Centre for art form that combines crafts of papermaking,
typesetting and bookbinding inspired by founder's US road trip
Simon Goode, whose decision to open the
London Centre for Book Arts was inspired by a three-month trip visiting book
arts centres across the US. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the
Guardian
Some people travel the US to see the sights and bright lights, to maybe lose
themselves in the kitsch of Vegas or Hollywood's craziness. Simon Goode, on the
other hand, roamed the country to explore the joys of papermaking, typesetting
and bookbinding.
"The trip was like a holy grail," he said, rhapsodising over three months travelling from New York to Los Angeles on a mission that has helped result in Britain's first ever centre for a craft that is in danger of disappearing: book arts.
That term may be a mystery to some. "It is a difficult one to define and still, to this day, a lot of people don't know exactly how to define it," admits Goode.
Essentially, it is creating art in book form. "Then you've got the question, what is a book?" he added. "My experiences define it as using traditional techniques, like bookbinding and letterpress making – but not wholly, and not exclusively – for artists to produce their own works."
"The trip was like a holy grail," he said, rhapsodising over three months travelling from New York to Los Angeles on a mission that has helped result in Britain's first ever centre for a craft that is in danger of disappearing: book arts.
That term may be a mystery to some. "It is a difficult one to define and still, to this day, a lot of people don't know exactly how to define it," admits Goode.
Essentially, it is creating art in book form. "Then you've got the question, what is a book?" he added. "My experiences define it as using traditional techniques, like bookbinding and letterpress making – but not wholly, and not exclusively – for artists to produce their own works."
If that's still fuzzy, then
Goode hopes people might just come along to his centre to explore an art form
whose practitioners have included Richard Long, David Hockney and Ed Ruscha, whose
first artist's book was Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations, which featured 26
photographs of just that. In the UK, the largest number of artists' books is
held by the V&A, while Tate has about 5,500
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