New Grolier Club exhibition page

Dear Readers, 
Please support the blook exhibition catalog and programs. I need your donations to bring them to fruition! Thank you for your readership, over 29,000 since last June.

$30,000 needed. $17,850 raised so far.

To Contribute

Option 1 $10.00 USD Option 2 $25.00 USD Option 3 $50.00 USD Option 4 $100.00 USD Option 5 $250.00 USD Option 6 $500.00 USD Option 7 $1,000.00 USD

The Art of Books That Aren't
January 28 - March 12, 2016
Grolier Club, 2nd floor member's exhibition gallery, 47 E. 60th St. NYC

2016 is the Year of the Blook! In January you are invited to the first blook exhibition ever to be held in the U. S. and only the second in the world. You will see over 100 objects of great diversity and ephemera which puts the objects into historical perspective. The exhibition is the result of  two decades of collecting and research. I'm so looking forward to sharing this with you. In order to produce (self-publish) the catalog and programs for your enjoyment, I need to raise $30,000. I would appreciate any donation you can make and there will be perks (see below).

PAYMENT OPTIONS
Click on the payment payment button in this post and choose your option
Log into Paypal and make a Paypal payment to mindelldubansky@gmail.com
Send a personal check or money order to: Mindell Dubansky
210 East 88th Street
#4-D
New York, NY 10128

FUNDING REWARDS
$10 Your name and website link on the Blook Club page of this blog and in the exhibition catalog.

$25 Your name and website link on the Blook Club page of this blog; your name in the exhibition catalog and two handmade greeting cards, made after vintage blook cards from my collection.  

$50 Your name and website link on the Blook Club page of this blog and the 2016 Year of the Blook wall calendar. 

$100 Your name and website link on the Blook Club page of this blog  and a personalized copy of The Art of Books That Aren't catalog.

$500 All of the above plus a choice of a copy of one of my books Guess Who Died? Memories of Baltimore with Recipes or The Proper Decoration of Book Covers: The Life and Work of Alice C. Morse; or an original felt flower pin by myself made to your specifications; or another perk that we can work out together. 

$1,000 A copy of The Art of Books That Aren't catalog and a unique book-lovers tours of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with me as your tour guide; or a private tour of the Grolier exhibition. Includes mentions on the Blook Club page and in the catalog. 

DONORS: to know more about the over 130 contributors to this project, see the Blook Club page of this blog.

CATALOG: EARLY BIRD SUBSCRIPTIONS

To subscribe to the Art of Books That Aren't catalog, please send your name and contact information. I will post the final price and specs to the exhibition page and email you as soon as I have them. The Art of Books That Aren't will be a paperback book,  9 x 11 inches, about 100 pages with about 150 color illustrations. I am on schedule now to have the book ready by mid-January 2016.

PROGRAMS
There will be at least one symposium with speakers who are collectors, historians and makers of book objects. I am also planning a magic show with book effects and weekly public gallery talks. Please let me know if you would like to plan a private tour or lecture.

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT 

mindelldubansky@gmail.com
Daytime: 212-650-2890
Evening: 212-348-1674

Max Gunawan and the Lumio Book Light

If there is a hero of the modern blook, it's Max Gunawan, inventor of the Lumio book light and Mini Lumio+. It would be hard to imagine a more elegant blook or a more engaging man. Lumio is a rechargeable LED light with about a long-lasting battery. Its covers are wood and magnets are embedded in the covers so that the 'book' can be attached to metal surfaces. The interior 'pages' are made of Tyvek. The Lumio book light is in octavo format. I asked Max why he made it that size and he said, it just felt right. That's bookness for you. Soon, the mini-Lumio book light will be out. It's a pocket-sized version modeled on a Moleskin notebook, which is a book that Max is familiar with and has enjoyed using.  The Mini+has a removable, magnetized spine that hides a convenient phone charger. You can read all about Max and the lamps on the Hellolumio website. 

Max has had an interesting and inspiring journey and it's been a great success. It wasn't long ago that Max quit his job in an architect's office to follow his dream of designing and manufacturing useful, simple and beautiful objects for us all to enjoy. Since then he has had  a successful Kickstarter campaign, created TED talks, gotten financing through appearing on the TV show Shark Tank, and is selling the lamps in many Museum shops. I recently contacted Max to ask if he would consider contributing a lamp so that I could show it with it's historical precedents in my upcoming exhibition. He generously agreed and came in person to deliver and demonstrate it to the delight of the book conservation staff. If you want to read more about his journey, follow the links in this post.

Here's a few links about Max and Lumio:

Max's TED talk:

Shark Tank video:

Interview with Max: http://inhabitat.com/interview-we-talk-to-lumio-folding-book-lamp-creator-max-gunawan/

Save the Date for a Grolier Club Exhibition "The Art of Books That Aren't"

Book padlock, German or French. Late 19th or early 20th century.
This is the only book lock I have seen in all the years of collecting, have you seen others? Fortunately it does still have its key.  

