Chair’s Report – November 2008

Hello Everyone,

This is the first installment of the business section of the website. It is fashioned after the “Chair’s Note” which was a regular feature of the newsletter, but more focused on reporting on communications between the Executive board of the Guild and the regional Chapter(s). Our hopes for the website are that it will make communications more up to date than in the newsletter because we will be able to get information to you as it comes, so let’s get started!

There has been a lot of focus on what the Guild can do to attract more members. One important thing the Guild can do is make it as easy as possible for students to get involved in Guild activities, starting with membership. So, the Executive board voted in August to lower the student rate for membership to $25 per year. The rate is available for 3 consecutive years to full-time students with ID.

During Standards this year a few things were brought up during the Executive committee meeting and the annual meeting that members might want to weigh in on. On the attracting more members front, it was suggested that the GBW might consider developing sections that correspond to different membership constituents (i.e., bookbinders, book artists, conservators, calligraphers, etc.) the idea being that if people can identify and connect with like-minded folks they will be more inclined to join and find value in their membership.

Another is to steer both the national newsletter and Journal to more academic writing (for example: having interns report on research.)

And a hot topic, understandably, at the annual meeting is a general concern about the trend in some chapters (including ours) of moving away from print newsletters. Your chapter co-chairs are always open to suggestions and input from members on this or any other matter including recommendations for workshops or other activities. Please use the “Contact Us” section of the website, or send us an email and let us know what’s on your mind. Planning is well under way for next year’s Standards that will take place in San Francisco next October. The Guild’s 2009 traveling exhibition “Marking Time” will be on view at the San Francisco Public Library during the conference.

There are a few more juried competitions coming up. The Society of Bookbinders will hold theirs to coincide with the annual meeting next summer. For more information go to the Society of Bookbinders web site.

The other is the 2009 Helen Warren DeGolyer Triennial Exhibition and Award for American Bookbinding. Funded with an endowment from the family of Helen Warren DeGolyer, the competition will coincide with a national conference on the book arts at the Bridwell Library in Austin, Texas in late spring 2009. For more information, click here.

We’ll be checking in with you again soon,

Clare Manias and Rachel Lapkin
Chapter Co-Chairs

Hi All,

We’re welcoming Spring here in NYC, at long last, and are looking forward to some great upcoming workshops and lectures, hopefully interspersed with some evenings of post-work outside libations.

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! The President’s coming to town … Jim Reid-Cunningham will be with us in early June, teaching a leather rebacking workshop. And a few weeks later, Sonja Drimmer will give a lecture on a sumptuous illuminated manuscript held in the collections of The Morgan Library and Museum. Both events are described inside. We also give you a sneak preview of our early November lecture and workshop with Cambridge University conservators Jim Bloxam and Kristine Rose, the construction of a binding model based on the late 7th century St. Cuthbert Gospel of St. John, formerly known as the Stonyhurst Gospel.

Through the early months of 2007, the NY Chapter held a number of successful and well-attended events, including a Tricks & Tips workshop with Renate Mesmer, the Head of Book Conservation from The Folger Shakespeare Library, a Byzantine Binding Model workshop with Anna Embree, instructor at the Book Arts Program at the University of Alabama, and a “Blacklettering” typography lecture by NYC-based typographic designer and artist Peter Bain.

Clare and I are settling in as the acting co-chairs for the chapter, and official election ballots for the chair seats are included in this newsletter. Please fill them out and send them in. Also, we are thrilled to be joined in running the NY Chapter by Vasare Rastonis, now the Newsletter Editor, and Erin Albritton as the Program Chair. We were really inspired by the breadth of book colleagues here in NYC in October for the Centennial, and are trying to organize events that can speak to this variety of interests. That said, we always welcome your ideas and suggestions for events and the newsletter. Don’t be shy.

Georgia Southworth