Benaroya
Jeremy took a nice shot of the view from the window at his desk, facing Benaroya Hall. A couple of blocks down sits Pike Place Market on the tip of Elliott Bay.
Photo by Jeremy Linden
Picturing Seattle’s Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition
In 1909, Seattle hosted the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, a world’s fair that helped to establish the city as a new cultural and industrial hub. The fair had a wide range of exhibits, featuring a hearty nod to the Pacific Northwest’s connection to the Alaskan gold rush with an Eskimo village and a scale model of a coal mine. Other notable exhibits included a reenactment of a Civil War naval battle and the largest log cabin ever built.
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the A-Y-P, Seattle is hosting many different centennial events throughout the year; one special treat is the Museum of History & Industry’s exhibit of the photographs of Frank H. Nowell, the official photographer of the A-Y-P. Nowell captured on film the construction of the fair, the various exhibits, and the events and celebrations held on the University of Washington’s campus throughout the summer of 1909.
Marquand recently produced Picturing the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, a catalog of Nowell’s photographs of the fair, distributed by the University of Washington Press. Nowell’s images are also collected in an comprehensive database viewable through the University of Washington’s Digital Libraries, where you can browse through the other images that we sadly didn’t have space to include in the book, like this oddly charming bear made out of raisins. Luckily the slightly redundant giant lemon made out of lemons made the cut.
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It’s the Little Things
Typography as a discipline is generally concerned with very small things. That’s not always true of course — sometimes letters can be big or even monumental. But most of the type we encounter daily is pretty small. In Marquand Books’ particular niche of the typographic world — book typography, and even more specifically art book typography — we’re especially concerned with another kind of small thing: numbers that are smaller than 1 but bigger than 0, expressed as portions of a whole. I.e. fractions. Read more
Worth a Read: LACMA’s “Ask a Curator” Series
It’s good to see more and more museums embracing blogs and social media, both as a way to promote upcoming exhibitions and to engage in commentary on the art world in general. A great example is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
It’s easy to lose track of time while clicking around LACMA’s website–in addition to the main museum site there are also regularly updated Twitter and Facebook pages. The museum’s Unframed blog recently started an ongoing “Ask a Curator” series, similar to one that’s in the works over at Untitled, the North Carolina Museum of Art’s blog. It’s an interesting development in exploring the question of how museums can tap into their curators’ knowledge to engage and attract readers on the web and, ultimately, visitors.
Over on Unframed, LACMA’s photography curator Charlotte Cotton talks about whether or not there is pressure to stay one step ahead of other curators in her field. Read what she has to say here.
Field Trip: Bookbinding Workshop in Tieton
On June 18 and 19, Jeremy, Brynn, Jeff, John and Zach from the Seattle office attended a hands-on workshop at the Tieton bindery and book arts studio. Learning four different stitches for binding and several techniques for making hard cases using various types of book cloth, each student assembled four or five practice books during the session.
Here are some photos by John Hubbard showing their progress. From left to right, top to bottom: Read more
Opening at LACMA: Your Bright Future
Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea opens at LACMA on Sunday. The exhibit features a wide variety of modern art from twelve artists, including video and multimedia, an installation using boxes and bubble wrap, and a piece made up of hundreds of neon plastic bowls and bins. Read more
Required Reading for Art Publishers
Jamie Camplin, managing director of Thames & Hudson, wrote an opinion piece for the June 2009 Art Newspaper that should be required reading for all art and museum publishers.
It raises the question: if art book publishing is to remain vital, how do we keep producing fresh, thoughtful publications at a reasonable price point? Read the article here.
Typography in Real Life
Marquand’s Managing Editor Marie Weiler writes on adventures in type:
Maybe I’m a little bit compulsive. I recall that when I was a child I would come home from school and eat my bowl of Cheerios at the breadboard at one end of the kitchen counter. With each mouthful of cereal, I would walk around the kitchen, matching my steps to my chews – the rhythm of chewing. Then I took piano lessons, and when I wasn’t at the piano I would think about the music and press the keys into the palms of my hands. But an overabundance of hymns and a paucity of popular music turned me away from playing. When I was older yet – a junior in high school now – I learned to type. Ever since, I type words in my mind or sometimes press the letters into my palms as I think or read them. I can’t stop it – the rhythm of words. Read more
Fresh off the Press: New Letterpress Coaster Designs
Our book arts and letterpress studio in Tieton, Washington, just delivered four new coaster designs, now available through our Etsy store Marquand Ephemera. Each set has a different personality, so you’re sure to find one that fits the vibe of your next cocktail party, backyard BBQ, or ritzy dinner.
Closing Sunday: The Book Borrowers at Bellevue Arts Museum
This weekend is your last chance to experience The Book Borrowers, showing now at the Bellevue Arts Museum. It’s an innovative exhibition featuring books transformed into sculpture by 31 artists, including Washington State contributors James Allen, Alan Corkery Hahn, Casey Curran, and Jane Lackey.
Marquand has produced a special limited-edition book to complement the exhibit. The hardcover version is cloth-bound with an embossed title, and both hard and soft-cover versions were digitally printed, then bound by local artisan Chikabird with a string-tie closure. Read more
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Marquand Books designs and produces fine illustrated books for art museums, galleries, trade publishers, artists, collectors, and architects.
