ARTISTS’ BOOKSbBOOKBINDINGbPAPERCRAFTbCALLIGRAPHY

Volume 11, Number 2 $8.50

The Zanerian Experience by Clifford D. Mansley, Sr.

The Wearable Book by Thery McKinney

Camera Distortion . . . And How to Avoid It by Colleen Nagel

Ritual by Amity Parks

Rachel Yallop: Making Letters

New Tools & Materials

Marbleized Mats from Paper Scraps by Ann Bailey

Pencil Books by Peter and Donna Thomas

A Letter a Week: Artistic Journeys Through the Alphabet by Fiona Dempster

Contributors / credits

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Bound & Lettered b Winter 2014 1

Volume 11, Number 2, February 2014.

Picnic in Your Dreams. Thery McKinney. “The Wearable Book,” page 8.

Bound & Lettered b Winter 2014 3

THE ZANERIAN EXPERIENCE BY CLIFFORD D. MANSLEY, SR.

As a boy, I had terrible handwriting. This was not happily received at home, as my father had, at one time, been a penmanship teacher in the Philadelphia public schools. However, The Educator, a

periodical from the Zaner-Bloser Company, arrived at our house every so often, and at some point the beautiful writing and calligra-phy on its pages became an interesting challenge to me. So, while I was in the Navy during World War II, I used some of my spare time trying to emulate the Engrosser’s Script (a hand similar to Copper-plate Script) and Old English lettering in the issues I had with me. I was discharged from the Navy in June of 1946, and while the GI Bill was there to provide funds, I could not possibly enter college until the winter term. With all that time on my hands, I was determined to spend some of it attending the Zanerian College in Columbus, Ohio. (This college of penmanship was part of the Zaner-Bloser Company.) At nineteen years of age, I took the train from Philadelphia to Columbus, arriving in mid-September 1946. My first challenge was to find a room near the school that would be clean, warm, and inexpensive. After several frustrating days of searching, I finally found one in a private home. This accomplished, I then visited the Zanerian College for the first time. There I met the principal of the college, Earl A. Lupfer, and also Robert Bloser, the president of Zaner-Bloser. Next, I was introduced to W. L. Newark, who served as the full-time engrosser in the Zaner-Bloser studio, and lastly, I made the acquaintance of my fellow students – all three of them! The college was founded by Charles Paxton Zaner in 1888. Robert Bloser’s father, Elmer Ward Bloser, became a partner in 1891, and by 1895 their organization was called the Zaner-Bloser Company. The Zanerian School was one facet of the enterprise. For decades both of these institutions served as the major preservers and promoters of the fine art of American penmanship and calligraphy. (Now known

as Zaner-Bloser, the company is still in Columbus and produces instructional materials on handwriting.) The college and the rest of the Zaner-Bloser Company were in the same building, a specially-built brick structure. The downstairs consisted of business offices, the studio, and a shipping and receiving area. The stairwell to the second floor had large and beautiful examples of calligraphy on the walls, including lavishly flourished pieces. (There was also an ancient freight elevator that took passengers and supplies up the three floors.) The second floor had two large classrooms with seating in each for about thirty students. (At one time, the school had summer sessions for as many as one hundred penmanship teachers. During those times, the classrooms would be filled to overflowing.) In addition, there was storage space for penmanship books and supplies. The classrooms were typical schoolrooms of the era with slanted, dark wood desks (screwed to the floor), chairs with hard seats (also screwed to the floor), and expansive blackboards on two walls. Gorgeous framed calligraphy, testimonials, resolutions, and fantastic flourished birds and other animals adorned the walls. The third floor had facilities for making and painting wooden penholders. The penholders were rough-turned on a lathe and then put into a large tumbler. Tumbling the penholders together smoothed them so that they could then be painted. Painting was done by hanging the penholders on a support over a large vat, dipping them into the paint and pulling them out, and then allowing them to remain hanging until dry. My fellow students were quite talented. Chris Costaras, from New England, did everything well; he was a natural. I highly admired his skill. In this era, he would be one of the standout calligraphers in the nation. Harry Tashner, an elderly gentleman, was there primarily to learn Engrosser’s Script and bird flourishing. While not as talented as Chris, he still became highly adept at bird flourishing. The third chap was there to learn business penmanship. My goal was to learn three basic hands: Engrosser’s Script, Old English, and Broad Pen Roman, a form of Foundational lettering. Although we had different goals, we got along well. Each day began at 8:00 a.m. with instruction by Earl A. Lupfer. He was a superb teacher and easily accommodated himself to our

Above, left: The Zaner-Bloser Company building in Cincinnati, from their letterhead (stationery). Below: One of a series of feathers designed by Jean and Cliff Mansley for use in their promotional materials.

