We love the inexhaustible energy of the Codex Foundation. Let’s hope this inaugural event will become a regular thing. Way to go Codex!

— Paul Razzell

We’re reposting this on behalf of our friends at the Book Club of California:

EXTENDED DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 26, 2012

 Download panel, lecture, and paper proposal forms below or at http://www.bccbooks.org/centennial.htm 

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

THE BOOK CLUB OF CALIFORNIA CENTENNIAL SYMPOSIUM

 WAY OUT WEST: Fine Printing and the Cultural History of the Book in California

October 18-20, 2012 in San Francisco

The Book Club of California is a non-profit organization founded in 1912. It supports the art of fine printing related to the history and literature of California and the western states of America through publications, exhibitions, and public programs. The 2012 Centennial celebrations will feature an array of special programs, including a traveling exhibition that reflects the story of the Book Club; a luncheon in homage to BCC founders; and a symposium focusing on the history of fine printing in California. As the Club moves into its Centennial and beyond, it continues the strategic mission to honor and promote the aesthetic and literary values unique to fine printing as created in California and the west.

The Centennial Symposium committee, inspired by the Book Club of California’s past achievements and future possibilities, invites proposals for presentations in the form of panel discussions, individual lectures, and papers. We are looking for demonstrated excellence in research as well as material for interesting, useful, thoughtful, and interactive sessions pertaining to fine printing and the cultural history of the book in California.

Proposals should address ideas about knowing and learning from the past or strengthening the future of the field of fine printing-cultures and traditions, innovations, collections, and communities.

Among the questions and themes that we expect to be considered are:

• The future of the book as reflective of California cultures
• What is the relevance of fine printing in contemporary culture?
• Fine printing, publishing, and collection experiences or trends in California culture
• What is the market place for fine printing in California?

Sample topics might include but are not limited to:

• Book Collecting in California: The great institutional and private collectors and their impact on public knowledge and research
• History of Printing in California: Particular presses and printers; cultural history; etc.
• History of The Book Club of California
• Education & Book Arts: Printing presses in schools, colleges, universities, etc.
• Typography Way Out West: California typefaces and book design in California
• History of Book-Making in California and the West
• Influences of Bibliophile Organizations, such as The Zamorano Club, The Colophon Club, The Book Club of California, etc.

PANEL PROPOSALS

We welcome proposals for panels on all topics relating to cultural aspects of the book in California-past, present, and future-including:

• Fine printing: History and literature
• Publishing History: Fine press and private press
• Collecting fine press and fine art editions
• Book arts and book arts education

GUIDELINES: 90 minutes per panel; 15-20 minutes per panelist. A panel has a maximum of three speakers, often with contrasting perspectives, experiences, and/or from different institutions. The moderator briefly introduces the topic and the presenters formally address it in some detail. The moderator may also serve as one of the presenters. The session concludes with a general question and answer period.

Download Panel Proposal Form  

INDIVIDUAL LECTURE PROPOSALS

We welcome proposals for individual lectures on all topics relating to cultural aspects of the book in California-past, present, and future- including:

• Fine printing: History and literature
• Publishing History: Fine press and private press
• Collecting fine press and fine art editions
• Book arts and book arts education

GUIDELINES: 15-25 minutes per lecture. Proposals should describe the content and objectives of the talk and provide applicable reference sources and citations, and types of media to be used (e.g. slides, PowerPoint, DVD). Creative approaches are encouraged.

Download Individual Lecture Proposal Form

PAPER PROPOSALS

We invite researchers to present proposals for papers on all topics relating to cultural aspects of the book in California-past, present, and future-including:

• Fine printing: History and literature
• Publishing History: Fine press and private press
• Collecting fine press and fine art editions
• Book arts and book arts education

GUIDELINES: All who wish to present a paper at the conference must submit an abstract. Abstracts must include:

• Objectives of the research
• Brief description of the model used (if appropriate)
• Hypotheses and/or research questions
• Methodology
• Main or expected conclusions
• Some indication of visual requirements (color, illustrations, etc.)
• Main references and citations

Download Paper Proposal Form

DEADLINE

Submit Way Out West paper, panel, and lecture proposal forms to centsymp@bccbooks.org by Sunday, February 26, 2012. Only email submissions will be considered. Authors will be informed of acceptance in April 2012. Information about the Centennial Symposium is also available at: http://www.bccbooks.org/centennial.htm.

