By all appearances, ferry riders are avid readers. A cursory look around on a weekday morning, and you’ll see a tome tucked beneath almost every commuter’s arm.
By Paul Duclos
Published: August, 2009
By all appearances, ferry riders are avid readers. A cursory look around on a weekday morning, and you’ll see a tome tucked beneath almost every commuter’s arm. Visitors and pleasure passengers, too, can be seen paging through some literary diversion when not taking in the view, and we are seeing more Kindles and other high-tech reading instruments these days.
But irrespective of subject matter, most of these books are of the machine-made, mass-produced kind available in most retail establishments. On rare occasion, though, one might observe a rider engaged in a book of distinctive and artful packaging. A hand-crafted book made with the love and care only a passionate devotee of bindery can appreciate. If you are one of those people—and we suspect many Bay Crossings readers are—you are in luck. For the San Francisco Bay Area is home to several remarkable institutions dedicated to the Art of the Book.
• The Book Club of California has been publishing significant books on California and the West during its nearly 100-year history while hosting numerous book-related exhibitions, lectures and demonstrations. The Club also houses an extensive reference library. The annual keepsake series may be the Book Club of California’s most innovative publishing concept. A club keepsake is typically composed of twelve separate illustrated folders on a common literary or historical theme that are contained in a unifying folder. Various authors contribute brief essays on a facet of the overall subject. Previous keepsake topics include: Sports in California; Chinese Book Arts in California; Homes of California Authors; and Southern and Northern California Travel Posters.
• The San Francisco Center for the Book is devoted to teaching the many arts and crafts that go into making books by hand. It introduces and fosters the joys of books and bookmaking—their history, artistry, continuing presence in our culture and their enduring importance as a medium of self-expression. Furthermore, it provides both a home for Bay Area book artists and a place where the wider community can discover book arts. Everyone is welcome here—experienced practitioners and newcomers alike. Its scores of workshops foster learning at all levels: from introductory classes to yearlong courses, from traditional bookbinding to cutting-edge printing techniques to experimental book forms. The Center always showcases an informative and delightful exhibition.
• The Arion Press, named after the legendary Greek poet who was saved from the sea by a dolphin, remains small, employing about ten people as printers, bookbinders, editors, and in other publishing roles. Part of the team are the highly skilled and long-experienced typesetters of Mackenzie & Harris, the oldest and largest surviving type foundry in America, which was bought in 1989. Arion Press is a self-sustaining business and has never been subsidized by grants. It has survived through hard work, perseverance, and devotion to excellence in the crafts of bookmaking and to imaginative presentation of worthy literary texts and visual art.
• Finally, for those in need of a good (machine-made) “coffee table” book, check out Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946–2004 (hardcover, 192 pages, $70), which is available at the SFMOMA Museum Store. Published by the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, in association with the Richard Avedon Foundation, the volume includes 125 reproductions of important works in the exhibition, as well as a complete chronology and texts by exhibition curator Helle Crenzien and San Franciscan gallery owner Jeffrey Fraenkel.