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THE WEARABLE BOOK BY THERY MCKINNEY

Carrying around books on your person has a long history. Alongside girdle

books, made to be attached to belts, and pocket books, obviously to be transported in your pocket, I am adding another form: the book shawl, to be placed around your shoulders. The book is constantly being reinvented; perhaps it’s time that the book becomes a new fashion trend.

What is a book shawl? You can define a book as a creation that contains an idea or a selection of ideas, usually in the familiar codex form. A book shawl initially acts like a codex, but when fully opened it produces a continuous strand of pages that can be placed around your shoulders. You carry the words and images as a personal adornment.

Based On a Historical Form This book form is based on a traditional structure, the maze book, also known as a labyrinth, puzzle, meander, or flutter book. (It is even known as an origami book, though it would be more correct to call it a kirigami book, since it not only involves folds but a certain amount of cutting.) I did quite a bit of research, but I could not find exactly when or where this book structure has its origins. Perhaps this form evolved when single sheets of paper were readily available but cumbersome; folding arrives at a more compact form and one more easily transportable. The basic premise of a maze book is that when unfolded, the structure reveals that the entire book is made of one sheet of paper. The way the sheet is folded and cut results in unique accordion forms that need no glue or even additional covers. I took the structure one step further and replaced paper with fabric. How did the book shawl come about? For some time, I had been inspired and amazed by the maze concept from seeing and reading about works by book artists like Edward Hutchins, and through follow-ing instructions in books like Shereen LaPlantz’s Cover to Cover. I’m not sure when, but somewhere, at sometime, while enjoying the production of both simple and more complicated maze books, it occurred to me that this continuous string of book pages resembled a scarf or shawl. Immediately, I felt compelled to design a book using fabric that, instead of being re-folded after being read, could be extended to be placed around the reader’s shoul-ders. The word made visible and wearable.

The Journey: A Proverbial Meander. 13.5" x 17". The book shawl fully opened and ready for placing around the shoulders. Photography by Edson Beckett.

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RITUAL BY AMITY PARKS

This summer’s International Lettering Arts Conference, Legacies II, has more first-time instructors than most earlier conferences. One of those instructors is Amity Parks, who is well-known in her home state of Montana, but less familiar to the rest of us than she deserves to be. Like many Bound & Lettered readers, she has attended numerous weekend and weeklong workshops with respected instructors, but she found that was not enough. In this article, she shares with us her formula for attaining excellence in the lettering arts. Legacies II will take place July 19-26, 2014, in the Dallas, Texas area.

RitualI’m up early; it won’t be light out for three or four more hours. While the coffee brews, I check my email and see what is new on Facebook. Then, cup in hand, I wind my way to my studio in the basement. I have always been an early riser. I wake up alert, hand steady and head clear. Every morning, I have three blissfully focused hours in the studio before the responsibili-ties of the rest of my life pull me away to start the day. This is my ritual. After an on-again-off-again love affair with calligraphy that started when I was a teenager, it seems I’ve finally matured enough to enter into a committed relationship, which has been served well by that morning ritual. I’d always seen a quality in the work of my calligraphic heroes, and I recognized a desire to aspire to a higher level of quality in my own work. I also appreciated that to reach that level takes years and years of experience, and if I were serious, I would need to find time to develop my skills. The ritual of making time to work every day has been the secret ingredient to reaching my goals.

Practice As a student of calligraphy, I followed a cycle of twice-a-year workshops hosted by my state guild. These were always inspir-ing and educational, and I would take what I’d learned back to my studio, hungry to keep practicing. But in the isolation of my own space, the charm would wear off, and soon days and weeks would go by without a trip to the drawing board. It was after a particularly inspiring workshop about five years ago that the momentum of my morning practice sessions lasted long enough for me to begin to see real and measurable improvement in my work. By then my practice sessions had become my ritual, and it was a joy and a craving to wake to it each day. I found, though, that repetition in isolation was not enough. I needed to show my work to others, to get feedback, advice, and frankly, blunt criticism. So I sought out opportunities to attend more classes and to hire private tutorials from artists whose work I admired, paying particular attention to the way they looked at and commented on my class exercises. Learn-ing how to analyze and evaluate a practice sheet gave me the tools to analyze my own work once I got back to the isolation of my studio. Scrutinizing my work, and the work of others, helps develop my eye to see those subtle details that will help raise my work to the next level. Practice is a never-ending process: there is always more to learn. Time spent writing purposefully to develop skills is never wasted. In addition to committing the time, studying with the masters in our field and looking critically at my work have been keys to my calligraphic development.

