Mortimer Rare Book Room Exhibitions

Paste Papers of the Pioneer Valley
January 158 through April 15, 2012
Mortimer Rare Book Room, Neilson Library Level 3 (hours)

The Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts is a national center for the book arts: printing, bookbinding, calligraphy, and paper decoration. Paste Papers of the Pioneer Valley, an exhibition on view until mid-April in Neilson Library at Smith College, celebrates the variety of color, design, and technique of a special type of decorated paper—paste paper—produced as artwork on its own and for use in collages and bookbindings. The nineteen paste paper makers whose works are on display are primarily bookbinders who live and work in the area or who have strong ties here. Some of them are: Carol Blinn, Sarah Creighton, Claudia Cohen, Daniel and Babette Gehnrich, Elisabeth Hyder, Sami Keats, Dan Kelm, and Mark Tomlinson. Also on view is a reproduction of a rare paste paper by master bookbinder Arno Werner (1899-1995), who taught and inspired many of this area, and this country’s, finest bookbinders. The exhibition at Smith also includes eight books bound using paste papers created by some of the paste paper makers whose work is on display.

The paste papers on view are from the Mortimer Rare Book Room’s deluxe copy of Paste Papers of the Pioneer Valley, a book designed by Michael Russem and co-published by Catawba Press (Northampton, MA) and Kat Ran Press (Cambridge, MA) in the fall of 2011. The book also includes brief biographies of the paste paper makers and an introductory essay by the late bookbinder and book designer David P. Bourbeau. Twenty deluxe copies, with boxes handmade by Barbara Blumenthal in Northampton, feature matted original pieces of the papers which were reproduced in three hundred copies of the book printed by Capitol Offset in Concord, New Hampshire.

David Bourbeau, who made some of the paste papers shown at Smith, described the process in his introductory essay: “Paste paper is basically a mixture of paste … and ground watercolor pigment (or acrylic paint as is more common now), which is applied to dampened paper with brushes, rollers, or sponges. It is then combed, scraped, pulled, or otherwise manipulated into a seemingly unlimited variety of textures and patterns. As the moisture evaporates and the paper dries, light and dark shadows create an interesting three-dimensional effect inherent in this method.”

Michael Russem, a printer and typographic designer, is the proprietor of Kat Ran Press. He has produced numerous limited edition books for many writers, artists, and publishers. Barbara Blumenthal is an independent bookbinder, as well as the rare book specialist in the Mortimer Rare Book Room, Smith College. Since 1980, she has designed, bound, and published five books under her Catawba Press imprint, as well as bound hundreds of books for small press publishers and private collectors.

Paste paper by Carol J. Blinn

Paste paper by Claudia Cohen

Paste paper by Elisabeth Hyder

Paste paper by Sarah Creighton

Paste paper by Meredith Broberg

Charles Dickens at 200
January 15 through April 15, 2012
Book Arts Gallery, Neilson Library Level 3 (hours)

Charles Dickens, born in February 1812, is a writer who presumably needs no introduction. Many of his characters and stories are part of the cherished fabric of readers of English literature— Oliver Twist & Fagin, Pip & Miss Havisham, Tiny Tim, Bob Cratchit, Ebenezer Scrooge, and all the rest. After a difficult childhood, Dickens started his writing career as a journalist and editor of several popular magazines. His first collection of essays and stories, Sketches by Boz (an early pseudonym derived from a family nickname) was published in 1836. Dickens was only twenty-four years old and not well known as a writer. His illustrator, George Cruikshank, was twenty years older and already an established graphic artist. The second series of Dickens’ sketches, generally known as The Pickwick Papers, is the work that made Dickens famous, almost overnight. Dickens was a prolific writer, and his popularity flourished during his lifetime and well beyond his death in 1870. His many works were illustrated by a number of the Victorian era’s most notable graphic artists.

Many of Dickens’ novels, as well as others of the time, were published as serials, in weekly or monthly parts, stitched into printed paper wrappers. This meant that the novels didn’t have to be, or seldom were, complete when publication began, resulting in the use of the “cliffhanger,” a suspenseful end to each section of the novel, intended to guarantee the reader’s interest and eagerness to purchase the next installments of the story. The Mortimer Rare Book Room has a notable Charles Dickens collection, including a number of his novels in “original parts.” The bulk of the Dickens material was a gift to the library in January 1965 (and exhibited here in February of that year) by Helen Dunbar Holmes, class of 1909. 

Portrait of Charles Dickens by Daniel Maclise, an Irish-born painter of historical and literary subjects. From The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (London: Chapman and Hall, 1839)

Cover, with illustrations by H.K. Browne (also known as “Phiz”), for the serial publication of The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences, & Observation of David Copperfield the Younger (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1849-1850)

Illustration by George Cruikshank from Oliver Twist  (London: Richard Bentley, 1838)