#Fine Books & Collections

[a2zillustration]

I feel like I didn't get to mess with her nearly enough.

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[[ All Croissant Adventures (chronological, desktop) ]]

[[ All Croissant Adventures (app) ]]

[catominor]

A 1964 illustrated Satyricon, translated by William Burnaby and illustrated by Antonio Sotomayor

[uwmspeccoll]

Doors Open Milwaukee

As we do every year, this past Saturday (September 28, 2024) we participated in the annual city-wide event, Doors Open Milwaukee, where over 150 institutions, facilities, and buildings open their doors to the community. Of course, as a public institution our doors are always open to the public, but this event offers us an opportunity to emphasize the public-facing aspect of our Special Collections.

During the event, we displayed select examples from our many collecting areas. These materials were arranged chronologically from the 15th century to the present, covering incunabula, literature, history, horticulture, printmaking technologies, state-of-the-art facsimiles, fine-press publications, and artists' books.

142 visitors walked through our doors on Saturday, with many coming in family groups. As you can see from the images, the children were as fascinated with our materials as the adults!

[haunthouse]

pspspps shirley jackson girlies (gender neutral). new page on ye olde neocities

[chiropteracupola]

Martín Macuilmazatl, a young gentleman of the Ciudad de México.

[conservethis]

I pulled this book for a project at work and never have I jumped on the Abebooks website so fast to see if there was another copy of a book for sale as I did after I flipped through it.

I have been keeping aquariums for 30 years now, and this will be a great addition to my personal collection of Books About Fish!

“Shallows of the Sea” was printed by Lamar College’s “Blotter Press” in 1966. It contains many lovely silkscreened images of freshwater fish (including many species familiar to the aquarium trade).

I can’t wait for my copy to arrive in the mail!

[hkblack]

Let me tell you a story...

It starts in the summer of 2021. Honestly it probably starts a little before that. 2020 through 2022 ish are a bit hazy because there was a lot of sitting around at home doing nothing.

Somewhere in that haziness my partner goes “wait, you haven’t watched this Good Omens show yet? And you haven’t read the book? … oh no. You should do that.”

And immediately after finishing the show I knew I was in trouble. I knew if I read the book I would absolutely fall down the fandom rabbit hole and be trapped, and so for a very long while, I didn’t. Until I did.

And then in August 2021, I wandered into fandom. I had been lurking. Seeing what AO3 had to offer. Crawling back onto Tumblr. But I had a story idea, and I needed a beta reader. And the last time I was in fandom, LiveJournal was still a thing, so I didn’t know where to go.

I found out about Discord, and I signed up for a thousand servers, it felt like, and in one server I bravely started sticking my neck out.

There was talk about someone writing a Human AU on a farm, and farm animals in general, and I chimed in about goat-scaping. And then I made the joke that would seal my fate.

“I don’t know if I could write a kid fic, but you know. I could write a kid (goat) fic.”

It was meant to be a short, sweet, meet-cute. Professor Aziraphale has a goat from the goat scaping team break into his office. Based loosely on a campus experience where a member of the goat-scaping team at a campus I was on tried (and failed) to get into a classroom once.

A simple formula. Maybe a 4+1? 4 times a goat broke into Professor Aziraphale Fell’s office, and one time it didn’t.

I even found the first beta reading request. First chapter done, I’ve got four more planned. Rated T.

Ha.

I started writing Chapter 5, you know, the final chapter, and realized—there’s more to this story. These characters have life, and story, and who doesn’t want to see more goats? Also, had I truly fulfilled the “kid-fic” portion of my joke?

I think we can all agree that no, no I hadn’t.

So, I kept writing. But I also found my stride in other Discord Servers and in Fandom in general. And in the winter of 2021, I went on a beta-reading blitz for the Gift Exchange happening in the Do It With Style Events Discord server. I read something like 14? 15? stories in a very short amount of time and in doing so, got to know some really amazing people and began to carve out my spot in the community.

From this server I found folks with lived goat-experience who were willing to share and advise me. From this server I found beta readers and brit pickers willing to cheer me on and guide my writing to the best version it could be. I found friends and joy and I found community.

And if you look very carefully through the pages of Bleating Hearts, I think that at its heart, past the puns, past the obvious fast burn love story, and the crooked Luce Matin and demanding James Starr, and even beyond the goats, it’s a story about finding your place in a community. While we talk about Aziraphale and Crowley and their relationship, so many people have asked me about Anathema and Crowley at the chicken coop (we only got to see Newt and Aziraphale in the bedroom). The most commented on scene is Anathema pulling the car over and getting Aziraphale’s consent to go to Tracy’s for lunch.

It's a story with goats, romance, and drama. But it’s a story about community.

I have thanked the people most involved a thousand times over, and I will always take an excuse to thank them again. @ambrasue, my ride or die beta reader. She is who to thank for the sentences making sense. And for me not beating you all over the head with the word “Gently.” HolRose, for the Brit-Picking and second pair of eyes when Ambra and I had gone cross-eyed, and always, always, always having a kind comment ready to go for every chapter update. @writingordinaryrealities, for all things Goats, and for not laughing at me when we met in person and I lost my cool over real life goats.

