Book Traces

First seen on the Green Chair Press blog, Book Traces is a project to track down and  digitize the human markings in 19th-century books.

"Thousands of old library books bear fascinating traces of the past. Readers wrote in their books, and left notes, pictures, letters, flowers, locks of hair, and other things between their pages. We need your help identifying them because many are in danger of being discarded as libraries go digital. Books printed between 1820 and 1923 are at particular risk.  Help us prove the value of maintaining rich print collections in our libraries."

Visit Book Traces here.

Image of the Day: S. Cooke Imgraham's Books

Type Holiday

Some of the type related gifts I received this year included an ampersand "shadowbox" display,  distressed letterpress magnets, cufflinks, a paintable ampersand, and the book "Just My Type;" such thoughtful gifts that I truly appreciate.

Hollowed-Out Books

via Green Chair Press
Always inspiring, Green Chair Press’ post creating a hollowed-out book is the latest how-to shared.

Little Free Libraries

via utne reader
“Andrew Carnegie built an impressive 2,509 libraries around the turn of the 20th century. Now Rick Brooks and Todd Bol are on a mission to top his total with their two-foot by two-foot Little Free Libraries, reports Michael Kelley in Library Journal. The diminutive, birdhouse-like libraries, which Brooks and Bol began installing in Hudson and Madison, Wisconsin, in 2009, are typically made of wood and Plexiglas and are designed to hold about 20 books for community members to borrow and enjoy. Offerings include anything from Russian novels and gardening guides to French cookbooks and Dr. Seuss. Each Little Free Library runs on the honor system, displaying a sign that asks patrons to Take a Book, Leave a Book. Fifty libraries have been built so far, with 30 more underway and plans to expand into Chicago, Long Island, and elsewhere…”
Read the rest here, visit Little Free Library here.

Cover: Japanese Fairy Tales

via letterology

Another one of the old cover scans found here.

Bookbinding: Everything you ever needed to know

via felt and wire
Craft Stew has more than 115 bookbinding projects, tips and tutorials that include stitching methods, glue methods, “unusual” methods, big books, little journals, and even how to bind a book by recycling an old book.
Visit Craft Stew here.

Alphabeasties and other Amazing Types

via a two-winged fairy
“This typographical trip will wow design fans... Innovations arrive several to a page, encouraging readers to muse on the power of type and all that letters and words can imply or insinuate.”
Discover more in this book here.  Another fun typography-inspired book by Sharon Werner is  “Bugs by the Numbers,” which can be found here.

Oliver Sacks: New Cover Designs

via howmagazine
These covers were designed in-house at Vintage by Cardon Webb and make me fall in love with the Oliver Sacks books anew.

Keep Our Secrets

via brain pickings
“Keep Our Secrets by Jordan Crane isn’t merely a charmingly illustrated treat, it’s also an admirable piece of publishing innovation — the book is printed with thermally-activated color-changing ink that lets you discover a wealth of delightful surprises and hidden illustrations as you rub the pages and the heat from your fingers causes some ink layers to become transparent. This kind of playful, tactile interactivity in what’s still a printed, physical book is challenges our assumptions about what it means to build truly “interactive” reading experiences, showing it doesn’t necessarily have to mean device-centricity…”
Read the rest here.

Collection of Pop-ups

via Paper Forest

“The Allegro Movable Book Collection is Australia’s largest and most comprehensive collection of movable and pop-up books covering over 300 years of published history. Corrie Allegro is releasing books from this collection to the public, collectors and institutions. This book site contains articles, news and related links to the genre of ‘movable’ books.”

Elsa Mora’s Papercuttings

The Ride

via a friend

Visit Elsa Mora’ blog dedicated to the magic art of papercutting here; more of her work here. Makes me smile.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang

via cnn

“The publication of Green’s Dictionary of Slang—a product of 17 years of work that make it the largest slang dictionary ever published in English—is for anyone who loves words and likes to laugh.”

Read the rest of the post here.

“The three volumes of Green’s Dictionary of Slang demonstrate the sheer scope of a lifetime of research by Jonathon Green, the leading slang lexicographer of our time. A remarkable collection of this often reviled but endlessly fascinating area of the English language, it covers slang from the past five centuries right up to the present day, from all the different English-speaking countries and regions. Totaling 10.3 million words and over 53,000 entries, the collection provides the definitions of 100,000 words and over 413,000 citations.”

Priced at $450, you can order it here.

Chromatic: The Crossroads Between Color and Music

via COLOURlovers.com

“At nearly 400 pages of full-color artwork and editorial, Chromatic: The Crossroads of Color and Music, is a dynamic print presentation of independent musicians and artists who are using or exploring color in unorthodox ways. . . ”

Read the rest here, visit the Alarm Press page here.

Producing a book, the analog way

via boingboing
A nostalgic look at what a it took to produce a book in the era before digital typesetting and printing.

Making Handmade Books

via feltandwire
“For those of you interested in bookmaking, you might want to pick up Alisa Golden’s Making Handmade Books. This comprehensive guide has instructions for the novice and professional. The book features 100 different types of bindings/structures, including folded books, glued books, accordion books and a lot of variations on each book type.”

Read the rest of the post here.

Xavier Antin’s Just in Time, or A Short History of Production

via printeresting

I’m pretty sure that this was one of the last posts in my previous blog, but I wanted to include it in the new version as well.

“Like a waterfall of printing technologies, Xavier Antin’s Just in Time, or a Short History of Production is an installation that was used to produce a book about production. Each of the four printers is from a different era and each is set to print one of the CMYK colors. The stencil duplicator does magenta, the spirit duplicator does cyan, the laser printer does black, and the inkjet does yellow. The resulting book is like a misprinted dream (or nightmare depending on how compulsive you are about registration).”

Find out more about it here.