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RACHEL YALLOP MAKING LETTERSMy passion for letters stems from a lifelong love of drawing, and I began doing calligraphy thirty-two years ago whilst studying for a degree in graphic design at Ravensbourne Col-lege of Art & Design on the outskirts of London. I then went on to complete a Master of Arts at the Central School of Art & Design, London, writing a thesis on expressive calligraphy. Early on, I was taught both formal and expressive styles – often on the same day – for which I am eternally grateful. It enabled a level of freedom that I do not think would have been possible if I had only concentrated on formal styles and had come to expressive forms at a later date. At college, I was introduced to the work of German calligra-phers, primarily that of Friedrich Poppl and Werner Schneider. Their use of the ruling pen in making letters was a revelation to me. Later, I met Hans-Joachim Burgert through the Letter Exchange and took a workshop with him. Before I knew him and his work, I thought that calligraphy should be regular and that spacing should be even. He opened up a whole new way of

looking at things, primarily the tension and spacing between letters. He and Schneider have been my biggest influences. Since leaving college, I have pursued a free-lance career as a calligrapher and lettering designer, working mainly with design consultants and marketing agencies. I have worked on numerous logos, mostly for packaging but also for promotion-al materials and business stationery. Alongside this work, I have continued to experiment with writing tools and tech-niques, spending countless hours developing ideas that are not for commissions or exhibitions. The most important things for me are line and design, and I strive every day to achieve that elusive perfect mark and letterform. Practice, analysis, and being flexible – having a willingness to explore different solutions – are required. Being prepared to tear everything up and starting again or repeating the exercise multiple times until it is right are fundamental to success. The process is still fascinating to me even after thirty-two years, and I am more enthused than ever!

This page: Some of Rachel Yallop’s favorite tools for making letters. From left to right: balsa wood, Automatic pen, flat brush, folded pen (dagger), cola pen, traditional pointed ruling pen.

Opposite page, top left: Folded ruling pen, ink, compressed

charcoal, Conté pencil, and eraser. After writing the E, I blended the compressed charcoal around it,

strengthening some areas with the Conté pencil and then drawing

lines through with an eraser.

Top right: Cola pen and ink. The double line in this piece is

achieved by cutting a nick about halfway along the blade.

Bottom: Cola pen and ink on white paper. The image was then reversed out in Photoshop. I used

just the tip of the pen to write this, only employing the full length of

the blade for the crossbar of the t.

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PENCIL BOOKS BY PETER AND DONNA THOMAS

When Donna and I first began making books, we thought of ourselves as bookbinders and fine press printers. We made blank books, which were sold at craft fairs, and we printed fine press books, like the ones we learned to make working with William Everson at the Lime Kiln Press in the library at the University of California, Santa Cruz. We never thought to call ourselves “book artists,” as we do today. Up to the late 1970s or early 1980s, it seemed most handmade books had traditional sewn codex structures. However, the introduction of the personal computer and printer changed that. When it became possible for anyone to get words onto a page – not just someone who had a printing press or could write in calligraphy – artists from other media began to explore book-making as a way to express artistic ideas. They created interest-

ing and experimental bookworks that explored the combined potential of narrative, illustration, and structure, and they often found the contained codex structure too limiting. For these artists, books with accordion-fold formats were the easiest kind of book to make. This structure also provided an easy way for artists who were used to working in two dimensions to express their ideas in a book format. Everyone started making accordion books. Print or paint on one side of a piece of paper and then fold it up and attach covers to the two ends – it was so simple! I saw a bookbinding fad being created before my very eyes and decided to try starting a fad of my own. I began experimenting with ways to make a book that had all the elements of a traditional book – opening covers and turning pages, text and illustration – but that presented them

The Pencil (8½" x 5½", edition of 30). Three-panel binding. Dimensions in this article are height x width, closed.