@mirjam-writes! Mirjam made me my first ever fanart for one of my fanfics! And so many more of you have followed suit and I never know what to say when I see it but I always make a noise and run excitedly to my partner and flap my hands and show him his heart and he always gets the dumbest smile and goes, “I love when people make you goat fanart. You are adorable when you’re verklempt.”

But also, the DIWS and Good Omens community. Every single person who shouted at one of my snippets when I needed a boost and shared a bit of what I was proud of. Every single person who tagged me in a goat video—you all have tagged me in so many goat videos. I watch each and every one of them. Every single person who got excited when I said I was finally ready to start posting.

Because you see, that support, that community, led me to pay it forward. At TIC4 in 2023, I had just finished my panel on beta reading and was feeling a bit amped up. I saw in the chat that someone wanted to talk Slow Show and Human Aus and, I don’t know if y’all know this, but uh, I’m a big fan of human AUs. And so I hopped into the break out room and met J.

J is a lovely human who has been fandoming since the OG Star Trek days with Kirk and Spock. She had found a physical copy of Slow Show and just needed to talk to someone, anyone about it. She wasn’t sure what the Archive was, she was still learning her way around digital fandom, and I instantly wanted to reach out and help her find community and joy the way I had when I got started in the fandom. So, I sat down and I gave her my favorites. I told her how to find me on socials. We connected on Discord. We sent each other long letters back and forth on Discord sharing our joys and frustrations and our love of GO and talking about all sorts of other things. And it has been amazing listening to her stories and getting to know her.

Unbeknownst to me, J had reached out to @brunheiffer to ask for a physical copy of Bleating Hearts. Now—I’m all for fandom in the physical space, but it’s never even crossed my mind to do more than something printed out at my home printer, hastily hole punched, and shoved into a binder so I could sneak fanfiction reading time during 5th period math class after I was done with my worksheets many, many, many moons ago. When brunheiffer reached out and asked if they could print and bind a copy for me—I didn’t know what to say. Or do. Or think. I think I keysmashed? I keysmashed after I made my partner read the message out loud. And then I went and looked through tumblr and all of brunheiffer’s excellent work. And then I went, “Do I say yes?” and he went “um YES OF COURSE YOU SAY YES. WHAT”

So, I said yes.

I also said yes to progress shots and got to watch some of the coolest work ever. I didn’t know how books…ya know…booked. Witchcraft probably? I’m still convinced there is witchcraft involved, but there is also an incredible amount of skill, and time, and patience, and hard work, and love that is put into making a book a book. And learning what I did, and watching the process, and seeing the care that brunheiffer put into each of the three (THREE!) sets of books that were made (one for me, one for brunheiffer, one for J), was just stunning.

Do you know, J reached out to me and apologized for not asking me first and asked me if it was okay that she had reached out and asked if brunheiffer would do this for her? Why would I ever be against something so heartfelt and kind?

I cried.

I legitimately sat in my office and cried.

When people ask me how I write the way I do, or why I write, or anything along those lines. I have the same answer. “I write for myself.”

Oh sure, I started to write Bleating Hearts to make Ambra laugh and/or have feelings, but at the end of the day, when I write, it is because I need to get the bed time stories I tell myself at night, the day dreams while sitting on the bus, out of my head and somewhere else—so that a new movie can play. And when I write, I write knowing that I will come back to that story. That I will forget the little pieces (because I have a pretty shit memory tbh), and I’ll be able to go back, and wrap myself up in the comfort of the story I have written, and be surprised by some of the little details I left as presents for myself. And be excited. And be happy. And watch my favorite movie again.

So every time I see someone make art of this story, or talk about how they love the story, or how happy it made them, or the feelings it inspired, or how reading goats made them want to write their own fanfiction—I get, well, like my partner says, “verklempt.” I don’t know what to do with that feeling, other than to just be overwhelmed that somehow something I made to entertain me has brought other people so much joy. Has helped people connect and find community.

What a powerful and beautiful thing that is.

Not everything I write is going to be Bleati—y'all I am just going to call it Goats. Calling it Bleating Hearts feels so weird. It’s Goats. That’s the name of the story. That’s my name for the story.

Anyway.

Not everything is going to be Goats. I’ve got some wips in the hopper right now that are um…lots of angst and heavy spice. Not everything I write is going to be liked by everyone. Some of it may even offend you.

But knowing that this one thing has inspired you all to the point that I’ve been gifted the ability to hold my story in my hand?

That’s powerful.

And it only exists because this community, this Good Omens community, has come together and chosen joy.

There’s some bad apples out there, there are in every bunch. But I am liberal with my block button and have been blessed to find a welcoming and warm community that creates some amazing and incredible art—whether that’s like actual like digital or pen to paper art, or the fiction you write, or the podfics you record, or the meta analysis you write, or the playlists or the animatics or the beta reading or the shouting unhinged support or the role playing or the plushies, or the books you bind—this community is full of incredibly creative and amazing people.

