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The Friends of Calligraphy review of Codex 2007: “The Codex International Book Fair and Symposium” At the FOC Council Meeting last September, President Susie Taylor proposed that the Friends of Calligraphy should participate in The Codex Foundation Symposium, “The Fate of the Art: the Hand Made Book in the 21st Century.” It was scheduled to take place in Berkeley in February 2007 for three days during the week before the Antiquarian Book Fair weekend in San Francisco. News of this event had been circulating in the local book scene for several months. Susie felt that since the FOC is part of this ‘scene’ we should have a visible presence at the Symposium. Her motion to spend $200 for the Symposium’s registration fee was seconded by Sandy Sanches, and then the Council selected a Berkeley resident, ME (!), to attend and take notes and write a report. Although I also had heard about the Symposium, I hadn’t looked at the program, and was not planning to go. But now, after having attended the Codex Foundation’s first event, I will be one of the first to register when the second Book Fair and Symposium comes around in 2009. The Codex Foundation is a new Bay Area non-profit organization (www.codexfoundation.org). Its purpose is to preserve and promote the art and craft of the book, and it is the brainchild of Peter Rutledge Koch, proprietor of Peter Koch Printers, who has been printing, teaching, and proselytizing in the Bay Area for many years. The International Book Fair and Symposium was conceived and organized by Koch and his active Board of Directors, with the support of an impressive list of institutions, presses, and individuals. The event got under way at the University of California Faculty Club in Berkeley on Monday evening, February 12, with an opening reception and pre-registration. The lines for drinks and for registration were long. But there were few signs of impatience as everyone was delighted to be talking with their neighbors. Many had traveled hundreds of miles to be there. A gentle looking man behind me was speaking German so I turned around to try out a few words of my deutsch and found myself speaking to H. Stefan Bartkowiak of forum book art in Hamburg. More than fifty small press books and artists’ books from his private collection were on display at the San Francisco Center for the Book, Bartkowiak’s Best: Book Art from the Hamburg Archives. I had seen the large custom made box they were shipped in at the Center in January. In line in front of me was Susanne Padberg of Galerie Druck & Buch in Tübingen, which specializes in Artists Books. Speaking with her was paper-and-book maker John Gerard of Rheinbach. Across the room I saw Dr. Stefan Soltek, Director of the Klingspor Museum in Offenbach, who would be speaking to the symposium on Wednesday morning. The Symposium lectures and panels, stimulating and often inspiring, took place in a timely manner in the UC Berkeley Art Museum theater. Here is the program: Tuesday, February 13 Wednesday, February 14 Thursday, February 15 Peter Koch’s dream for The Codex Foundation is “to create a great marketplace for all forms of the book as a work of art” and the heart of undertaking was the International Book Fair, held in Pauley Ballroom on the second floor of the Student Union, and open every afternoon until 6:00 PM. There were well over 100 exhibitors, more than a dozen from Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom, respectively; as well as participants from Australia, Colombia , France, Italy, Israel, Mexico, Russia. The rest came from all over the United States, more than 30 from California. The people standing behind the tables were mostly affiliated with fine presses, but there were also dealers in skins and papers, and galleries for handmade artist books. There were bookbinders, papermakers and one calligrapher. Friends of Calligraphy member Thomas Ingmire showed two large format (approximately 18” x 14.5”) manuscript books with original drawings by Manual Neri and poems by Pablo Neruda, both books bound by Massachusetts bookbinder, Daniel Kelm. Ingmire also was showing a binder of small originals and prints for sale, as well as a small book, My Rice Tastes Like the Lake, a collaboration with Tibetan poetess, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa. (This book may be seen in Special Collections, San Francisco Library.) As everyone knows who has been involved in putting on a public event, it is a risky business. It costs money, not to mention time and spirit. What if nobody comes? On the last panel, Codex Foundation Board Member, Earl Collier, an administrator and businessman, reported that the Board had been prepared for failure. But “the event has gone better that we could have imagined!” The Board members looked happy –and a bit stunned. It was heartening to know that things went well because this means that there’s a chance for a second Codex Foundation International Book Fair and Symposium, and you, dear reader, will have a chance to go. Besides book sales, what went really well at this event was the huge number of new connections between people so deeply committed to book making. In the last lecture on Thursday, Robert Bringhurst repeatedly made connections between living, organic things and intellectual, spiritual things --the imperfect (suffering) and the perfect (ideal). Writing or typography connects them because letters are “organic artifacts left behind a living organism.” “Script is spiritual geometry made visible by material instruments.” Art should not be confused with perfection. The success of this event is directly related to the number of people who came whose first allegiance is to language and to something beyond language: to that quality in things – I like to call it poetry –- which calls language into being.* * Robert Bringhurst, The Typographic Mind. Gaspereau Press Limited, Canada, 2006 |
© The Codex Foundation.