Codex was massive and amazing. It was the best book fair debut an independent bookseller could hope for. I met pen pals in person, I made new friends, I saw old friends, I preached the gospel of contemporary fine art bookbinding, and I sold books. San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Richmond were very good to me.
Now I get to bring it all back home. Really. It’s about 20 blocks from home. I can walk there.
The San Francisco Bay Area is a hotbed of book arts with a long-standing tradition of French-style binding. Historically, binding in the Northeast US owes more to the English and Germans. I’m not going to discuss dates, patterns of immigration and migration, or happenstance. The research has been done and written about by actual binder-scholars. I refer you to the index to the journal of the Guild of Bookworkers. These days, in San Francisco, you can get excellent training in both French and English binding methods from the many binders who reside and teach in the area.
The point is that in San Francisco there is an especially appreciative audience for exquisitely crafted fine art bindings such as the ones I brought to CODEX.
Time has gotten away from me. I can’t believe it’s been a month since my last post.
So many things happened in 2014: some good, some great; some bad, and some very bad. Oddly, even the very bad stuff turned into some very good stuff. The main thing is that I went from being an antiquarian bookseller who obsesses over fine art bookbinding on the side (not at all bad), to a bookseller who obsesses over fine art bookbinding all the time (very, very good) at www.AbbySchoolman.com.
American Bound 