of the Book speaker is Marcy Dinius. E105 Adler Journalism Building 7:30pm.
CHICAGO – Janet Weaver, assistant curator of the Iowa Women’s Archives at the University of Iowa, is the winner of the 2017 Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Women and Gender Studies Section (WGSS) Award for Significant Achievement in Woman’s Studies Librarianship. The WGSS award honors a significant or one-time contribution to women’s studies librarianship.
A plaque will be presented to Weaver at a WGSS event during the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago.
“The Awards Committee was greatly impressed by Weaver’s creation of the Migration is Beautiful website, which is a project constructed from oral histories and other archival material housed at the Iowa Women’s Archives,” said award chair Stacy Russo, librarian and associate professor at Santa Ana College. “Migration is Beautiful was developed from the Iowa Women’s Archives’ Mujeres Latinas project that launched in 2005. The committee especially noted Weaver’s level of collaboration with her colleagues and undergraduate students. The students selected documents for the website and also wrote vignettes. The introduction on the website reads: ‘Migration is Beautiful highlights the contributions Latinas and Latinos have made to Iowa history. Migration is central to understanding and interpreting the past, shaped first by Native Americans, and later by immigrants from around the world.’”
The Migration is Beautiful digital humanities project highlights the contributions of Latinas, their families, and their organizations to Iowa history. Visitors can navigate the site in multiple ways to access hundreds of digitized primary documents and audio clips from oral history interviews through historical topics, life stories, and a migration map.
“Weaver’s work has brought accessibility to primary source documents that were previously only available to visitors at the Iowa Women’s Archives,” continued Russo. “After its launch in 2016, Migration is Beautiful debuted with a travelling exhibit at the national League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) convention in Washington, D.C. In her continued emphasis on outreach, Weaver has made presentations to Latino groups around Iowa regarding the project. Her work has also been featured on Hola Iowa, a news outlet that focuses on Latinos in the Midwest.”
Weaver received her M.A. in Modern History from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
On Saturday, February 18, Poet Andrei Codrescu (author of the Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess, editor of Exquisite Corpse: a Journal of Life & Letters, and the 2017 collection of new poems, The Art of Forgetting) will present a talk Andrei Codrescu’s Posthuman Dada Guide, and will sign books. Shambaugh Auditorium, UI Main Library, 7pm. Registration is requested.
Exhibitions:
Instruction:
Amy is working with Serina Sulentic to allow her graphic design students create printable and boxed versions of Codex Conquest: The Game of Book History, which is currently being developed and tested.
The Instruction Program is gearing up for the spring: we’ve already booked 77 classes!
If you have any plans to bring a class in this semester contact us ASAP about availability.
Timothy Shipe, curator of the International Dada Archives has two new publications:
“Hugo Ball.” (in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism)
“A Century of Documenting Dada: From Coupures de presse to ‘Dadabase’”. In Caietele avangardei, no. 8 (2016).
University Archivist David McCartney wrote the cover story in this month’s Archival Outlook called, “Archival Bonds, Love and Friendship in the Archives.” http://www.bluetoad.com/publication/?i=376049
Documenting Dada / Disseminating Dada is an exhibition featuring items from the University of Iowa Libraries’ International Dada Archive, the world’s most comprehensive collection of material related to the Dada movement. Timothy Shipe who is the curator of the International Dada Archive and a librarian in Special Collections curated the exhibition.
From 1916 to 1923, a new kind of artistic movement swept Europe and America. Its very name, “DADA,” was notably missing the obligatory “ism,” distinguishing it from the long line of avant-gardes that had determined the preceding century of art history.
More than a mere art movement, Dada claimed a broader role as an agent of cultural, social, and political change. Its proponents wanted to affect all aspects of Western civilization, to take part in the revolutionary changes unfolding as inevitable results of the chaos of World War I.
The Dada movement was perhaps the single most decisive influence on the development of twentieth-century art, and its innovations are so pervasive as to be virtually taken for granted today.
This exhibition highlights Dada’s printed output, which documents the ephemeral aspects of the movement and shows how the dadaists used their publications to spread the movement beyond its origins in Zurich.
On January 18, 2017 the exhibition was officially opened with a ribbon cutting. The ribbon cutting involved creating a Dadaist poem inspired by the instructions from Dada writer Tristan Tzara:
“To make a Dadaist Poem” (1920):
Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are—an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.
Arthur Bonfield, “The Why, How, What, and Result of 60 Years of Rare Book Collecting”
In December the Iowa Bibliophiles’ guest speaker will be Arthur Bonfield who will speak about his 60 years of rare book collecting.