PDF of Call for Proposals

Read the NYT review of the Grolier Club’s current exhibit of treasures from The Imprimerie Nationale. Reviewer David Dunlap writes, “It is the emphasis on the physicality of type that makes the Grolier show so useful…”

“Printing for Kingdom, Empire & Republic: Treasures From the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale” runs through Feb. 4 at the Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, Manhattan; (212) 838-6690, grolierclub.org.

— Paul Razzell

Attention printers, publishers & book dealers! Those wishing to advertise in Parenthesis issue #23 should start thinking about reserving space now. The deadline for ad placement is the end of March and will include the popular drop-in ads. Drop-in letterpress ads are limited and are accepted on a first come, first serve basis so don’t miss out.

For more info contact Chip Schilling NAAdvert@fpba.com or go to our website.

— Paul Razzell

Five presses and one illustrator won awards at the Oxford Fine Press Book Fair on Sunday, November 6, 2011. The five presses to receive Judges’ Choice awards were –Nikodim Press (Dimitry Sayenko, St. Petersburg, Russia), for the ABC of Fears; –Russell Maret (New York City), for Specimens of alphabets designed or revived by Russell Maret; –Susan Allix (London), for Myth; –Barbarian Press (Crispin and Jan Elsted, Mission, British Columbia, Canada), for Pericles; and –Whittington Press (John and Rosalind Randle, Leominster, Herfordshire, UK), for A Vision of Order. The Parrot Prize for best illustration in any medium went to Angela Barrett for her illustrations in the Hand and Eye Editions (London) version of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Additional random photos from the fair can be seen on the FPBA Facebook page. If you’re not on Facebook, just click here.

–Bob McCamant

As many of you know, Canadian book designer Glenn Goluska passed away this summer. His partner Bernadette and his friend Bob Beck put together this slide show for his memorial, held on Friday, September 30, 2011.
As Bob and Bernadette write, “Glenn was a book designer, typographer and Linotype/Letterpress operator – one of Canada’s great typographers, and one of the best book designers of his generation.”

To see some of Glenn’s book and broadside designs, please see Autumn 2011 issue of Parenthesis.

— Paul Razzell

Our special issue of Parenthesis devoted to fine printing and the book arts in Massachusetts is now out, and early responses from FPBA members are starting to roll in:

 

Birmingham Institute of Art & Design, part of Birmingham City University (UK), is planning a one-day symposium on the role of typographers past, present, and future. It will take place on March 14, 2012. They’d like a two-page proposal of a topic you’d like to present. Send in Word format, along with a succinct curriculum vitae, to Dr Caroline Archer at caroline.archer@bcu.ac.uk .
It must be received by 12 noon, 1 November 2011.

Here’s what they say:

In the past typographers required both erudition and a knowledge of printing processes, including that of punch-cutting, type founding and printing; and only those who combined an understanding of all three were fit to be styled a typographer. By the early twentieth century the definition of typographer was restricted to the designer of a printed page as distinct from the compositor or machine operator. Nowadays ‘typographer’ has become a vague term, which takes no account of the inherent differences that technology has brought to the discipline: typography is no longer a vocation but an emergent profession difficult to define. But whether typography can be accounted an ancient calling or a new profession, it still requires a high degree of literacy, discipline and technical knowledge: it also needs some way is needed of distinguishing between the ancillaries of the profession and the truly literate and practical typographer.

This symposium will look at the changing roles of typography’s past; examine the nature of typography’s present; and soothsayer into typography’s future.

–Bob McCamant

For some reason I received a PDF copy of The Printer in my email inbox, and it prompted me to resubscribe to the paper newsletter after a lapse. Such a lot of interesting stuff in the August issue. A printer’s fair in LA October 1; the annual Seattle Wayzgoose
& Steamroller Smackdown August 27; a puff about LetterMPress, the iPad app which allows you to imitate a proof press using wood type (conflict alert: I was a sponsor); an obit of Glenn Goluska by the designer of Parenthesis, Andrew Steeves; and more ads than you can shake a stick at.
To subscribe, residents of the US can send $35 (and of the UK, £40) to Box 1221, Findlay OH 45839.
–Bob McCamant