Save the date for the first exhibition of my book object collection, titled The Art of Books That Aren't: January 28 through March 12, 2016. Note that this is next year, but work has begun. I've been busy rounding out the collection, writing labels, conserving the objects and photographing them. My goal is to have a catalog and I will be writing to you later about it when it has taken shape. There will also be a special event (panel or symposium), in addition to a curator chat(s). If you are interested in planning events or workshops relating to this exhibition or in publishing an announcement of it, please let me know.

Someone made this tiny Bible box for Geneva LaToer in 1853, when she was 10 years old. The box pivots out from one corner and I'd say it was backwards, as the cross only appears on the back of the box. It's rare to find these humble folk art boxes with inscrptions. There are many book objects made for children and many specifically employed in educating them in the Bible. There will be others in the exhibition. See this earlier post.

Support has been coming in many ways even before asking, so that's reassuring. I've received several wonderful donations of objects, a little donation of funds from a friend and an offer from Roni Gross to design the catalog. My photographer friends at the Met are training me to take better photographs, Stan Pinkwas contributed the title of the exhibition, my neighbor Pamela Morin drove all of my blooks to NYC from upstate, Aaron Salik at Talas has offered to provide refreshments at a special event and young magician Francis Karagodins will work on learning how to perform the book magic props! It will definitely take a village to get the blooks exhibit and events to fruition, so THANK YOU to all of you who have supported me now, in the past and into the future. It's not a simple thing to present and legitimize this wonderful subject, but we will have fun doing it.

Note: Many others have generously contributed in so many ways. Everyone will be thanked on the Blook Club page of this blog in upcoming weeks.



Miniature Mysteries of R. Vernon Cook, or, How I Began Collecting Magic Blooks

I came late to the category of magic, simply because I didn't know it existed. After I finished the draft of my collection catalog and could see the scope of my collection, I asked myself if I had overlooked any particular genres of blooks and I thought about magic, among other topics. Now, I can't remember what made me think of it. I think I saw a 'hot book' or 'book test' and it got me started.  I looked around on the Internet for someone to talk to and the first person I contacted was Larry Kahlow owner of Eagle Magic and Joke Store, the oldest magic store in the country. Larry later sent me a wonderful personal story about another prop, the Dove Book, but that's for a later time. In any case, after several forays into the world of magic I began to understand bookish magic props and to put them into context.

It's rare to find a blook that is an 'association copy' or one whose owner or maker is known. If you find one, there's likely to be a story behind it. That's the case for Miniature Mysteries of R. Vernon Cook. 



Vernon Cook (1908-1988)

Vernon Cook was a 20th century magician born in Kansas and raised in Wyoming. He moved to Portland, Oregon, in the late 1950s where he worked in a tire factory, while his passion was magic. In the 1940s, during the height of his performing career, he was known as "the Montana Montebank".  He developed a couple of tricks that he marketed through magic dealers including the "Hot-Spot", a clever effect in which the magician's want goes into a block of wood but does not come out the other side. Surprisingly , the wand is absolutely solid. Cook was an avid collector of magic books and tricks, as well as a science-fiction enthusiast; he was a member of numerous magic societies, including the IBM (International Brotherhood of Magicians), of which he was a member for 25 years.

I don't know who made the box for Miniature Mysteries. It's possible that there was a binder or box maker who made these for magicians and may have advertised in magic periodicals. I haven't found that yet. Or, perhaps Vernon commissioned a binder specifically, which might account for the custom aspect of the box. The tricks inside are common table-top magic tricks involving trick thumbs, coin tricks, etc.

By the way, I'm looking for an amateur magician to perform book-related magic tricks at the opening of the exhibition of my collection at the Grolier Club. More details coming soon.

Introducing the Book Camera

Since it's July 4 and you will all have your smart phones out documenting everything in sight, I thought it would be a nice day to reflect on the blookish predecessors of the camera. 

Older book objects that fit into the theme of photography are ingenious, elegant, well-made and of great historical significance. They were made over a long period of time and are still being made today, but newer ones are not always so fine.  This genre of blooks includes book cameras, daguerreotype cases, security devices, book safes, lockets, view finders, photograph storage containers and more. 

Book cameras evolved from the late 1880's and throughout the 1890's, as detective or concealed novelty cameras (even earlier if you consider the camera obscura, some of which were made in book form). I don't think that they could have really fooled anyone when they were in use, as the photographer's posture must have been awkward in comparison to an actual scholar rushing to or from the library; it would be nice to see one in use. In most cases, great pains were taken by the manufacturers to create a realistic impression. This is especially true in the case of the Scovill book camera featured below. This camera is made to appear like a parcel of three nicely bound books, in full-leather bindings and gold-tooled leather title labels -- French, Latin and  Shadows. Book cameras were produced internationally in the late 19th century, by a number of manufacturers in numerous single and multi-book formats. I'll show you one of each below.  