Arthur Bonfield is a Professor at the Iowa Law School and has been collecting books published between 1490 and 1800 for 60 years. He has collected about 1,000 books printed during that period and focuses his collecting on voyages, travels, and geography; English and European history; encyclopedias and dictionaries of the arts and sciences; political philosophy; and herbals.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016 at 7PM in the Special Collections Reading Room, 3rd Floor Main Library
The Game of Thrones-themed Lunch with the Chefs drew the largest crowd ever on Wednesday the 7th. So did our signed first edition copy of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, generously donated by Al Lewis, and several other items evocative of the Song of Ice and Fire series. Pete Balestrieri, Curator of Science Fiction and Popular Culture, and Margaret Gamm, Special Collections Librarian, enjoyed talking with attendees interested in the many related objects in Special Collections.
Instruction News:
We have digitized all of the blue slips! Now, if you teach with special collections, you can request spreadsheets of the materials you pulled by emailing Amy Chen at amy-chen@uiowa.edu.
As a result of this digitization effort (with warm thanks to Department Manager Lindsay Moen and her students!) and a new workflow, we are now beginning to send out emails to ask instructors if they would like to retain their blue slips. Otherwise, we will discard them. Look for an email from Amy in the next few weeks if you have brought your students to special collections.
Instruction Librarian Amy Chen has a new publication.
“Possessing an Inner History: Curators, Donors, and Affective Stewardship,” Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, 12.3 (October 2016), 243-268. https://goo.gl/QwpXSZ
Join us in congratulating Amy!
Events:
Cultural and Textual Exchanges: The Manuscript Across Premodern Eurasia
This Mellon Sawyer seminar is an interdisciplinary collaboration dedicated to mapping cultural exchanges across Eurasia from roughly 400-1450 CE, by focusing on the development, distribution and sharing of manuscript technologies. http://eurasianmss.lib.uiowa.edu/
Friday 2 DECEMBER 2016 – 8:30am-4:45pm / 166 IMU Iowa Theater (Iowa Memorial Union) William Johnson “From Bookroll to Codex”
Classical Studies, Duke University
8:30-10:00am
Arthur Bonfield, “The Why, How, What, and Result of 60 Years of Rare Book Collecting”
In December the Iowa Bibliophiles’ guest speaker will be Arthur Bonfield who will speak about his 60 years of rare book collecting.
Arthur Bonfield is a Professor at the Iowa Law School and has been collecting books published between 1490 and 1800 for 60 years. He has collected about 1,000 books printed during that period and focuses his collecting on voyages, travels, and geography; English and European history; encyclopedias and dictionaries of the arts and sciences; political philosophy; and herbals.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016 at 7PM in the Special Collections Reading Room, 3rd Floor Main Library
Arthur Bonfield: 60 years of collecting rare books from 1490-1800
For the last 60 years Professor Arthur Bonfield has collected rare books— original copies of books on several subjects written, published, printed, and bound between 1490 and 1800. In this talk he will discuss the why, how, what, and result of his 60 years of rare book collecting. He has collected over 1,000 original copies of books from that period on voyages, travels, exploration, and geography; encyclopedias; English and continental history; English literature; English translations of classical Greek and Roman literature; political philosophy; and herbals. In his talk he will explain how and why his life has been enriched by his continuing attachment to and preoccupation with this very absorbing avocation.
Professor Arthur Bonfield received his legal education at the Yale Law School and recently retired from the University of Iowa Law School after serving 53 years on the faculty. As a teacher and scholar his specialty was Constitutional Law and Administrative Law. While on the Law School faculty he was actively involved in the reform of state administrative procedure law, state freedom of information law, and state civil rights legislation, and drafted many of the Iowa statutes adopted on these subjects. He recently was awarded the Iowa Freedom of Information Council Friend of the First Amendment Award for proposing and drafting the recently enacted Iowa statute creating the Iowa Public Information Board.
December 14, 2016 at 7PM in the Special Collections Reading Room, 3rd Floor Main Library. Refreshments will be served before the talk at 6:30PM.
Amy is working with Serina Sulentic to allow her graphic design students create printable and boxed versions of Codex Conquest: The Game of Book History, which is currently being developed and tested.
Timothy Shipe, curator of the International Dada Archives has two new publications:
Arthur Bonfield, “The Why, How, What, and Result of 60 Years of Rare Book Collecting”
Instruction Librarian Amy Chen has a new publication.
So you want to visualize your data?
For the last 60 years Professor Arthur Bonfield has collected rare books— original copies of books on several subjects written, published, printed, and bound between 1490 and 1800. In this talk he will discuss the why, how, what, and result of his 60 years of rare book collecting. He has collected over 1,000 original copies of books from that period on voyages, travels, exploration, and geography; encyclopedias; English and continental history; English literature; English translations of classical Greek and Roman literature; political philosophy; and herbals. In his talk he will explain how and why his life has been enriched by his continuing attachment to and preoccupation with this very absorbing avocation.