
Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953 by Robert Rauschenberg
Erased de Kooning Drawing, 1953 by Robert Rauschenberg
Handwoven cotton cloth grown from the ground of West Texas, stained with dirt collected from Marfa to Joshua Tree and all that spans through New Mexico, Arizona and in between.
What runs from West Texas on out farther West
till LA is visible through its hiccups of suburbs
sets off a freedom in me.
The residual effects linger here.
This consistency of freedom, solitude and horizon
has been mapped with materials
whose energy corresponds to the desert.
Their essence and origin comes from this space.
The consciousness that is realized in the desert can be traveled to
through these materials that have been exposed to the energy of the land.
Colors , Stains , Memory , Mirage
It’s not about a specific place or a route with an end destination,
but more a recognizing of openness and where openness resides for you.
Seeing patterns and settling into the movement of a circle.
Yes, I feel like I Must Travel On
I can never get enough of old books. I collect plenty myself and then here I am combing online archives late at night finding more to look at. Can't help myself. Selected bindings from the Rare Books & Special Collections of the University of Rochester, River Campus Libraries
The earliest cloth bindings are plain and unassuming, decorated with nothing more than their own color and a paper or leather label. To a public accustomed to the tradition of leather bound books and the elaborately embossed or silk bound annuals of the 1820s, these books were unattractive. In an effort to disguise the very cloth itself, it was impressed with textures imitating first, in 1830, leather with “morocco” graining and then, in 1831, watered silk with moiré graining. English publishers and binders alike worked to solve the problems of titling and decorating cloth in gold. They finally met success in 1832 with the introduction in England of the Imperial arming press, which applied pressure to an engraved brass die to emboss a cloth case. One of the most significant developments in the mechanization of bookbinding, the arming press made possible the economical decoration of cases by allowing one man to accomplish with one pull of a handle what would have taken a traditional finisher hours to achieve.
Lafcadio Hearn; Youma; New York: Harper & Bros., 1890 -- found via River Campus Libraries
book bound in a simple untreated dress fabric. From the 1890s on, it was common for the cloth itself to be a featured aspect of the cover design, even imitated in the interior.
endpaper designs from Songs From Vagabondia by Bliss Carman & Richard Hovey; designed by Thomas Buford Meteyard who was an Impressionist landscape painter who studied with Monet
Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt (b. 1932); German artist in the fields of Visual Poetry and Mail Art
Pieces above from her typical typewriter graphics (Typewritings) developed as Mail Art in collaboration with her husband, Robert Rehfeldt. Cannot get enough of this series found via ChertLüdde.
Raymond Meeks, Cabbage White Folio (link)
Raymond Meeks
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