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Spellbinding bookbinding at the Boston Public Library, Copley Square
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Six of the 117 bound books on display until December 13
If you have questions about bookbinding as an art form, you will get positively decisive and beautiful answers from Bound for Success: International Bookbinding Exhibition in the Cheverus Room at the BPL. More than one hundred books on display in several glass cases demonstrate a vast variety of successful ways to bind one limited-edition book, Water, an illustrated international anthology of poems about water. These 117 were selected for traveling exhibit from 240 entries in the Designer Bookbinders' first annual international competition, 2009. First and second prizewinners have slight prominence in a central case near the windows across from the doorway.
Only one book, chained to a table, is available for visitors to touch. Make sure to hold it and leaf through the handsomely printed anthology of poems and images that each designer was given to bind. From handling that one book, you can sense how texture, heft, flexibility, stability, and other physical qualities might affect your experience of any one book. Viewing all other books through the glass of the cases, you can at least recognize different tactile qualities and identify a range of materials—cloth, leather, paper, as well as shells, wood, metal objects and plastic. Bindings differ not only in shape, depth and density but also in possible decisions to mount, box or tie the book.
Diversity of perceptions, conceptions, and interpretations of the title, Water, confirms the creativity and individuality possible within the art of bookbinding. Whether the word water appears prominently or not at all, whether the design features images, symbols or abstractions, whether the colors are dazzling or subtle, each binding conveys some aspect or multiple aspects of the word’s meaning. Each designer, respecting constraints of the craft and the possibilities of this particular book, has produced a distinct and distinctive work of art.
Exhibit Data Informative signage in each of the four corners of the exhibit space focuses on relevant topics: the process and history of bookbinding, its terms, its tools, and Designer Bookbinders as an organization. Copies of a helpful brochure about the exhibit are available on tables, and a copy of the catalog is on display, with information about purchase. This exhibition will leave the BPL on December 13 and move along to San Francisco, and finally to New York City. Though the exhibit was derived from international competition, a great number of the entries are from Europe, with UK, Germany, and Estonia strongly represented. North America (USA and Canada) and Asia (Japan and China) are represented too. Maybe designers from additional continents and countries will take part in future competitions.
BPL Calendar summary of the exhibit:
http://www.bpl.org/central/calendar.htm
Description and visuals of top prize selections in the competition:
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