The Book Arts Program at Wellesley College connects historical scholarship and creative studio work through hands-on study of the arts of the book. Founded by librarian Hannah French in Clapp Library in 1944, the Book Arts Laboratory hosts full-semester classes in the Studio Art Program and the Writing Program. In addition, the lab supports instruction sessions for visiting classes, ranging from classics and comparative literature to computer science. It also hosts extracurricular workshops and open houses for members of the college community. The Book Arts Lab is a unique, well-equipped studio for letterpress
printing and book binding. Papermaking is taught in the screen print and papermaking studio in Pendleton West, home to studio art classrooms. The lab is home to the Annis Press imprint, and an archive of materials printed under various imprints since the 1940s can be found in the college’s special collections.
The activities of the Book Arts Laboratory dovetail with the college’s Book Studies initiative, which was launched in 2010 and builds upon the college’s bibliographic legacy. This library-based program supports book-oriented teaching and learning within the liberal arts curriculum. Book Studies at Wellesley consists of a number of collaborative scholarly enterprises that probe the history and future of the book, both as a vessel for the transmission of text and image and as evidence of material culture. In its broadest sense, book studies can be thought of as the study of the evolution of written communication, of which the “book” is only one part. This emerging field is historic, contemporary, and interdisciplinary. It provides a framework to examine the social and political forces at work on the dissemination and reception of written, printed, and digital texts.
Katherine M. Ruffin, director of the Book Studies Program and Lecturer in Art at Wellesley College.
Ava Chapman
Female Poets of Antiquity: An Encyclopedia
Press Name: Annis Press, Wellesley College
Media: Typewritten text, hand drawn illustrations; single signature text-block case binding
Size: 2.25 × 3.125 × .5 in.; 20 pages
Year: Fall 2023
Edition: 1 unique copy
This book was constructed as part of an assignment for ARTS 112, the introductory book arts class at Wellesley. I was intent on creating a book that could only exist in a miniature form, where its size was directly intertwined with its meaning. At the time that I was brainstorming, I was about to declare my major in classics. My interest in classics stems from a desire to understand how women have impacted society throughout time, and thus, this artist’s book was born.
The small size of the encyclopedia directly correlates to the amount of information that we have on the seven most well-known female poets from ancient Greece and Rome. The information that we have about these women is fragmentary, just like their texts, and leave academics with more questions than answers. Thus, there have been many attempts to fabricate biographies and portraits of these women. In fact, think of any typos in the book as a play on this phenomenon. This book is absent of pictures, and only information that I was sure could be verified was included. I have also included a short quote from each author, which I believe to be reflective of her style.
I hope this book inspires viewers to think about how knowledge is inherited, and women’s role in literature throughout history.
Rebecca Fang
Under Skillful Fingers (“Visiting the South Pavilion at Chongzhen Temple Where the Civil Service Exam Results are Posted”)
Press Name: Annis Press, Wellesley College
Media: Letterpress printed Optima and carved linoleum on kozo paper; stab binding
Size: 5 × 8 in.; 10 pages
Year: Winter 2023
Edition: 2
For my final project in a seminar on the history of writing in East Asia, I created an artist’s book of female Tang dynasty poet Yu Xuanji’s poetry, translated by David Young and Jiann I. Lin. The poem “Visiting the South Pavilion at Chongzhen Temple Where the Civil Service Exam Results Are Posted” expresses Yu’s dissatisfaction with her gendered social status. The title of this book comes from the second line of the poem, “under skillful fingers / great calligraphy is born.” I chose this line for the title because it reflects the many aspects of this project: Yu’s skill as a poet, my mother’s calligraphy, which serves as the template for the Chinese characters, and my own labor in making a handmade book.