This unusual camera is in the collection of the Swiss Camera Museum.

Book Camera with a Flash. Revolver Photogénique.

French. Dr. Ranque. 1890

To the best of my ability I will explain this camera. The Revolver Photogénique is a detective or concealed book camera that produced its own light source in order to better capture movement. By actuating a pull-tab on the side of the camera, a dose of magnesium powder  was dropped into a reservoir. The powder was then channeled to the flame of an alcohol lamp (cylinder side), controlled by a damper.

Here is an engraved image in an advertisement showing it with it's squeeze bulb and an interior view. This image is from a website that suggests that this camera was also a gun. I do have another toy book spy camera in my collection that shoots three plastic bullets, but the Revolver Photogéniqe is not an armed weapon, although it could be dangerous.

Image from Weirdest Cameras of the 1890s. 

http://1890swriters.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/weirdest-cameras-of-1890s.html

Seen below, with an advertisement that sheds light on its context, is Scovill's Book Camera (American), introduced in 1892. From the advertisement, we see that the book camera was marketed to ladies as well as gentleman, that it was relatively light and compact, and that its book-disguise avoided the then-common adverse reaction of the public to the common box camera. Isn't it difficult to imagine a time when hand cameras were universally avoided by the public? How we have changed! If you would like to see the Scovill camera in person, there is one on display in the George Eastman House, in Rochester, New York.

Just to give you an example of a newer book camera, here are two from my collecton. A Russian children's book, made in Japan and The Secret Sam Spy Dictionary Camera that shoots three plastic bullets (I love books that have extra jobs to do). 



Happy July 4!

Whitman's Library Package (and I don't mean Walt)

The book format has been internationally popular as a novelty container for many types of candy since at least the late 20th century and probably earlier. One of my favorites is the Whitman's Library Package. In this ad dated 1922, it is referred to by the unfortunate term 'Oddity'. While there are many book-like candy boxes, not many follow through with the theme, as this one does, by providing a Table of Contents and a publisher's list of other titles. The Whitman's Library Package is bound in paper, printed to emulate a full-leather (goatskin) binding with gold tooling. I don't believe it was issued in other binding variants.  

I look forward to showing you other candy blooks in the future, but while we are on the subject I thought that you might enjoy this excerpt from a post that I found today on a site entitled Candy Professor:

...High-quality candy novelties were much more important in the early days of the candy industry. Success in the candy business hinged on moving quickly to introduce new kinds of candy and new novelties to catch the eye of child or adult shopper. Higher priced candy was often bought as a gift, and clever or eye catching presentations would increase a gift’s value. For children’s candies, the novelty could transform a simple candy into something much more appealing.

These candy dolls from the 1920s were manufactured by Huyler’s, a large confectioner better known for quality chocolates. Although these goods are for children, they would have been sold at higher-priced shops and department stores alongside Huyler’s chocolate goods and similar candies. Each was made by hand. These candy dolls appear primitive to the modern eye, but must have been charming and appealing to a child in the 1920s...

...Here is Simple Simon, fashioned of candy sticks, with his chocolate pies.  The book motif is cleverly carried through from the shape of the box to the hand-written rhyme, with the figures and candies playing out the theme.

In the Simple Simon package, the Huyler’s name is featured prominently. The transformation of candy box into part of a toy novelty assures that the manufacturer’s name stays in the child’s mind. The novelties are not only for children’s delight, but also to build business:

The children of today are the candy buyers of the future. [These novelties] give the manufacturer a chance to get first place in the child’s affections.

Source: Edward T. Tandy, “Place of Novelties in Merchandising,” Confectioners Journal April 1921 (Printers Ink March 1921)

Punny Blooks with a Dusty Theme

I suppose that the last post made me think of blooks with funny titles. Nothing pleases me more when I'm a little down than looking at my blook collection. Those with silly titles crack me up every time. Even thinking about them makes me smile. They aren't valuable antiques, beautiful objects or important historic artifacts, in fact if they were real books, they would fall under the practical how-to, pulp fiction and humor subject categories. They may be humble, but anything that makes us laugh should not be underestimated.

Not So Dusty, by Y. B. Untidy is a diminutive clothing brush in book form, probably for keeping in one's pocket or purse. I don't know if it's American, Canadian or English, or exactly what date it is. It is hand-painted and for some time, I thought it was a unique object, until I saw another one, so it must be the product of a a cottage industry or, perhaps these were commercially available and someone of artistic bent had the idea to add value and resell them. In any case, it's funny, isn't it?

Crime Does Not Pay, by Dusty Evsky is a novelty 'punchline' book from the late 1940s. Humorous, slightly raunchy blooks like these were made in the thousands and sold as souvenirs throughout the U.S. Their purpose was to lift the morale of guys in the armed services.