So thanks, y’all, for letting me part of your community, and enjoying my silly little goat fic. And thank you brunheiffer and J for this amazing gift.

If you haven’t read it, or just want to reread it, you can read Bleating Hearts (GOATS) on Archive of Our Own.

All my love,

HK

(I am the most cringe sap on main right now. No regurts)

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[hclib]

Remembering Jody Williams, 1956-2023

In August, I met with Minneapolis book artist Jody Williams. We gossiped about other artists, talked about tiny things, and she shared stories about her life-long love of books and her chaotic 1960s childhood, growing up near Chicago with five siblings. But the real reason she was visiting was to sell old work from her archive. I've been buying Jody's work for the Hennepin County Library's Book Arts and Fine Press Collection for over a decade, but didn't have any of her early work and wanted to better document her legacy as a book artist. She brought with her nearly all of her books--work spanning over thirty years as a book artist--and it all fit in just one box. Jody's work is tiny.

She had the first editioned artists' book she ever made, her first book housed in a box, her first book under the name Flying Paper Press, her first book printed in her own studio, a book about phobias, an alphabet bestiary jack-in-the-box, books which melded her training in printmaking and metalworking, and her semi-annual periodical devoted to tiny things, among others. What they all had in common was their diminutive size, Jody-designed font, and impeccable precision. We now have 20 of Jody Williams' books in our collection.

Jody died on October 17, 2023, after a long battle with cancer. She will be missed and will be remembered fondly for her contributions to book and printing arts in the Twin Cities.

Jody's books will be on display at Minneapolis Central Library starting in mid-December 2023 through February 2024.

[butterflieswhisper]

thoughtabout the minecraft end poem again. man. man. a minecraft movie is just. so. it's so. man. "and the universe said everything you need is within you" "you. you. you are alive" "to tell them how to live is to prevent living" "to see you, player. to know you. to be known." "does it know that we love it? that the universe is kind?" "and the universe said i love you because you are love" it's so. man ... man .......

[kolajmag]

COLLAGE BOOKS

Enchanted Worlds: The Visionary Collages and Art Couture of Amy Zerner

Amy Zerner takes the world around her and transforms it magically into her own art forms. She combines fabrics, embroideries, and found objects into lushly imaginative collages intended as signposts to spiritual growth and healing. Guided by her husband, Monte Farber, you’ll experience how Amy synthesizes myths, archetypal symbols, fairy tales, and world cosmologies as she conjures sacred spaces; depicts goddesses, gods, and guardian angels; and creates surreal dreamscapes of primeval grottoes, sanctuaries, and utopias. Read More

*****************************

Kolaj Magazine, a full color, print magazine, exists to show how the world of collage is rich, layered, and thick with complexity. By remixing history and culture, collage artists forge new thinking. To understand collage is to reshape one's thinking of art history and redefine the canon of visual culture that informs the present.

SUBSCRIBE | CURRENT ISSUE | GET A COPY

SIGN UP TO GET EMAILS

[the-busy-ghost]

Me normally: Let people love what they love

Me, after a Test Match Special commentator expresses their belief that the new All Creatures Great and Small is somehow "better" than the 1978 version: This is pure insanity and TMS can no longer be trusted on anything, how can they even be trusted to know about cricket, do they have no TASTE

[uwmspeccoll]

Typography Tuesday

Silver Buckle Press is a working museum of letterpress printing dedicated to preserving the craft of fine printing through its collection of presses, type, and publications, distinguished by an extensive range of wood type, display faces, and decorative ornaments. It was acquired by the University of Wisconsin Madison in 1973 and resided at the university's Memorial Library as a teaching laboratory until the retirement of its last director Tracy Honn in 2016, after which the press and its collections were transferred to Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers Wisconsin under a long-term loan agreement with the museum.

Silver Buckle had a series of curator/director/printers in its 40+ years at UW, and in 1988, when the noted letterpress printer and book artist Barbara Tetenbaum was director, the press printed this Calendar of ornamental material from the collection of the Silver Buckle Press, designed, printed, and bound under the direction of Tetenbaum with the assistance of Marta Gomez, Tracy Honn, and Phyllis McGibbon in an edition of 65 copies signed by Tetenbaum.

The calendar features the Printers' Ornament Collection from the Silver Buckle collection, and each image was designed and hand set from a variety of decorative border fonts and hand printed on a Vandercook proofing press. Our copy is another donation from the estate of our friend Dennis Bayuzick.

View more posts on the Silver Buckle Press.

View more posts of type ornaments.

View more Typography Tuesday posts.

[sockeyesidequest]

Alriiiiight post time. Finished the first project of my first illustration class. The prompt was flora and fauna which I ran with, ngl. I chose an orange tree sapling paired with an epaulette shark. Pretty fun to make but pretty nerve racking not fucking it up bcs of how fine and small the details are. BUT I DID IT and I'm pretty happy with it. :)

[outerspacesushi]

My Cad Bane Hot Toys came in today, and let's just appreciate the smolness of Todo. Thank you

[iammb]

i’m giving up dating as a lesbian. i’m going to die a cat lady with her own library, and you know what? that’s okay:)